Forty-eight falls ago we converged on Hanover from various vantage points and life experiences, each with a story, each wondering what college would be like and how we would fit in. I am asked more often than I could ever have expected what it was like to be in the first class of coeducation. Mine is just one of 177 answers to that question, the one commonality being that it required strength. In our chrysalis state of developing identity, we, like our male counterparts, sought safety in the comfort of what the College now refers to as affinity groups. Although a natural inclination and justifiable survival tactic, this comfort-clustering reduced our range of social interactions. Fortunately, I continue to meet new friends and learn their stories at reunions, mini-reunions, and in researching this column. I am increasingly awed by the strength of our approximately 20 intrepid Black female classmates. I knew a few and am grateful to be connecting with others. I first met Donna Humphrey, Debbie Humphrey, and Andrea Lewis in our North Mass enclave, one of two all- female dorms. Donna’s warmth, humanity, and humor continue to inform me. Debbie’s goodness and serenity remain an anchor. Andrea’s unwavering sense of principle and fearlessness made her the perfect unofficial first-floor sentry during that crazy fall of 1972. Her verbal reaming of an unwitting, inebriated football player who wandered in to harass one of our dormmates late one night made her my instant hero. Decades later, she is elegant and eloquent regaling me with tales of her travels with Sharon Ali, Cynthia Taylor, Karen Evans,and the Humphreys. I recently learned about Juneteenth in Amanda Green’s rich reminiscences of multi-generational family celebrations published in the PBS publication Rewire. Professor Karen Turner shared her historical perspective on Juneteenth in an interview with Kay Angrum of New York’s NBC affiliate. Karen has dedicated her career to teaching, explaining, researching, and sharing as a journalist, radio reporter, mayoral press secretary, Temple University professor, and director of the university’s academic center on research in diversity. J.B. Redding (coauthor with Monica Hargrove and Eileen Cave of the 1974 report on institutional racism at Dartmouth) recentlyopened up about a lifetime of humiliating, scary, and exhausting experiences with the police. Her pain was made even more poignant when I read J.B.’s mission as founder of Caring Hands, a Maryland organization committed to providing homes for adults with disabilities: to “honor the wishes of the individual, accept people as they are, give opportunity for full lives in the community, maximize healthy outcomes, and preserve dignity.” Deep gratitude for these friends is the magnifying glass that brings the term “systemic racism” into sharp focus, revealing the life-and-death urgency of this hour. Understanding our classmates’ stories and generational history precludes any arms-length observation of injustice. The burden to explain, prove, educate, and take action can no longer be borne solely by our Black classmates who have been doing it for too long. It is the responsibility of all of us.

—Sara Hoagland Hunter, 72 Mount Vernon St., Unit 4B, Boston, MA 02108; sarahunter76@gmail.com