On the morning of this year's Commencement procession, LaToya Strickland '06 will walk through the Van Wickle Gates wearing an African kente cloth around her neck, a gift given to her and black seniors by the Inman Page Black Alumni Council. Strickland, who is chair of Onyx, a black student organization composed primarily of seniors, will march at the head of the procession with fellow black students in continuation of a tradition dating back to the 1970s.
"I can't break this tradition," Strickland said. "I care too much about my culture to let that happen."
Strickland and other black students will arrive at the gathering spot where seniors meet to begin their procession in the early hours of Commencement morning. "Black seniors have always made it a priority to wake up however early they have to and get first in line," said Lisa Raiola '84, campaign deputy director and former vice president for alumni relations.
In 1975, when Denise Bledsoe Slaughter '75 MA '77 and fellow black seniors decided to march at the head of the annual procession, the move represented a history of struggle and perseverance for black students at Brown.
But Slaughter, a member of the board of directors for the Inman Page Black Alumni Council, or IPC, told The Herald the tradition is one that is too often misunderstood or taken out of historical context.
"It's part of a continuum," she said of the tradition. "We didn't just wake up one morning and decide to be at the head of the line."
Marching at the head of the procession is linked to the Rites of Passage Ceremony, which is also called the Blackalaureate, that takes place the evening before the procession and celebrates graduating black students, their families, alums and faculty, Strickland said. This event and other related traditions are organized by Onyx.
Understanding the traditionRaiola said every year she hears from alums who are curious about why black students march at the front of the procession.
"After the Commencement you start getting the questions and calls with, 'What is that all about?'" Many alums have the misconception that the administration plays a role in organizing the tradition, Raiola said.
For some, concerns about the tradition stem from misunderstanding, Raiola said.
"People have this reaction, 'My God, this is Brown University. What are black people in kente cloths doing marching at the head of the line?' People think it's militant," said Harold Bailey Jr. '70 P'99 P'03, a trustee emeritus. "My take is it brings people together more than anything."
Javette Laremont '80, a trustee and former president of the Brown Alumni Association, agreed the tradition is often misinterpreted.
"People ... think it's a negative thing - that it's a militant thing - and it's not," Laremont said. "The tradition starts from a sense of pride in celebration of this major milestone for many African-American students who potentially could be the first in their family to graduate from college."
"The history itself kind of got lost," Slaughter said. "The traditions remained, but there were all kinds of questions."
Marching at the head of procession grew out of a resistance to the turmoil black students faced at college campuses across the country in the 1970s, according to Bailey.
Bailey was one of the seven black men to graduate from his class when this tradition was still unheard of at Brown. "You can't have a tradition if you don't have anyone there," Bailey said of the small black population in his class. "It was extremely lonely," he said of his time at Brown. "I didn't have a sense of who I was and my culture."
Slaughter said the tradition began on the heels of the 1975 student takeover of University Hall, which occurred "because of the dearth of minorities in the student body and ... faculty across the board." There were only two black tenured faculty members at Brown in 1975, Slaughter said. "The empowerment that we felt basically played out in our movement from invisibility to the head of the line."
The tradition also emerged following the lack of media coverage of black students graduating from Brown in 1973, the first "large black graduating class," according to Elmo Terry-Morgan '74, associate professor of Africana studies and theatre, speech and dance.
Terry-Morgan remembers marching with fellow black students during the Commencement procession the following year. "We had to prove the skeptics wrong in a public way and lay a foundation of success so that there would be Black generations to follow us," Terry-Morgan wrote in an e-mail to The Herald.
But the tradition for these alums really stretches back to 1877, when Inman Page and George Washington Milford because the first black students to graduate from the University.
"If you look at African-American students, where they first came in numbers of one and two, now they are coming in hundreds," said Laremont, the trustee who marched at the head of the procession during her graduation over two decades ago. "It's paying homage to the sacrifices that these pioneers made to get to Brown."
The tradition has a contemporary relevance for students as well, said Brenda Allen, associate provost and director of institutional diversity. "The fact that these African-American students still pull together for this tradition shows they still face some struggles here at Brown," she said. "It serves a purpose for some, but not every African-American student will walk there."
The tradition is practically unheard of among students, Strickland said. "Communication is the main problem at Brown," she said. "Even black students don't know about it."
For Strickland, walking through the gates with other black students also means a sense of community. "People on the track team hang together and it's OK. People on the soccer team hang together and it's OK. But when you get a group of minority students together, it's not really looked at that way," she said.
"Graduating and celebrating with people who have been most involved in your experience at Brown is important," Allen said. "We want to embrace this and encourage it amongst all students."
