Why Should White Guys Have All the Fun? (9 page)

Melvin Smith recalls one away game where Lewis was really feeling his oats. “I tell you, we went on a football trip once and there are a couple of young ladies out in Bluefield, West Virginia, one at least, that will probably love him forever. You know how it is after a game with guys out of town. It happened to a lot of us that we, uh, had people fall in love with us for a moment.”

Back at Virginia State, “you had to plan your little liaisons very carefully—if you got caught, the girl and you would be sent home. He was never sent home, so it looks like he was a planner even back then,” Smith says.

Students at Virginia State were issued a list of rules and regulations known as the “blue book” because of its cover. Young men were allowed to depart and leave campus at their leisure, but female students had a long list of restrictions and curfews, the violation of which could lead to expulsion.

All women students had to sign out of their dormitories anytime they left campus and could not ride in cars while on Virginia State grounds. Couples discovered
in flagrante delicto
could kiss their college careers at Virginia State goodbye.

Although Lewis didn’t broadcast it, he had platonic female friends on campus, too. One, Carolyn Powell, was something of a soulmate.

“He was the one person I could be very serious with. We had a lot to talk about that we didn’t necessarily talk to our friends about. We would just talk about our backgrounds and about school and having no money and things that we wanted to do. I knew he wanted to be a lawyer. I knew he was very ambitious and had an entrepreneurial bent even back then. Mostly what I remember him talking about at that time was going into law and eventually he wanted to have his own business,” Powell remembers.

Despite Lewis’s many activities, he still found time to join a fraternity, Kappa Alpha Psi. The Kappas are one of the country’s oldest black fraternities. Lewis stoically endured the Kappa initiation rites with one exception. Some of his fraternity brothers wanted to borrow his car but he managed to deflect this request by telling them that the insurance had been paid for by his stepfather and didn’t cover anyone else.

Lewis would later donate money to the New York chapter of the fraternity, which established a scholarship foundation in his name after his death. The Kappas gathered one last time to bid farewell to Lewis at a private service at Riverside Church the evening before the official memorial service in New York. Among those who spoke were Reverend Calvin Butts, the pastor of New York’s Abyssinian Church, businessman and former Manhattan politician Percy Sutton, and Arthur Ashe, who succumbed to his fatal illness two weeks later.

Among Virginia State’s faculty, Lewis had developed a reputation as someone who thought nothing of asking professors to prove the validity of their theories. That wasn’t a problem for Hanley Norment, a young professor with the department of history, geography, and political science who was popular with students.

When Norment arrived at Virginia State, a veteran professor pulled him aside with a word of advice about Reginald Lewis. “This man here, I want you to know, just wants to argue all the time,” Norment chuckles.

“He had an inquiring mind. I think that’s why we got along so well. I was open to challenges, and that was not generally the case at black colleges at that time. I think he tried to be tactful, but I don’t think he succeeded. But I did not mind because I could take what he said and make a teaching point out of it,” Norment says.

By his senior year, Lewis had moved back on campus and was living on the third floor of Puryear Hall. Because Norment was single, he lived there, too.

Lewis would often drop by for discussions and the two of them traveled to Richmond to watch the state legislature in action. The two were also active participants in a discussion group that used to meet in the snack shop at Foster Hall.

“Hanley Norment was an extremely popular instructor,” says Lucious Edwards, a member of that discussion group and now Virginia State’s archivist. “We would all get a cup of coffee and a couple of donuts and we would sit in one of the corners in Foster Hall and talk about a variety of things—politics, political systems, civil rights. Those were long conversations. We talked about student apathy to the civil rights movement at Virginia State,” he says.

Lewis spent a fair amount of time chatting with his new roommate, Alan Colon. Lewis had matured since his freshman year and was willing to at least entertain Colon’s viewpoints, rather than force-feed him a Lewisesque take on the world.

“We had some intellectual stimulation from newspapers and periodicals. We would read through those and comment on world affairs. He always had an agenda, a sense of purpose, and direction. You could discern a sense of destiny about Reggie that set him apart from his peers. He had little time to waste. He had a disarming, but not malicious sense of humor. Reggie could talk trash with anybody and get a kick
out of it. He would make a statement and then bust out laughing at his own brilliance,” Colon recalls.

Colon noticed that Lewis had an idiosyncratic habit of pulling at his moustache when he was thinking. He’d often be sitting at his desk in the dorm, thinking or studying and pulling at his moustache to such an extent that Colon would laugh.

Lewis made his bed every day and kept his side of the room free of personal touches like pictures or posters. Lewis often had so little money during his senior year that he would periodically pawn his electric shaver to generate a few extra dollars. He became such a regular that every time he walked in the door, the clerk would begin to count out the money. Lewis always redeemed the shaver after a few days.

“He had a hard side to him that showed itself in his being very blunt, with no bullshit attached,” Colon says. “I remember talking to Reggie about the possibility of a young lady that I was with being pregnant. He said, ‘Man, don’t you fall for that bullshit, she’s just jiving you.’ About a week later, she came and told me that everything was all right. I said, ‘Damn, Reggie was right about that, but why did he have to be so cold about it?’”

Colon remembers Lewis worrying about whether he had enough credits to graduate on time. In fact, Lewis took three summer classes before his senior year to ensure that he would be leaving in May 1965. He was really pumped by the time regular classes began. Academically, it was do-or-die time.

In his last semester, he earned three A’s, three B’s and a C, which oddly enough came in an individual sports course. These grades notwithstanding, one of the defining events of Lewis’s life was just over the horizon.

I began to think about graduate school or law school or maybe, just maybe, a really great university like Harvard. At this point, it was really pretty much a dream, but who knows—keep punching and maybe.

