“Variations in Black”: Eureka’s Stories – February 2, 2008

If you walk into the red brick structure known as Whetzel House today, you will be entering the offices of Admissions and Financial Aid where staff members and student workers will greet you with a smile and begin acculturating you to the spirit of Eureka College. In years past, the structure has served many different purposes including being a private family residence and serving as a sorority house for a time. During the early-1970s, Whetzel House served a special purpose and provided a different type of campus acculturation when it was established as the Black Culture House on the Eureka College campus.

Eureka College has educated African American students since the mid-1880s, but for the most part, the number of black students who attended the College remained quite low until the mid-1960s. In the late-1960s and early-1970s the College experienced an unprecedented surge in the enrollment of African American students. For example, black students accounted for 13.8 percent of the campus enrollment in 1968-69; 14.4 percent in 1969-70; and 13.7 percent in 1970-71.

The increase in African American student enrollment at Eureka College was attributable to several factors: (1) President Ira W. Langston, who had previously served as a pastor in New York City, initiated a concerted recruiting effort in several East Coast cities to recruit minority students, (2) Reaccreditation through the North-Central Association, which the College had earned in 1962 after a lapse of several decades, required that the College make an effort to recruit and retain students from a variety of cultural and ethnic backgrounds, and (3) Government bonds that had been issued to help support the financing of the Founders Court residence hall complex (1965) carried the stipulation that the College do all within its power to serve the needs of minority students.

Although the College had the nineteenth century tradition of being an abolitionist-founded institution, the necessary adjustment to recruiting and retaining large numbers of African American students in the twentieth century proved to be more challenging. The College changed slowly, at first, and this apparent air of indifference was viewed by African American students as a sign that they were not welcomed upon the campus. One letter to the editor that appeared in The Pegasus in March 1970 suggested that the College’s inaction “. . . show its true colors as a facists [sic] institute.” In other even more strident pieces that appeared in the pages of The Pegasus, some African American students closed their letters with the expression “Mutha!” that was typical of some of the Black Panther literature of the period.

In March 1970, at the end of the Third Term, a contingent of African American students presented “The Petition for a Black Culture House” to the Administration of Eureka College. In doing this, they also instituted discussion on the topic in the Student Senate, among the Faculty, and among the Trustees of the College. Supporters of the Black Culture House also used the pages of The Pegasus to make the case for why Eureka College needed to establish such a facility.

Student authors decried “a half-hearted effort by the power structure of the college to make the Black Culture House a realization.” One student pointedly asked “How can one go on thinking that Eureka College is the promised land or better yet, a Utopia?” Another writer noted that “I have learned some things in the time I’ve been here, but I have also learned something else. That is, that I am slowly losing the small amount of Black identity I had when I first arrived here. I grant you Eureka is isolated, but it is also a cultural deprivational institute . . .” One editorial written by an African American student quoted from Mao tse tung and from Fred Hampton (Black Panther leader murdered in Chicago) to add urgency to the call for why a Black Culture House was needed.

Starting in Fall Semester of 1970 the Whetzel House began serving as the Black Culture House on the Eureka College campus. The following year, the 1971 Prism (the college yearbook) acknowledged that “Eureka College saw, this past year through the Black Culture House, many contributions from the Negro [sic] race. The culture house sponsored teas, films, and lecturers. The Black Culture House added to the college through its contributions in the above areas as well as being a center of learning of the Black culture.” Curiously, the Eureka College Student Handbook, 1971-1972 makes no mention of the Black Culture House. The College maintained support of the Black Culture House into the late-1970s when attention waned and the site was discontinued.