By Dr. Phillip Stone ’94, archivist
Sixty years ago this fall, Albert W. Gray ’71 became the first Black student to enroll at Wofford College. While the story of how the college decided to end segregation and how alumni and friends reacted is well documented, the actual experience of the first generation of Black students, faculty and staff at Wofford has remained underresearched.
One of the responsibilities of the college archives is to maintain the institution’s records so that researchers can tell an honest and complete version of the college’s story. Where records have not been collected, it becomes harder for us to understand what really happened at crucial moments in our history. Archivists have taken to referring to these gaps in stories as “archival silences,” and figuring out how to document events that are not recorded in the archives is one of many challenges in archives and public history work.
Over the past year, nine summer researchers and an Interim class have worked to fill in some of these gaps in the college’s history. Thanks to a “Reframing the Institutional Saga” grant from the Council of Independent Colleges’ Network for Vocation in Undergraduate Education, these students began conducting oral history interviews in the summer of 2023. This work was continued in Interim 2024. In total, over 40 alumni, former faculty and former staff participated in the information-gathering stage. In the summer of 2024, student teams listened to the interviews, developed themes and prepared a series of panels for an exhibit. Student researchers Daniel Brasington ’25, Dani Emmen ’25, Christopher Green ’24, Zion Sampson ’26 and Laila Villeda ’26, led by Dr. Dwain Pruitt ’95, chief equity officer and vice president for community initiatives, conducted the summer 2023 interviews, sometimes in person and sometimes virtually. In 2024, Brasington, Aubrey Chapman ’25, Joshua Harris ’25, Hayden Pendergrass ’26, and John Luke Taylor ’27 worked on turning the interviews into exhibition material. Students in both summer groups and the Interim project conducted research in the college archives to seek background and add context to their work.
The interviews will be added to the college archives so future researchers will have a better understanding of life at the college during a crucial period in Wofford’s history, and we will be able to fill some of those gaps in our recorded history.
“No Back Door: Integrating Wofford College, 1964-1994” is on exhibit this fall in the Sandor Teszler Library’s Martha Cloud Chapman Gallery. The informational panels include stories, photos and audio recordings from individuals who experienced the first 30 years of integration at Wofford. Please stop by when you are on campus this fall to see (and hear) some of these stories.