Andrew Morgan: Paternalism and Presence

COR Goals: Critical Thinking, Research Skills, and Communication Skills

Activity/Discussion Questions: Divide students into groups and have each group work with a different source about Andrew Morgan: the Danieley eulogy, the US census returns, the Ratliff interview, the Alumni News article, the Maroon and Gold article, and the yearbook photographs. Give students with the yearbook photographs access to the entire yearbooks so that they may have more context.

Ask students to record all of the information they can about Morgan from the sources. To facilitate comparison across groups, you may choose to ask students to answer basic biographical questions (name, age, role at Elon, reputation among faculty and students, family life, personal qualities, commitments outside of Elon, etc.). Ask students in different groups to contrast and compare their narratives. What can we know about Morgan from these sources? Which sources are the most useful, and in which ways? Do you think the white students who put together the yearbook considered the images demeaning? How do you think Black staff considered them?

COR Goals: Critical Thinking, Research Skills, Global Perspective, and Communication Skills

Activity/Discussion Questions: The Alumni News described Morgan as “one of the oldest and best-loved employees of Elon College.” The focus on Morgan as an individual conceals a great deal about the institutional context in which he worked. What can you tell about Morgan’s working conditions? What can you tell about the experiences of contemporary Black staff from the Ratliff and Danieley interviews? From the census records? Did any of the whites address Morgan’s working conditions or race relations more generally? How would you describe the relationship between the generosity whites demonstrated to Morgan personally and the broader system whites supported of segregation and white supremacy?

COR Goals: Critical Thinking, Research Skills, and Communication Skills

Activity/Discussion Questions: Earl Danieley featured very prominently an anecdote about Andrew Morgan’s purchase of an automobile that was longer than Elon President Leon Edgar Smith’s. He concluded, “When Andy found out that his car was longer than Smith’s car that was a great time. It was a great thing in the community.  Everybody knew about it. And we were glad for Andy that his car was longer.” Please read Danieley’s entire discussion of the automobile and look at the entries for Morgan and Smith in the Federal Census of 1940 (or at least take note of the income differential: $5,000/year v. $300/year). There is no doubt that Morgan took pride in his car (cf. the photograph). What function do you think this story fulfilled within Morgan’s family?  Within the broader Elon community? What stories did it conceal?

COR Goals: Curiosity and Questioning, Research Skills, Communication Skills, Critical Thinking, Problem Solving

Assignment: Colleges and universities across the country, like Elon, are revisiting their past and realizing the extent to which they have ignored the lives, experiences, and contributions of Black people. This project can scale up or down depending on how extensively students evaluate history and memory work at other institutions, ranging from a survey of best practices to a close look at a particularly prominent effort at memorialization (UVA’s Memorial to Enslaved Laborers). Working individually or in groups, have students create a proposal to honor the memory of Andrew Morgan on Elon’s campus. The memorial could take a variety of forms, and students should be encouraged to be creative. After creating their proposal, they will share their ideas with the class as if they were presenting their recommendations to the President Book and the Board of Trustees. Students could be required to support their recommendation with evidence from Morgan’s life, context from the secondary sources, and examples from other institutions.

COR Goals: Curiosity and Questioning, Research Skills, Broad Base of Knowledge, Global Perspective, Communication Skills, Critical Thinking, Problem-Solving

Assignment: Andrew Morgan’s career provides a potential entry point into larger questions about racial disparities in income on college and university campuses. Students might read the Hamer and Lang article about race and structural violence, the Magdola and Deman article about the gap between custodial staff and other members of campus, and/or an influential essay (expanded from the Chronicle) in the Huffington Post on the crusade to bring living wages to campus workers. In what ways is Andrew Morgan’s story a story about structural inequality (systemic racism)? What elements of this story are still in place today? Depending on what additional, discipline-specific materials faculty would like to include, the larger question about how to address these inequalities is also available.

COR Goals: Research Skills, Communication Skills, Critical Thinking, Problem Solving

Assignment: Most of the available primary sources about Andrew Morgan were written by white men and thus paint a picture of Morgan tainted by white supremacy.  The same whites who professed to love Morgan also ascribed to Jim Crow ideologies of racial confinement and inequality.  Have students write a biography of Andrew Morgan using the available primary sources and other materials (this may be as much of a research project as faculty would like, and they may set the universe of additional sources, which may include Elon student newspapers, yearbooks, etc. from Morgan’s time, and/or secondary sources discussing the segregated South from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, including but not limited to those provided).  Please avoid asking students to conduct oral histories so that the scale of student requests does not overwhelm those who knew of or about Morgan.