I wanted the sign as soon as I saw it. My wife and I were attending a black memorabilia fair at the Montgomery County Fairgrounds in Gaithersburg, Maryland last spring, and on my way to the Negro Baseball League gear, I encountered a display of framed “Colored Only” signs that once infamously adorned restrooms, water fountains and other public facilities.
The particular sign I set my sights on, however, was different because it went one step further. According to the fine print, it had once hung in the balcony of a Georgia theater (or was a replica of one that had), and it was mercilessly explicit in its directions: “Colored Only,” it declared, emphatically adding, “No Whites Allowed.” And so there it was, the sad, desperate truth of segregation made plain. As Jesse Jackson once explained of oppression, you cannot hold a man down in a ditch unless you are willing to linger there with him. Similarly, you cannot consign a group of people to a specified area without restricting your own access to it.
My wife had her eye on the sign, too. Perhaps because I was concerned about how it would look over our front door or in our kitchen-or simply eager to add another meaningful decoration to my office-I beat her to the punch. Deciding my new sign might seem a bit too abrupt in the hallway of the Center for Minority Educational Affairs, I hung it in my office on the wall right behind my chair.
Soon enough, people began to notice. Inevitably, the first question they would ask was, “Has that always been there?” I always explained that it was a new acquisition, how I had obtained it and why: because it captured the mutuality of segregation. Clearly, it was the second line, “No Whites Allowed,” that caught people’s attention and distinguished this sign from another quaint memento, like a pickanniny penny bank. This line drove home the point that segregation was not only an injustice toward blacks, it was also an affront to whites. It was a stark reminder that racism is always a double-edged sword. That is precisely why, for example, the Old White Leagues-Major League Baseball before 1947-were no more valid than the Negro Leagues, and why all “official” baseball records from that time should be erased. I looked forward to the conversations, especially with students, for whom the entire history of legal segregation feels nearly as old as slavery itself does for me.
Evidently, however, I had some visitors who were either unimpressed by my explanations or too taken aback to comment on the sign at all-at least to me. But they did not remain silent. Exercising their workplace prerogative, they contacted the proper authorities, who, in turn, requested that I remove the offending sign. After one last attempt to explain what my intentions were in hanging the sign, I agreed to remove it from the wall. As an associate dean of student affairs, a longstanding member of the Diversity Action Council and, most importantly, as a man who sees himself as a caring and thoughtful colleague, I decided that was the appropriate thing to do. But I did so with a feeling of sadness because I still believe that the conversations generated by that sign were important ones to have, especially at a university.
Now about that Confederate flag, stained-glass window in Riggs Library-I have known of its existence for years. I understand its significance to university lore: the reconciliation of North and South, the Blue and the Gray and all that. Just this spring, in fact, during CMEA’s senior reception in Riggs Library, I pointed it out to some students. Only the day before, they had been fussing about an apparently clueless classmate who was wearing a t-shirt adorned with a Confederate flag at another Senior Week event. And so they were stunned to realize that every day of their four years on the Hilltop, a stained-glass Confederate emblem had been staring out at them from the front of Healy Hall. I thought they should know of its existence, although I told them that if they were offended, it was up to them to hold their alma mater accountable. I didn’t consider it to be my fight. I now think otherwise.
I considered the hundreds of young people who swarmed over the campus this summer, many of them African-American, many of them sponsored by my office, who believed in Georgetown as a welcoming educational destination. Did any of them happen to look up, crossing Healy Lawn, and notice, etched into the University’s proudest and most famous building, the symbol of, at best, racial segregation, and, at worst, white supremacy? What would they have made of Georgetown then, and who would be standing by to explain (as I had done in my office) the history and the context to assure them that they were not supposed to be offended? What of the workers who see it every day, who conduct the business of the university from second-floor offices, who clean Riggs Library and maintain the grounds outside? Who is there to explain to them that their feelings should not be hurt?
I have recently sought to exercise my workforce prerogative and complain about the confederate symbol in the window. I have not yet received an official response, which is not to say that nothing will be done. It is, however, hard to imagine that on the basis of a similar complaint, the offending window will be removed from public view as graciously as I removed my sign. Perhaps if I can find a way to hang the sign from the window in Riggs Library, that might help.
