Dillard's Cook put hearts and minds to work - Dillard University Pres Dr. Samuel DuBois Cook

Black Issues in Higher Education, April 3, 1997 by C.C. Campbell-Rock

In September 1986, then-Japanese

Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone

shocked many Americans when he

asserted that America was

intellectually inferior to Japan

"because of a considerable number

of Blacks, Puerto Ricans and Mexicans."

Dillard University President Dr.

Samuel DuBois Cook, with characteristic

practicality, decided that something should

he done to refute Nakasone's racist

misconceptions.

Earlier that year Cook had traveled

to Japan for a university presidents

conference sponsored by the United

Methodist Church and Japanese universities,

the only Black university president

in the twenty-member group. There he had

been impressed with a Japanese academic, Dr.

Makoto Fujita, who had been speaking at

historically Black colleges and universities

since 1954 and had a profound understanding

of and appreciation for the Black American

experience.

"I was impressed by Dr. Makoto Fujita,

and we discussed the possibility of a

Japanese study program," Cook later

explained.

Fujita proposed that Dillard host

Japanese junior high school students on the

campus for a three-week English program.

Cook implemented the proposal and in 1991,

Dillard began a Japanese language studies

program headed by Fujita.

"No other university is conducting such

intense study," Fujita brags.

That kind of institutional and academic

bridge building between cultures is Cook's

way of fighting the tragedy and tyranny of

racism.

"I'm against all forms of racism. I

believe we all belong to each other -- Blacks,

whites, orientals. We need to understand each

other as members of the human family," Cook says.

Cook applied that same combination to

the tensions between Blacks and Jews in the

United States. The first Dillard University

National Conference on Black-Jewish

Relations was held in 1989, and shortly

afterward the institution established its Center

for Black-Jewish Relations, the only center of

its kind in the world. Among other things, it

sponsors an annual conference that focuses on

the political, religious and even musical ties

between Jews and African Americans. "When

Blacks and Jews fight, God cries," Cook has

been known to say.

"Dr. Cook vowed during the civil rights

movement, when the Black-Jewish coalition

started to fall apart in the 1970s, that

one day he would help put the coalition back

together," said Alan Katz, head of the Center

for Black-Jewish Relations. "Dr. Cook feels

that Blacks and Jews have a history of

common oppression and they are allies."

Remembering the alliance between Jews

and Blacks during the civil rights movement,

Cook says, "Every time we have a national

conference on Black-Jewish relations, I

want to see that spirit reestablished."

Finding Inspiration

Cook grew up in Griffin, Georgia, one of

six children born to the late Rev. and Mrs.

M.E. Cook. Both his father and grandfather

were ministers, and Cook had planned to

follow in their footsteps. Attending Baptist

conventions, Cook became friends with

another minister's son, Martin Luther King Jr.

"M.L. and I became friends in junior high

school," Cook remembers.

At Morehouse College, they were part of

a special class of fifteen-year-olds recruised

during World War II, when most college-age

students were in the armed services. Other

members of their class included: the late

Robert Johnson, who was editor of Jet

magazine, and Vernon Jordan, who later

headed the National Urban League. Lerone

Bennett, who later edited Ebony magazine, was

in the following class. Morehouse College

President Dr. Benjamin E. Mays became a

surrogate father to Cook and the other

students.

"He just inspired all of us. He believed in

us," Cook says. "And that's the genius of our

colleges. We believe in our students. And

because Dr. Mays and others believed in us,

we didn't have any better sense than to believe

in ourselves."

Mays, who never had children, came to

regard Cook as a son. He visited the Cook

family every Thanksgiving until his death

in 1984. He asked Cook to write the

introductions to his autobiography, Born to

Rebel, and his last book, Quotable Quotes of

Benjamin Mays. He was Cook's first

commencement speaker at Dillard and

received the institution's first honorary

degree. Ten years prior to his death, Mays

asked Cook to deliver his eulogy.

"He used to tell us, `You'll die unheralded,

unrecognized, but never sell your soul to

anybody...to anything. You have to stand by

your beliefs, stand by your selfhood, stand

by your ideals, though the heavens fall.' A

man of integrity. That sums up his life," Cook

said of his mentor.

After graduating from Morehouse, Cook

earned a master's and doctorate in political

science from Ohio State University and did

post-doctoral studies in philosophy there,

while serving as a social science specialist

in the U.S. Army.

Cook's career included teaching at

Southern University, At ante University,

Duke University, the University of Illinois

and the University of California at Los

Angeles. He has lectured at colleges and

universities nationwide, in Paris, in Vienna,

and in Bucharest. He was also a Rockefeller

Foundation Fellow and Ford Foundation

Faculty Research Fellow and is a member