Anytime someone tells you that the East Coast has been a liberal bastion of racial progress they should be reminded that a) that simply isn’t true, and b) there are plenty of examples to prove that such thinking is demonstratively false.
Enter an enterprising reporter at Harvard University’s student newspaper The Harvard Crimson, who found a 1924 photo of Klansmen casually chillin’ around and on the John Harvard statue on the school’s campus.
Celebrating four influential Black women music producers
Simon J. Levien found the photo last spring, setting off a year of research that produced a 4,500-word feature that was published last week. The photo, labeled: “Harvard Klass Kow & Klans — students having fun.” was just the beginning of his research into Harvard’s attempts at reconciling its racist past.
Levien spent hours in Harvard’s archives and the student newspaper and spoke with professors, administrators and alumni who attended Harvard 65 years ago, according to an interview he did with The Washington Post.
The most detailed account of the racist climate on campus comes from a Black student named J. Max Bond Jr., who arrived at Harvard as a 16-year-old freshman and graduated in 1955. He was one of the few Black students at the time.
