Word: eppse
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Epps says he was careful to take a studiously neutral approach to race, one he now views as overly cautious.
Two years after his graduation from the Divinity School, Epps applied for a job at the University's career office but says he was rejected when an officer told him that white students would not take advice from a black man. When he told former Dean of the College John...
While race relations at the College later became an integral part of Epps' office, his first official duties were apolitical. He was charged with researching the College's requirement that students learn to swim.
This attitude wasn't surprising in the early 1960s considering black students and administrators at Harvard had few resources and a fragile sense of community, says Peter J. Gomes, a close friend of Epps for more than 30 years.
During the tumultuous '60s, Gomes says, many students perceived Epps as "the administration's man," siding with the University rather than with students making radical political demands.