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| Kendall Hall at the University of Tulsa The Kendallanrum Yearbook: 1955 |
By Fall, 1954, Simon Grünzweig, recently renamed Simon Green, had left Little Rock, Arkansas for Tulsa, Oklahoma to work at the University of Tulsa (TU). The historical record is silent on Green's reasons for leaving, but the move was a natural one. While Green had worked exclusively at HBCUs since moving to the U.S., this seems to have been a matter of convenience. Unlike the Iggerses and Lorches, for whom working at an HBCU provided opportunities for personally satisfying political activity, Green seems to have taken the jobs simply because they were available.
Moving to a new professorship was a way of expanding his professional opportunities. At Philander Smith, Green was the only faculty member with a PhD in mathematics and was teaching students whose education had been stunted by a segregated school system and generations of inequality. On a personal level, faculty salaries at HBCUs tended to be low, and Green would have faced social stigma from white Arkansans for teaching at an HBCU.
Tulsa was a natural place to look for a new academic position. While not exactly close to Little Rock (it's over 200 miles away), Tulsa is one of the nearest big cities. Moreover, Tulsa was growing during the 1950s. Since the early 20th century, Tulsa has been an international center for the oil industry. Its economy expanded during the mid-20th century. During the Second World War, the federal government built an aircraft assembly facility in the city. With this as a foundation, Tulsa grew into a leader in the aviation industry during the 1940s and 1950s.
Population statistics demonstrate how Tulsa was prospering. From 1950 to 1960, the population of Tulsa grew by almost 50%, from 182,740 to 261, 685. In contrast, Little Rock saw little population growth during this time. Its population stood at 102, 213 in 1950 and grew by only 5,600 people over the next decade.
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| University of Tulsa campus, 1955 The Kendallanrum Yearbook: 1955 |
The University of Tulsa was and is a private research university. The university was small by national standards, but it was significantly larger than the schools Green had previously taught at. In 1949, TU's student population stood at 3,034, roughly two-and-half times the size of Philander Smith's student body and six-times the size of Lincoln's.
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| University of Tulsa campus, 1955 The Kendallanrum Yearbook: 1955 |
The larger student body naturally supported a larger math department, albeit a math department where most faculty were less research-oriented than Green. The year before Green arrived (in 1953-54 academic year), the school yearbook listed five math faculty, only one of which held a PhD.
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| William Roth The Kendallabrum Yearbook, 1954 |
The PhD-holder was William Roth. Roth had received his PhD from the University of Wisconsin in 1928. He was supervised by Arnold Dresden, an influential early 20th century mathematician who had, for example, served president of the Mathematical Association of American. Roth did research in linear algebra, and wrote the dissertation "A solution of the matric [sic] equation P(X)=A." Before moving to TU, he had worked for a number of years in Milwaukee at the University Extension Division of the University of Wisconsin. He had remained research active, having published 10 papers by 1954. All of his work was in linear algebra, and a number of his papers were along the lines of his dissertation, analyzing how to solve certain matrix equations. Roth retired around the time Green arrived in Tulsa, and by 1956, he was living in Mississippi.
The other faculty were Sarah Burkhart, H. N. Carter, E. A. Howard, and Ralph Veatch. All four had has masters degrees, Burckhart from the University of Kansas, Carter from "Colorado" (probably the University of Colorado), and Veatch from Northwestern. Burkhart and Veatch were TU alumni who had returned to teach after doing graduate work.
The other faculty were Sarah Burkhart, H. N. Carter, E. A. Howard, and Ralph Veatch. All four had has masters degrees, Burckhart from the University of Kansas, Carter from "Colorado" (probably the University of Colorado), and Veatch from Northwestern. Burkhart and Veatch were TU alumni who had returned to teach after doing graduate work.
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| Sarah Burkhart The Kendallabrum Yearbook, 1954 |
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| H. N. Carter The Kendallabrum Yearbook, 1954 |
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| Edgar A. Howard The Kendallabrum Yearbook, 1954 |
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| Ralph Veatch The Kendallabrum Yearbook, 1954 |
For Green, the biggest change would be that he was working on the other side of the color line. Tulsa had a significant Black population, although it was smaller than the population in Little Rock (Blacks made up about 10% of Tulsa's population and 25% of Little Rock's).
Tulsa had experienced a horrific race riot, one more severe than any experienced in the Deep South. In 1921, a race riot broke out after a Black man was accused of assaulting a White woman. Over the course of two days, rioting Whites destroyed Black businesses and attacked Black residents. Order was restored only after the Governor called out the National Guard to impose martial law. After the riot ended, the state residents tried to ignore that it had happened. No one was criminally convicted for violent acts, and there was minimal public recognition of the event until the 1970s. However, the riot would have been preserved privately in the living memory of residents when Green arrived in the 1950s.
In the 1950s, the Black community was separated from the White community by segregationist laws and social practices. However, segregationist practices were more mild than in the Deep South. For example, the public universities had started to desegregate around 1948, 6 years before the Brown v. Board of Ed court decision.
Legal progress towards desegregation had a limited impact on the University of Tulsa as the university was private, and it isn't entirely clear what happened as desegregation occurred in a quiet, informal fashion. For example, I was unable to locate any information about when Blacks were officially admitted to the university. What is documented is the following. In February, 1947, university officials announced the creation of an extension program that allowed Blacks to study off-campus with TU faculty. Official policy continued to bar Black students from campus, but unofficially a small number of Black students were allowed on campus to attended classes with white students.
University officials maintained an official policy of racial segregation throughout the 1950s. In Spring, 1950, two Black students applied for admissions into graduate programs, and their applications were refused by the Board of Trustees. However, the issue was openly debating on campus, and students advocated for desegregation as early as 1949.
Overall, in Fall, 1954, Simon Green was arriving at a university where he would be in a work environment that was more supportive of academic research. While it was not a place where political issues like segregation could be ignored, politics were not a dominant feature of life in Tulsa the way they were in Little Rock at this time. This proved to be a good change for Green: his time in Tulsa proved to be the most professionally productive period of his life. We will explore what he did in the next blogpost.
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