Degrees of Equality: Abolitionist Colleges and the Politics of Race by John Frederick Bell (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Degrees of Equality: Abolitionist Colleges and the Politics of Race by John Frederick Bell Michael E. Jirik Degrees of Equality: Abolitionist Colleges and the Politics of Race By John Frederick Bell (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2022. Pp. ix, 298. Notes, bibliography, index. $45.00.) In 1864, Fanny Jackson, a Black student at Oberlin College, penned an editorial responding to debates on campus over hiring Black tutors. While faculty preached against prejudice at Oberlin, it surely existed “in some of the students,” she observed. The college was “not the pool of Bethesda for the sin of prejudice” Jackson reasoned, and yet it was a space in which racial equality might be lived and practiced (p. 98). Jackson’s observations form the core of John Frederick Bell’s argument in Degrees of Equality, a critical appraisal of “abolitionist colleges” and social equality among students—Black and white, women and men—on their campuses. “Then as now,” Bell argues, “there was an important difference between African Americans being equally admitted as students and being equally accepted as people,” even at colleges founded on ideals of racial equality (p. 8). Examining the social and cultural histories of Oberlin, New York Central, and Berea Colleges respectively, he asserts that “there was a disconnect between equal rights for all races and complete social equality between them” (p. 9). He traces the racial politics at these institutions from the antebellum period to the late nineteenth century, by which time the experiments in racial coeducation had disintegrated on these campuses, as they became de facto spaces of racist segregation. Significantly, he ultimately shows that it was often Black and white students who lived out the ideals their institutions promoted while the institutions themselves often fell far short of manifesting the fullest extent of the meaning of abolition. Throughout the book’s six chapters, Bell demonstrates the significant tensions over institutional ideals of equal admission and the realization of social equality among students on the three campuses. White faculty, college officers, and some white students often denounced interracial relationships among the students, especially romantic partnerships. A former white student at Oberlin, in 1837, wrote an exposé that critiqued displays of social equality among Black and white students. At New York Central, meanwhile, William Allen, a Black professor, was run out of town for his courtship of Mary King, a white student. Allen received little support from the college’s leaders, and the controversy over interracial dating at Berea in 1872–1873 exposed the institution’s limitations for students realizing interracial solidarity. The students practiced what they preached, carrying the abolitionist transformations they fought for to their logical conclusions. Conversely, college authorities often feared white reprisals against the students’ egalitarianism, whether it be withholding donations or mob violence, revealing their own racial paternalism and the [End Page 292] shortcomings of their abolitionist convictions. The opposition to full interracialism at these institutions foreshadowed the eclipse of the students’ abolitionist struggle to realize a transformation in human relations. Bell shows that the radicalism of the students at New York Central outpaced financial support for the college, which led to its closure in 1860. This outcome raises a broader question Bell leaves unanswered: should students temper their radicalism at the behest of capital, or is capital itself the problem? The other two schools did not close. During Reconstruction, whites at Oberlin and Berea created an atmosphere hostile to Black students, believing that the end of slavery and the codification of legal rights ensconced in the Constitution went far enough for realizing Black freedom. Whites believed Black people could contend for inclusion without interference. The result gave license to white students’ racist antagonisms, creating an atmosphere hostile to Black life on campus. Just as the project of radical Reconstruction was overthrown, so too were the abolitionist experiments in racial coeducation at these institutions. Throughout, Bell documents how Black students often checked the institutional logics of college leaders, which is a strength of the book. For example, in 1841 Black students at Oberlin publicly critiqued racism at the college. They also celebrated emancipation in the Caribbean with white and Black people in the community. The significance of the coalescence of Black...