Remarks by the President at Campaign Event -- Rollins College, Winter Park, FL | The White House

Remarks by the President at Campaign Event -- Rollins College, Winter Park, FL | The White House

RP 300 Florida History: From Frontier to Sunbelt __ It Starts Here!

The new semester means new classes for myself and my colleagues. This is especially interesting semester for me as I'm coming back from sabbatical to teach in the Rollins Plan. The Rollins Plan (RP) is a curricular pilot that is designed to provide an integrative general education curriculum centered around a theme. As a member of the Global Challenges RP and an historian, I'm naturally teaching a history course on Florida. Look for this blog to be a space for experimentation and clarification related to the Florida experience.

Rollins Football History: Sport and Culture in the Southern Mind

Rollins Football Team, 1907

Rollins Football Team, 1908

Rollins Football Team, 1921










Do you remember the Rollins Football team? Probably not, the Football program at Rollins was dropped in 1949. The problems associated with college football are well known, especially for smaller colleges that try to support those programs. In the long run, the lack of football saved the college money and time.

Today, the football team is punchline for a college T-shirt and nice trivia question. Yet, the football program at Rollins also gives historians and those interested in sport history a chance to examine race relations in Florida. In 1947, the Homecoming game between Rollins College and Ohio Wesleyan was canceled because the Ohio Wesleyan team wanted to bring an African-American player. When Hamilton Holt, the college president, announced that the Rollins v. Wesleyan football game was canceled, he stressed that the college made this decision to preserve the racial balance in the community. The issue at hand was simple. Should Ohio’s Kenneth Woodward, a Black running back, be allow to play in the game.

The crisis was created in part because the Ohio Wesleyan team, which has promised not to bring Woodward, reversed their decision and press to bring their teammate. Face with allowing the African-American player to attend or suspending the homecoming game, the Board of Trustees and the President chose to stop the game. In deciding to cancel the game, Holt was force to articulate his position on race in United States. A founding member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), Holt was known for his public stands against racial and social intolerance.

Holt argued that while his own family history and personal sentiment opposed racial discrimination, the decision to stop the football game was driven by a desire to preserve the racial climate in Winter Park. The decision to call off the game of course drew attention from people on both side of the issue. Some condemned the decision, while others were mindful of the problems that would have been created by allowing an African-American player to freely compete in the Jim Crow South. Indeed, the racial climate in 1947 offered ample proof that Jim Crow restriction on African-American would be enforced through violence and intimidation. Nonetheless, there was clear evidence that African-Americans were unwilling to take such abuse.

In 1944, a statewide NAACP chapter, under the leadership of Harry T. Moore, began a campaign against lynching and in 1944 the group won a major victory when the state's white only democratic primary was ruled unconstitutional. Moreover, Moore was instrumental in raising African-American voter registration in Florida from five percent in 1934 to thirty percent in 1950, the highest in the South. Moore's story emphasize African-American desire overcome segregation's restriction, but his death in 1951 in a bombing highlights the fears that drove Holt's decision.

The recent story about the creation of a football club on campus has refocused attention on Rollins' Football history. While football's appeal in southern culture has only increased since the end of Rollin's program, the reality of funding a football program have not gotten easier. Indeed, the controversy over the cost of collegiate sport has grown more heated as rising tuition costs lead observers to question the future of access to higher education. Strangely, while professor's salaries are an open question for many critics of higher education, costs associate with sport are seemly accepted. Indeed, while professor salaries have grown little, major salaries for coaches, especially football coaches at major programs have been and continue to be formidable. Whether or not the current effort will result in a return to Rollins' glory days as a football power is yet to be determined. Still, the issues tied to football's re-emergence on campus go beyond play and touch on vital questions linked to rising costs in higher education.

History and Civil Rights

Julian Bond's recent visit to Rollins College was a unique opportunity to interact with someone with long history linked to the struggle for civil rights in the United States. As the person who nominated Mr. Bond to Winter Park Institute, I was asked to introduce him at events. It would have been an honored but, I demurred in part because there are many people on campus with their own history of striving for civil rights that would be better choices. Of course, Barry Levis my colleague in the History department at Rollins was high on my list.

