A00342 - Carl Curtis Beckwith (Amherst College Class of 1931), Dunbar High School Graduate

 The next name that is now on my list is the name of Carl Curtis Beckwith, Amherst College Class of 1931.  This is a new name.  His name has not appeared on my Memorial List before nor was his name mentioned in Harold Wade's Black Men of Amherst. These omissions are probably due to the fact that Carl Curtis Beckwith did not graduate from Amherst College.  Instead, he ultimately graduated from Lincoln University in Pennsylvania in 1933 and, probably, due to the Depression and the War did not become a doctor until 1944 when he graduated from the Howard University Medical School.  

For an unknown length of time, he worked in Automobile Sales before becoming a doctor working for the Chrysler Corporation and later as a self employed doctor.  We know about Carl Curtis Beckwith because his name is listed as being one of the Dunbar High School graduates who attended Amherst but did not graduate in the article entitled Remembering Dunbar which can be found at the following link

mpub.11873533.12.pdf

And as for the explanation as to why Carl Beckwith left Amherst and why the attendance of Black Students diminished to minimal levels for the next twenty years, the article explains:

 

In the foreword to Harold Wade’s Black Men of Amherst, Hastie speculated on the
sharp decline in black students at Amherst in the two decades immediately after his own.
Only nine black students attended Amherst in the 1930s and 1940s, including four young
men from Dunbar who did not ultimately graduate. According to Hastie, the roots of
Amherst College’s struggles with its black student graduation rates rested with the col-
lege leadership. He asserted that “the then President of the College [Stanley King, presi-
dent from 1932 to 1951] adopted a practice of inviting successive groups of seniors to social
evenings at the President’s House until this hospitable gesture had been extended to all
seniors who were not black.”

It is also true that black people suffered disproportionately more from the Great
Depression than other groups, which deterred the pursuit or completion of higher educa-
tion in general. Dunbar teacher Mary Gibson Hundley ascribed students’ lack of admis-
sion to competitive northern colleges during this era to “the failure of the administration
and faculty and because of the financial depression.” Amherst College would not experi-
ence a resurgence in black student enrollment until the late 1940s.

In 1946, Eugene Wilson (class of 1929) became the college’s dean of admission, a posi-
tion he held until his retirement in 1972. A 1971 interview in the Amherst Student noted that
Wilson ultimately “reversed the percentages of public and private school graduates of the
college.” Under Wilson’s leadership, Amherst admission deans made efforts to diversify
incoming classes, including organizing frequent trips down to Washington, DC, to meet
with Dunbar students in person.

Amherst faced competition from rivaling northern colleges for the best and brightest
Dunbar seniors. Williams College, near Amherst, had its own history of recruiting Dunbar
men going back to the early twentieth century, with about fifteen Dunbar students enroll-
ing between 1909 and 1944. In response, Wilson sought out local leaders in the black DC
community who could identify talented young men who might be a good fit for Amherst.
Wilson strategically collaborated with the Drew family that embodied Dunbar’s con-
nection with Amherst. Nora Drew Gregory, Charles Drew’s sister, served as a liaison
between Amherst and the black Washington community. After her brother died in an
automobile accident in 1950, Gregory diligently promoted his alma mater. (Gregory’s
father-in-law, James Francis Gregory, also graduated from Amherst in 1898 and was one

of the first African Americans in the United States to be elected captain of a college
baseball team.) 

Before his senior year at Dunbar in 1953, Harold Haizlip (class of 1957) simply remem-
bered Nora Drew Gregory as his elementary school teacher. However, in Haizlip’s senior
year, Harvard, Yale, Williams, Amherst, and Dartmouth all accepted him. Gregory per-
sistently advocated for Amherst to be his top choice. Haizlip recalled that she invited him
to her home: “[There was a] very nice white gentlemen Eugene Wilson . . . the dean of
admission! . . . This was at a time when it was unusual for college administrators, and
white college administrators, to be so aggressive. . . . I’m sure they knew Nora Gregory’s
lineage. . . . Her son . . . became the first African- American astronaut, Frederick Gregory.”
After Haizlip, Amherst recruited a cohort of three Dunbar seniors for the class of 1959,
who happened to also be neighborhood friends: Lawrence Burwell, Robert Jason, and
Raymond Hayes. Hayes remembered that “we were all interested in science and medicine
and were encouraged by the opportunity to attend Amherst together.” Both Hayes and
Jason received $700 each through an Amherst College scholarship, while Burwell received
$500. These were all relatively significant contributions at the time. Annual tuition at
Amherst was $1,425 during the 1955 to 1956 school year. 

*****

Reading the last sentence, makes one realize that some things have greatly changed indeed.

Peace,

Everett "Skip" Jenkins

Class of 1975

Fairfield, California

October 26, 2024