Article 5: Contextualizing African American Collegians’ Experiences of Racial Desegregation in Midwestern Private Colleges, 1945–1965

A group of private liberal arts colleges in Ohio, Michigan, and Indiana formed a voluntary association called the Great Lakes Colleges Association (GLCA) in 1962 based on their self-perceived shared interests and missions. These institutions included Albion College, Antioch College, Denison University, DePauw University, Earlham College, Hope College, Kalamazoo College, Kenyon College, Oberlin College, Ohio Wesleyan University, Wabash College, and The College of Wooster. Allegheny College, located in western Pennsylvania, joined the association in 1992. Preliminary archival research revealed that many of these institutions had race-blind admissions policies providing access to African American students and other students of color prior to the Brown decision in 1954 or the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, yet African American students did not constitute a critical mass of the student body at any of these insti tutions: Although there were 198 African American students enrolled at Oberlin between 1945 and 1965, they constituted less than one percent of all students at Oberlin during that period. Meanwhile, the numbers at other institutions were much less; Denison University only had 15 full-time African American students enrolled over the course of these twenty years. These institutions were also commonly located in relatively isolated, rural areas that were not necessarily favorable to racial desegregation or civil rights for African Americans.