Title

Hopkins to W. A. Green, Jr., 2 December 1920 See all items with this value

Description

Hopkins replies to W. A. Green, Jr., of Dallas, who had written on 11 November 1920 about the advisability of playing negroes on the teams. Hopkins refuses the terms of the question: the issue, he writes, is not one of utilising the athletic ability or prowess of negroes who happen to be among us, but of what Dartmouth's interpretation is to be of its traditional attitude in the light of modern conditions. He concedes the near impossibility of deriving any constituency from south of the Mason-Dixon line so long as Dartmouth does not draw the colour line, and notes that the matter arises each year with Southern alumni and with the parents of Southern students, most recently with Mrs. Parker, wife of Judge E. D. Parker of Houston. He then sets out three attitudes among northern colleges: Princeton, which bars Black applicants from the curriculum entirely; Yale, which admits them and denies every privilege beyond attending classes and receiving a diploma; and Harvard, Dartmouth, Brown, Cornell and Pennsylvania, which admit the few who qualify. Hopkins states that he has no patience with the second of these attitudes while sympathising to some degree with Princeton's. He refers the admission question to the Trustees and athletic eligibility to the athletic authorities, describes his own convictions as considerably tinged by his northern New England antecedents, and closes by telling Green he is not unsympathetic with the theory that the South handles the negro problem better than the North handles its portion of it. See all items with this value

Creator

Hopkins, Ernest Martin See all items with this value

Date Created

1920-12-02

Timeline Date

1920-12-02

Citation Information

Hopkins, Ernest Martin. Letter to W. A. Green, Jr., December 2, 1920. Dartmouth College. Office of the President (1916-1945: Ernest Martin Hopkins) records, DP-11, Box 6767. Rauner Special Collections Library, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH. See all items with this value

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