Barry Levis came to Rollins College in 1968 as a professor of history. For more than forty years Levis has served the college as an active faculty member, student mentor and champion of academic excellence. Levis, like Julian Bond, hails from Pennsylvania. He grew up in Philadelphia like Bond, and went on to study at Pennsylvania State University, where he received his bachelor’s, M.A., and his Ph.D. in history. Since coming to Rollins Barry Levis embraced his own identity as gay man and emerged as an advocate for LGBTQ faculty and student. His efforts, along with other faculty, are reason that Rollins has domestic partner rights. Moreover, Barry has served as an advocate for diversity in curriculum, the faculty, and for the student body. I think my presence here is in part a result of that commitment.

I know this is something he regrets deeply, but it is too late:-)

So it was extremely fitting that Barry Levis gave a perfect introduction to Julian Bond on March 3, 2011. Mr. Bond talk detailed how he became involved in the struggle for civil rights in the United States. Barry Levis' introduction touched on the many points of overlap between the two men, but perhaps knowing Dr. Levis own efforts, his introduction is perhaps more meaningful for you.



My name is Barry Levis, Professor of History. When growing up in suburban Philadelphia in the 50s, I was vaguely aware of the great clashes of the Civil Rights movement. But, after all, it was taking place in another country south of the Mason-Dixon line where people spoke strange non-northern dialects of English. Frankly, I didn’t pay much attention. I was away at college when the race riots broke out in Philadelphia in 1964, and again only dimly paid attention. Returning from college in 1965, however, I did take notice since it had come rather closer to home. My father was ranting at the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, which he often did, because our Episcopal Bishop, Robert Dewitt, had engaged in marches around Girard College trying to de-segregate it. Stephen Girard had founded the college for fatherless white boys, and Bishop Dewitt among others tried to get the court to break the will since by now a large portion of the city was African-American. My father, an equal opportunity bigot [unless you were a white Protestant Republican who drove a GM car, you were somehow subhuman], was infuriated that the bishop had marched in full Episcopal regalia around the school. So this sort of discrimination thing was not just something that happened in the South. I also learned about the same time that my high school in Abington had before Brown vs. Board of Education actually had two campuses: the main one offering college preparatory courses and another in Crestmont, where our maid lived, the vocational program. That year proved a turning point in my life as I drifted away from what I had been taught at home to become what my father claimed was a communist.

While I was still living in my suburban haze, however, Julian Bond—a fellow Pennsylvania, I’m proud to say—had already become renowned as a student civil rights activist and leader. He moved to Pennsylvania in 1945 when he father became president of Lincoln University, near Kennett Square. He attended the George School just up the pike from Abington in Bucks Country and then attended Morehouse College in Atlanta, George. But unlike me, he did not remain political passive; he quickly became a student leader in both the civil rights movement and the anti-Vietnam War movement. In 1960, he founded the Committee on Appeal for Human Rights, a group instrumental in desegregating Atlanta’s theatres and parks. That same year, he helped organize SNCC (The Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee). By 1964 he had been elected but expelled from his seat not once but twice in the George State Legislature because of his stance on the War in Vietnam. He subsequently served four terms in the State House and six terms in the State senate. He was nominated to run as Vice President in the 1968 Democratic election, although he turned it down because of his age. In 1971 he became involved with the Southern Poverty Law Center and served as its president from 1971 to 1979. Subsequently, he served as Chairman of NAACP from 1998 to 2009. He has held teaching position at Penn, Harvard, UVA, Drexel, and Williams. And he even has time to write poetry!

I have always been an admirer of Mr. Bond because he consistently speaks in measured tones, but his message is at all times inspiring and uncompromising. Although we are now three days from the end of Black History Month, it is still not too late to look back at those events, in which Mr. Bond was so intimately connected. As he told an Orlando Sentinel reporter, “It seems to me a proper time to celebrate the achievements and struggles of African-Americans. Even today, those struggles continue.”

It is my distinct pleasure to introduce Julian Bond to talk about that history.



Thank You Dr. Levis....

