March 1923 issue of The Crisis marked up for the Harvard University President's Office
Series: Collections of the Harvard University Archives
Publisher: National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
Published: 1923
Place of publication: New York, N.Y
Language: eng
Number of pages: 238
Subjects: Freshmen; Student housing; Administration; Race discrimination; Discrimination in housing; Segregation in education; African American college students; Alumni and alumnae; Harvard University; Harvard University. Presidents Office
Other titles: Harvard and the Negro
Work titles: Crisis (New York, N.Y.)
Description: A marked copy of "The Crisis" Page 199 bears a pair of manicule stamps pointing to W. E. B. Du Bois' editorial rebuking Harvard University President A. Lawrence Lowell for segregating freshman dormitories. Page 218 is unmarked, but a section is entitled "Harvard and the Negro." Additional markings include a stamp and pencil combination that reads "Harvard College Library from the President's Office, Mar. 21 ,1923" which appears above the caption. "Marked copy" is stamped on the cover and "pp. 199 & 218" is penciled on cover.  It is unclear who made the markings or how the journal was acquired by the President's Office. From the acquisition stamp in the library, we know that it was quickly transferred from the President's Office to the library.
Notes: Students in Gen Ed 1034, Texts in Transition, in Fall 2019 contributed to the cataloging of this collection.

The President's Office.

Related archival material: Petition against exclusion of Negroes from Freshman Dormitories, circa 1922, UAI 20.920  Harvard University Archives.

In 1915, Harvard University President A. Lawrence Lowell established a housing policy for Harvard freshman that required freshmen to live in college housing in Harvard Yard while at the same time barring black students from freshman housing. During World War I, two black freshman resided in the freshman halls, apparently without fanfare or incident.  After the War, two black freshman were told to find their own accommodation. They complied. However, by 1921 two other black students petitioned Lowell for inclusion in freshman housing. Lowell rejected the petition. He began receiving criticism for the rejection and for creating a color bar.  By 1922 activists had established a public campaign that included a petition from alumni which was submitted to the President and Corporation in September 1922. In December 1922 a prominent black alumnus, Roscoe Conkling Bruce, applied for housing for his son, Roscoe Conkling Bruce, Jr., an incoming freshman. By January 1923, the issue and much of the correspondence between Lowell and Bruce had become public and was discussed in both the mainstream white press and in the black media. In March 1923 the Harvard Board of Overseers unanimously overruled Lowell. -- Source: Painter, Nell. "Jim Crow at Harvard: 1923." The New England Quarterly, Vol. 44, No. 4 (Dec., 1971), pp. 627-634. DOI: 10.2307/364477 (via https://www.jstor.org/stable/364477 accessed  2019-11-26)

The Crisis  is the official publication of the  National Association for the Advancement of Colored People  (NAACP). W. E. B. Du Bois, also a prominent black Harvard alumnus, was its founding editor and served in that capacity until 1934. Source: Mélissa Brabri. W. E. B. Du Bois’s writings for The Crisis, 1910-1934, from integration to voluntary segregation?. Literature. 2013. (via https://dumas.ccsd.cnrs.fr/dumas-00925141 accessed 2019-11-26)