Former UA Faculty, Graduates Reflect on Roles as Civil Rights Trailblazers

Former UA Faculty, Graduates Reflect on Roles as Civil Rights Trailblazers

Dr. Carl Clark, the first African-American doctoral student at The University of Alabama, and Dr. Howard Miller, former psychology professor at UA, speak about their roles in helping desegregate the university at the Department of Psychology's Desegregation Symposium on Sept. 30.
Dr. Carl Clark, the first African-American doctoral student at The University of Alabama, and Dr. Howard Miller, former psychology professor at UA, speak about their roles in helping desegregate the University at the Department of Psychology’s Desegregation Symposium.

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. – Carl Clark was a high school chemistry teacher in Chicago when Dr. Howard Miller, a psychology professor at The University of Alabama, recruited him to pursue graduate school at UA.

It was the mid-1960s, and Clark, a native of Brinkley, Arkansas, had achieved what was typically considered a reprieve for black people born and raised in the south: he was gainfully employed in a northern city.

“My family was equally split about whether or not I should come (to Alabama),” Clark said. “I felt that I had to come.”

The time period was chaotic and transformative for UA, which was in the midst of federally mandated desegregation. Part of the university’s blueprint to integration was to recruit black students. Miller eventually persuaded Clark to enroll at UA, where he became the university’s first black doctoral student.

“I went to Chicago, found him, talked to him, asked him to come,” Miller said. “Why he did? I don’t know. But he came here and was a good dedicated student. I was his dissertation director and friend.”

Clark and Miller shared their experiences at UA during the university’s civil rights transition at the department of psychology’s desegregation symposium, held recently in Gordon Palmer Hall. Clark and Miller were part of a four-person panel that included fellow trailblazer and retired UA psychology professor Stan Brodsky, and Dr. Martha Crowther, professor of psychology at UA. The symposium was created to highlight the department’s role in desegregation at UA. The theme of the symposium was “Effects of Discrimination on Psychological Well-being of African Americans.”

Brodsky, who’d participated in civil rights protests when he attended the University of Florida, said his decision to teach at UA and fight racial injustice was affirmed after his first meal in Tuscaloosa.

“Larson’s Cafeteria, now Buffalo Phil’s, was my first meal here,” Brodsky said. “There were no windows, but plywood, because it was the first restaurant to be integrated in Tuscaloosa. People threw rocks through the windows. Faculty took me there because that’s where they went to show they were committed to integration.

“That’s the evolution of my thinking and part of the reason I came 44 years ago, and part of the reason I stayed.”

Clark said his re-acclimation to living in the South mirrored the fear he experienced as a boy in Arkansas. Though he had the support of some classmates and faculty members while on campus, he was anxious each time he left it, particularly at night when he would drive to his internship at the Tuscaloosa VA.

“I’d drive from student housing down Loop Road, which wasn’t as developed as it is now, at least three nights a week,” Clark said. “I worried about every bright headlight that came behind me. I drove out to the VA with a gun on the seat next to me. This was, for me, a real conflict, because there’s nothing I value more than human life. Someone would have to shoot at me first.”

Clark never had to use his gun. He never had a conflict at the VA, where he tested and treated white American war veterans. The dynamic was free of prejudice, which was ironic given the arduous path he would navigate to get there.

“I was completely accepted into that community by those veterans,” Clark said. “That part of it was absolutely rewarding, and I learned how to administer various psychological tests, one of which I wrote my dissertation on. I learned how to engage people and how to be myself.

“These were supposedly the most prejudiced people, but the trust was immediate.”

Clark said classmates at UA would gather around a professor’s post of class test scores to see his grade. It was unnerving, but the overall experience at UA provided opportunity and perspective that he hadn’t experienced up to that point.

“I learned so many things here that I could not learn in Arkansas, that I had no opportunity to learn,” Clark said. “I learned, art, literature, I learned about black history. I learned who I was, and I learned more and more the sanctity of human life, and the absolute wonder and miracle of thinking.

“One of the things I came to know is that you cannot learn from people who hate you. And you cannot teach without love in your heart. You cannot teach people you do not respect, and you can’t learn from people who do not respect you.”

Contact

David Miller, UA Media Relations, 205/348-0825, dcmiller2@ur.ua.edu