The Desegregation of Girard College

Matthew Schickling

English 487W

The Desegregation of Girard College

At the time of his death in 1831, Stephen Girard, a Philadelphia merchant and banker, was perhaps the wealthiest man in America. While he dedicated much of his adult life to public philanthropy, in death he gave his largest donation: nearly 7.5 million dollars, the majority, according to his will, to be allotted to charity, municipal development, and the establishment of a boarding school for “poor white male orphans” (Girard). After the school opened in 1848, the stipulations contained in Girard’s will went unchallenged for nearly 100 years, but as the surrounding farmland of the “college” urbanized into a predominately African American neighborhood, locals began to question the whites-only policy of what had become a prep school for poor orphans. These whispered questions slowly grew into outright demands for justice as enrollment climbed to nearly 2,000 students and as the legitimacy of the civil rights movement became widely recognized.

Girard College, from its inception, was designed to be grand. Stephen Girard willed $2 million, forty-five acres of beautiful land, and a valuable portion of his own estate to build this institution, which ultimately took about 14 years to accomplish (Westbrook). The buildings, of which there are several, were designed to be reminiscent of massive ancient Greek structures, and the grounds were, and still are, well-maintained in greenery. In other words, Girard’s donations produced a picturesque campus with seemingly endless available funding. Just to give a comparison, by 1955 the Girard College estate, not including the campus property, had a larger endowment than Harvard, Yale, Columbia, and scores of other universities, despite only enrolling 1,100 students (Gordon). Students at the college have always been supplied adequately with room and board, clothing, supervision, food and drink, a fine education and moral guidance until they turned 18. All of this to say, that if a boy was fatherless, which was Girard’s definition of an orphan, he still had a chance to live a comfortable, safe life and be given a topnotch primary and secondary education. There was just one legal caveat: the boys had to be white.

It is important to recognize that Girard College was essentially founded as an institution intended for public good, but it was not technically a public school because it was not within Philadelphia’s public school system (“School Desegregation”). Girard’s will specified that a board of directors be established by the city of Philadelphia to administer both the estate and the school. To this end, in 1869 the city complied with Girard’s terms and appointed a fourteen-member “Board of Directors of City Trusts,” which included twelve unpaid private citizens who were appointed by the Board of Judges of the Courts of Common Pleas, the Mayor, and the President of City Council, both of which served ex officio (Gordon, Resolution). This means of operation connected Girard College directly with the City of Philadelphia, and “administered a trust which is used to operate a boarding school and home for male orphans, excluding nonwhites” for over one-hundred years (Gordon, 53). This connection was unique to Girard College as it had been privately endowed, but run by the government of Philadelphia, and even directly by elected officials. This special status would create tension among citizens and within government as social ideology about race and civil rights legislation evolved from the early 20th century onward.

The de facto segregation of Girard College was initially upheld in accordance with Stephen Girard’s will, which designated the boarding school for whites, but made no explicit mention of exclusion for non-whites. Girard’s will never specifically suggested that young, black, poor orphans should be barred from admission, and some would go as far as to say “that Girard had been outwitted and his magnificent benefaction applied to what he did not intend,” that is, the inclusion of some and not of others (Westbrook).  This, however, was before many schools in Philadelphia desegregated, so the notion of a whites-only school was in accordance with the general social ideology of the late 1800s: “at the time of [Girard’s] death the lowly status of the Negro, slave or free, the fact that such education as there was, public or private, was racially separate” (Gordon, 57). But as the land around Girard College began to urbanize and as African-American moved from the south to northern cities after World War I, the North Philadelphia neighborhoods surrounding Girard College came to be  populated mostly by African Americans (Kativa). In fact, the number of African-Americans in Philadelphia at this time rose to almost 20 percent of the entire city’s population (Gordon). This presented a striking contrast: an all-white boarding school walled within a predominately black neighborhood where many citizens were likely in need of such an institution. In the late 1940s this disparity began to gain attention as the subject of school desegregation became a national priority. By the time of Brown v. Board of Education (1954), several African-American orphans had applied, but were denied admission to Girard College on the basis of Stephen Girard’s will (Kativa). The will had been interpreted so that the boarding school would accept only white boys, whether or not this was Girard’s exact intention.

