A Leader on Race And Racial History: Robert Francis Engs ’65
Princeton Portrait: Robert Francis Engs ’65 (1943–2013)
That spring, Engs wrote an essay that PAW republished with the title “On Being Negro in the Ivy League” (read it at bit.ly/engs-paw-1965), in which he condemned both bigots and white liberals for setting him apart without his say in the matter.
“I find at Princeton the identification in the minds of others that I am not just an individual of another color, but a Negro,” he wrote. “This is what I object to. In that assumption, my right to be a man, achieve a man’s goals, and fail as men will fail is denied me. It is the sudden realization — more difficult in my case because it was sudden — that I can never be a famous American, or even a famous American who is a Negro, but only a great ‘Negro American.’ ... Once, just once, I’d like to be invited to dinner here at Princeton without the topic of conversation of my ‘liberal’ hosts being the race problem. I’d like to ask two questions of white Americans, especially those at Princeton. Do you really want a Negro to share your society? And if you do, why can’t you let me share it instead of treating me as some honored representative of an alien group?”
“Once, just once, I’d like to be invited to dinner here at Princeton without the topic of conversation of my ‘liberal’ hosts being the race problem.”
Engs went on to become one of the deans of American historians. After writing his senior thesis about segregation in the era of Woodrow Wilson 1879 — he requested access to a collection of Wilson’s papers at Princeton, but was turned down because of his thesis topic — he earned a Ph.D. at Yale and taught as a professor at the College of William & Mary and the University of Pennsylvania. His work often dealt with the aftermath of emancipation.
“Both of us were active in trying to use history to change race relations,” says Morgan Kousser ’65, a friend of Engs in college and graduate school, and who likewise became a history professor. Engs “worked hard to get Black undergrads at Penn to be treated fairly and to make sure that people recruited Black grad students and professors,” Kousser says. At both Penn and William & Mary, Engs led efforts to ensure their histories of intellectual achievement addressed the extent to which they relied on the unacknowledged labor of African Americans, from the era of slavery onward.
“He was sociable, gracious, funny,” Kousser recalls of Eng. “I don’t think he ever did a good job with a stone face. When he told a joke, you could always tell there was a joke coming.”
“He was humane and understanding in treating everybody as individuals, but at the same time he was conscious of racial history,” Kousser adds. “He was not colorblind with an emphasis on blind.”
As for the Committee for Racial Reconciliation, Engs responded to criticism that he had staged an unfair coup with chilly contempt for the way the committee had demanded that others accept their bad-faith language and let them define racial reconciliation. “The meeting demonstrated that there is more than one point of view at Princeton on how best to reconcile the races,” he said. “It is to be hoped, however, that no one group will again attempt to pre-empt the field of racial reconciliation.”
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3 Responses
Abraham L. “Linc” Sonenshein ’65
4 Years AgoEngs’ Impact on Friends, Peers
I was delighted to read the report by Elyse Graham ’07 about my classmate and roommate, Bob Engs ’65. Bob and I met the day we first arrived at Princeton, since we were both assigned to single rooms in Edwards Hall. We also spent our time in Edwards Hall with Bill Parker ’65. For our sophomore year, the three of us moved with Dave Smith ’65 to a four-person dorm site in Foulke Hall. For our junior and senior years, Bob, Dave and I moved to 1938 Hall with Mike Newlon ’65 and different additional roommates in different years. Our close friends across the hall were Rich Losick ’65, Ron Glick ’65, Mark Granovetter ’65, Ken Grossman ’65, Dave Herr ’65, George Spence ’65, and John Vigorita ’65.
Bob Engs clearly had a major impact on our class. A substantial fraction of our members came from states in which African Americans were claimed to be much less intelligent and valuable than whites and were treated extremely poorly. He easily convinced many of those members (without intimidating them) that their presumptions were totally incorrect and that their treatment of African Americans was unintelligent and unfair, as well as illegal.
Having Bob as a close friend during our four years at Princeton was one of the most pleasant and important aspects of my highly appreciated education.
P. Geoffrey Feiss ’65
4 Years AgoOn Engs ’65 and Small, Meaningful Steps
Bob Engs ’65’s defanging of the so-called Committee for Racial Reconciliation in 1964 (Princeton Portrait, September issue) conveys a lesson. In light of the discomfort arising from greater awareness of racism in America, it is easy to be disheartened. The question “What can one do?” is easily grounded by realizing that few of us can be Rosa Parks or John Lewis — whether by temperament or circumstance.
But Bob’s story reveals a truth. Racial progress is also the aggregate of small acts, each promoting justice.
Bob’s final work testifies to his celebration of small acts. When Bob retired from the University of Pennsylvania, he joined the College of William & Mary to lead the decade-long Lemon Project — a Journey of Reconciliation (https://www.wm.edu/sites/lemonproject/). Bob named the project for Lemon, a Black man enslaved by the college. Though only visible via scant records, Lemon, though enslaved, was an independent man. He sold produce to the college. The college paid him bonuses and purchased his coffin.
Bob insisted that analysis not stop at 1865. No belated apology for slavery could suffice. He demanded the work continue through Reconstruction and the Jim Crow Era and confront the unfinished business of integration and reconciliation. The work was to be done by faculty and students collaboratively. Many small steps.
Bob revered such steps taken by sincere, enlightened, nonheroic individuals. He knew the power and significance of symbols and names, whether it was the unknown Lemon or Woodrow Wilson, whose legacy Princeton was eager to embrace, until it wasn’t.
Small, catalytic steps.
Hamilton Osborne Jr. ’65
4 Years AgoGentleman and a Scholar
I was very pleased to see the Princeton Portrait that featured my late classmate, Robert Francis (“Bob”) Engs. I knew Bob pleasantly but not as well as I would have liked.
I was not surprised to learn that Bob did not like being regarded as the representative of a racial minority. Bob was a gentleman and a scholar, and he was fully entitled to be viewed as the able and unique individual that he was and not as a specimen of a particular ethnic group.
Bob’s views about race provide an interesting contrast to those of President Eisgruber, who apparently desires to have all applicants for admission to Princeton sorted into various racial groups, to be favored or disfavored on that basis.