Too Much to Ask: Black Women in the Era of Integration

Reviewed by Alma R. Clayton-Pedersen

Many people can recall civil rights leaders of the 1960s asking, “Are equal opportunity and justice too much to ask?” Elizabeth Higginbotham gives a whole new meaning to the phrase in Too Much to Ask: Black Women in the Era of Integration. This extensive study chronicles the lives of fifty-six women who received undergraduate degrees from newly desegregated predominantly whiteinstitutions from the mid- to late-1960s. The women were among the first wave of African Americans to attend such institutions in large numbers.

The book’s first four chapters set the context for the reader by describing the behavior of working- and middle-class African Americans during the era of desegregation. Some of the women Higginbotham interviewed had attended elite, mostly white, college preparatory programs, while others had attended all-black high schools. Some women’s parents had attended college and had a sense of the challenges involved, while other women’s parents had not finished high school. However, all were strongly encouraging and worked to enable their daughters to achieve a higher level of learning.

Rather than present the women’s stories linearly, Higginbotham categorizes them, comparing the experiences of working- and middle-class women in one chapter, and examining the effects of the types of high schools they attended in another. She examines the influence of the intersection of race, class, and gender (both before and during college) on their educations, and demonstrates how these factors strengthened the women’s resolve to persist at a time when the climate for black women at predominantly white high schools and college campuses was chilly at best, and downright hostile at worst. Too Much to Ask documents and underscores the ability of these extraordinary women to draw on their own strengths as well as those of their families to overcome barriers to educational achievement during a period in which decision makers were ignorant of their basic needs.

Higginbotham first collected the data on which this book relies in 1976 for her dissertation. She chose survey subjects who had graduated from college six to eight years earlier, reasoning that this would allow them time to have reflected on the full array of their educational experiences. The women were asked about their high school and college years, and about the support they had received from family, community, high school teachers, and college professors. Too Much to Ask is based on the original survey results and on follow-up interviews conducted by the author with twenty of the original fifty-six survey subjects.

The book is thus a retrospective study centering on women with one thing in common: they all succeeded in obtaining undergraduate degrees from one of the nine predominantly white institutions in what Higginbotham calls “East City.” However, all of the women faced obstacles, and their paths to success varied. Middle-class economic status did not provide immunity against low expectations on the part of white teachers and professors or against a lack of guidance in negotiating the predominantly white environments. The women from working-class backgrounds often had less sophisticated family supports than their middle-class peers, but their access to college and survival strategies still enabled them to succeed. Regardless of their economic backgrounds and the type of high school attended, the women all struggled with the transition from high school to college and with the isolation they experienced in their predominantly white environments. Higginbotham shows that these women paid a high social and personal price for their educational success—sacrifices that were “too much to ask.”

Too Much to Ask is a deep examination of the intersection of race, class, and gender in African American women’s struggle toward educational attainment and provides sound evidence of the different and negative experience that these students had in the early days of school and college desegregation. The book debunks the myth that these students’ negative experiences resulted from their own inadequacy rather than from grave deficiencies in institutions’ structural support systems. Unfortunately, as Bonnie Dill Thornton comments on the book’s jacket, “the ways that racism, class background, and gender affected [the women’s] strategies for achieving higher education are hauntingly familiar today.”

Campus administrators, faculty, and researchers who seek to understand the life experiences of African American students (particularly women) at predominantly white institutions will find this study well documented, enlightening, and compelling. It would be an error for readers to look at the age of the data and conclude that this study’s relevance is merely historical. As Thornton suggests, students of color at predominantly white institutions today are still reporting many of the same race, gender, and class challenges that these women detailed nearly three decades ago. Faculty, especially, should read Too Much to Ask to obtain deeper understanding of the lives of their African American students. The most critical insight to be gained is that African American women are not monolithic; the book shows how they differ.

The casual reader may find Higginbotham’s categorical style of revealing these women’s experiences somewhat confusing. However, simply telling the personal stories of Denise, Jennifer, Robin, Allison, Helene, and many others could not have demonstrated as aptly the point that race is a critical mediating factor in education even if we hold other factors, such as class and gender, constant.

It is interesting that Higginbotham decided after so many years to refocus on her 1976 data. She notes in the epilogue that she has maintained contacts with many of the women in the study over the years. It should be noted that while some of the women studied had more sophisticated school, community, and family support than others, all were instilled with the drive to persevere and attain their educational goals. This motivation and the support they received served as a foundation upon which they built their future success. Yet even at press time in 2001, these women faced workplace challenges similar to the educational challenges they described in 1976. This state of affairs speaks volumes about the pervasiveness of racism and exclusion that still exists in the United States for African American women, regardless of their educational success. These stories and the experiences of many students that I have worked with over the years illustrate that we have not yet overcome race, gender, and class prejudices. Too Much to Ask suggests that the higher education community may have some time to wait before it can read a book that tells eloquent stories of African American women consistently being embraced when they choose to situate themselves in predominantly white environments.

Alma Clayton-Pedersen is vice president of the Office of Education and Institutional Renewal at the Association of American Colleges and Universities.

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