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Chapter 15

William Carter Jr.

Harvard, October 1963

If you asked William Carter Jr., he might say that his life began at Harvard. The day that he’d slipped into the customary white pants and blue blazer that signified the last frontier for departing Galston seniors was his farewell to boarding school. The ensemble had been completed by a straw boater hat accessorized with a red, white, and blue ribbon around the middle that matched the same decorative accessory each boy wore on his lapel. William had felt ridiculous, but Russell’s healthy Afro meant that the boater hat sat directly on top of his head, perilously balanced like a halo.

“They love to try to keep a good brother down,” Russell had joked, patting the sides of his head. William, who wore his hair shorn close to the scalp, loved that Russell was so comfortable with his nonconformity. He imagined his athletic talent yielded a lot of confidence, something he would miss when he had to start all over again making friends and building a community at Harvard. Russell was off to Penn in the fall, ready to continue playing football on a new field. And for the first time in their lives, the Burke brothers were taking separate paths, one going to Stanford and the other, Edinburgh. William’s friendship group, going their separate ways.

In a last-minute offer, an alumnus at Galston had secured William a campus library job at Harvard for the summer, so he went there early. He’d felt both ready and not. He had submitted all his paperwork, filled out all the forms, checked off that he would accept a roommate of color just like he had for Galston. But unlike when he started at that school five years ago, he now had a better idea of what to expect, and this had intimidated him. At Harvard, everything would be magnified. He would have female classmates for the first time. He would be closer to home. He’d worried about adjusting to the changes. Still, moving in early meant that he would avoid at least some of the confusion of the general move-in day, and fewer people would see him fumbling around with his parents. Image was everything.

In the end, William Jr. had let William Sr. and Evelyn have their full send-off experience, with his mother in particular far more emotional about his starting college than she had been when he began boarding school. His parents strangely hadn’t seemed as out of place on Harvard’s campus as he’d assumed they would, and he regretted not wanting them there. His dorm assignment was Matthews Hall North, and his room on the third floor was so small that the fact he was a de facto minimalist was an asset. When he’d turned the door handle, he had been startled to see someone was already inside, and that was the first time that William Carter Jr. encountered Kofi Asare. Kofi, his new roommate, hailed from Accra, Ghana, which had confused William at first because he had a very ostentatious British accent. Without knowing anything about him, he’d branded him stuck up and immediately put up walls that he’d never had with Russell.

In October of his freshman year, having had a highly successful academic season so far, William arrived back at his dormitory to find a crimson envelope bearing his name on the floor. He looked around, even though the hallway and his room were both empty. He shut the door, dropped his belongings, and stepped out of his shoes all while tearing at the sealed envelope. He thought it might be an invitation of some kind to a party, and in some ways he was right.

Dear William Carter Jr.,

Your presence is requested at a gentleman’s meeting to welcome a select group of Harvard freshman. Please keep this invitation confidential. The meeting will be hosted at the home of Professor Raymond Hill on Saturday evening, October 19, at 5:00 p.m.

Proper attire required.

The Hill residence is at 38 Banks Street. There is no need to RSVP. Kindly burn this letter after reading. We are looking forward to welcoming you to campus.

William read the letter again, surer with every reread that this letter was a prank. He went to his student facebook, cracked the spine to get to H , and looked up the professor who would be hosting this alleged meeting. Raymond Hill was right there between Professor Stephen Hayes and Kevin Howard. To burn the letter felt unnecessarily dramatic, so he tucked it inconspicuously beneath some books in his middle desk drawer. If this were a prank, it was a very elaborate one, but if anyone could pull off an elaborate prank, it would be a Harvard student. He weighed the decision to go or not, but at over a week away, he still had some time to do some more research to find out just how real this was. There was no letter for Kofi, and he didn’t know whether or not he would ask him about one. When Kofi returned back to the dorm, William carried on as usual and didn’t disclose that he’d been asked to attend a secret meeting at the house of a professor who wasn’t his professor ... on a weekend. It just seemed too bizarre to explain.

When October 19 arrived, William found himself placing an ill-fitting blue sport coat over a white polo and khaki slacks. He didn’t yet have a coat that would be right for this combination, so though the temperature dipped to a chill, he had to endure without the added layer of protection. He didn’t fully understand the nuanced instruction on dress code suggested in the invitation, but he’d learned a thing or two at Galston beyond the books and figured that “proper attire” meant no sneakers or sweatpants.