Wikipocalypse: The Information Problem

The recent leak of classified Afghan war documents on Wikileaks has been compared to Daniel Ellsberg’s leak of the Pentagon Papers. For me, a U.S. historian often faced with undergraduates with little or no historical understanding, the case is interesting for a variety of reasons. If this had happen in September, I’m sure a really bright first year student would have asked me about it. There is always one really bright fresh person in the survey class. I always feel sorry for them, stuck in a class of non-history majors who wish they could escape☹. Still the reality of the Wikileaks incident would be a great “teachable moment” and I would stress that from historical standpoint the emphasis on Wikileaks story is more complicated than the narrative being offered by many commentators.

First, the comparison with the Pentagon Papers incident is wrong. Like many historical comparison, it rests on an incomplete understanding of the events in question and surface identification of specific actions. The similarities between the two events are in my mind minor. Yes, both deal with the leak of government documents related to an unpopular conflict. That is where the similarities end. Daniel Ellsberg, a government insider, copied and release a finished government report prepare by experts for consumption in policy circles. In contrast, Julian Assange, the director of Wikileaks has published 91,000 reports covering the war in Afghanistan from 2004 to 2010. The difference between the information presented is stark. In the case of the Afghan Diaries, we have a series of army after action reports, raw intelligent analysis, and field interviews. While I cannot commitment on the depiction of the war effort in these documents, the reality of the different between the Pentagon Paper and Wikileaks is an important one that touches on how students will be forced to navigate the information saturated world of the future.

Wikileaks, like so many web-based information sources, excite users with vast quantity of information. I don’t want to argue about the morality of the leak. The reality of our new information reality is highlighted by the event. I don’t know how many people will read all the documents. The reality is that most people will go to some source they trust and allow that source to frame the meaning of the information. The result is of course the exact opposite of what the Internet is suppose to promote. Instead of greater individual awareness based on primary source analysis, people have facts, but often do not put in the time necessary to create a balance holistic picture. From my own experience in the classroom I know the difficulties students experience while trying to create a coherent narrative from studying primary document.

For many of my students (and adults), having information is knowledge. This is not true. Many people don’t have strong sense of information judgment, meaning having been expose to a specific fact, they can apply that information in a balance way considering multiple variables to achieve a logical conclusion. At Rollins, we constantly discussing the nature of liberal art education in 21st century and as a result, I have made a deliberate effort to make research and writing using primary sources a big part of survey classes. I have done it through my own digital history projects and by participating in with national collaborative project such as the History Engine initiative. Sponsored by the National Institute for Technology in Liberal Arts Education (NITLE), the History Engine Project allows students to write “episodes,” short narrative based on primary documents. These episodes are complied in a searchable database. In both cases, these projects force students to contextual raw data into a narrative form. In doing so, the student must make judgments about facts, identify key issues, and apply a reasonable analysis of causal links and societal consequences. These assignments are great learning experience for students. They are forced to slow down and try to think in-depth about raw unfiltered information. As a result, they asked questions about bias, they are confronted by the important of individual perspective shaping data and they see how easily minority views can be omitted or suppressed. It makes them more careful readers of historical texts and make them more invested in understanding the past.

What do I take from these experiences? I think it highlights that the people who benefit the most for the vast amount of information available on the web are those people who have the motivation, skills, and resources to comb through the information. The difference between the Pentagon Papers and Afghan Diaries is stark in this regard. If you have read the Pentagon papers, you immediate recognize the report strives to provide contexts and analysis. In contrast, the information in Afghan Diaries is raw data. This information is useful to people or organizations who are willing and capable of put in the time to comb through it and shape the raw data into actionable information. That process, my student complain, is time-consuming and painstaking. Ironically, the groups that will do the most with the information are the people motivated by bigger issues beyond simple awareness. The Taliban will scan it looking for names of people who have given assistance. Pundits on both side will read it to flush out the establish narrative from their perspective and news organizations will reference it for a fuller picture of the war. In every case, people invested for very specific reason will process the data and act on that information to further an establish agenda.

I could be wrong, perhaps millions of people are pouring through the information offered in the Afghan Diaries and getting a better sense of the realities of the U.S. war in Afghanistan. Still, unless they have been primed by an educational experience developed the habits and skills need to do that, they probably aren’t putting the time in to get the full picture. Many education professionals lament the Wikipedia effect on society. I know that I threaten students with major point deductions for citing Wikipedia in a formal paper. Yet, I recognize now that the battle over Wikipedia is loss. The key now is to teach students how to navigate sources on the web, how to judge the merit of the information and how to find supplemental information to provide context for raw primary documents on the web.

