Roosevelt University in the Early Years
President Charles Middleton

Presented at the Chicago Public Library
April 14, 2005

This is Roosevelt University’s 60th Anniversary year, and I’m pleased to have an opportunity to talk with you about the founding of Roosevelt College.

Many of us tend to forget, but in 1945, as World War II drew to an end, most Americans still lived in a country often divided along racial and religious lines.

In Chicago, as in many other places at that time, one sign of that discrimination was the practice of placing quotas on admission to colleges and universities for black people, Jews, immigrants, women, and others from communities not then thought to be a part of the American mainstream. This was about to change, at least in one place, for at the same time that the country was mourning FDR’s death, which occurred on April 12, 1945, brave and principled people here in Chicago were taking action to change at least one aspect of that tarnished legacy in higher education.

Edward J. Sparling, President of the Central YMCA College, refused to provide his board of trustees with demographic data on applicants for the fall semester. He believed the information would become the basis for the implementation of a quota system, limiting those seeking to enroll.

And, he found this prospect to be offensive. Not illegal, of course, but wrong.

Predictably, he was fired.

By a margin of 62 to 1, the faculty voted to abandon the College in favor of creating a new one. Students came along by a vote of 488 to 2.

To my knowledge, no faculty members from those days are still alive.

However, numerous alumni, who were present for the student vote, have told me about people standing on tables, calling for principled action. As the options were considered and voted upon, a liberating feeling swept over the faculty and students as they knew that they had taken the right course.

Those who were there for those historic votes vividly recall, even today, the crowded room, the heightened tension and the passionate rhetoric. The tipping point came when an unidentified faculty member climbed up on a table and told the students, “We’re going – come with us.” And, this alumna said to me, “Well, if my professor thought this was the right thing to do, I figured we ought to do it.” And so she – and they – did.

I doubt that today, even if such a clear choice were to exist in an institution of higher learning, that many could be found who would be willing to replicate this act of moral courage. Hopefully no administration or board would present a college community with such an ultimatum challenging its core values.

Certainly it cannot happen in Roosevelt University, where a key goal of our new Strategic Plan is to express the University’s historic commitment to social justice through academic program development and civic engagement.

President Sparling was the right man at the right time to lead the new college. A charismatic, idealist leader, he had a stubborn streak that enabled him to pursue his goals even against great odds.

Chartered as Thomas Jefferson College on April 17, 1945, the name of the College was changed to Roosevelt five days later when Eleanor Roosevelt agreed to President Sparling’s request to honor FDR’s memory by naming the college, which had not even opened its doors, after her husband.

Financial help for the fledgling college was provided by Marshall Field III, the Julius Rosenwald Foundation, the International Ladies’ Garment Workers Union and other organizations and individuals.

And a distinguished board of directors was established with representatives from business, labor and education, including Edwin Embree, President of the Julius Rosenwald Foundation; Percy Julian, Director of Research for the Glidden Company; Morris Bialis, Vice President of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union; Leo Lerner, Editor of Myers Newspapers; and Frank Floyd Reeves, Professor of Administration, in the University of Chicago.

A few years later, a high level Board of Advisers was created with international figures like Pearl Buck, Ralph Bunche, Albert Einstein, Albert Schweitzer, Harold Ickes, Thomas Mann, Gunnar Myrdal and Eleanor Roosevelt herself.

Thus Roosevelt College was born out of this stand for racial and religious freedom.

The first classes were held in September, 1945, in a rented building at 231 S. Wells Street. Thanks in large part to GI’s returning from the War, enrollment that first semester was over 1,200 students.

This facility was clearly going to be inadequate, so Roosevelt purchased the historic Auditorium Theatre Building in 1946 and moved in the following year. Built in the late 1880s, this Building was a former hotel, theater and office building, whose heyday had long since passed.

Although it was one of Chicago’s most famous and important buildings, it had fallen into such disrepair that during World War II the glorious theatre had been used as a bowling alley by the USO.

The University has spent tens of millions of dollars since that time converting the hotel into classrooms and offices and restoring the Auditorium Theatre to its original grandeur.

