Newspaper Page Text
April, 1976
SPELMAN SPOTLIGHT
Page 7
Dialogue With The President
The Manley Years:
By Debbie Newton
Editor’s Note: The foDowing is an interview with Dr. Albert E.
Manley, the first black, and the first male president of Spelman
College. Dr. Manley is expected to retire from his position as
president of the college this year. The interviewers are Ms. Judy T.
Gebre-Hhvet, advisor to the “Spotlight” Newspaper, and Ms.
Debbie Newton, edltorrin-chief of the “Spotlight.”
Newton: When did you begin
your career as President of
Spelman?
Manley: On July 1,1953.
Newton: What were the en
dowments like when you arrived
in contrast to what they are
today?
Nfenley: The endowment of the
college in 1953 was 3.5 million.
The endowment today is about
10.6 million.
Gebre-Hiwet: What are your
personal feelings right now, dr.
Nfenley you’ve invested a great
part of your life here. Do you
have mixed emotions? Do you
feel nostalgic? Happy to get
away?
Manley: I have mixed feelings
about it. I have both cognitive
and emotional feelings. The
emotional part concerns the
students who have gone
through; together with those
who are now here, as well as the
faculty and staff. These are the
things that will perhaps tear at
me more than anything else in
terms of leaving. As well as
some of the younger alumnae
who graduated under my
administration.
Gebra-Hiwet : What do you feel
about those of us who are
abandoning ? In terms of those
of us who have been here a good
prtion of the time you have
been here? When you walk
away and leave us here, what
are you leaving us with?
[vfenley: I feel that 1 am leaving
Spelman, if not at the crest in
terms of it’s leadership role for
predominately black institutions
a small liberal arts colleges in
general, I feel that I’m leaving
Spelman in a direction of that
goal. I don’t feel that I am
£>andoning my students or my
faculty. I’m glad that I’ve been a
part of Spelman and have seen
students glad that I’ve been a
part of Spelman come here who
were in pretty bad shape u^en
they first arrived
in terms of expression, not
being very Knowledgeable about
things in general, and then
finally see them stand on their
own two feet, :>o I don’t feel that
lam abandoning anyone-That’s
one of the joys of this en
terprise. I think that it’s good
when we can help students
teach the point where they can
make their own decisions, and
where they no longer feel they
need you as a crutch. When you
help a student reach that point
then you’ve done something. I
<bn’t have any sense of guilt
that I may be abandoning this
institution because I feel that
Spelman right now enjoys a very
enviable reputation not only in
the south, but also in he
country. Sometimes the best
time to leave is wjien things
have reached a crest.
Georc-Hiwet: Certainly there
must be some aspects from
which you will be happy to get
away. The day-to-day grind,
conferences, salary increases,
criticisms, unwarranted
criticisms. Aren’t there some
aspects of being president of
this college that have been
wearing, that you will be happy
to move away from?
Manley: I don’t know. I hope so,
but you can’t tell. I won’t know
whether I’m going to be happy
or not, I may be very unhappy. I
say to myself now that I’ve got
to get up in the morning at 4:30
to go to a meeting in New York
because I’m not leaving this
rftemnon. I say to myself, well
now wouldn’t it be nice if I could
just sleep late in the morning
and not worry about anything
concerning Spelman. But if I
don’t sleep well anyway
suppose when I retire I’m still in
a situation. When I’m not
deeping well-then what good is
it going to be to retire? Or if I
don’t take the exercise that I
take now and I’m sitting around
with more frustrations with
nothing in particular to do. In
that sense I could be worse off.
On the other hand, if I pick up
aid get away from the everyday
pressures of the presidency, the
things that you mentioned- and
start working in some other
areas; I want to take about 2 or 3
months of doing nothing. I
think that’s going to be very
boring but I’ve got to do it to see
whether or not I can. After that,
I think I have a fairly good
chance of getting funded so that
I may update the history of
Spelman College. If I do that
and then do some consulting
work and keep busy, I think
it will be an interest in a dif
ferent kind of life. You see all
my life I’ve been used to
working 10, 12,14 hours a day. I
don’t believe I’m going to be
happy just sitting around,
playing golf and doing nothing.
