F r om t h e Archi v es
Democratic Society, the Weathermen, and others. Andover boys were not immune to the tumult. As the school year was ending, the simmering outrage over Andover’s hippie set reached a rolling boil. On May 25, 1969, a fight broke out behind Cochran Chapel between a PA student and a U.S. Marine home on leave from Vietnam. Police broke it up with pepper spray. The widely reported incident allegedly started after PA students, wearing “peace” armbands, passed out pamphlets opposing the Vietnam War at the town’s Memorial Day parade.
Photo courtesy of the New York Times
As students prepared to leave for summer, a good number of them, a patchwork coalition that included some longhaired boys, felt at loggerheads with the Kemper administration over myriad issues. Over the course of the previous year, the growing chorus called for a bigger say in school policy: they wanted an end to required chapel, meaningful integration with Abbot Academy, an end to
The New York Times photo that accompanied the June 11, 1969, story titled “Negroes Elected President of Three Classes at Andover.” From left, Timuel K. Black ’71, Edward J. McPherson ’72, and Freddie Drake McClendon ’70.
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the dress code, and the right to have long hair and beards—a right that, seemingly, African American boys like McClendon already had. The PA electorate speaks At the baccalaureate, Lane paid close attention to the white seniors as they filed out of the chapel, counting 11 “whose appearance, with particular reference to hair,” he wrote Kemper on June 10, “might have the effect of raising ‘dander,’” adding an etymological digression, “(dander, a variant of dandruff, from E. dan ‘scurd’ +Old Norse hrufa + scab).” He urged Kemper to send an “unambiguous” letter to all parents stating the policy on dress and appearance.
“socialistic” or now “embraced hippie land,” the story—along with the subsequent ones that ran in the Washington Post and the Boston Globe—was pure vindication: ANDOVER, Mass.—Phillips Academy, the oldest and one of the most prestigious of the elite prep schools, the alma mater of the Lees and Washingtons of Virginia and the Quincys and Lowells of New England, has elected three Negro students from the ghettos of Chicago and Oakland as class presidents for 1969–1970.
Journalist John Leo wrote that the election signaled the demise of “shoe” students, a term once used to describe Ivy-bound legacies—fops who could afford to walk in white shoes atop That next day, the New York Times ran campus grass, past the aspirants in a story with the headline “Negroes practical footwear. “Now the Andover Elected President of Three Classes at style of dress runs to long hair and the Andover,” which included a large photo baggy and the sloppy,” wrote Leo, quotof Black, McPherson, and McClendon ing one student as saying Andover’s in suit jackets and ties. To those “‘in’ crowd is now on the left.” bemoaning that Andover had gone McClendon, Leo wrote, “wants to go to Harvard or Stanford, then medical school, then back to his native Oakland” (and, indeed, that’s what he did) and quoted a white student who said McClendon “is the only guy on this campus strong enough to stand up to Kemper on the [hair] issue.” Another said the three black students were elected to force the administration’s hand; it would risk accusations of racism if their demands were rejected. “It’s ironic,” one black student said, “that a rich little white boys’ school elects three blacks to defend them from a white administration.” Dress code revisited The 1968–1969 student body bid its adieu with a most discordant swansong. Left to mop up, Kemper took Lane’s council and sent a memorandum