William Carter Jr. left his dorm at 4:15 p.m., which was an excessive amount of time to leave to walk to a residence less than a mile away, but William liked to account for every potential scenario, and he also liked to be on time. He arrived with plenty of time to spare and was let into Professor Hill’s home by a similarly dressed Black upperclassman. His shoulders settled into relaxation for having made two right assessments, the first being that this meeting wasn’t a prank, and the second being the correct assumption about what to wear. When William was shown inside, he was also delighted to discover that he wasn’t the first person there. Five other Black freshmen sat awkwardly on the open seats between the living and dining areas sipping water and what looked like red wine. Two boys made room for William on the sofa and he sat, giving a closed-mouth smile to everyone else in the silent room. Suddenly, the upperclassman who answered the door appeared again and asked William what he’d prefer to drink. William hesitated, not knowing what to say at first because he didn’t drink alcohol yet, and then he replied, “A glass of red, thank you.” Keep it simple, he figured.

He looked around. From what William could tell, the home was decorated in varying shades of red and featured a very worldly collection of antiques. The paintings on the wall were a combination of pastoral landscapes and what William’s limited artistic knowledge could decipher as Black American folk art. More boys filtered into the house until it was filled with twenty-seven students, almost the entirety of the male Black students in his class. He’d seen them all since they were hard to miss on campus, but he did not know all of them. The boys, all transmitting unspoken anxiety for various reasons, kept their chatter to hushed whispers and short sentences. No one wanted to draw attention to their conversations, but most of them couldn’t bear the silence.

At 5:01 p.m. exactly, Professor Raymond Hill appeared and clapped his hands one time with a single reverberating snap that made William jump. Professor Hill was a man of average height looking to be in his midfifties. He had close-shaved salt-and-pepper facial hair and a slightly crooked incisor that some would say gave his smile character. He wore a navy suit with a blue-and-white patterned oxford underneath, an especially decorous decision for someone who was already home. “Welcome!” he exclaimed. “Welcome to my home and a belated welcome to Harvard. I’m so glad to have all of you here.”

The crowd of boys murmured their appreciation.

“So you’re likely all wondering what you’re doing here, and I’m eager to tell you. But first I have some questions for you,” Professor Hill said.

William joined his fellow freshman in adjusting their posture. This was a pop quiz of sorts. They’d do their best to excel.

“Why don’t we get to know each other by introducing yourselves, saying where you come from, and telling us what you’re studying here,” Professor Hill offered.

As far as questions went, this was a relatively easy thing to tackle. Professor Hill gestured to the first student on his left, a dark-skinned boy with deep brown eyes and absurdly long eyelashes.

The boy cleared his throat twice before saying, “Um, hi, I’m Chris Vernon, and I’m from Virginia. I’m studying medicine.”

“That’s wonderful, Chris,” Professor Hill said encouragingly. “Welcome.”

This went on for the remaining twenty-six people in the room. There were boys from Florida and New Jersey and South Carolina and Missouri and Michigan and Illinois. They were studying to be engineers and doctors and lawyers and economists. By the time it was William’s turn, somewhere in the middle, he’d already taken several generous gulps of his red wine, and although the taste was bitter, he appreciated the calming effect that it had on him. He spoke clearly: “William Carter Jr. I’m from Boston, actually, and I’m studying business.” William truthfully had no idea what he was studying just yet. It was barely six weeks into the semester, but so far he’d deduced that the best professional track for him to be on was either law or business. In this moment, he picked business.

Professor Hill maintained an uncomfortable amount of eye contact with him and said, “A hometown hero. Welcome William Carter Jr.,” before letting the rest of the room complete their introductions. After every boy had gone, Professor Hill spoke again.

“Now, what do you notice about this room?” he said. The boys all looked at one another and tried to avoid catching a gaze for too long. None of them had a real answer aside from the obvious.

“Okay, don’t hurt yourselves,” Professor Hill said. “I’ll tell you. You might be thinking this is a Negro convention, and you’re right. At least that’s what we called it when I was a student here. I started teaching at Harvard in 1951, and by the time that freshman class had graduated, it was becoming out of favor to refer to us as ‘Negros.’ We had graduated to being Black, but the sentiment surrounding the fact that we didn’t quite belong at Harvard remained.

