Bernie Sanders: Integrating The Life of the Mind
One April evening, a black and white photo of three men sitting in a dorm room full of books and papers was posted on my dorm’s Facebook page by an alumna. One of the men had his hair a bit ruffled and wore rimmed circular glasses. The alumna captioned the picture with “Bernard Sanders and two friends in Pierce Hall.” This picture meant that Bernie Sanders, the candidate for the Democratic Party's nomination for President in 2016, could be an alumnus of one of the four houses in Pierce. In other words, there is a 25 percent chance Bernie Sanders is an alumnus of my beloved house, Shorey.
After two more months of seeing Bernie Sanders in the national spotlight, my curiosity was still drifting back to that 25 percent chance. Was Bernie Sanders an alumnus of Pierce Hall, but more importantly my dorm, Shorey?
On my last day of classes in the spring, and directly before the chaos that is finals week at the U of C, I ventured into the Regenstein Library’s Special Collections to find answers.
At the front desk, I asked, “can you help me find out which house Bernard Sanders (AB’64) lived in during his time at the University?” The guy responded, “You mean Presidential Candidate Bernie Sanders?” I quickly showed him my student ID, clarifying that I wasn’t a reporter, but rather a curious student. He laughed. He had no idea where to look, but he too was curious about Bernie’s housing. He called his supervisor to assist me in my search .
For the next three hours, I searched through student directories and newspapers from the early sixties in a clear glassed room, carefully flipping the thin, delicate pages. While searching for Sanders’ undergraduate dorm, I found the answer I was looking for and quickly wrote it down for a presentation at the next house meeting. (On behalf of Shorey, I have decided not to publish the house that Bernard Sanders lived in is as an undergraduate). As I continued, I found the usual facts cited when newspapers across the country reference Sanders’s time at the University of Chicago. He was a member of the Young People’s Socialist League and Chairman of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). He traveled to Washington DC to listen to Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. Since CORE sought to end discrimination – specifically in housing – towards African Americans at the University of Chicago, as well as across the nation, I took a deeper look at its activities and came across the name Georgiana Simpson.
During her UChicago career, Simpson faced many racial obstacles beyond the ones that Sanders and other CORE members sought to dismantle. In 1921, Georgiana Simpson became the second African American woman in the United States to earn a Ph.D. Previously, she had attended the University of Chicago as an undergraduate in 1907. While at the University, Simpson faced the reality of racism that many blacks were facing on the campuses of elite institutions. Dr. Simpson’s peers, southern white females, protested against her residency in the college dorm, resulting in a “white flight” from the University of Chicago’s college housing. Soon after, Simpson decided to take summer courses and classes through correspondence to avoid facing the callous prejudice of the white students on campus.
After four years of blatant bigotry, Simpson’s resilience and commitment to higher education could not be squashed. In 1917, she returned to the University of Chicago for her doctoral program in German Philology. During Simpson’s enrollment in the doctoral program, an African American teenager was stoned by white youth and eventually drowned in Lake Michigan after violating the unofficial segregation of Chicago’s beaches which lead to the Chicago Race Riots of 1919. As racial tensions increased, the University of Chicago President, Harry Pratt, urged Simpson to find housing off campus. In 1921, she succumbed to his request and left campus housing. Despite the hate and hostility of her University’s environment, Simpson made history later that year, becoming one of three of the first African American women to earn a Ph.D. in the United States.
While many acts of racial discrimination and violence during Simpson’s time at the University decreased, issues such as housing discrimination remained a serious issue in the sixties. Bernie Sanders and his peers saw the housing discrimination that African American students were still facing on the University’s campus; and, as a result, became the chairman of CORE. He organized whites and blacks alike to demand that the administration integrate its housing system. This specific instance, as reported by the University of Chicago Magazine, helped shape the nature of the protest:
“...at a noon rally at the rear steps of the Administration Building, Bernard Sanders, chairman of the social action committee of CORE, said, “We feel it is an intolerable situation, when Negro and white students of the University cannot live together in university owned apartments.” Then some 33 people, most of them white students, strode into the building, took the elevator to the fifth floor, and reclined on the floor along the walls of the reception room adjoining [University of Chicago President George] Beadle’s office: a sit-in.”