I think I’m going to have to
continue to use my mind
because the mind can atrophy as
well as the body. If you don’t
use it, then it’s worse to be in
retirement.
Newton: What would you say
was the political temperament
cf spelman students during the
late fifties and the daring sixties
in contrast to the students on
campus at Spelman today?
Manley: In the late fifties, and I
like to tell this story, and even
in the early sixties if I sent word
that I wanted to see a student,
{resident want to see me
about?” But from ‘66 onwards,
and especially after the
Morehouse Trustees were
locked in 1969 by Spelman and
me, I got a little shakey. The
students of the last part of the
sixties were much more in-
wived in social change than
they were before the last part of
the sixties. And Ithinkthat what
they’re doing now is using the
political thrust to get some
things done. They no longer
have to go to buy a sandwich at
the counter. All of that is gone.
Ihe students in general have
helped to bring about the kind of
iiange across this country. The
only thing that bothers me about
the student revolution between
sixty-five and seventy is that
generally, when you read about
it, credit is given to schools such
as Berkely, Harvard and other
white schools. When actually,
the student revolt started down
in a little town in North Carolina
in Greensboro when some black
students at A&T decided one
right that they were going to a
drugstore that some white folks
avned. That was in 1959. And
they decided they wanted a coke
and a hotdog and they were
going in and they went in and
gat arrested, and that’s what
really started the student
movement. And so it wasn’t the
students at Berkely or at San
R-ancisco State that started the
movement. It was black
students in Greensboro, North
Carolina. And that bothers me,
that blacks don’t get credit
where it’s due.
Nswton:What was the ad
ministrative response to the role
Spelman students were
assuming with the civil rights
movement of the sixties?
Manley: Well, I tried to
discourage the students from
getting involved in situations
where I though there was going
to be blood shed. And at that time
I think Lester Maddox was the
gpvernor of Georgia. I would
discourage them. But once they
got downtown and sat-in and got
arrested, I usually was one of
die first ones down to try to get
them out. For example, in 1968,
when Martin Luther King, Jr.
was assassinated in Memphis.
We didn’t know what was going
to happen because they were
burning down buildings in large
cities in Chicago, Watts and
ether places. The president of
the six institutions sat in my
kitchen all night and Eugene
Patterson, then the editor of the
Atlanta Consitution, along with
Mayor Allen were on the phone
dl night trying to find out what
was going to happen when Dr.
King’s body lied in state for
about 48 hours in Sister’s
Chapel.
Gebre-Hiwet: And Dr. Manley,
it probably would be good to
mention too that the student
non-violent coordinatin com
mittee (SNCC) had its origin
between the two campuses of
Spelman and Morehouse. In
1961 with Rosalyn Pope,
followed, by Heischell Sullivan,
followed by Martin Wright
Edelman. So that, SNCC did
have its birth there.
iVhnley:And Julian Bond was
one of SNCC’s early leaders
dso. And while King’s body lied
in state in the chapel, the
students decide they were going
to march. We met in Vivian
Hfenderson’s office after having
spent the night planning out
strategy and the Mayor had
called that night. He asked if the
audents were going to march
and we said yes. He then said
that he wanted to march with
the students and our repsonse to
lim was that we had just lost a
great man and there was no
pint in losing another. So we
aavised him (Mayor Ivan Allen)
not to march. But he surprised
everyone by coming out the next
morning. So that we (the AU
Center presidents) had to go
find out from the marshall
leaders if it would be alright for
Allen and Patterson to march.
Vincent Harling (IBW) and one
or two other leading the march
said no. They didn’t want Allen
and Patterson to march. By that
time Lester Maddox had called
cut the National Guard and said
that if the students came
downtown, there was going to
be blood shed. So all of the
presidents marched with the
students. And we were able to
get them to go up Fair Street
and Northside and back around
by Morris Brown on Ashby, and
then back around to
Morehouse’s gym. And Dr.
Mays was there and talked with
the students and then they left.
In other words, we marched but
we kept them away from the
section where there might have
been blood shed.
Newton: What have you seen as
being the role of the college, in
terms of it being the first in
stitution of higher learning to be
established in the nation for
black women?
Mtnley: I think that Spleman
has a very, very unique role.