“It’s now many years later, but you might be feeling the same way that I once did about walking onto this historical campus and not knowing exactly where you fit. This room is to affirm for you, for all of you, for now and for the future that you belong here. There will be a lot of talk in your lives about excellence. You are excellent. There will be a lot of people who say things about you like ‘He thinks he’s special.’ Let me be clear to you right now: you are special. There will be professors here who will treat you with open contempt. These people do not want you here and they will not pretend otherwise. There will be other students that do the same. There’s also an aspect of this education that many of the other students here are getting outside of the classroom, in their homes, in their fraternities and clubs and teams that you will not be allowed into. So in this room, we will be giving you that education. You will learn all of the things that you need to know in here to compete with them. But let me tell you something, you don’t win a race by tying your opponents’ legs together. You win a race by running faster, and you will have to run faster, and be stronger, better, smarter, and more dedicated than your white peers. And that’s forever.”

William Carter Jr. swallowed hard. This man’s command over the room was a marvel to witness.

“So, first things first: your appearance,” Professor Hill said. “You all might have noticed that I added a dress code to this invitation even though it is on campus and on a Saturday, and that’s because one of our first lessons is to learn how to command respect. Some people will tell you that this doesn’t matter, that the clothes do not make the man, and in some cases that’s true. But it will not be true for you in the world that you inhabit. Casual dress is a privilege for those given the benefit of the doubt. It is for people who will be accepted without question, and that’s not you. It might be one day, but right now, that’s not you. I don’t want to have to tell you that you’ll have to negotiate for your humanity, but it would be a lie to say that you don’t, and one thing that we will never do in this room is lie to one another. If any of the things I’ve said so far aren’t things you want to hear, please know that you’re free to leave. This is an elective club, one that I hope many of you will see as an opportunity.” Professor Hill paused and looked slowly around the room. None of the boys moved to leave, and so he continued.

“Aside from knowing how to dress, in this room, you’ll also learn the quiddities of the elite. We’ll talk about wine and art and music. We’ll refine your tastes so that you’ll be prepared to inhabit the world with knowledge and power.”

William found himself enraptured. He’d been navigating this world since he was thirteen with limited guidance. Unlike some of the other boys in the room, whose fathers had also attended Harvard, William was gripped with the fear that his ignorance of this world would lead to his downfall. Some of these boys looked incredibly comfortable, their body language indicating that they’d heard speeches like this before. But William sat up and leaned in. This was the first time that anyone had even bothered to concede that this school was overrun with invisible obstacles and populated by many who were very determined to exclude the people in this room from accessing the spoils that came with a Harvard degree.

“With your excellence, you make white people feel uncomfortable because you threaten their illusion that life is a meritocracy,” Professor Hill continued. “They believe that they’ve worked hard to get here and that because you’re Black, you’ve cheated. So I’m going to say this again: You actually are excellent. You are better than them, but here, you still have to play their game, with their rules, on their field. Luckily, I know how to do that, and by the time you graduate, you will too. This club has fostered many students and set them free in the world, and they will also help you. You are not alone, and now that you’re here, you won’t be again. In return, all we ask for is loyalty and discretion. As the invitation mentioned, we do not discuss this club. We do not invite anyone else to be a part of it, so welcome to the future of Black America. The invitation was personal and nontransferable, and I hope that all of you can respect that.”

After this sermon, the room became more comfortable, safer somehow. William met the other boys who were to become members of this unofficial fraternity. These relationships would come to define William’s opinions on Blackness, what the responsibilities were, what the obligations were, the rules and specificities.

At boarding school, he had learned the term “in loco parentis,” which essentially provided a way for adults who were part of a school administration to act as parents in a situation where there were no parents. Seeing as his own father was present for the five days of the school week when he was at Galston, he thought the concept of in loco parentis didn’t apply to him. But now, he felt energized by the surrogate father role that Professor Hill embodied.

William listened to Professor Hill continue his lecture for almost another half hour, hypnotized by the man’s voice, realizing that being in the room was the ceremony where he would be getting the keys to having the life he was meant to live—the rules of fortune.