One to One: Diane Brady, author, "Fraternity"

Hello, I'm Cheryl McCarthy of the City University of New York. Welcome to One to One. Each week we address issues of timely and timeless concern with newsmakers and the journalists who report on them. With artists, writers, scientists, educators, social scientists, activists, government leaders, we speak with each One to One. I'm delighted to welcome journalist Diane Brady to the program. In her new book, Fraternity, which has just been published by the Spiegel and Grau imprint of Random House, the Bloomberg Businessweek writer goes outside the box of financial writing. Fraternity is not a book about frat life, but an account of the brotherhood that existed among the African American students who arrived at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1968, and about the Jesuit priest who brought them together. Welcome. You're a business writer. So why write a book about a group of black men who go to a white Catholic college in the late 60s and the priest who brought them there?

You know, it was serendipity because I happened to be out to lunch with Stan Grayson, who's one of the men in the book. He's the former deputy mayor of New York. And it was the day that Ted Wells was on the front page of the New York Times, and he just. He happened to refer to that fact and then started mentioning the other men that he not only gone to school with, but actually lived on the same hall with, and then mentioned Father Brooks. So I became just intrigued by what was it that made them so successful and who was Father Brooks and the fact that he was still alive and still in their lives, I think sort of intrigued me and sort of drove me into writing the story and ultimately into writing the book.

You smelled a story?

I did. Story's a story.

You decided to focus on five. There were 20 black students who entered in the fall of 1968. One was Clarence Thomas, who was a transfer student, A sophomore, and 19 freshman. Why focus on five? It's just sort of.

I was interested, first of all, in. I'm interested in leadership. I was interested in what made these men successful. So I wanted to focus on, to me, an interesting cross section of the men. Obviously, Edward P. Jones won a Pulitzer. You had Ted Wells, who's one of the top criminal attorneys in the country, Justice Thomas. Clarence Thomas was very interesting. And then you had Eddie Jenkins, who was a football star, coming on an athletic scholarship. So I found them very interesting characters. I was interested in their interaction with Father Brooks. There's no question there was a bigger group of people. In fact, I spoke to many of those men. They had very Interesting lives, too. But partly for the sake of the reader, it made sense to focus on five.

Now, Father Brooks, who was a professor at Holy Cross at that time, why did he pick 1968 to try to recruit black students to this college?

Well, he had been. Like a lot of colleges across the nation, he had been trying to increase the number of African Americans at Holy Cross. It is a very Irish Catholic college on a hill in Worcester. It's not an attractive place for a lot of people, but he'd been out there. And what happened was after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. S death, he secured some money, so now he was able to go out and actually offer full scholarships, actually offer a living allowance that enabled him to get more people. But I think it was a sense of social justice. I think it was very much the era, obviously, civil rights, and very much the reality that there was a huge swath of leaders out there that they weren't even beginning to touch.

And also, I mean, the fact. I mean, what happened at Holy Cross happened at, you know, I went to Mount Holyoke, one of the Seven Sisters. And what happened to Holy Cross?

Very popular with the men at Holy Cross, by the way.

Okay, Okay. I wish I had met some when I was there. Had happened three years earlier in the Ivy League, and Seven Sisters, you know, had made it where you got in almost all of those schools. The first class with a significant number of black students, whether it was 14 or 20 or 30. And part of it, you know, also. I think part of it was just wanting to be with the times and be progressive, but also the fact that to get federal funding, you had to show there had been two civil rights laws passed, and to continue to get federal funding and that your students get student loans, you had to show that you were open. And I think that was part of the impetus now. There was resistance, you know, from the administration and alumnae to Father Brooks plan to recruit these black students. And this was a school that didn't have much money, almost no endowment, and you're talking about 20 fully paid scholarships.

And the following year, in fact, the class was twice the size, which happened again across the country. When Dr. King died, there was a very big push. So I think it was. There was resistance on a couple of levels. One is, anytime you go outside the typical process where you're personally sitting down recruiting people and admitting them, these were not men who went through the regular process. So there's this bias, in a sense, that, well, are they meeting our standards? Are they people that we would admit anyway, Then there's the fact, of course, that that's putting a lot of power in the hands of one man.