While the students participated in the sit-in, they completed their readings for the Humanities and Social Sciences Core classes. They believed very strongly in the unity of theory and action, as exhibited by one protester's stating that, “the University should practice what it teaches.”
While Bernie Sanders planned and executed these protests, he worked closely with Lula Mae White, an African American woman studying at the University of Chicago Law school. Mrs. White was a member of the Freedom Riders, activists who refused to abide by the laws designating that seating in buses be segregated by race. Her fervent activism against segregated public spaces lead to her imprisonment in Mississippi in the summer of 1961. Mrs. White helped Sanders fine tune the sit-ins that were occurring across campus and Chicago. Thanks to this collaboration, African American students today can enjoy the rich house culture that the University has to offer.
Bernie Sanders’s activism on behalf of African American women did not end when he graduated from the university; it followed him to Congress. For example, while many Democrats were divided on President Clinton’s controversial welfare reform bill, Bernie Sanders voted against it. In 1997, a Clinton appointee who resigned in protest over the new welfare law told The Atlantic, “When we discuss jobs, we need to be talking about opportunities for men and women both. That may seem obvious, but the welfare bill skews our focus.” The bill has been widely criticized for limiting legal immigrants’ access to economic assistance, significantly reducing food stamps for millions of children in working families, and ending a sixty-year commitment, which began with President Franklin Roosevelt, to provide assistance to all needy families with children who met the federal eligibility requirements.
Furthermore, The Washington Post reported that "Even as Clinton signed the measure, women's groups and advocates for the poor protested along Pennsylvania Avenue, vowing to carry their dispute to the Democratic convention in Chicago next week.” Bernie Sanders stood with these groups, by opposing the legislation because he believed the bill was an attack on the poor, not on poverty. In 1996 when the bill was passed, 26.5 percent of African Americans lived in poverty. Today, 27 percent of them live in poverty. Bernie Sanders’s convictions were sound. The bill did not “end the welfare system,” but perpetuated the economic inequality that many African Americans are facing today.
For this reason, it important to note that when Bernie Sanders talks about racial justice on the 2016 campaign trail, he highlights the many factors that lead to racial inequality. For example, People of color are incarcerated at a higher rate than their white counterparts. Similarly, there are Voter ID laws that suppress African American voters at a higher rate than white voters due to felony disenfranchisement. Also, the lack of access to affordable housing due to the large wealth inequality gap that disproportionately affects African Americans is another issue that leads to racial injustice. These are some of the areas that Bernie Sanders has laid out in his racial justice plan.
The issue of racial justice is at the forefront of the 2016 elections because Americans are sick and tired of the impunity with which African Americans have been killed in the past two years. For Bernie Sanders this is an issue that he has found very troubling and sought to address since the killing of Mike Brown. He has been at the forefront talking about these issues, before other democratic candidates like Hillary Clinton ever spoke or acknowledged them. Sanders is not only speaking about racial justice when it’s politically expedient to do so, he is working everyday in the Senate to achieve the justice African Americans are seeking.
If Bernie Sanders is going to be successful in the Democratic primaries, he’s going to again need the support of African American women voters, one of the strongest yet most vulnerable electorates in the country. Although Bernie Sanders has a strong history of fighting for civil rights, a recent poll found that only 23 percent of African American voters supported Bernie Sanders, compared to 80 percent for Hillary Clinton. Bernie Sanders doesn’t have the luxury of having a last name that has been making headlines since the 90's or traveling across the country outside of election season for $225,000 speaking engagements to reach outside of his constituency.
I found that what he does have, however, is a record of collaborating with and supporting African American women, beginning with Lula White. Bernie Sanders supported African American women in the 1960’s, he is supporting them now, and will continue to support African Americans whether he wins or loses in 2016, because that is just who Bernie Sanders is, a man who stands firm in his beliefs for justice.
The image featured in this article was taken by Michael Vadon. The original image can be found here.