In 2015, Clifton R. Wharton Jr. entrusted Michigan State University Press to publish his autobiography, Privilege and Prejudice: The Life of a Black Pioneer. He is fondly remembered by those who worked with him on this project, which enshrined his vision for and experience with Michigan State University in his own words. In remembrance of Dr. Wharton, we are sharing an excerpt from his book in which he described how he came to earn the historic distinction as the first Black president of MSU and of any major predominately white university in the United States.
Excerpt from Privilege and Prejudice: The Life of a Black Pioneer
In March 1969 John A. Hannah, MSU’s legendary president, announced that he was resigning to become director of the U.S. Agency for International Development. Hannah had been chair of the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges when President Truman announced his Point Four plan for providing technical assistance to less developed countries. Hannah had responded to the president by offering the extensive intellectual resources of the land-grant institutions and forging them into a strong bloc of support.
President Hannah had headed the university for twenty-eight years, overseeing its transformation from a small agricultural college into the land-grant powerhouse of U.S. higher education.
Once known throughout the state as “Moo-U” by the mid-1960s, Michigan State had become a teaching and research colossus, and its international programs were among the best in the world. With over 40,000 students, it was the second largest single-campus institution in the country.
Soon after Hannah’s announcement, several friends called from MSU to ask whether I would be interested in being a candidate to replace him.
Dolores and I both sensed that here was a university we could really get excited about. Michigan State was a school with a strong tradition of extension and public service, plus a commitment to an international role that meshed smoothly with my background, experience, and values. MSU also was an early promoter of minority education, pushed by Hannah. I had visited its lovely sprawling campus in East Lansing several times, both as director of the American Universities Research Program and as vice president of the Agricultural Development Council (ADC), as well as for the 1968 conference on the “Winds of Change” in Southeast Asia. I first met Ralph Smuckler, dean of international programs, in 1958, when he headed the MSU team in South Vietnam. I knew and liked many members of the Department of Agricultural Economics. Larry Boger, when he had been chairman before becoming dean of the College of Agriculture, was a contact for my Asian graduate student survey. Larry Witt had served briefly as a consultant to Ted Schultz and the Chicago/NPA survey in Latin America. Jim Bonnen and I first met when we were both graduate students at a meeting of the agriculture committee of the National Planning Association. Later we saw each other again at my first meeting of the Agricultural Economics Association, and thus began a lifelong friendship. Carl Eicher had participated in my 1965 conference on subsistence agriculture and contributed to the resulting book. Glenn Johnson had been a research contact because of his work in Thailand, and Bob Stevens had been an ADC visiting professor in South Vietnam.
“Dolores and I both sensed that here was a university we could really get excited about. Michigan State was a school with a strong tradition of extension and public service, plus a commitment to an international role that meshed smoothly with my background, experience, and values.”
—Clifton R. Wharton Jr.
At MSU the agricultural economics faculty were prominent and powerful. Dale Hathaway, the department head, also chaired the executive committee of the Academic Council—and he was now chair of the university’s presidential search committee. This time, I thought, my stars just might be in the right configuration.
Nonetheless my feelings were mixed about such a dramatic career change. Although it had never been said in so many words, Art Mosher, along with John D. Rockefeller 3rd and his advisers Donald H. McLean and Raymond Lamontagne, made it clear that they expected me eventually to take over the presidency of ADC. Moreover, there were two special initiatives that had involved a lot of my time and effort preparing to launch—the new program for Africa and a proposed graduate school of agricultural development. I hated the idea of walking away from them before they even got off the ground.
As always, I wondered what the change would mean for Dolores and the boys. Yet I could not deny that the new venture promised rich opportunities—to exercise leadership and take responsibility at an entirely new level, and to use my experience and abilities to help shape the next generation of scholars. If I had already been devoting myself to the development of human capital, what better next step than heading a major university?
Art Mosher was completely supportive. Michigan State, he said, was respected worldwide for its programs in agricultural development, and its presidency offered the chance of influence on both national and international stages. As my boss, mentor, and friend, Mosher told me it was a prospect not to be taken lightly. Years later he told me something he had left out at the time. After I had alerted my father about my candidacy, Dad called Art confidentially to urge him to talk me out of leaving ADC. He didn’t want me to give up my security and long association with the Rockefeller philanthropies, and he worried that in uncharted waters I could run afoul of forces I had not previously encountered. Even if my father had spoken to me directly, he probably would have made me only more anxious to take on the new challenge. My formal nomination for the presidency of Michigan State was by Nicolaas Luykx, an associate professor of agricultural economics. Nick had received an ADC grant when he was a doctoral student at Cornell. Later, he spent a year and a half in rural villages in Thailand and the Philippines. When he contracted hepatitis while visiting Hue, South Vietnam, I tried to be of assistance, and we remained in touch in the years that followed. Then relatively new to MSU and unencumbered by campus political baggage, he could make the nomination without drawing too much fire.
As chairman of MSU’s search and selection committee, Dale Hathaway had two key goals. First, he wanted to find candidates who, above all, were capable of being president of the institution. Second, he wanted candidates who would be electable to the position. Wisely, he had gotten an official resolution from the university’s board that they would select no one as president who had not received the search committee’s approval. The stipulation, on which Hathaway insisted before agreeing to serve, would prove critical in dealing with factions and conflicting interests throughout the process.
In addition to Dale Hathaway, the AUSSC [All University Search and Selection Committee] included four faculty from the East Lansing campus, one faculty member from the branch campus at Oakland, two undergraduates, one grad student, a representative from the Black students group, a Black faculty member, and one alumna.
On July 30, 1969, I met the group in the United Airlines Red Carpet Room at the Detroit airport—the off -campus location to avoid premature public disclosure of candidates. By late August the committee had narrowed its list from three hundred possibilities to four: Stephen K. Bailey, dean and professor of political science at Syracuse University; Ed Pellegrino, vice president and dean of medicine at SUNY–Stony Brook; William Bevan, vice president and provost at Johns Hopkins; and myself. But three trustees had their own agenda and their own candidate: G. Mennen “Soapy” Williams, the state’s former governor. Williams, heir to the Mennen family fortune and a lifelong Democrat, was a popular Michigan figure. After six terms as governor (1949–60), he had served as assistant secretary of state for African affairs. In 1966 he had lost a race for one of Michigan’s seats in the U.S. Senate, and at the time of the search he was finishing up a stint as U.S. ambassador to the Philippines.
Mennen apparently saw the MSU presidency as a vehicle for returning to prominence within the state. He began a political-style campaign for the position, seeking support within MSU and among union leaders and other political factions. But he failed to appreciate how his heavy-handed lobbying and his lack of academic background would play on campus. Before long a group of faculty sent him an open letter criticizing his attempt to interject politics—and himself—into the search. When he didn’t make the committee’s first cut, trustees Warren Huff, Clair White, and Frank Hartman demanded that he be reinterviewed. After he again failed to pass muster, the trustees retaliated by leaking to the press the names of the four finalists for the position, hoping that some or all would withdraw. Only Bill Bevan did. The premature disclosure presented no hazard in my relationships with Art Mosher and John D. Rockefeller 3rd, so I stayed in the race.
This excerpt has been modified from its original printing. It can be read in its entirety in the book, available at: msupress.org