Point of Reckoning: The Fight for Racial Justice at Duke University

by Theodore D Segal

Overview

On the morning of February 13, 1969, members of Duke University's Afro-American Society barricaded themselves inside the Allen administration building. That evening, police were summoned to clear the building, firing tear gas at students in the melee that followed. When it was over, nearly twenty people were taken to the hospital, and many more injured. In Point of Reckoning, Theodore D. Segal narrates the contested fight for racial justice at Duke from the enrollment of the first Black undergraduates in 1963 to the events that led to the Allen Building takeover and beyond. Segal shows that Duke's first Black students quickly recognized that the university was unwilling to acknowledge their presence or fully address its segregationist past. By exposing the tortuous dynamics that played out as racial progress stalled at Duke, Segal tells both a local and national story about the challenges that historically white colleges and universities throughout the country have faced and continue to face.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781478011422
Publisher:	Duke University Press
Publication date:	02/05/2021
Pages:	400
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.82(d)

About the Author

Theodore D. Segal is a lawyer and member of the board of directors for the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University. He received his undergraduate degree from Duke in 1977.

Table of Contents

List of Abbreviations  xi
List of Key Actors  xiii
Acknowledgments  xv
Introduction: A Historic Encounter  1
1. A Plantation System: Desegregation  5
2. Like Bare Skin and Putting Salt on It: First Encounters  32
3. Rights, as Opposed to Privileges: Race and Space  60
4. We Were Their Sons and Daughters: Occupation of University House  102
5. Hope Takes Its Last Stand: The Silent Vigil  125
6. Humiliating to Plead for Our Humanity: Negotiations  160
7. Now They Know, and They Ain't Gonna Do: Planning  182
8. No Option to Negotiate: Confrontation  208
9. We Shall Have Cocktails in the Gloaming: Aftermath  242
Epilogue: Something Has to Change—2019, Fifty Years Later  276
Notes  287
Bibliography  347
Index  357

Editorial Reviews

"Point of Reckoning is an important contribution to the histography of how Black Americans have sacrificed their lives—spiritual, emotional, physical—to enter into hostile white spaces 'bathed in the commitment [of ] wanting to make a difference' in their community and in America (277)."

Dwonna Naomi Goldstonen Historical Review

Point of Reckoning makes clear that race and racial issues have been a central conflict at Duke since its inception. . . . Individuals who are interested in higher education, race and education, civil rights, social movements, and Black history will greatly benefit from a careful reading of Point of Reckoning.

Journal of Southern History - Brian Daugherity

"Excellent, accessible. . . ."

New York Journal of Books - Mark I. Pinsky

Point of Reckoning is a remarkable and unforgettable story that traces the white racial foundations of Duke University while uncovering how whiteness actively resists change in the face of Black dehumanization. Segal renders the unremarkable existence of racism remarkable and painfully reveals what happens to a dream deferred—it explodes. As we currently bear witness to Black suffering and inequity, righteous indignation and Black protests near and far, Point of Reckoning is an urgent text that offers hope as it dares to illuminate the past in order that we might not be condemned to repeat it.

George Yancy

2020-12-22
In-depth examination of the first years of integrated education at a prominent Southern university.

Trinity College, in Durham, North Carolina, became Duke University in 1924 following a huge endowment from a tobacco tycoon. For the next four decades, writes local attorney and Duke graduate Segal, the university was a reliable bastion of Jim Crow law. As late as 1957, a Black pastor asked to complete coursework begun in New York for a master’s degree in theology and was firmly declined by Duke’s president, who wrote, “No doubt you are familiar with the traditional admissions policy at Duke University. [Since] there has been no change in this policy…I am unable to give you a favorable reply.” In 1963, the school admitted Black students—not many, and not enthusiastically—meanwhile continuing a policy of hiring Black blue-collar workers at wages far below the federally established minimum. Thanks to a forward-looking president, Duke eventually “eliminated most of the school’s de jure discriminatory policies and practices” even if the school’s most formal social events were held at a Whites-only country club off campus. Following the death of Martin Luther King, writes Segal, Black students at Duke, as everywhere, were radicalized and became more militant; in 1969, they occupied a campus building only to be brutalized by campus police. Earlier, the majority of Duke’s Black enrollees had written, “We, as a group of Negro students, are fairly convinced…that our sole purpose here at the University is confined to being conspicuous.” Their point was well taken, and even if “on matters of racial progress, Duke was at best reactive and at worst highly resistant,” racial progress did eventually follow. Segal closes his doggedly researched narrative with a list of the accomplishments of some of the occupiers of 1969, including “Brenda Armstrong, the second Black woman in the United States to become a board-certified pediatric cardiologist.”

A candid view of institutional resistance to social justice and its dismantling by determined activism.

Kirkus Reviews

"A methodological strength of Point of Reckoning is how Segal grounds the narrative almost entirely in oral history, which helps provide a broad, accessible, and well-balanced perspective. . . . This book will be required reading for all of the university’s constituents as a common reference point for continuing to move the university forward according to its stated values."

Black Perspectives - Brandon K. Winford

In vivid detail, Theodore D. Segal introduces us to men and women, Black and white, who tried to differentiate between integration and desegregation, between being welcomed and included and remaining true to themselves as Black Americans and becoming darker versions of white Americans. As Segal uncovers, not only did the actors have conflicting notions of what was at stake, but they often differed on what was desired. In that sense, he exposes the long history of today's raging debates on campus about race and diversity.

Professor Earl Lewis

"A useful volume for any library supporting graduate study in the management and history of higher education. Recommended. Graduate students, faculty, and professionals."

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