The puzzling thing about finding Art Martin portrayed as one of Father Brooks Fraternity proteges is that Art arrived at Holy Cross when I did a year or two before Father Brooks began his crusade to increase black enrollment at the college. I remember a gathering of students where Art was asked to brief us on "What's it like to be black at Holy Cross." This was in probably in 1966 or 67 when we were sophmores, and he said "it's really not so bad." Then he added politely that he had to field some unusual [well meaning but dumb questions] like
"Why do you wear a stocking cap on your head at night."
"Easy, I have wiry hair and if I don't keep it under control it will stick out."
This was the year before long hair and afros came into fashion. There were three strange dudes at Holy Cross with long hair then. It seemed like half the student body came back with long hair and mustaches the next year.
What changed as far as the black students were concerned? It wasn't just about Holy Cross. My wife tells me that a few years later at Yale she observed the blacks circling the wagons and self-segregating. Her friend, a lovely Irish redhead from Seattle, had a black fiancee who ignored them completely in the dining hall and sat with the other black students. He's a great guy; they're still married after all these years and their two daughters are graduates of Jesuit colleges. His thing now is to dress up in a kilt and hang out with people celebrating their Scots heritage.
What changed was some jerks shot Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. Huey Newton, Eldridge Cleaver and the Black Pather Party came into vogue. Cassius Clay and Lew Alcindor, who'd attended Catholic grammar and high school in New York City, changed their names and joined the Nation of Islam. Even white pre-medical students at Holy Cross were reading Soul on Ice and The Autobiography of Malcolm X. Tom Wolfe provides a perspective on this in his book Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers, which examines "white guilt and armchair agitation becoming facets of high fashion" and "hapless bureaucrats (the Flak Catchers) whose function was reduced to taking abuse, or "mau-mauing" from intimidating young Blacks." The cynical might say that Holy Cross deserved a chapter in Wolfe's book, but to be honest the Black Students Union only had one member who might have rated a paragraph. Wolfe's essays do, however, provide a nice backdrop for understanding the black student walkout that took place at Holy Cross in 1969.