After it became clear that Girard College would not desegregate voluntarily without resistance, several members of the local chapter of the NAACP  became involved. Even before the NAACP was founded in 1909, Nathan Mossell, a physician from Philadelphia challenged the school in 1891 by aiding a young black orphan Frank Wilson with his application, but “Mossell’s effort failed. The courts did not get involved. The school simply said no, and that was the end of it” (Canton). Although not a legal challenge, this action represented the first resistance to College’s unwillingness to desegregate, and gained the support of the local NAACP for the cause. Mossell did not abandon his mission here, but carried it through into the 1940s, and it was said at one point he “appeared at the institution, placing a poor, black baby on the counter and asked if they would still not accept the helpless child” (Heilbrunn). Mossell started the movement, but those that followed him would use aggressive legal action to shatter the racial barrier that stood before Girard College.

In the late 1940s into the early 1950s, the issue of school desegregation became an integral piece of the civil rights movement. At this point, it became obvious to those involved in the movement that the “separate but equal” concept would never yield to African-Americans equal facilities or the full respect of white Americans; it was only a means of racial discrimination. The desegregation of Girard College became one of the most important issues in the Philadelphia civil rights movement. Eventually legal action was offered: “In 1953, E. Washington Brooks, a black attorney and editor of The Philadelphia Tribune, offered free legal aid to any black parents who tried to enroll their children in Girard College,” but no one took him up on this offer (Canton). A more collective approach was needed.

Such a collective approach was realized through the efforts of Raymond Pace Alexander, a city councilman and attorney. He introduced a resolution in 1953 “declaring that because Girard College was governed by elected officials and received tax exempt status, it must admit black male orphans” (Canton). Though this resolution was passed legally, Girard College failed to comply and refused to desegregate.  In May of 1954, the Supreme Court ruled against segregation of public schools in the historic Brown vs. Board of Education trial, and shortly after, the City Council acknowledged that boys of all races should be allowed admission to the College and petitioned that Girard’s will be reevaluated in light of modern social developments; but this petition was denied by the Orphan’s Court (Kativa). Earlier that year, six African American boys applied to Girard College and were denied. Alexander provided legal support for their cause, and became involved in a lengthy legal battle that landed in the Supreme Court by 1957 (“Girard College”). Alexander held that “because the State was associated with the school, the College’s racial discrimination was unconstitutional,” and the College maintained that because Girard’s will preceded the 14th amendment, it held more relevance in regard to the case at hand (“School Desegregation”). To avoid desegregation, the board members sought to legitimatize the concept that a person’s will could outweigh the United States Constitution.  The U.S. Supreme Court upheld, reevaluated, and ultimately favored Alexander’s cause “that the board which operates Girard College is an agency of the state,” and decided that Girard College should, legally, be desegregated because the refusal to admit African Americans “was discrimination by the state” in April of 1957 (“U.S. Ends”).

Legally, at this juncture, Girard College’s Board of City Trusts was obligated to admit black orphans to attend the College. The Orphan’s Court attempted to sidestep this claim by removing the Board of City Trusts, effectively diminishing Girard College’s association with the city of Philadelphia. They replaced this board privately with 13 different trustees for Girard’s estate in an attempt to privatize the Girard College: if the board was not affiliated with the government, then the institution could be said to be private. It is important to note that Girard’s will did not specify a privatized board just as it did not specify the exclusion of blacks. This manipulative move was, however, deemed legal in the Pennsylvania Supreme Court and subsequently in the U.S. Supreme Court (Kativa). Now legally viewed as a private institution, Girard College was able to accept and deny applicants based on any standards and admission policy that the institution’s private board determined. In other words, through the Orphan’s Court’s quick action, Girard College avoided desegregation and now could openly deny the admission of blacks. Rather than defeating the efforts of civil rights leaders in Philadelphia, this Supreme Court ruling of January 1958 intensified the desire of the movement’s advocates and moved them to try a method they had not yet employed: public protest. While Alexander believed that the courts represented the only way for blacks to gain equal rights in the United States, the civil rights leaders that followed adopted a more active, militant approach when they revisited the Girard College issue in the 1960s.