Shortly after the first fall semester of Roosevelt College began, on November 16, 1945, Eleanor Roosevelt, who worked tirelessly in support of the school’s early success, came to Campus to formally dedicate it. In her eloquent remarks, she noted that its purpose was to “provide educational opportunities for persons of both sexes and of various races on equal terms and to maintain a teaching faculty which is both free and responsible for the discovery and dissemination of the truth.” And she thereby dedicated the new College to “the enlightenment of the human spirit.”

By the way, Roosevelt University was rededicated in 1959 and renamed after both FDR and Eleanor.

In March of 1947, about a year and a half after our founding, a Washington Post reporter visited Roosevelt College and wrote a feature story titled “Chicago’s ‘Equality Lab’ Thrives.”

He is worth quoting here extensively:

“Founded in September 1945, with 1,200 students and 84 instructors, Roosevelt College now has an enrollment of 3,700 and a faculty of 161. More than 1,000 students were turned away last fall for lack of room. Today the college is flourishing with all its principles intact.

“The college’s original ‘library’ consisted of a card table, a portable typewriter, a folding chair and two orange crates of books. By … September (1946) it held over 36,000 volumes. When the Founders’ Fund reached the original goal of $400,000, it became clear that Roosevelt College was there to stay.

“Chicago has no municipal colleges,” the reporter continued. “Only one fifth of the city’s high school graduates can afford further education. Combining low fees with nondiscriminatory admission, Roosevelt College filled a vital local need.

“But Dr. Sparling aims further. ‘To the nation,’ he says, ‘Roosevelt College offers an important laboratory in democratic education.’ A walk through the corridors of the hastily converted office building on South Wells Street shows that at first glance. There’s no glamour. A student told the visiting reporter, ‘We don’t need the trimmings. At this stage, they’d only detract from our accomplishments.’”

One of those proud students was Robert Ahrens, who was a friend of Harold Washington. In fact, Ahrens stood behind Washington when they were both in line to register at Roosevelt for the first time.

Like Washington, Ahrens was a bright student who would go on to graduate with a Bachelor of Science degree in Marketing. To me, his career is emblematic of so many others from those early years.

After graduation, Ahrens stayed at Roosevelt where he served as an assistant to President Sparling. He was also the founding director of both our Alumni Association and the Division of Continuing Education and Extension, the predecessor of our Evelyn T. Stone University College.

Ahrens later earned a second degree from Roosevelt, a master’s degree in Educational Administration, and was Chairman of a committee organizing the University’s 20th anniversary.

When Ahrens left Roosevelt in 1965, he joined the administration of the City of Chicago, where he created and then headed up the city’s impressive pioneering programs in services to adult citizens.

And when Harold Washington became Mayor in 1983, small wonder that he appointed his friend from the registration line in 1946 as director of the Mayor’s Office for Senior Citizens and the Handicapped. “Bob was involved in an area that was completely undeveloped at the time,” his nephew told me after his death. “He was very committed to the idea that government could make a difference in the world.”

And he was right.

Like Harold Washington, Ahrens always remembered his alma mater. In fact, when he died two years ago, he left $400,000 in his will for Roosevelt to enable current students and senior citizens of Chicago to enjoy events at the Auditorium Theatre at discounted prices.

Robert Ahrens and Harold Washington – two men who met in a registration line nearly 60 years ago – two men full of hope and ambition – two men pursuing the American Dream – are just two of our 65,000 alumni, all of whom have made important contributions to Chicago and America in both major and in humble ways.
Those of us who are stewards of this Rooseveltian legacy today believe that embedded in the University’s vision is an understanding of the vital role that higher education must play in the success of American society, beginning with success here at home in Chicago, a city both men loved and served so long.

The American dream of access and opportunity, of civic engagement and democratic values, depends upon many things, of course.

But, none is more central than the education of the citizenry at the highest level so that the principles upon which the country was founded – the principles for which FDR and Eleanor Roosevelt advocated so passionately – the principles upon which the lives and careers of Harold Washington, Bob Ahrens and so many others were and are embedded – will survive and prosper.

That is our legacy; that is our future.