by: Brenda Tindal

Before the pomp and cir­cum­stance of reunions and Prince­ton University’s 265^th com­mence­ment fades into mem­ory, it is worth not­ing that this year marks the 40^th anniver­sary of the Class of 1972 because in many ways, this class bore wit­ness to the rev­o­lu­tion­ary trans­for­ma­tions tak­ing place across the coun­try. These stu­dents entered col­lege dur­ing the tumult of the civil rights and women’s move­ments, and the Viet­nam War with its anti-war protests. Per­haps, they too, were shocked by the news of Sen­a­tor Robert F. Kennedy and civil rights patri­arch Dr. Mar­tin Luther King, Jr.’s assas­si­na­tions. In any case, Prince­ton and many other uni­ver­si­ties were not immune to the changes tak­ing place nation­ally; in fact, some col­lege cam­puses served as the­aters for such social and polit­i­cal unrest.

For instance, in a sub­tle dis­play of resis­tance, the stu­dent edi­tors of the 1972 Bric-a-Brac, Princeton’s under­grad­u­ate year­book, devi­ated from its tra­di­tional format—for what appears to be the first and only time—with the issuance of a two-volume annual, in hopes that “no one will con­strue [their] pre­sen­ta­tion as being char­ac­ter­is­tic of any par­tic­u­lar stu­dent or Prince­ton ‘type.’” To this end, they assem­bled images of nuns at the col­leges’ ath­letic events; pho­tos of the bohemian vari­ety of long-haired, bearded, and afro wear­ing Prince­to­ni­ans; and a psy­che­delic iter­a­tion of Nas­sau Hall’s clock tower. More­over, Robert F. Goheen, then the pres­i­dent of the col­lege, con­cluded his term as an agent of change and arbiter of diver­sity, exit­ing Prince­ton with sev­eral notches under his prover­bial belt, includ­ing the hir­ing of Carl A. Fields, the first black admin­is­tra­tor at an Ivy League col­lege, and the admis­sion of women in 1969. In addi­tion, at their com­mence­ment, the Class of 1972 observed John Hope Franklin, renowned scholar of African Amer­i­can his­tory, and Alvin Ailey, chore­o­g­ra­pher and founder of one of the most noted black reper­tory com­pa­nies in the world, receive hon­orary degrees from Princeton.

Vera can be seen on the left sec­ond from the top.

Miss­ing from the 1972 com­mence­ment and this nar­ra­tive of tumult and tri­umph is the story of Vera Mar­cus, the first known under­grad­u­ate African Amer­i­can woman to grad­u­ate from the col­lege as a “Prince­ton­ian.” For Ms. Mar­cus, the lat­ter point is par­tic­u­larly impor­tant. To be sure, women were part of the intel­lec­tual and social life of the col­lege long before Mar­cus entered in 1969. For exam­ple, there was the found­ing of Eve­lyn Col­lege for Women in 1887; the imprint left by the wives of deans and fac­ulty mem­bers, such as Isabella McCosh, the wife of Pres­i­dent McCosh and beloved 19^th cen­tury fig­ure of the col­lege; the admit­tance of women as grad­u­ate stu­dents in the 1960s; and the pres­ence of young women from neigh­bor­ing col­leges, who par­tic­i­pated in a year-long con­cen­trated study in “crit­i­cal lan­guages.” How­ever, the caveat, as Ms. Mar­cus explains: “what dis­tin­guishes [her] class is that [they] were admit­ted as Prince­to­ni­ans and grad­u­ated as Princetonians.”

Vera Mar­cus in The Fresh­man Herald

Inter­est­ingly, though Mar­cus is the first black woman admit­ted as a fresh­man* to obtain an under­grad­u­ate degree from Princeton—in three years no less—her feat remains largely unac­knowl­edged within the pan­theon of “firsts” at the col­lege. Her emer­gence from the iso­la­tion of the 1960s pseudo-integrated schools of Birm­ing­ham, Alabama, to the pres­ti­gious halls of Prince­ton Uni­ver­sity is an extra­or­di­nary jour­ney and it begs the question(s): Why hasn’t this daugh­ter of Prince­ton assumed a more promi­nent place in the annals of the col­leges’ illus­tri­ous his­tory? What did it mean to embody what fem­i­nist schol­ars have often referred to as the triple bur­den of class, race, and gen­der, in a place that has largely been inher­ently white and male? Dur­ing a two-day oral his­tory inter­view with Ms. Mar­cus in April 2012, she elab­o­rated on these mat­ters with the wis­dom and emo­tions that only a woman who has walked in her shoes can.

