At a Minnesota evangelical school, Black students sought racial reckoning, then felt the pushback

Dozens of students in rain coats and parkas gathered by a parking lot outside the Billy Graham Community Life Commons on the University of Northwestern campus in November 2020. Some took shelter from the rain under the school’s columned porticoes. A blue pickup truck loaded with speakers backed into a parking space near Riley Hall, named for the university’s founder. After asking God to “unravel the ugly truth, so that we can really be healed as a Christian community,” he began to talk about life as a Black student on campus and how belief in God’s compelling love, spelled out in the university’s vision statement, seemed too often to disappear when he brought up issues of racism and the needs of students of color. “BIPOC students have been asking for help for years, but it hasn’t yet been received,” he told the crowd. They were asking their peers, teachers and church leaders to recognize and disrupt more than a century of history and theology, to change a way of thinking that had birthed a religious and political movement and a brand of conservatism that continues to define the theology and worldviews of many white Minnesota evangelicals today. “We’re slowly doing it and I think we’re making progress … but we’re never going to reach utopia, and I keep reminding students we’re a microcosm of a big culture,” Cureton said. Cureton noted the school, among other steps, had hired a “director of intercultural engagement and belonging” last year. In interviews, Bowdry and other students of color detailed recurring experiences of casual, exhausting bigotry on the Roseville campus — from tone-deaf comments on race by students and professors to disbelief over claims of discrimination to a kind of passive-aggressive behavior that made them feel unwelcome. Bowdry and others seeking change that day came with a list of actions they wanted the university to take to improve the campus climate, but they were pressing for more than a diversity office and language changes to university documents. Among the marchers was Ruti Doto, a 2016 University of Northwestern graduate. She recalled hearing a professor denounce a Black student-led gospel music group as “not Christ-like” and “not real worship. A group of students painted the phrase “Black Lives Matter” on a rock, traditionally used for student expression on the University of Northwestern campus in Roseville. Following the Twin Cities police killing of Philando Castile in 2016 during a traffic stop fewer than four miles from campus, Doto said she and other students painted the phrase “Black Lives Matter” on a rock near University Hall, a place traditionally used for student expression. That night, she said, members of the university security team covered the rock and its message with white paint because, as a university official explained later, “it was misinterpreted by the university as a political statement. Doto said she and others returned the next day to repaint “Black Lives Matter” on the rock but discovered a group of students had blotted out the word “Black” and wrote “All” there instead, turning the phrase into “All Lives Matter. In June of 2020, when she saw a picture of the rock on Instagram, newly painted with the phrase “Black Lives Matter,” it felt to her like the university had forgotten its actions four years earlier. A group of students blotted out the word “Black” and wrote “All” on a campus rock used for student expression, turning the phrase into “All Lives Matter. “Of course, this triggered me and multiple students of color,” Doto said. Doto and some of her fellow alumni drafted a petition in response, suggesting a list of “measurable actions to support students and address institutional racism” at the university. “I have a ton of Black high school students who ask me if it’s a place they should consider. Thousands of supporters added their names to Doto’s online petition, some with their own stories of racism they’d experienced at Northwestern. “This place was supposed to be my community,” one signer wrote. When Bowdry, the student who led the protest on campus, returned to campus in the fall of 2020, he and his fellow students used Doto’s petition as a framework to guide their list of demands.