Cecil B. Moore became president of the Philadelphia chapter of the NAACP in 1963, and, having seen Alexander’s legal efforts fail time after time through the years, he believed that integration at Girard College could be achieved through protest. Though Moore strongly believed in peace and democracy, he was also an ex-Marine with an intense demeanor and a strategy for desegregation that demanded direct action (Kativa). Regarding Girard College, he once called it a “cesspool of bigotry and shrine to segregation” (Russ). Clearly Moore had strong feelings against the discrimination the College represented, and would go to great lengths to see that image reversed, having “dismissed the tactics of an entrenched black leadership that he believed favored respectability over true reform and had failed to produce meaningful change in areas like school segregation” (Kativa). These feelings materialized as a plan of protest that reflected, but would not mimic, Alexander’s efforts. Moore organized daily picketing outside of Girard in order to attract media attention both for and against the movement and to gain the attention of public officials and pressure them into action.

The first day of this protest was May 1, 1965, and by August they attracted Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to join them during his two-day visit to Philadelphia. King and Moore “embraced and exchanged pats on the back,” at a press conference at the Bellevue-Stratford Hotel on the first day of this visit to unite their causes and allay Moore’s fear that King’s stature would act as a “divisive force” amongst the protestors (Morrison). The next day Dr. King addressed a crowd of 2,000 protestors outside the walls of Girard College. In approximately twenty minutes of speaking, King assured the crowd “The walls of Girard College will tumble like the walls of Jericho,” giving their cause a religious and moral connection (John-Hall). He, unlike Moore, urged the protestors to be nonviolent, but Moore, who had been leading the picketing for about three months, responded to King in his speech, saying “the principal is greater than Cecil Moore…but I’m not nonviolent” (Poindexter). King’s visit had a broader purpose than to address the protestors. That same evening, he spoke to a crowd of 5,000 at Grace Baptist Church, just two miles from Girard College. His visit also included an address to nearly 10,000 people at the intersection of 40th and Lancaster, where he delivered the message that, “You are somebody: don’t let anybody make you think you are not” (“Dr. King Tells”). He left Philadelphia early the following morning, allegedly delayed by a bomb threat at the Sheraton Hotel, where he had been staying (Poindexter). Dr. King was not the only leader that reached out to the protesters; national president of the NAACP, Roy Wilkins formally, addressed the protestors, saying, “What the Negro population of this country has been fighting all these years is embodied in the Girard College philosophy; it is a philosophy of exclusion” (Wilkins). So while Cecil B. Moore succeeded in projecting the Girard College protests into the national spotlight, he had not yet to gotten the complete attention of the College’s Board of Trustees, which ideally would include an answer to his call for desegregation.

The initial picketing lasted for seven months, and ended with a warning from Moore to the College “that if African Americans were not admitted to Girard College by September 1966, he would return and begin picketing” (Costello). This picketing caused Pennsylvania Governor William Scranton, Mayor James H.J. Tate, and John A. Diemand, Trustee President, to meet in July of 1965 regarding the possibility of ending the segregation at Girard. Although Moore had originally resisted filing litigation of any kind representing the NAACP and was personally barred from the meeting, he halted his picketing due to City and State officials filing cases to end the racial discrimination at Girard College (Kativa). Though Moore resumed his picketing in October 1966 amidst much already-present racial tension in the city, after a fairly lengthy appeals process District Judge Joseph Lord ruled that Girard College must admit applicants of all races. This decision was appealed, but the appeal was denied by the U.S. Supreme Court on May 20, 1968, and so on September 11, 1968, Girard College finally accepted its first non-white students, including four African American boys and two Asian American boys. The first black student graduated in 1974; his name was Charles Hicks and he was one of boys involved in the lawsuit (Landmark).

