Latest / Voices And Visions Podcast / Part 2 -Dr. Alice Palmer | NU Alumna, Black House Dean, Illinois State Senator|Voices & Visions

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Part 2 -Dr. Alice Palmer | NU Alumna, Black House Dean, Illinois State Senator|Voices & Visions · Voices And Visions Podcast

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_02: Welcome to Voices and Visions Podcast, alumni Jeffrey Sterling and Lauren Lowry's interview series exploring the black experience at Northwestern University amid a changing national landscape.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_02: Let's learn together.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_02: Dr.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_02: Alice Pammer obtained her PhD from the School of Education at Northwestern University and was the Associate Dean of African American Student Affairs, revolutionizing the Black House until 1985.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_02: Hear her Northwestern Story on Voices and Visions podcast.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_02: Listen to part two of Dr.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_02: Palmer's interview on Apple, Spotify, and all podcast platforms.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_01: No, it uh it goes back to the demands of the students 50 years ago who understood that what had to be put into place were recognizable departments, recognizable positions.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_01: Uh without that, it we wouldn't have been more marginalized uh than we were.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_01: But being able to be associate dean and therefore dean of African American Student Affairs allowed me to operate, not just me, but Milton before me and whoever came before him, operated within the context of the university in ways that they understood, or at least in positions that they understood.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_01: That was very important.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um you left Northwestern in 1985.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: And you you had an uh even more so, if not equally if not even more so, legendary career um when you left Northwestern.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um can you speak to what you took from the university and how your time at the university impacted the rest of your amazing career?
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: And um you can get into why you left if you like, but you know, the fact that you left is heartbreaking enough.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: But you know, I guess I'm they've been constants throughout your career in terms of activism and social change.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um what have been those constants?
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_01: Well, let first of all, let me just add add a few bit more um about what the black house served to do because I talked to you about the roles of each of the other people.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_01: My role was to make sure that the presence, the strong presence of African American student affairs was on the campus.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_01: And so one of the ways departments to do major things, partner even with students.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um if you recall, we partnered with uh uh the uh the alphas to start the first uh lecture, uh Martin Luther King lecture, which I think is still going on.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_01: Uh we partnered with uh the newly founded women's studies and uh the director, and I feel bad that I can't remember her name, but she got money from uh a number of the North Shore wealthy women to bring women to campus.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_01: At that time, First Lady of Jamaica, Beverly Manley, who spoke in the Black House in this very room, uh, brought uh Gwendolyn Brooks, who was the poet laureate of Illinois, and Marion Wright Edelman.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_01: So we were very busy in making sure that the were throughout the country and the world in that matter.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_01: So uh those were um the kinds of things you know that we did in terms of we hosted, we had um uh forgotten how many poets and authors and so forth were hosted in this living room, and of course, um then Essie and Jeree decided they wanted to do something.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um the Christmas bazaar, I don't know if you remember that.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I do.
• 4:37
  unknown: It's it starts.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_01: Essie went into Evanston and started asking uh merchants, you know, can you help us?
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_01: And because they both crocheted beautifully in some of their items, and by the time they finished in a year or so, a huge banner hanging out in front, and it was uh quite amazing, you know, and so forth.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_01: So these were the kinds of things that were going on in the black house that encompassed all those things that I said we wanted it to be.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_01: Now, I um I've always been an activist, and so when I got a call to film out about Heather is one of the foremost uh women organizers in the country, and she had founded years ago the Midwest Academy, and um I got a call from them saying that uh they wanted me to come to Chicago and to be in charge of the the thrust uh to do voter education and voter registration, and we take it for granted these days that you can register to vote at a motor uh vehicle place or you you know, all these things we take for granted, which are now in threat, by the way.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_01: They are threatened.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_01: But this was the early days, this is how they came about.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_01: So I decided, I discussed it with my husband, my family, and I took a cut and pay and went to work in the basement of a church.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_01: Went around the country helping people learn how to um get righteous uh voter uh registration and education.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_01: Sitting that's the only thing that could have pulled me out of here.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: Sure, sure.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: And of course you famously became a state senator um a few years after that.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yep, that was later, right?
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_01: Well, there were things between there too.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, okay.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: Let me you you're sitting in the black house.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: What memories um does that bring back and what impressions um looking at it in its current state?
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um what does that say to you?
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: How does it make you feel?
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_01: Right now it's sterile.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I'm sitting in the living room.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_01: The only two uh remnants are the two African uh pieces in the window.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_01: The mural is gone.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_01: Uh there at least this one is still here, so I I can touch base with that.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_01: But it looks like anybody's corporate conference room.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm kind of missing the uh, like I said, this was a comfort zone as well as all the rest of it.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm hoping that uh that kind of spirit and um and the way uh it it welcomed it, it always held out its arms and welcomed, and I'm hoping that'll get back in here somehow.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_00: Do you care to speculate?
