Roger Angell reminds us of the way we were. Read the whole three paragraphs, but here’s the nub:
I found him again in an old reunion report, and filled in the blank: Lucien Victor Alexis, Jr., of New Orleans. In our junior year, he’d been briefly in the news, when the Navy lacrosse coach refused to allow his team to take the field at Annapolis, because of Lucien’s presence as a player on the visiting Harvard team. Lucien was black—the only black player on the team, just as he was the only black member of our class. The Harvard lacrosse coach refused to withdraw him, but was overruled on the scene by the Harvard athletic director, William J. (Bill) Bingham. Alexis was sent back to Cambridge on a train; Harvard played and lost, 12–0. There was a subsequent campus protest at Harvard, a petition was signed (I can’t remember if I signed it), and soon afterward the Harvard Athletic Association announced that Harvard would never again withdraw a player for reasons of race. Harvard’s president, James B. Conant, had been away in Europe at the time of the lacrosse incident, but when he came back he apologized to the commanding admiral at Annapolis for the breach of cordial relations that Harvard had occasioned by bringing Lucien Alexis along.