Right, right.

And so there were. And then I think there was also, you know, in some cases, racism. I think in some cases, who knows? It was partly. Some of the professors I talked to resented Brooks somewhat because he's not exactly a gentle, fuzzy man. I mean, he's got a strong personality. And, you know, especially when he ultimately became president, he was somebody who, you know, when he had made up his mind and had his opinion, he kind of went with it. So, you know, rubbed some people the wrong way. But. So I think there were a lot of reasons, but I think it also was emblematic of the times. These were tense times, and people had mixed views about how much change they were willing to put up with or felt comfortable with.

These students also were admitted after the admission cycle had closed. You know, so it's like, you know, in the springtime, you're recruiting Father after they've already sent out the acceptances. Every Catholic class, you're recruiting for the next fall. What was the criteria for choosing?

Well, you know, in the case. So there was a mix, because, first of all, you've got, you know, Ted Wells, Stan Grace and Eddie Jenkins. A lot of men had come through. In fact, it was very common to come through on athletic scholarships. Brooks had been pushing the athletics department to also diversify. The football team had been all white prior to that. Now, all of a sudden, they had not only two, they had three black players coming onto the team. So there was. First of all, the criteria he had was he started with the Catholic schools when he was recruiting, like Edward P. Jones and many others. Gilbert Hardy.

Clarence Thomas.

Clarence Thomas. And so what that did was he understood that it's a very rigorous environment. It's a Jesuit school. And so he wanted kids that he knew were used to the, you know, sort of the workload, who were used to also the religious atmosphere, even though that was fading at Holy Cross. And he was looking for academic standards, he wanted people that he felt could cut it. So he wasn't just looking to diversify. He was looking for the best and the brightest at these places that they hadn't typically recruited from.

Of the students that you interviewed, whose backstory surprised you the most, or who did you find most interesting? Who did you like the most?

Well, it took a long time to get Justice Thomas, as you can imagine. It took me a year, actually, from the time that I had lunch with Stan Grayson, there was real resistance on his part. I think in part because, you know, he assumed I was coming in with an agenda other than, you know, what were you doing in 1968? Once I got in there, I was surprised by, you know, how warm and how emotional he felt about this experience because you've often heard about how he felt about Yale and the negative feelings. Don't often hear about the very positive feelings he had about his other college experience, which was Holy Cross.

So you had Clarence Thomas, but which one was. Who did you find especially interesting of the group?

You know, I have to say I found them all interesting. Eddie Jenkins is a very sort of, you know, colorful, funny, dynamic man. Stan Grayson, I thought it was very interesting to get perspective on his life in Detroit where he was quite an athletic star and sort of the middle class existence of all these families that had come north to work in the auto sector.

He seemed, well, he had friends, black and white, plus he was on the basketball team. And he just, it seemed to be maybe a slightly easier experience for him.

Well, he's a personable, he is a personable guy. He was also very used to being in a all white setting. Ted Wells, on the other hand, had grown up in a very much an all black neighborhood in Washington D.C. he was a football star. You know, he was as ambitious as smart in a very kind of, you know, in a setting where he felt very comfortable. So he was suddenly out of his element. I think it was a harder transition for him coming to Holy Cross. But you know, I'm not going to say it's like picking children because they're not, but. But I found them all very interesting because like they were in many ways sort of a microcosm of a lot of different groups of people that were coming into the system at that time. I found the women who were not in the book, the women that were sort of around these men, the women who were dating these men who were at the other colleges, a lot of whom I spoke to, I found their experiences very interesting. There's only so much you can put in a narrative where you start to confuse people.

I found it interesting to learn about Clarence Thomas relationship with his grandfather because basically his grandfather had basically thrown him out of the house because he had withdrawn from a Catholic seminary, decided he didn't want to be a priest. And his grandfather said basically, I'm through with you.

Yeah, yeah, very harsh, very strict upbringing. In fact, when I first met Justice Thomas, this was before his memoir came out and you got the sense of an incredibly strange, strict, almost mean spirited man. But at the same time, when you read his memoir, when you talk to him, he felt that he got a lot from his grandfather. But there's no question, this period of his life, he was incredibly at odds with this man. And, you know, becoming a priest was a source of pride for his grandfather. When he rejected that, I think it was game over for him.