Remaking Place and Asserting Space: The Land Trust Experience in Winter Park, 1991-2010__Ep 3: The Making of a Theortical Framework

Photos by Kelsey Von Wormer












The Plan for Winter Park








Allison England and I continue our efforts to understand the CLT experience in Winter Park. We can say firmly--there is a complex story related to housing policy and local story. We continue to deepen our understanding of local story. Recently, we took a walking tour around Hannibal Square. As the images can attest, the physical layout of the community tell a story about development on the "other side of the tracks." There are a number of possible avenue we can take to highlight, understand, and explain the Winter Park experience. Incorporating the established literature on race and housing, we can place the local African-American experience within a broader regional perspective. Recently Allison reviewed Andrew Wiese's work and noted the “domestic service employment suburb” that housed “shopkeepers, mechanics, industrial workers, and the servants who made it possible for white residents to "live comfortably in the palatial homes" within whites communities he identified in his research relates easily to the Winter Park experience. In addition, we have considered the work of Gwendolyn Wright and Dolores Hayden to understand the social implications associated with the home. Our analysis has established a strong culture of property ownership for African-Americans and the implications of that culture on perceptions about community continue to shape resident's perceptions, even as broader economic, social, and political changes have worked to marginalize Hannibal Square.

For me, as a historian of urban planning history, I can see how traditional tensions over race and class framed Winter Park's development. As we move forward I think our research will allow us to explore the link between community, policy, and the home. As we currently struggle over the effort to promote middle-class homeownership, the history of this type of policy offers important lessons. Key to this analysis in my opinion is how the assumptions about property and public policy practice at the turn of the century--social control, order, and modernity were refined in significant ways by municipalities throughout the twentieth century. In Florida, the importance of modernity, consumer consumption, and the socialization of space play a crucial part shaping perceptions of the lived experience. Winter Park's story can and will inform our understanding of the American housing experience.

Synergistic Flow

What do historians do exactly? It is a good question. One hundred years ago, you ask people about what historians do, they would give you a straight answer. Now, you ask me what a historian does and it is a little fuzzy. This problem (if you want to call it that) doesn't usually bother me, but in the Spring I get to deal with it head on. Every spring I'm tasked with teaching the History Department capstone course. It is the last course you every take as a history major (it suppose to be at least). The students, in victims senioritis, want to know "What do I need to do in that class?" My answer never satisfies them and to be honest....I don't worry about it. If they can't roll with the punches at this point.....life will be unpleasant. Still, I do have goals. First, I want them to tell me what a historian does. It is not an easy answer. Is History a Social Science or Humanities? History has evolved a great deal in the twentieth century, depending on your Master (sorry adviser), you look a little social science or a little humanities or a little of both. Second question, what have you (as a graduating senior) learned as a history major. No, I don't mean the facts. They didn't really learn historical facts (they did, but it not like they can rattle that off). No, I think the History Department want graduating seniors to be able to think and act with certain tools at their disposal. If they are graduating they have the tools, but it likely they have never actually processes the fact...this is how I deal with a problem. This is my process of information analysis and presentation. In the capstone...they kinda sit down and go, "Yes ,I do this and then this, and this is why I do it that way." Third, and this is a really me pushing it. I kinda want see a little synergistic flow. Yeah, they are given the change to pull things together... make presentations...pull this idea from that class and this idea from over here and maybe remember something from econ or English, or Antho or some service learning project or something they saw studying abroad and it all means.........something. At least, it suppose to to mean whatever they manage to argue in a clear and orderly way. Still, they will feel unhappy, they got to the end and here I am...messing with them.

Pray for the History Seniors. Pray they Survive.

