Jessica Brooks papers on the Brown University-Tougaloo College Partnership (AMS.1ZUT.1)

Biographical / Historical

Jessica Brooks graduated from Brown in 1993. She attended Tougaloo in 1991 through the Brown-Tougaloo Partnership during the fall semester of her junior year. Brooks was hired as a researcher for the Brown-Tougaloo partnership 30th anniversary celebration. in the summer of 1993. She worked with Janet Cooper Nelson, Brown University’s chaplain and the Chair of the Faculty Advisory Committee on the Brown-Tougaloo Exchange. Brooks’s responsibilities included research, conducting interviews of Brown-Tougaloo Partnership participants, gathering artifacts and historical materials from Brown-Tougaloo participants, and organizing efforts for the Brown-Tougaloo Partnership 30th anniversary celebration in 1994. Brooks, along with Brown and Tougaloo faculty, interviewed people involved in the partnership over the years and asked program participants to share historical records in an effort to create an archives of the partnership. Brooks also acted as dramaturge for Brown’s Rites and Reason Theatre performance based on the history of Partnership. Brooks has served on the Brown-Tougaloo Partnership Advisory Council since 2018.

Tougaloo College, a historically Black college in Mississippi, and Brown University, a predominantly white institution, announced their partnership in 1964. The partnership was one of many developed nationally at that time as a result of an increased interest in Black education among progressive government leaders and educators during the civil rights and Freedom Now movements. Unlike many of the other intercollegiate relationships of that time, Brown and Tougaloo have been consistent in collaboration save for a period in the early 1970s where tensions between the mostly white community of Brown University and the mostly Black community of Tougaloo College were high. The Brown-Tougaloo Partnership, as it is called today, has been known by different names over time, including the Brown-Tougaloo Partnership, Brown-Tougaloo Exchange, the Tougaloo-Brown Exchange, Brown-Tougaloo Cooperative Exchange, and Brown-Tougaloo Relationship.

Brown University's initial programs and interactions with Tougaloo were paternalistic and extractive, borne of the white-saviourism of progressives of the time. While Tougaloo was allowed to send students and faculty to Brown with the intention to improve their education, Brown University sent professors and students to teach, tutor and examine Black students. One example of this was the Brown-Tougaloo Language Project, started in 1965, which replaced Tougaloo College's English course with a program of reading, writing and diction while using the students as the test subjects for Brown professor's linguistics studies. Brown administrators also worked to control power structures at Tougaloo, including the firing of Tougaloo's president in 1965 and the process of hiring his replacement.

The programs undertaken during the partnership have varied in content over time. Most have involved the exchange of students and faculty between the two institutions, and there have also been shared events such as concerts and seminars.

The 30th anniversary celebration took place at Tougaloo in October of 1994. Festivities included the Rites and Reason Theatre performance, music, banquets, seminars, and a convocation.