They asked university leadership to establish a diversity, equity and inclusion office, mandatory anti-racism training for faculty, staff and students, core courses on Black, Native, Latino and Asian theologies and histories, a zero-tolerance policy on racism, a George Floyd memorial scholarship for aspiring Black American leaders and language in the university’s Declaration of Christian Community requiring students and staff to condemn racism. “We are no longer willing to endure our campus’s compliance with racism,” they wrote. Kenneth Young is one of the first full-time African American faculty members hired at the University of Northwestern. Young, though, said he’s had unpleasant run-ins with students and colleagues during his tenure, and he knows students of color there have also had bad experiences. “I don’t think it’s those overt experiences of marginalization or even racism that is discouraging them. It’s a problem grounded in teaching from Sunday School classes to Bible colleges, he said, noting that Blacks were largely excluded from the Bible college movement. Young said he prefers not to use the terms “racist,” “Black” or “white. He said he tells students two things: “We need to learn how to have real dialogue and we need to enter that dialogue with a high degree of humility. Many Christian colleges and universities now brand themselves as conservative “and that’s really part of their identity,” said Jemar Tisby, a historian who has written extensively on the history of racism in American Christianity. These institutions were not founded with racial or ethnic diversity in mind, and that works against social progress, Tisby said. For David Fenrick, who worked at the University of Northwestern from 2008 to 2019, the experiences of students of color on campus like Bowdry and Doto are directly linked to the school’s history. “It’s a historically white institution, a very conservative evangelical school. He could remember many times students would come to him with stories of bad experiences. Students at the University of Northwestern in Roseville march in a protest in November. For Fenrick, those kinds of stories illustrate the problem at the University of Northwestern. “There’s a kind of welcome (at Northwestern) that says, ‘We’re glad you’re here, now be like us. The school was founded in 1902 as a Bible and missionary training school by Baptist pastor and evangelist the Rev. Randy Moore, a biology professor at the University of Minnesota who’s studied Riley’s influence, points to Northwestern’s founder as a father and organizer of the Christian fundamentalist movement. “What came to be known then as ‘fundamentalism’ — contrary to most people’s knowledge of it now — originated in the north in towns like New York City and Minneapolis and Chicago,” Moore said. “He tapped into this discomfort that what we now call fundamentalists had with the direction of the country … and he organized it,” Moore said. Riley was succeeded in his leadership by Graham, who was president of the institution for four years. On a personal level, DeYoung points out, Billy Graham abhorred racism and refused to hold segregated rallies. “If your priority is just to convert people to Jesus so they can go to heaven, you have less of a focus on the systems that exist right now because you’re thinking about eternity. For historian Tisby, this individualistic theology is at the crux of white evangelicals’ inability to deal or make progress on many social issues, including race.

“White evangelical colleges and universities are more individualistic than the larger society. The changes pushed for by students of color at University of Northwestern in the last several years have also brought protest from students, staff and the wider evangelical community. “Our beloved University is at a turning point,” the petition authors wrote, “Perhaps more significant than any other in its history. The petitioners objected to the university including cultural competency in curriculum, mandating racial bias training for staff, funding a diversity and inclusion office and sponsoring campus-wide events promoting “reconciliation” among other things and suggesting that the school was implicitly endorsing critical race theory or social justice, leading down a road to Marxism or other “anti-biblical ideologies. The petition authors took their concerns to Fox News, saying “as Christians we believe our primary call is to preach the gospel. Close to a decade ago president Cureton oversaw the preparation of a “strategic diversity and inclusion framework,” which included directives such as examining “systems that may be preventing full diversity, equity and inclusion” and intentionally increasing “the diversity of students, faculty, staff, administrators and board of trustees. And there were changes that the university made in response to the protests and demands of students of color like Bowdry and Doto in 2020. Student body president at the time, Qashr Middleton, helped shepherd those demands into action. Middleton, a 24-year-old from Chicago pursuing a degree in pastoral ministry, was the first student body president of color in Northwestern’s history. When he tried to talk about his experiences on campus, he felt like it made some white students and staff on campus uncomfortable. After the 2020 student protest, Middleton organized a student government committee to begin working on those and the other demands. Eventually the school inserted phrases into its Declaration of Christian Community, requiring students and staff for the first time in its history to commit to “refrain from racism, prejudice, and social injustices” and “condemn oppression which can manifest itself in individuals and systems. Leaders did not create a “George Floyd memorial scholarship” as requested by students, but they did endow a scholarship geared toward students planning to work with “urban youth leadership” or “biblical reconciliation. There is anti-bias training for faculty and staff at Northwestern, although attendance is not required because, as Cureton said, “You can’t force people. The university president, who’s set to leave his position this year, has said he believes it’s the school’s job to help students and staff learn how to “live amidst multiple cultures” — something he believes is integral to the university’s mission of “reflect(ing) the essence of the Kingdom of God. He does not believe the university has a “culture of racial intolerance. “Are there acts of insensitivity exhibited by some towards people of color? Yes. Her first year on campus was filled with good memories, but she soon became worried by what she saw and heard. “It ended up blowing up in my face a lot where they misunderstood what I was saying, took it very personal, and they got very, very angry at me and told me that I was racist towards white people,” St. “The liberation of black people is liberation of all of us,” St. She said she and some of the other students of color she knows at Northwestern spent their last semester in 2022 isolating themselves, keeping their heads down in class and escaping back to their rooms or other places they could be alone afterward. “There is very little time when I feel or felt seen on this campus. Editor’s Note: University of Northwestern is a financial supporter of MPR News

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