Because it was not only the first
institution established for black
women in the Unites States, but
I don’t know if another in
stitution of higher learning in
the world that was established
just for black women. And I
suppose that the most unusual
thing about the Spelman
situation is that it is here in a
consortium. The Morehouse
environment, AU and others
aid without sounding about it; I
would say that Spelman has a
gpod, if not a better position, as
any of the schools in this center,
cr any black school in this
country. I worked with co
educational institutions before I
came to Spelman, and the
fending for anything athletic is
an example. If they had say fifty
thousand dollars for athletics,
most of it went to the men for
football; and basketball. And
then whatever was left, the
crumbs, were used for the
women. They had two swim-
rring pools, one Olympic for the
men and then the little swim-
ning pool for the women. I think
the other thing that is unusual
sbout Spelman is that the
students have the best of two
worlds. You have a situation
where, if the sudent wants to be
around a Morehouse man or a
Clark man, she can do that. But
when she gets tired, she can
also escape to your own
atuation. For example, if you
were jn a co-educational in-
atution as bright as you are,
and as many improvements as
you’ve shown in the last three of
four years, I’m not so sure that
jou’d be editor of the
newspaper. Usually the women
in co-educational institutions
are secretaries of the
organization and so on. What
I’m saying is that you have to
have a better chance here to
really reach a certain leadership
role that you wouldn’t reach in a
co-educational institution. And
while wer’re talking Spelman,
there is something that worries
me now much, much more so
than three or four months ago.
We have been under a lot of
pressure here in the past few
jears, to move more and more
towards centrally merging. And
I won’t name any foundations
but there are some who have
been putting a lot of pressure on
us. They say, ‘‘let’s have one
{feat university. Let’s do away
with all the little schools like
Spelman, Clark and
Morehouse. And then we sav
to them, nobody has been able
to prove to us that you can do a
better educational job by having
one university as opposed to
having a consortium where
each school has its own
autonomv, its own board of
trustees, its own president, and
its responsibility for the
awarding of its own degrees.
This way you’ll be able to offer a
much better program but they
haven’t been able to show us
that yet. These people who are
for this centrality, neither have
they been able to show us how
we are going to get the kind of
support that we get now if we
merge into one university and
that is one of the things students
were pushing for during the
student movement-if you have
cne university, you only have
one undergraduate college, just
Ike you have at Harvard. It
wouldn’t be a Spelman, it
wouldn’t be a Morehouse or
Clark, it would be the un
dergraduate college of the
university. And then you have
bst. For example, Spelman has
about 5,000 alumnae.
M>rehouse prehaps a thousand
or so more graduates. You
would lose that support because
many parents who send their
daughter to Spelman would not
send them to -just a college in
Ihe Atlanta University. They
would also not give the kind of
support to the college that they
are now giving. For example,
when the alumnae were told
that we wanted them to raise
3250,000 toward the campaign
of 16.9 million-many of them
said that it just could be done.
But they went over the top, they
raised over 250 thousands
dollars. But I don’t believe they
would have done that if this had
been just one university. You
see, they did it for “A” college
or *‘B” college. As you deal
with these people, you finally
get around to them saying,
“We’ll throw the ropes in if you
want just one university.” You
can’t have a first-rate university
by giving us peanuts. Clark and
M>rris Brown get quite a bit of
support from the Baptist
Church. Morehouse still
gets a little support from the
Baptist Church. We get a little,
but we are no longer church-
related. Atlanta University of
course does not get too much
religious affiliated support. I
would sav that Morris Brown
and Clara would stand to lose
somewhere between 6 hundred
and 8 hundred thousand dollars
a year from support of the
Msthodist Church. For
example, the A.M.E.’s are
COMING HERE IN June,
twenty thousand strong. You’re
not going to be able to find room
in this city. And of course,
M>rris Brown is their school.
And you can say whatever you
{tease about it but they believe
in Morris Brown. What I’m
saying is that the church
provides a kind of unifying force
for blacks that prehaps no other
institution does except the
(redominantly black colleges.
Newton: What was the biggest
problem the college faced wher
jou arrived in the 1950’s?
Manley: I don’t know, I guess
Spelman was a very peaceful
college during the fifties. The
girsl were very poised, and very
mannerly, very nice. They had
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