The Last Negroes at Harvard: The Class of 1963 and the 18 Young Men Who Changed Harvard Forever

The Last Negroes at Harvard: The Class of 1963 and the 18 Young Men Who Changed Harvard ForeverThe untold story of the Harvard class of '63, whose Black students fought to create their own identities on the cusp between integration and affirmative action. In the fall of 1959, Harvard recruited an unprecedented eighteen "Negro" boys as an early form of affirmative action. Four years later they would graduate as African Americans. Some fifty years later, one of these trailblazing Harvard grads, Kent Garrett, would begin to reconnect with his

The untold story of the Harvard class of '63, whose Black students fought to create their own identities on the cusp between integration and affirmative action.

In the fall of 1959, Harvard recruited an unprecedented eighteen "Negro" boys as an early form of affirmative action. Four years later they would graduate as African Americans. Some fifty years later, one of these trailblazing Harvard grads, Kent Garrett, would begin to reconnect with his classmates and explore their vastly different backgrounds, lives, and what their time at Harvard meant.

Garrett and his partner Jeanne Ellsworth recount how these eighteen youths broke new ground, with ramifications that extended far past the iconic Yard. By the time they were seniors, they would have demonstrated against national injustice and grappled with the racism of academia, had dinner with Malcolm X and fought alongside their African national classmates for the right to form a Black students' organization.

Part memoir, part group portrait, and part narrative history of the intersection between the civil rights movement and higher education, this is the remarkable story of brilliant, singular boys whose identities were changed at and by Harvard, and who, in turn, changed Harvard.


Binding Type: Hardcover
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Published: 02/11/2020
ISBN: 9781328879974
Pages: 320
Weight: 1.10lbs
Size: 9.10h x 6.00w x 1.30d

Review Citations: Library Journal Prepub Alert 09/01/2019 pg. 51
Library Journal 10/01/2019 pg. 108
Kirkus Reviews 11/15/2019 pg. 170
Publishers Weekly 12/16/2019