It is interesting to note that although Moore fought for integration, toward the end of his term an opposing idea was rising within the civil rights movement that integration places blacks within a white-power system. So while Moore opposed Alexander and moved forward, there were others breaking from Moore ideology into a more oppositional approach (Kativa). Despite these opposing ideas, the desegregation of Girard College represents an important landmark in the Civil Rights movement because it represents an acknowledgement of the national progression toward racial equality.

On June 24, 1968 a crowd gathered outside of Girard College, this time not to protest, but to celebrate a victory not just for blacks, but for a nation based on the principles of equality and justice. As time passed, Girard College eventually opened its doors to female students in 1982, and adopted a new definition of orphan to include not only “fatherless boys” but any child of a “single, nonmarried parent, male or female, household” (Canton). By 2011, Girard College had a history over 20,000 alumni, and 85 percent of its 475 currently enrolled students are now African American. The injustices of Girard College’s past will likely not be forgotten: viewing a dead man’s will not as a product of its time, but as tool for perpetuating racial discrimination, denying entry to needy children living in the same neighborhood to maintain a racially-based power structure, manipulating a democratic system intentionally to oppose the ideals of democracy. But its progress represents, finally, the acknowledgement of true freedom. It is a microcosm of the whole civil rights movement in America, representing not just the slow, reluctant desegregation of one school, but a step in the direction of total racial equality.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Works Cited

Canton, David A. “Girard College.” The Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia. University of      Pennsylvania Press: Philadelphia. 2012. Web.

Costello, Lisa. “Girard College: Breaking Down the Color Barrier of Girard College.”       Philaplace. The Historical Society of Philadelphia. n.d. Web.

“Girard College Civil Rights Landmark.” Explorepahistory. WITF, inc: 2011. Web.

“Girard College Jim Crow Upheld.”The Philadelphia Tribune 13 Nov. 1956: 1. Print.

Girard, Stephen. “Mr. Girard’s Will: The Will of Stephen Girard.” Nile’s Weekly Register 7 Jan. 1832. American Periodicals p. 347. Web.

Gordon, Milton M. “The Girard College Case: Desegregation and Municipal Trust.” Annals of     the American Society of Political and Social Science. Vol. 304 Mar. 1956: 53-61.              Sage  Publications: California. Print.

Gordon, Milton M. “The Girard College Case: Resolution and the Social Significance.” The         Symposium on Law and Social Problems. Vol. 7. 1959-60:15. Print.

Heilbrunn, Evi. “The lost legacy of Dr. Nathan Mossell, Philadelphia medical pioneer.” The         Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 22 Apr. 2012. Web.

John-Hall, Jeanette. “King’s Contribution to Girard College.” The Philadelphia Inquirer. 12 Jan.                                     2013. Web.

Kativa, Hilary S. “The Desegregation of Girard College.” Civil Rights in a Northern City:            Philadelphia. http://northerncity.library.temple.edu/content/collections/desegregation  girard   college/what-interpretative-essay

Morrison, John F. “Cecil Moore Vows to Act United with Dr. King.” The Philadelphia Evening Bulletin.             2 Aug. 1965. Print.

Poindexter, Malcolm. “Dr. King Ends Visit Here, Attacks Girard’s Policy.” Philadelphia Evening Bulletin. 4 Aug. 1965. Print.

Russ, Valerie. “The Opening of Girard College: Marches, rulings, and the unlearning of   prejudice.” The Philadelphia Daily News. 10 Nov. 2008: 08. Print.

“Dr. King tells 10,000: ‘You’re Somebody’.” The Philadelphia Evening Bulletin. 3 Aug. 1965.    Print.

“School Desegregation and Civil Rights Stories: Girard College, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.”     Achives.gov. U.S. National Archives and Records Administration: n.d. Web.

“U.S. Ends Bias at Girard College.” Daily Defender [Chicago] 30 Apr. 1957. Print.

Westbrook, Richard B. Girard’s will and Girard College theology. Self-Published: Philadelphia   1888. Print.

Wilkins, Roy. “NAACP President Roy Wilkins Comments on Girard College Case” 5 Aug.         1965. <http://northerncity.library.temple.edu/node/29289>