Letter writer Leonard Abess’ is surely prescient when he writes that the impact of the diversity achieved at the Univ. of Miami after integration in the sixties was priceless and would one day usher in an era of “promise and possibility we could only dream of 50 years ago.”

UM, however, was no passive participant in the integration process, even though it had to await legal approval from the state before it was allowed to integrate in 1962. Rather, UM had even in the early fifties the only undergraduate department of race relations in America, euphemistically titled Human Relations, offering a concentration in minority studies without parallel and taught by outstanding academics. UM was the trailblazer in this field at a time when only NYU had such a department at the graduate level.

Even though UM prior to 1962 was barred by law from admitting black students, it was already creating a climate in which integration one day would go forward peacefully in Greater Miami. It was anticipating a color-blind society in which students regardless of race could pursue their educational opportunities where they chose.

The Human Relations majors from UM would fan out around the country in the fifties and sixties to apply what they earned during a time of critical national transition in the fight for equality. Many UM grads were actively working for integration in the south long before it was recognized by a majority of southerners as the just and humane course. Some of the students persevered at great risk to themselves.

One of the professors who taught human relations was Donald Sprague, who also doubled as coach of the UM varsity debate team. In 1953, when the national debate topic was about a Federal Fair Employment Practices Commission, his knowledgeable debaters won the national championship at West Point in part by applying what they had learned from the Human Relations department.

While the faculty at UM in the fifties was of outstanding quality, the professors of race relations are remembered fondly by their former students today for the breadth of instruction they imparted on this critical issue at a critical time.

Sherwood Ross, Miami