July 16, 1969

The anniversary of Apollo 11 landing on the moon is this month. While there is some question about the future of the current space program. There is something to be learned from taking a moment to remember how much was accomplished with the Apollo Space Program. Twelve men walked on the moon beginning in 1969. The technical problems associated with getting to the moon are almost forgotten today. The fact of the matter is the smartphones we used everyday have more computing power than the computer used in the space program. While that seems amazing, it only represents the tip of the iceberg when we consider also every technical detail involving going to the moon was conceived and quasi-perfected between May 25, 1961 when President John F. Kennedy gave his memorable speech in front of Congress and July 1969 when the landing actually took place. Kennedy's proclamation had everything to do with the politics of the Cold War. Indeed, without the specter of the U.S.S.R reaching the moon first--its unlikely we would have committed the money to the space program. Critics then, and critics today, are quick to point out more hard science can be done with unmanned vehicles and the cost associated with keeping a person alive in space make manned flight a waste. Indeed, the dangers associated with space flight are well known. In the Apollo Program the death of the Apollo 1 crew: Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee marked the first example of the danger when they died testing Apollo systems. In recent times, the Challenger explosion and the loss of the Columbia have reminds Americans space exploration is risky. These dangers however, are not the real barrier to exploring space. Today, the cost question represents the most powerful challenge to space exploration. However, historically the question is not new. Even as men walked on the moon, protest over Vietnam, urban race riots, and rising social tension cause many people to question the wisdom of spending money on the space program. Today, in the midst of a massive economic downturn, people are once again asking why spend money on a space program? NASA to it credit, has played the politics of budgets as well as any government body, but they have always been fighting a loosing battle. Nixon began cutting the space program when he came into office and every president since Nixon has had questions about spending money on NASA's budget. Indeed, there are always plenty of people worried about the our national debt and those people look at the manned space program and say cut it. Given the challenges, plenty of people, especially observers in Florida are looking beyond the government to help keep the dream of exploring space alive. The idea of a commercial space program to fill the gap is interesting. Whether or not private corporations going into space grows into the business advocate hope for is a question. Another key question is whether or not this commercial space business will be in Florida. Florida is linked to the space program and because of that connection we hear more about funding problem and economic impact of space program than most communities. In case you haven't notice, fears about the end of the shuttle program and what will happen while the Orion capsule is made ready to fly are in the news regularly. One things that give me hope is that while politicians aren't traditionally concerned about long term science issues (hard to get elected saying this will pay off in 20 years) they are concerned about appearance and they are reactionary. Given those facts, the specter of the rise of China as a space-faring nation might translate into continued health for NASA. The trick will be to avoid the militarization of space, something that we have been struggling with since the 1950s. The case for a manned space program can be made, but it needs to be made at every level. We don't hear a lot about space in school and unless there is trouble, you don't hear about it in the news. NASA's efforts to raise awareness about the benefits of space are pretty weak. It's a shame because NASA is the place where breakthrough in solar power, recycling, environmental engineering, and material science can happen the fastest. Just look at the Apollo program, the innovations created there are still affecting our lives today. President Obama's desire to create a new green economy works in favor of the space program and the fact the infrastructure associated with NASA is already up and running make it hard to say the program will disappear. Still, looking back at the Apollo moon landing remind us to consider what a U.S. space program can accomplish with big goals that push our imagination.

History Department Profile: Dr. Yusheng Yao

Rollins College has always acted as a resource for the Central Florida community. While Winter Park residents have longed understood the college as a center for the arts, they sometime forget the dedication to academic innovation and excellence associated with Rollins. Yet, the school's history is one of innovation in teaching, scholarship, and service to the community. Today, with issues of global cooperation and competition daily headline, you can find professors in many academic departments dedicated to understanding these new global circumstances. In the history department, the history and future of China are a central focus for Dr. Yusheng Yao.

Tell Us About Your Research




Dr. Yao grew up in Beijing, China. As a sixth grader, he welcomed the Cultural Revolution when it started in 1966 because it relieved his worry about the upcoming examination for entering junior high school. Like millions of the Chinese youth of his generation, Yao was sent to the countryside during the Cultural Revolution, where he worked in the fields at first and later on as a carpenter. Without opportunity for school education and ample time to kill in his spare time, Yao began to study English by himself in 1972. When national examination for college was restored in 1978 after Deng Xiaoping came to power, Yao could enter Peking University. After receiving his B.A. and M.A. degrees in English literature in 1982 and 1984, he had taught in the English Department of Peking University for three years.

Yao came the United States for graduate study on Harvard-Yenching scholarship in 1987. He received his M.A. in American Studies in 1992 and Ph.D. in history in 1999 at the University of Minnesota. His research on Chinese modernity can be found in numerous academic journals.

For more information on China, investigate the China Center at Rollins College.