Speaking Truth to Power - Anita Hill [165]
The response to the fund-raising was immediate, both nationally and locally. An herbalist in Choctaw, Jim Holder, pledged to send fifty dollars a month to the fund until it was completed. Harley and Marie Brown, a couple who were members of my church, wrote letters to the local newspaper urging “concerned Oklahomans” to “pitch in and help complete the fund.” A group of university faculty and staff, led by a retired journalism professor, Tom Sorey, took up a collection for a donation and to buy an ad for the local paper to show their support of the professorship. The ad listed the names of over four hundred contributors. Disturbingly, some supporters stated that they feared retribution for contributing. Donations came from women and men in nearly every state in the Union, some as large as ten thousand dollars, from alums and children of alums, but many more in amounts of five to fifty dollars. I started to believe more in the idea of the fund as the ultimate goal of the professorship.
When the university announced that it had received the amount in the fund that would allow them to request state matching funds under a five-year-old program, Sullivan responded by attacking the group in Minnesota. Segal and Far icy were well on their way to raising the $125,000 needed in order to receive state matching funds for endowment of the professorship, when tragedy struck Gloria Segal. She was diagnosed with a brain tumor which would later take her life.
The death of Gloria Segal and the attacks on her and Faricy took away much of the energy and enthusiasm I had for the fund. The fund moved forward with the help of Dean Swank, who treated it as he had other professorships he guided through during his tenure. The fund came before the regents of the university in a highly contentious atmosphere in the early summer of 1993, when they debated whether to accept the funds. This debate, too, was unprecedented in fact and in tone. Never had the university ever questioned whether it would accept $125,000 in private donations for any reason, let alone for a reason unrelated to the area of study. Moreover, the nature of the debate focused not on the nature of the research proposed under the professorship, but rather on the person after whom it would be named. This, too, was unprecedented. The university regents had approved seventy-four previous professorships without debate.
This was also the first time that the board was asked to approve a professorship named after an African American. The irony of such a debate seemed to be lost on most of the participants until Melvin Hall, one of the board’s two black members and a graduate of the law school, reminded the regents of a debate that occurred in the 1940s when it decided to exclude aspiring law student Ada Lois Sipuel Fisher from admission into the university because of her race. Mrs. Fisher, a friend and supporter, sat on the Board of Regents when they debated the Hill professorship. But instead of recognizing the irony, the board allowed Million to turn the discussion into an opportunity to air complaints about me, my qualifications, my teaching, and my research. Like the letters sent to Washington in 1991, the new attacks came from individuals whom I did not know, and from Oklahoma students I had never taught. Those in support of the professorship included one current and one former provost, retired faculty, and Dean Swank. Finally, when Regent C. S.