In my senior year, lightning struck. Harvard Law School started a program to select a few black students to attend summer school at
Harvard, to introduce them to legal study in general. Participating colleges would select five students from their respective schools and Harvard Law School would select just one student from each school.

I was excited, I mean, really excited. Calm down, calm down, I told myself. Develop a plan. It wasn’t easy knowing where to begin. First, I needed to get the literature on the program. My school only gave a summary of it, so I wrote to Harvard for specific details the same day I found out about the program. Harvard responded immediately, which really impressed me. My approach was to first make sure I was selected by Virginia State. That would not be easy. Many students had straight A’s and I had had a rotten freshman year, which hurt my cumulative grade point average.

I needed to supplement my application—obtain letters of recommendation perhaps. I spoke to a couple of professors. I told them that this was my shot at the big time. I said I didn’t want a letter that just said “he’s a nice guy,” but a real substantive letter setting out what I did well and what I did poorly. I gave them a biography, grades, everything.

Hanley Norment figured to be a natural ally in Lewis’s quest. Not only were they friends, but Lewis had received A’s in both classes he’d taken from Norment. Mindful of the rapidly approaching deadline for submitting Harvard program applications, Lewis barged into Norment’s office.

“In the spring of 1965, a number of black colleges—I believe 32—were given an opportunity by Harvard to nominate some students to attend a summer program that Harvard had for minority youngsters. Virginia State was asked to send either four or five applications and Lewis rushed over to me when he found out about it. He was not one of those asked to prepare papers for that opportunity. So, he asked me if I could write a letter of recommendation for him,” Norment recalls.

“I was pleased to do it and did it quickly. I knew there was some urgency. I met the time frame and personally walked it over to the president’s office. The person who handled it was the assistant to the president at the time, a Mr. Dabney. I don’t remember his first name. He took the letter and began to read it with a pained expression on his face. I said, ‘My god, what’s this all about?’”

A tall, light-skinned man who wore glasses and squinched his face readily, Mr. Dabney said, “Well Mr. Norment, I see that you’ve put a lot into this letter, but I want you to know that Mr. Lewis is not one of the students that we’ve selected. But since you’ve put a lot into this letter, we will send it on. But Mr. Lewis will be an add-on to our selections.”

Lewis was ecstatic. Against the odds, he’d made it.

Well, I made the college list, fifth. The college recommended four people above me because their cumulative averages were higher. But I made the cut. OK
!

The paperwork was sent off to Harvard, beginning an anxious waiting period for Lewis. He monitored his mail daily, looking for anything bearing a Harvard seal.

Then the letter came—I was going to Harvard for the summer. I later learned that Harvard discredited my freshman year and liked my straight A’s in economics and the letter of recommendation. The night I got the letter, I told my roommate, Alan Colon, “Alan, come September I will be in the incoming class at Harvard Law.
”
He said, “Reg, this is just for the summer. Don’t set yourself up for a major disappointment.” I said, “Alan, just watch—I’m going to Harvard.
”

The Harvard summer program opened a door on a new world for Lewis. Characteristically, he kicked the door open, instead of waiting to be ushered in.

       
No Application Needed: Breaking Down the Doors of Harvard Law

Reginald Lewis was beginning to make his move. As he’d told his professors at Virginia State, the summer program was his “shot at the big time” and he wasn’t to be denied. First, however, he would have to overcome one more obstacle in his path.

Unbeknownst to Lewis, his goal of becoming a Harvard Law School student was something the creators of the summer program had given considerable thought to and expressly forbidden. The program was the brainchild of Louis Loss, a law school professor who later got Lewis interested in corporate takeovers. Alarmed by the paucity of African-Americans in law schools and in the legal community in general, Loss and a few other law school professors—including Frank E.A. Sander—pressed Harvard to establish a program to acquaint black college students with legal study. Perhaps mindful that Harvard Law School’s highest ranking full-time black faculty member was an
assistant reference librarian named George Strait, the school went along with Loss’s suggestion. The Rockefeller Foundation agreed to fund the program, which provided room and board along with a $500 stipend.

In addition to giving participants a taste of law school life, the summer program was designed to give them a boost in the law school application process. The entire project was a grand experiment never attempted at Harvard or anywhere else prior to 1965.

However, the decision to create the program brought with it a damning proviso from Lewis’s standpoint: It was
not
to serve as an alternative admissions route for black students wishing to enter Harvard Law School.

For that reason, the law school asked participating black colleges to send third-year undergraduates. That way, students would return to their schools as seniors and enthusiastically spread the law school gospel around their respective campuses. They would also be a year removed from the elaborate screening mechanisms Harvard had in place for selecting law school applicants. Part of Virginia State’s reluctance to send Lewis to the summer program may have stemmed from his being a senior.

As far as Lewis was concerned, the whole thing was an elaborate forum for showcasing his talents and attributes. Before arriving at Harvard, Lewis read everything he could get his hands on about the law, the better to capitalize on this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

Lewis borrowed several political philosophy books from Virginia State Professor Norment to bone up for the summer program. Determined to impress the instructors at Harvard, he’d turned down an offer from IBM to work in the company’s office products division. He was taking a real risk, but he approached the summer with a sense of purpose and determination that characterized his entire career.

I needed a plan. An incredible calm came over me and the plan began to emerge. First, have a tremendous final year in college; second, know the objectives of the program; third, break your ass over the summer, eliminate all distractions—nothing except the objective. The program was held over two four-week semesters: during the first semester, say nothing about going to Harvard. First, prove that you can compete; for example, take a difficult course at Harvard College
during the summer and do well. Second, do the job. Build upon your strengths. This was the brief and I’ve never executed better.