Charles Drew House

        I first heard the story of Dr. Charles Drew on the television show M.A.S.H. Like the multitude of places it continues to be told, stories like this, expose racial segregation as a pathology which embraces the invented, while ousting as inferior the inventor. To grasp the pathology, think of it this way: the slave who cooked the meal was considered to possess a foulness and innate inferiority, which prohibited them from sitting at the dinner table with its master and family. Embraced yet dispossessed, Blacks learned to exist within the context of multiple roles. Even with Emancipation and in through the Civil Rights Era, the hardship these roles have caused continues. As implements, Black sanitation workers removed garbage from the streets of Memphis Tennessee. As human beings they demanded an end to segregation and recognition of their humanity by declaring, “I AM A MAN” (Memphis Sanitation Workers Strike (1968)). Likewise, Dr. Charles Drew’s scientific prowess won him the position of director of the first ever blood bank. When the armed forces imposed Jim Crow Law to segregate the way blood was stored, Dr. Drew’s protest led to his resignation. (See insert President of the Blood Bank)

        Though the story of this leader, athlete, inventor, scientist and father has been memorialized in the naming of this hall, Drew’s personal story overshadows an event dubbed by locals as “The Phi Psi Affair.”

   As the opening caption states, originally the home of President Julius H. Seelye, Class of 1849, the building in 1922 was remodeled as the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity house. Recognized as a national fraternal order whose by-laws did not include exclusionary rules limiting membership to "full Aryan blood" (Lee,3), in the spring of 1948 the undergraduate members of the Amherst chapter “issued an invitation to Tom Gibbs, a Black freshman, to join the fraternity....[T]he leaders of the national organization did not react favorably when they learned of the Amherst chapter’s intentions,” explains Dr. Bob Romer in a resent article about the affair. (See insert Colorblind pledging for personal reflections from Amherst College alumni) 

 Followed nationally, the New York Times, reported the Chapter’s suspension by the national committee for “unfraternal conduct.”  Convinced that it was the integrity of the initiate that mattered, the Amherst Chapter reorganized as local fraternity, Phi Alpha Psi, then formally initiating Tom Gibbs along with other pledges.

        The Phi Psi Affair would spark challenges from other fraternities on campus about the covert ways exclusion exist within Greek life. George McClung Lee, in his book “Fraternities without Brotherhood: A Campus Report on Racial and Religious Prejudice” documents (see insert) some of these activities and the way race has played out in fraternal life. He writes,

        “The crucial problem facing men's and women's fraternities is not scholarship or hazing or wild parties but self -segregation- segregation on the basis of race, ethnic origin, and religion. Although fraternities have taken positive steps to deal with scholarship, hazing, and parties, only a very few have seen the need to combat and eliminate self -segregation” (Lee, Preface).

Amherst College eventually gave up its fraternity housing, creating theme houses in its stead. Remembering the work of Charles Drew and the spirit of fraternal members who chose integrity over segregation, the Drew House “was founded as a space where members of the Amherst community can engage in intellectual debate, social activities, artistic expression, and all other endeavors which highlight the accomplishments of blacks throughout the years and around the world” (Drew House themes).

        Since its dedication in 1986 Dr. Drew’s name has be memorialized on the façade of this building. The story of the group of young men who placed integrity above obligation to its national organization, is part of the History of Blacks in Amherst that must be shared by those who have voice.