And basically, I mean, Thomas went to Holy Cross partly because he didn't have anywhere else to go. He probably didn't have anywhere else to go.

He had nowhere else to go. He was also angry and bitter and very much against the Catholic Church. I mean, this was an experience, infamous at this point, where he'd been at the seminary the night that Dr. King died, and somebody who was also en route to becoming a priest had said he got what he deserved. So to think that he then went to a Catholic college after this incredible, bitter experience of being part of the Catholic Church, I think is very interesting. And, and the fact that he connected so much with Father Brook, the theology professor, when he himself couldn't bring himself to go to church after one or two times at Holy Cross, I think says a lot about sort of the depth of the relationship those two men had.

You know, like me and my fellow students at Mount Holyoke and the black students that I knew at the other Ivy League and other, you know, Northeast colleges at that same time, the black students at Holy Cross found no social supports, encampments, no black faculty, few or no black people who lived in town, no significant black social life. Isolated, isolated.

And that's one thing I think that, you know, Brooks recognized. I think at other colleges, they recognized they did not get any special academic support. You kind of had to make it or not based on that. They did get special social support. Brooks paid for them to get a van to go to drive off campus because he recognized, you know, they were not necessarily going to have a good time in Worcester on a Saturday night. He let them live in the same residence, which the black border, very controversial, you know, form of, you know, self imposed segregation. Clarence Thomas was against it and then moved in once everybody voted yes, let's do it. So I think there was a recognition on his part that it was uncomfortable and, and whatever could be done by the college to make it a more comfortable community for these men was important. And that is very different than making it a more comfortable community. Academically, there was no break there, but there were some significant breaks in terms of, you know, perks that they got that other students didn't get because they just, you know, didn't have the community that the other students had.

We're going to take a short break, then we'll be back with more with Diane Brady, author of Fraternity.

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More heat than light. Switch to energy star light bulbs, and you'll realize just how much gas you are really burning through. Saving energy saves you money. Learn more@energySavers.gov. Welcome back to One to One. I'm Cheryl McCarthy of the City University of New York, and I'm talking with Diane Brady, author of Fraternity. It's just been published by the Spiegel and Grau imprint of Random House. We're talking about the. The evolution of the black brotherhood on campus. There was the Black Student Union. We all had one. Yeah, the black corridor, which was a floor in one dorm, which is highly controversial, but probably helped the black students to survive by creating this sense of community.

I think it was a level of comfort. I asked, you know, Clarence Thomas, who had voted against it very openly and loudly in the Black Students Student Union and then moved in. I said, why did you go? He goes, well, you know, to be honest, it was comfortable, and it was a place where they could hang out, they could bring their girlfriends. And what was happening at Holy Cross at that point was they'd very much changed. You were allowed to bring women on campus more freely. You didn't have to go to Mass every day. So a lot of the 60s had sort of come onto campus, perhaps a little belatedly. But I think what was happening was there was more awareness. And I think that just having that sense of community and having a place where they felt that they belonged and they didn't have to explain themselves or feel noticed was important.

Now, a lot of the other demands sound familiar? The demands for black studies program, for black faculty, for black meeting and reading room, for the van. You talked about the van for transitional year for entering black students to help them bridge the academic gap. But, you know, very controversial with a lot of people. But Brooks supported the students on most of these.

He did. And, you know, there are real difficulties. For example, everybody wanted more black faculty at that time. And there simply, you know, in many cases, it was not that easy, you know, to recruit them. Ogretta McNeill, who I spoke to in the book, who was a very important figure in these men's lives as well, she talked to me about how difficult it was for her because she was trying. She was one of the first faculty members. She was trying to get more black faculty members as well. And it was partly Holy Cross. It was partly the nature that these people were in high demand and hadn't necessarily had as many. You know, there weren't as many of them for various reasons. And so I think that there was this desire and there was this almost kind of goodwill as well, that happened after Dr. King's death. Death, where the door opened wider. They discovered that, you know, it wasn't so easy to get everything they wanted.

