She applied the “Page 99 Test” to her new book, Black Woman on Board: Claudia Hampton, the California State University, and the Fight to Save Affirmative Action, and reported the following:
On page 99, Dr. Claudia Hampton, the California State University (CSU) system’s first Black woman trustee, is chairing her first committee - the committee to appoint a president at the CSU Dominguez Hills campus in 1976. To help contextualize why Hampton asked to chair this committee, page 99 first refutes commonly held myth that the site for the CSU Dominguez Hills campus was chosen to appease Black activists and parents who complained to then-governor Pat Brown about the lack of educational opportunities for Black youth in South Los Angeles following the 1965 Watts Riots. Much of what is understood about California as a racial utopia is based in myth and the historical record shows that the site for the CSU Dominguez Hills campus was chosen for financial reasons, not racial considerations. By the mid-1970s, Dominguez Hills had a predominantly Black student body and Hampton wanted to ensure that the next president would be a strong advocate for continued Black student access. Concerned with the increasing political battles between Blacks and Asian Americans in the City of Carson where CSU Dominguez Hills was located, Hampton insisted that the next president had to be a white man who would remain neutral in local politics, while remaining a stalwart champion of African American educational interests. Page 99 begins telling the story of how Claudia Hampton lobbied for the appointment of Donald Gerth, former CSU Chico president, as the right white man for the job.Visit Donna J. Nicol's website.
The Page 99 Test works well for my book because it gives readers some early insight into the political strategist that Claudia Hampton was throughout her tenure on the board. Page 99 falls in the middle of an explication of how Hampton used quiet observation of board culture and extensive preparation before board meetings to secure support for the policies, programs, and personnel she championed. Later in the same chapter, readers learn that Hampton went as far as cooking dinner for the white male board members and campus presidents at her home to gain access to the informal ‘telephone network’ where deals were made, and votes were counted behind closed doors. In cooking dinner for the white men of the board, I maintain that “Hampton strategically disarmed the threat posed by her race by playing to the gender norm of the day, using sly civility and respectability as resistance tools” (p. 102). I argue throughout the book that Hampton used Bhabha’s concept of “sly civility” as a resistance strategy against the deeply embedded culture of racism and sexism that was pervasive on the CSU Board of Trustees when she was appointed in 1974. By building personal relationships with fellow trustees and serving on multiple committees in her twenty years on the board, Hampton ensured that affirmative action programs were funded, helped increase the number of faculty and students of color in the system, and developed policies to hold campus officials accountable for the implementation of system-mandated affirmative action faculty hiring and student admissions programs.
The primary aim of Black Woman on Board is to fill the critical gap in the literature about race and gender in the appointment and exercise of university trustee power. Black women’s leadership at this level during this time was unprecedented. So, this story about Claudia Hampton and her strategies and actions in supporting affirmative action in the CSU system, and her relationships with key figures in the system and within state legislature is critical for our understanding how university boards can either thwart or support educational access for all, regardless of their race, gender, or income.
--Marshal Zeringue
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