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: Can you even conceptualize how it could have become sterile, why it would have become sterile?
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I would suggest that uh in fact, um, this is not the first time I've been back to the black house.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, an undergraduate um young woman was doing a video, and I don't know how she got to me, but she asked me to come out and be interviewed.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_01: And when I opened the door of the black house, strange things were going on, you know, it's a big office and da-da-da people out.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_01: So anyway, when I said, what is going on here?
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_01: And that's when I was told that um it was to be the multicultural, I said, Oh, come on, spare me, surely not.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_01: And you see, there's been a big push in this country to be political, to be non-identity politics.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_01: But as I was telling you earlier, my term is mutuality, and I think we uh each of us in our our we are, that should be a matter of pride, it should be a matter of um the basis, the foundation on which we deal with other people with integrity and wisdom, as we were asked to do.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_01: And um I don't reject that.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_01: I don't reject being black and being invited to be in some, as you pointed out, some kind of smoothie does away with all of our differences.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_01: Those differences are profound, and if they're if they're um put to righteous use, they create uh a wonderful world.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_00: Indeed.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um I think that it's fair to point out here that um despite what you have described as a sterilization process that has created a self-fulfilling prophecy amongst the current generations of students, to where they don't know what they never had, and thus the black house became incrementally less used, so much so that the administration became comfortable trying to do away with it in its traditional form, which is how it no longer exists as the Department of African American Student Affairs and no longer has a dean.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_00: And subsequently, efforts um have been made to integrate services from other parts of the university into the Black House, um, so much so that uh it caused a full-scale revolt to kind of get back to the future and major um renovations are being planned to reinsert the soul and spirit of what um it was meant to be by those students in the late 60s who fought for this place.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_00: So um don't be too disheartened by what you see currently because um when you come back for the commemoration in May of 2018, um you'll see a groundbreaking for a brand new uh black house that is uh modern and relevant for the current and future generations of students and not just students.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_01: Derek, oh congratulations.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_00: Not just students, but you know, the current vision is to create a cultural center that serves the needs of um students, alumni, faculty, staff, and and others who have an interest in the same way in which other cultural centers have long existed and have flourished um on campus without constant fears of intrusion and and questions about their relevance.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: So um we still fight to preserve and grow um the legacy that you um served and protected and grew so well.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_00: Um so the struggle continues.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_01: I am so proud.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_01: I'm so proud of Nuba and of all of you.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_01: Uh it I talk about you all the time, all of you, because you are extraordinary and that you have stepped up and reclaimed what is ours, is profound.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_00: But but but this leads into my next question to you.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_00: We are we are both the fruits of your labor, I mean, directly.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you were my dean, and we're, you know, figuratively your children.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_00: So um the fact that we're able to do this in a way that pleases you is certainly a reflection of the work that you did when you were here.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um and to that end, do you have a sense of your personal impact and your personal importance historically to the uh black Northwestern uh community?
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_00: Can you just speak to that?
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_00: I know that's a leading question, but it's true.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_00: And I just kind of like to have you share any reflections you have about um what your place um should be here, given all that you accomplished.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that's very kind of you to say, but I I never thought of it in that way.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_01: I just um these all of you were my children, and I don't mean that in any, you know, little people way, but you were all grown, and I was honored to be here and to be part of this and to know who I am so that I didn't get confused.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_01: All of us in this house knew who we were, and so we did not get confused by efforts to um demean when that came up or to marginalize or any of the rest of that.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_01: We said, Oh no, no, no, we know who we are, we know who these young people are.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_01: So you come on over and talk to us, and it'll be all right because we're gonna join forces and battle off anything that does not make sense.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_00: No, so no, it I was honored.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_00: Explain, if you will, why not just the black house as a building, but the resources that were contained within the black house are so important, not just to the black students on campus, but to the university um as a whole.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_00: How does this make this place better?
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_01: Because it's all encompassing.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_01: Uh you pointed out its cultural significance.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I've pointed out its uh personal um comforting significance if necessary.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_01: It is a place where if you had a uh question and you needed help um getting yourself through a course or getting yourself through a uh a tangled situation, I I have to tell a funny story.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_01: I uh uh last year or so I was asked to write a uh recommendation for this young man.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't really know him that well.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_01: But the first thing he said to me was, Well, you know, Dr.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_01: Palmer, uh, I didn't do that well in high school, so I don't know.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, son, I've been writing those kind of recommendations for a while.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_01: But I remember once in a while I get a student who had never been in the black house, you know, and I would have to tease them a little bit.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_01: I said, Oh, you know, now you find us, you're getting ready to graduate, you want me to write a letter of recommendation?