Yeah. And then there was their takeover of Fenway Call. Everybody had a takeover.

They had two, actually, two or three.

The takeover about Hoyok happened right after I graduated, but probably around the same time as the takeover Fenwick Hall. What was that about? And the threatened walkout.

Well, the walkout. So they were quite. They were quite different. So the, you know, the first incident was. First of all, they were taking over the. There was the, you know, Students for a Democratic Society, which had morphed into the, I think, Revolutionary Students Union. So there were other groups on campus that were also almost serially taking over buildings because you had civil rights. You also had the Vietnam War, which was very powerful.

It was so funny. When the black students went into this hall, there was already another. There was another. There would have taken it over.

There was a rival. Yeah. So they had to kind of split up the building for who gets what they were fighting for. Again, a list of rights for the black students, the faculty members. But the walkout was very interesting because what that was, the Marines had typically come to campus to recruit quite a bit because Holy Cross was one of the schools that had very active rotc. They recruited a lot for the military. They targeted GE in part because of, again, they were making weapons for the Vietnam War. A lot of these companies were targeted. What happened was a mass student demonstration. Five, you know, five black students in that group. They weren't organizers. The organizers were singled out. The black students were singled out. And that was, you know, clearly racist. And that was when the Black Student Union voted essentially to walk out en masse. So, you know, this education that they had fought so hard to get, they essentially all quit school at once out of protest.

The black students were not.

But they had. Yeah, they had been suspended. And if they were not reinstated, and Father Swords, who was the president at the time, said, no, no special treatment. But there's no question that had they not been black, in fact, the rationale was they were easy to pick out in the crowd. Well, that's not why you're supposed to be. That's not how you're supposed to identify the offenders. In these situations. So that became a very powerful statement. It was also a very powerful connection at that time to Brooks, because it was Brooks that fought very hard to get them back. And it was Brooks that kept the men together while they were negotiating to try and change Father Sword's mind.

And he also. Brooks also served as a real kind of mentor to the. To the black students that he had brought in along the way he did.

And I think, you know, I think it wasn't so much that he was giving them, you know, pithy advice. I think in some cases it was simply that he listened. In the case of Clarence Thomas, you know, this was a man who did have a lot of people to talk to. He would come and talk to Father Brooks quite a bit. I think with Ted Wells, he, you know, very much encouraged him in terms of his leadership. Wells was a prodigious worker, the two of them. In fact, Clarence Thomas and Ted Wells were always the last two people at the library. At night, it would close down. But I think in terms of what he did was he basically showed them that people at the highest level of the administration really cared, Cared about their success, cared about them, understood that it wasn't easy. And I think simply having somebody acknowledge that, somebody check in on them, it meant a lot, because a lot of people didn't have that.

About half of the 20 black students who entered Holy Cross in the fall of 68 graduated just 50% attrition rate. Did that prove Father Brooks right or wrong?

You know, it's. I think there were multiple factors. Some of them did kind of come back, and, you know, but I think what ultimately happened was some of them did not fit in well. Some of them transferred and because it was not a comfortable environment, you know, yes, there were maybe one or two before they came, but, you know, having 25, 26, a total on a campus of 2,000, does not make you feel that much at home. So for some, it was a comfort level. For some, it was the attraction that happens to every kid at college. They start cutting classes, they can't keep up with the workload. They end up dropping out for academic reasons. Not that they weren't smart, but that they just couldn't sort of cut it, and that happens. So I think there are a lot of reasons. I don't think it proves that he was wrong to do it. I think that a lot of those students did go on to be successful. They weren't necessarily successful there, but, you know, it's something that I think the failures, in many ways, are as important as the successes. And to look at why those students didn't do well in many cases. It was a very uncomfortable environment. And I think it was also a very dramatic time in their lives.

So tell us about what happened to the five students that you focused on, what they went on to do. Clarence Thomas, we sort of know him.

