Janet Shaffer papers on the Brown University-Tougaloo College Partnership (AMS.1ZUT.2)

Biographical / Historical

Janet Shaffer '88 attended Brown University from 1984-1988. She majored in psychology. She spent her fall semester at Tougaloo in 1986. During her time at Tougaloo College, Shaffer swam at the local Racquetball Club in Jackson, Mississippi, took a course on Black religion, and was crowned Miss Brown Exchange at Tougaloo's homecoming. Shaffer also befriended a Tougaloo College student named Kevin Jackson. Shaffer went on to become a licensed acupuncturist.

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 University-Tougaloo College Partnership, as it is called today, has been known by different names over time, including the Brown-Tougaloo Partnership, the 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.