More than a generation has gone by since I taught at Oberlin College in Ohio. Memories of those years in the early 1970s eased up on me yesterday when I saw a story about a list of demands from students. The demands were broken down into several categories, and in one labeled “Academics and Curriculum” was the name Wendell Logan.
“We demand the renaming of these specific academic buildings: The Kohl Jazz Building to the Wendell Logan Building, a Black man who created the Jazz Department and gave his life to this institution.” The students also wanted Hall Auditorium renamed the Avery Brooks Auditorium after the highly acclaimed actor and alumnus of the school.
It was a similar climate of student activism that had brought me to the campus in 1970. Several students in the school’s Conservatory began to demand classes in jazz to augment their classical curriculum. At that time, I was living in Detroit and was a member of a group of musicians and activists who had created Strata, and our organization became known to the Oberlin students because of a concert series in which two our members had participated.
Our main spokesperson was the late Kenn Cox, a phenomenal pianist and composer and the co-leader with trumpeter the late Charles Moore of the Contemporary Jazz Quintet. With Cox at the helm, we began discussions with the students and Emil Danenberg, president of the college. Danenberg died in 1982. It was finally agreed that Strata would help devise a curriculum and lead research on settling the dispute between the student activists and the Conservatory.
I was summoned to help structure the curriculum since I had done similar work at Wayne State University in Black studies. Cox, Moore and I developed what we called “Jazz Anthropology.” After a series of meetings, the Conservatory agreed to our plan—Moore would instruct the musical component and I would teach the history and literature of jazz.
For two years, Moore and I commuted to Oberlin from Detroit, a 300-mile round trip. We would arrive there Thursday evening, stay overnight at the Oberlin Inn, teach our classes Friday and leave out that evening for Detroit.
Moore and I were warmly welcomed by the students, and our classes were packed. We got to know Avery Brooks, who had just graduated but remained on campus to head up the burgeoning Black Theater Department. Already he was demonstrating the talent that would later make him a star on stage and screen.
After two years we felt we had done enough to set things in motion, and my job at Wayne State was expanded, making it difficult for me to continue at Oberlin. Plus the trip, particularly in the winter, became grueling since I had to do all of the driving.
All of these memories came flooding back as I read the demands of the current students. When Moore and I left, Logan was hired to replace us. In effect, he had to do what two teachers had done previously. He soon took it to another level of achievement with the development of a Jazz Department.
Logan died in 2010, but he had established an enviable department, often bringing in world-class jazz musicians to help him. Later, one of my students, Ralph Jones, would basically take his place. When Jones brought me there for a guest lecture and performance three years ago, I was reacquainted with the town, the campus and with students who were very much like the ones I got to know back in the day.
Well, it seems “back in the day” has returned, if in fact, it truly ever left—that is, some of the complaints now registered by the activists. Jones, who is no longer at Oberlin but in Atlanta at Spelman College, where he is a senior lecturer and director of the school’s jazz ensemble, gave some indications of the simmering discontent at the college.
That discontent, following on the heels of similar recent protests at the University of Missouri, Princeton, et al, is now fully forged with a list of demands that reach beyond the Conservatory to practically every corner of the academy.
Among the demands is that African-American students be granted a safe space, something more than the existing Afrika Heritage House; an increase in the number of Black and students of color represented in the institution from the Americas; an increase in Black administrators and faculty; divestment from all prisons and Israel; and an end of Oberlin functioning as a gentrifying institution.
“We demand that Black student leaders be provided an $8.20 an hour stipend for their continuous organizing efforts around the well-being of Black people on Oberlin’s campus and beyond,” the students declared. They also listed a number of faculty members they wanted to be fired immediately, as well as several who they say should be granted tenure. A demand was made as well for the rehiring of community members who worked at the Oberlin Inn before its renovation.
One of the demands was of particular resonance for me, as it said that students majoring in jazz should not be required to take classical musical courses if students majoring in classical music are not required to take jazz courses. It was a debate that was quite prevalent in the ’70s.
What is different now is the demands are more sweeping, and the response from the administration is not as accommodating. Oberlin President Marvin Krislov said the demands were not negotiable. While some of the demands were significant, he said, there would be no discussion about the demands termed nonnegotiable.
“Some of the solutions it proposes are deeply troubling,” Krislov wrote in a response to the college’s website. “I will not respond directly to any document that explicitly rejects the notion of collaborative engagement. Many of its demands contravene principles of shared governance. And it contains personal attacks on a number of faculty and staff members who are dedicated and valued members of this community.”
A generation has gone by since student demands brought about change, and the beat goes on. We will have to wait until students resume classes next week to see if they have to invoke their promise of “immediate action” if the demands are not met.