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_01: Do I know you?
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_01: I will we would then have a very come home, come to Jesus kind of conversation before I wrote a letter.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_01: Said now from now on, you know where this house is and you know who you are and what your what expectations are of you.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_01: So yes, I will write the letter.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody has to come home eventually.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_01: And there were uh other, you know, on the comfort side.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, if I came to the house and I saw a young sister sitting on the steps, I knew what my day was gonna be.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_01: We'd go up to the third floor and I'd put her on the floor and she would cry and cry.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_01: And I would say, Is he a friend of yours?
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_01: And she'd say, No, I told you he's my boyfriend.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_01: I said, I didn't ask you that.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_01: I said, Is he a friend of yours?
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_01: I said, You know what friendship is.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_01: So, on that measure, is he a friend of yours?
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_01: And then we could talk after that.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_01: So, yeah, the house was all encompassing, and that's what I hope, and you knew it when you walked in the door, you knew that.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_00: So this is going to be part of the Nuba Archives, and there's going to be scores of generations of students who view this over time.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_00: So say something to them, because as I mentioned before, you know, current day students don't realize what they don't have.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_00: You can't miss what you never had.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_00: And the university very much wants to, as it always did, perhaps, um wants the students to engage in the university experience, which is very Eurocentric, admittedly.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_00: But the idea of assimilation versus acclamation is something that folks don't tend to appreciate very much.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_00: And the students believing that they are uniquely different, that's whole that's apparently part of the millennial thing, um don't as easily get the connection between um folks that may have been here ten years ago, much less 30 or 50 years ago, and are more inclined to um buy into that notion or at least want to try to live that notion that we have somehow overcome notion as opposed to demanding the culturally sensitive type of support that others on campus, as you mentioned, there is a woman's center, there is a Jewish center, there's a Catholic center, and the black house represented the African American Center.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_00: And yet we are often compelled to try to do without our culturally sensitive needs.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_00: What would you say to the students as a means of getting them to appreciate that they don't have to apologize for wanting to have a set of resources and that doesn't necessarily detract from their pursuit of a global university experience?
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_01: I would say to them that African Americans do not have to be either or.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_01: We can be both and.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_01: So he would go there.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_01: And it's when white GI saw him, they came out and urinated and defecated on the garbage, so he couldn't get it.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_01: He had to go back again.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_01: The next time a black G.I.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_01: came out and said, Son, are you hungry?
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_01: Is your family hungry?
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_01: And from that point on, they fed that boy.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_01: And he never, never forgot it.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_01: Now, this is how black people are known around the world.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_01: When I was in Katavi, which is the major department store in Berlin, Billy Holliday was playing on the PA system.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, I could tell you on and on.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_01: Um when World War I, how do you think jazz?
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_01: You can go in villages, and people know about black jazz.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_01: There will be billboards uh showing uh who's coming to town.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_01: World War I, uh James Europe was on the troop ship and marched into a small town in France, and the people went crazy because he brought jazz there.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_01: My grandfather was the highest ranking um medical officer in World War I.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_01: He came back.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_01: This is a man who'd been a slave.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_01: He came back from there and was appointed the first African American medical director of a veterans hospital in Tuskegee.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_01: He believed in excellence, and so that that uh VA hospital became one of the tops in the country.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_01: He did not have to choose between being black and being excellent.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_01: So you don't have to choose.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_01: You can be both, and you can be in all the rest of your lives, and others will know who you are and respect that you are the best of the best, and that you are both and not either or.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_00: Fantastic.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_00: Um final question for you.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_00: Uh can you just opine on what you would think the major challenges facing uh Northwestern's um black community um will be moving forward, and particularly within the uh greater university structure?
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_00: I know that you are aware of some very prominent and high-profile um faculty and administrative hires, including our provost and chief diversity officer, but in terms of the student experience and the faculty experience, because we're still underrepresented, obviously, uh what would you um say to them and what would you think would be the challenges that folks have to be on guard against in order to succeed?
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_01: No, as Duke Jenkins used to say, know who you are, know where you came from, be proud of that, step up.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_01: And there's nothing precludes a black student from taking full advantage of all of the exceptional opportunities that this campus offers.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_01: At the same time, nothing should preclude a black student from being very comfortable in the place where his culture is most celebrated and his being is most celebrated.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_01: You are to be both and, not either or.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_00: Fantastic.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_00: You're every bit as wise now as you were were then, if not more.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um thank you so much.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_00: As always, a pleasure spending time with you, and I'm looking forward to getting you back up here in May and continuing these conversations.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much from the bottom of my heart for everything that you did uh for me personally and for all of us.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_00: So um, this is very much the Voices and Visions Podcast.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you, Caroline Mike.
• 24:21
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• 24:26
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• 24:30
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