Duke is now comfortable in its place in the top tier of institutions of higher education in the United States, but 100 years ago, Trinity College was just starting to make a name for itself--and the John Spencer Bassett Affair helped it do just that.
The controversy arose when Bassett, a professor of history, published an article declaring Booker T. Washington the greatest southerner born in the past 100 years, except for Gen. Robert E. Lee. The local community demanded Bassett's removal from the College.He submitted his resignation, but in a landmark decision, the Board of Trustees rejected it and declared their support of Bassett's right to free speech.
"A crucial decision was made at that time by the leaders of Trinity College," President Nan Keohane wrote in an e-mail. "This decision truly set the future course for the College and then Duke University."
At the time, the affair drew attention to modest Durham. John Burness, senior vice president for public affairs and government relations, said that although the affair might not be well known outside of academic circles, it gave the University staying power.
"The decision... to uphold the right of Professor Bassett to speak his mind and do his scholarship, in a sense, put Trinity College on the map--a place that had the courage to not cave into pressure from other sources and to uphold the right of its faculty and students to speak as they saw fit," Burness said.
Particularly within Bassett's own field, he made a lasting impression and paved the way for scholarly dissent in North Carolina. His legacy continued in the 1920s and '30s with Howard Odum, a professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, who raised similar controversy about sharecropping, Jim Crow laws and other socioeconomic situations in the South. Scholars remember, however, that Bassett started it all.
"It's hard to be a historian in the American South and not know about [Bassett]," said Jim Leloudis, a professor of history at UNC, adding that Odum's studies reasserted the rising tide of critical academic inquiry.
"That's when UNC developed its reputation for academic stature," he noted. "It's one of those ways in which our histories are connected. Bassett and Odum are both important representatives of that dissent tradition in an early 20th century South that was moving in the other direction, becoming increasingly rigid and intolerant."
Today, scholars like Leloudis may be far more aware of the affair and its effects than the average student, but in Bassett's day everyone knew of the controversy.
"It made a big impression at the time. We know that Theodore Roosevelt was aware of it, and not only did Booker T. Washington write about it, but W.E.B. Dubois was very impressed with what had happened," said John Thompson, chair of the history department.
Local and national universities stayed away from the issue as the affair raged on, but they did take note as Trinity College rose in the ranks.
"[Other schools] didn't have an immediate response--this was 1903," said William Chafe, dean of the faculty of Arts and Sciences. "It accelerated the already existing trajectory of Trinity as being a very much respected institution of higher education."
And as Trinity College grew into Duke University, the precedent that had been set with the Trustees' support of Bassett was preserved within the institution, Provost Peter Lange said.
"The affair and the basic set of values which it committed the College and then later the University to has been a real milepost, a real marker," he said. "It set a tone for the University really for 100 years. It is a tradition and a set of values that we constantly refer to." Emily Almas, Andrew Collins, Ian Crouch, Aaron Levine and Rolly Miller contributed to this story.
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