We know him, you know, Supreme Court. Done. Ted Wells. Ted Wells went on to get an mba, a joint MBA and a law degree from Harvard and became one of the top trial lawyers in the country. He basically has represented Scooter Libby, Elliot Spitzer, Citigroup, ExxonMobil. He's been named Lawyer of the Year and won a. I think he won is it the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Legal Defense Fund. Very interesting because his life has overlapped quite a bit with Clarence.

He had emerged as a real leader on campus.

He did, he did. And Nina, his wife, who's a character in the book, was also Secretary of State for New Jersey. So she's done. They're quite a powerful family. Stan Grayson went on to get a law degree at the University of Michigan. He went into investment banking. Broke a lot of ceilings there. First man to head up the municipal bond department at Goldman Sachs, Deputy Mayor of New York, and now he is head of the largest minority owned investment bank, Mr. Beal. He's president and chief operating officer. Eddie Jenkins went on to did get his NFL career. He was in the Miami Dolphins, you know, The Perfect Season, 1972. He played there, so spent some years in the NFL. Also became a lawyer and has worked.

After going to the super bowl, after.

Going to the Super Bowl. Showing up with your super bowl at law school probably is a good conversation starter. So he's been very active. He actually stayed in the Worcester area. He lives in Boston now. And he's been involved in a lot of different sort of public service jobs and working a lot actually in the community as well to sort of make sure that disadvantaged youths go on to college and the like. And then Edward P. Jones actually did not have a roaring success story. In fact, he was homeless for part of the 70s. His mother was ill. He ended up going back to take care of her before she died, became a writer, won a Pulitzer Prize for the known world, and I think is one of the greatest writers of his generation.

Does Brooks maintain relationships with the black students he brought in today?

Very much, yes. In fact, he sees them on a regular basis. He's presided over their weddings, their funerals, in some cases their daughters. Gil Hardy, who was a very introduced Justice Thomas to Anita Hill. He died very young in a scuba accident. Father Brooks was, you know, preside over the funeral. So he's been very involved. And the men have been very involved in the college. Many of them have been trustees. And they come back, including Justice Thomas, to sort of talk about their experiences and to encourage the next generation of black students to reach for the same heights.

How many black students does Holy Cross have now?

You know, it's a very, you know, overall I think their minority diversity count is like 25%, but I think it's still 4 or 5% for, you know, when it comes to black students. So it's, or certainly maybe black men, it's still a low number. They fight. And in fact, there's also, you know, a lot of questions. There have been times when why isn't this next generation feeling the same sort of weight on their shoulders to really push and achieve? Some people have done very well. This was a remarkable group of men. They've had many success stories, but I think they also have had periods where they've had to sit and think, you know, what can we do to be helping bring more people here, be helping them succeed. So it's been a mixed record, but I think overall this is a college that has first of all really striven to create excellence across the board. They were also the last group of students that were all men. Brooks pushed for women to come and so they left In June of 72, fall of 72 was the first class that was co ed. And I think that was also very powerful. For.

Do you think any of those, if you look at just those five, any of them would have come to Holy Cross if Father Brooks hadn't gone looking for them?

You know, they would have certainly. Ted Wells, I mean there was. Father Brooks was behind the scenes for some of them. Ted Wells, Stan Grayson, they came through athletic scholarships and in fact, Ted Wells was very much in demand from many different college colleges. He picked Holy Cross because he felt it was the right mix of academics and sports. He did not want to go to a sports school. He didn't want to be diminished as just simply a jock. So he chose that of his own volition. Edward P. Jones says he would not have come. In fact, he feels his SAT scores were so bad that they wouldn't even have looked at him. So, you know, I think that some of them would not have. Clarence Thomas, initially it was suggested by a nun that he look at Holy Cross because Father Brooks had been reaching out. And another student suggested that Brooks, you know, got him in. But Clarence, you know, found other ways to get to Holy Cross. So I think some of them would have come. The question is, would all. Would they have stayed?

Yeah, that is the question. That is probably the big question.

I think that's the question.

A fascinating story, the convergence of these young men and that priest and that particular point in time.

Thank you.

We're out of time. I want to thank Diane Brady for joining me today. Fraternity has just been published by Spiegel and Grau for the City University of New York. And one to one, I'm Cheryl McCarthy.