Vera Mar­cus: From the Deep South to the “Most South­ern of North­ern” Colleges

Ms. Vera Mar­cus grew up in civil rights era Birm­ing­ham; also known as “bomb­ing­ham” due to the fre­quency with which white suprema­cists used bombs as ret­ri­bu­tion against African Amer­i­cans, whom were per­ceived as hav­ing trans­gressed the South’s racial codes, thus tar­get­ing black Alabamian busi­nesses, homes, and churches. In fact, she lived in a neigh­bor­ing com­mu­nity near the 16th Street Church, which was bombed in 1963, mar­tyring “4 lit­tle girls”—Addie Mae Collins, Car­ole Robert­son, Cyn­thia Wes­ley, and Denise McNair. Mar­cus’ par­ents tried to shield their chil­dren from Birmingham’s cesspool of vio­lence, cor­rup­tion, and dis­crim­i­na­tion. Her father, Rev­erend Robert James Mar­cus, was a Methodist min­is­ter and held numer­ous other jobs through­out his life; her mother, Ammie Mar­cus, was a hair­dresser, train­ing under the famed “hair cul­tur­ists” and busi­ness mogul, Madame C.J. Walker. Like many south­ern black fam­i­lies, the Mar­cus’ were not afflu­ent, but in many ways they were “wealthy,” accord­ing to Mar­cus, who states:

“I came from a wealthy house­hold, but I didn’t know it at the time. I refer to it that way because it was an intact family—a mother and a father…And my par­ents owned our home. And I think any­body lis­ten­ing to me today would know how extra­or­di­nary that was, given our hous­ing crisis…So, for that rea­son, I look back at my upbring­ing and real­ize that I was very wealthy.”

Despite her parent’s pro­tec­tion, Mar­cus expe­ri­enced her own share of mar­gin­al­iza­tion within the newly inte­grated West End High, a pre­dom­i­nately white high school in Birm­ing­ham. In many of her classes, she recalls, white stu­dents delib­er­ately aban­don­ing desks that were in close prox­im­ity to her. In another instance, she was not allowed to travel with her band mates to con­certs out­side of Birm­ing­ham because “there was no way that the offi­cials could phys­i­cally pro­tect [her]” from the litany of threats and tar­geted racist vio­lence. In spite of these moments of dis­em­pow­er­ment, Mar­cus grad­u­ated from West End with a stel­lar aca­d­e­mic record, mak­ing her highly com­pet­i­tive for entrance into a num­ber of col­leges and uni­ver­si­ties. With plans to attend Wash­ing­ton State Uni­ver­sity on schol­ar­ship dur­ing the fall of 1969, Mar­cus thought she’d made her final deci­sion for under­grad­u­ate stud­ies. How­ever, shortly there­after, she received a let­ter from Prince­ton encour­ag­ing her to apply, promis­ing a schol­ar­ship that exceeded Wash­ing­ton State’s offer by $300. Accord­ing to Mar­cus, “it was for that $300 rea­son that I selected Prince­ton.” This deci­sion would for­ever change the course of her life.

In 1969, Prince­ton was still grap­pling with the racial diver­si­fi­ca­tion of its stu­dent, fac­ulty, and admin­is­tra­tive demo­graph­ics; addi­tion­ally, this year sig­naled the start of the college’s exper­i­ment with co-education. Mar­cus admits that she “didn’t stop to think that [she would be] in the first class of women” nor did it occur to her that Princeton’s “social foun­da­tion was the Men’s Club.” Upon arriv­ing, Mar­cus real­ized quickly that there were still bar­ri­ers that needed to be dis­man­tled in order for women to fully par­tic­i­pate in the Prince­ton expe­ri­ence, not­ing women could not join the eat­ing clubs on cam­pus at that time. She con­tends, “when I went to Prince­ton, and fig­ured out [I belonged to] the first class of women, it was like, I was too busy…surviving as one of the first women to go to Princeton.”

For Mar­cus, the trope of iso­la­tion and social alien­ation was also evi­dent in her dorm room assign­ment at Pyne Hall. Hav­ing had a minor dis­pute with her white room­mate dur­ing the early months of the first semes­ter, Mar­cus found her­self with­out a roommate—an arrange­ment that would last through­out her tenure at Prince­ton. She did, how­ever, grav­i­tate toward the small cor­pus of black women at the col­lege and was deeply engaged in the­atre and dance. In fact, Mar­cus was the first black cast mem­ber to per­form in a pro­duc­tion spon­sored by the Prince­ton Uni­ver­sity Tri­an­gle Club, the old­est col­le­giate musical-comedy troupe in the nation. Mar­cus per­formed in the Tri­an­gle Club’s 81^st Annual Pro­duc­tion, “Call a Spade a Shovel,” a con­tro­ver­sial show­case in 1969 that sought to deal with con­tem­po­rary social and polit­i­cal issues that chal­lenged Amer­i­can ideals and life.