Blind man with a math degree: #MAA Disrupted, David L. Hunter

David L. Hunter
From the Carver College yearbook

David L. Hunter with math class in 1964
From the Carver College Yearbook

The Carver College Math Club
From the Carver College yearbook

David L. Hunter giving a 2013 speech
Screenshot of recording "CPCC 50th Time Capsule Burial"

In the blogpost #DisruptJMM, 1960 Edition, I wrote about a 1960 MAA meeting held in South Carolina where African Americans left in protest because the organizers had hosted the meeting at a segregated hotel. At the time, African American mathematicians had few ways to obtain redress for these types of grievances. While there were a large number of African American mathematicians working the Southeast (especially at Historically Black College and Universities), none of the them were MAA officials. This situation first changed in 1972 when David L. Hunter was elected Vice-Chairman.

Hunter's election as an MAA officer provides a striking demonstration of how advances in the treatment of African Americans were achieved through collective action. Hunter had been a graduate student at Atlanta University in the early 1960s and had studied under Abdulalim Shabazz, the math professor who had led the 1960 protest. While it took over a decade, Dr. Shabazz's work ultimately helped place an African American into a significant administrative position within the MAA, removing a major barrier to African American participation in mathematics.

Hunter's professional trajectory provides a view of what life was like for mid-20th century African American mathematicians. You can listen to Hunter talk his life in a 1996 interview, a 2005 interview, and at a 2013 speech.

Hunter was born in Charlotte, North Carolina in 1933. He was raised by his mother, grandmother, and aunt. His mother worked as a domestic worker, his aunt as a cook, and his grandmother as a laundress.

After graduating from high school, Hunter went to Johnson C. Smith University. His studies were interrupted by army service, so he only graduated in 1957. Right after graduation, he was hired as a math instructor at Carver College. (Carver was a black junior college in Charlotte that was later incorporated into Central Piedmont Community College.)

When he was hired by Carver, Hunter agreed that he would get a master's degree. After his first year of teaching (in summer of 1958), he started taking graduate courses at Atlanta University. He enjoyed his studies and found the Department Chair Abdulalim Shabazz to be especially inspirational. ("Smartest man I've ever seen in my life" is how he later described Dr. Shabazz.)

Dr. Shabazz encouraged Hunter to return next summer, but attending Atlanta University was a major financial burden. The cost of summer tuition together with room and board was roughly 1 month of Hunter's salary. However, because he had done well during his first summer, Dr. Shabazz arranged for him to be hired as a teaching instructor at Morehouse College. With the income from teaching Hunter was able to return for another summer and then enrolled for the 1960-1961 academic year.

While a student in Atlanta, Hunter became involved in the Civil Rights Movement. At the time, many of the restaurants in downtown Atlanta were segregated, and in 1960, a number of Atlanta University students protested against this by participating in sit-ins. Hunter and other math graduate students went to an upscale whites-only cafeteria and tried to join the serving line. As waited in line, the cafeteria's clientele started to change: well-dressed businessmen and military officers were replaced by rough-looking workers. Hunter said the new clientele was "getting ready to do something bad," but before violence broke out, the police arrived and announced that the cafeteria was closed and made everyone leave.

At the end of Spring 1961, Hunter had done well in his coursework, but he failed his foreign language exam. Frustrated, he decided to return to Charlotte without his degree.

Carver College was in a state of transition when Hunter returned. The college was moving to a new location and had been renamed Mecklenburg College. Hunter said that white city officials had decided on the name change because they didn't want the college to be named after an African American. (Carver College was named after George Washington Carver.)

The renaming of Carver College was part of a general backlash to integration efforts in Charlotte. While the famous 1954 Brown v. Board of Ed Supreme Court decision had ordered states to desegregate their public school systems, Charlotte only began desegregating its school system in the early 1960s after facing lawsuits. Efforts at desegregation made people "mean as hell," in Hunter's words.

Ironically, desegregation had a negative impact on many African American teachers. As progress was made towards desegregation, it became clear that many blacks-only schools like Carver would be shutdown and only a few African American teachers would keep their jobs. Anticipating that he would soon lose his job, Hunter began to apply for jobs as a high school teacher. However, he was told that he would be hired at Central Piedmont Community College (or CPCC) if he completed his master's degree.

Hunter returned to Atlanta University in the summer of 1964 to complete his degree. He continued to take math classes and passed his foreign language exam. He submitted his thesis "Lecture in the theory of functions of a complex variable, Part II" and was awarded a master's degree at the end of the 1964-65 academic year.

Hunter completed his degree just in time because Mecklenburg College had closed by the time he returned to Charlotte. Out of the 15 people working at Mecklenburg, Hunter was 1 of only 4 to be hired at CPCC.

When he arrived at CPCC, Hunter was surprised at the resources that were available. While he was first settling in to the new job, he asked one of the secretaries for two or three pens and some paper. He was expecting the secretary to immediately provide him with the items, and when she told him to come back later to pick them up, he felt insulted. Upon returning, he realized that there had been a misunderstanding: rather than receiving two or three pens, he received two or three boxes full of pens. Hunter was amazed because providing an instructor with boxes of pens was far beyond the financial resources of Carver College.

Hunter was anxious about starting to teach at CPCC as he was the only African American instructor and the student body was predominately white. To help everyone make the adjustment, a friendly chemistry instructor accompanied Hunter to his first class. The instructor (falsely) told the students that he and Hunter were co-teaching the class and asked Hunter to call roll. After Hunter did so, the instructor turned the classroom over to him. The class then proceeded normally. After that, Hunter did not make any special efforts in the classroom, and he said he soon felt accepted by the students and faculty.

In the early 1970s, Hunter became active in the Mathematical Association of American. In 1972, he was elected Vice Chairman of Southeastern Section, and he served in the role from 1972-75. Hunter's vice-chairmanship saw increase in African American participation at regional MAA meetings with students from the HBCU Bennett College regularly presenting. Presenters included Nedra Hamer, Cynthia Hardy, Denise L. Johnson, Nanetta B. Lowe, Gloria J. Phillips, Bessie Tarpley, Reba M. Turner, and Ruby D. Williams. These appears to have been the first African Americans have presented at meetings of the Southeastern section. (However, Kenneth W. Wegner, a white professor working at Spelman and Morehouse Colleges, presented at the 1969 meeting.)

Over the course of the 1970s, Hunter became increasingly involved involved in administrative work and decreasingly involved in mathematics. He earned a Doctorate of Education from Nova Southeastern University in 1979. In 1995, he retired from CPCC as the Dean of Arts and Sciences and Vice President of General Studies at CPCC. He is an honored citizen of Charlotte. For example, he was awarded the National Council on Black American Affairs's Distinguished Service Award.