"Would you like to follow in Jackie Robinson's footsteps?"
"I don't understand, sir."
"I'm talking about your becoming one of the first Negro students to integrate Kenyon College. I've been in Ohio and there's another Negro student—Stanley Jackson, of Steubenville High School—who's interested, so you wouldn't be totally alone there."...
I started researching Kenyon College. It was prestigious, Episcopalian, and its faculty had impressive credentials. Father Thomas was enthusiastic about my attending, as were my mother and Uncle Jerry. But all the Ballards, starting with my father, were opposed. My Uncle Lonis flatly stated, "It'll ruin you for life, because you won't have any social growth there with no black women around."
Jeanette wanted me to stay in Philadelphia—she was going to be starting evening classes at Temple while working days as the first black telephone operator at Bell Telephone. But the lure of being a pioneer, the promise of an excellent education, combined with my real disgust for Lincoln's paddles [Lincoln University], persuaded me to accept Kenyon's offer. Sonny, who was at Lincoln, told me I'd be happier at Kenyon, as did Charlie, who said I could come up to Oberlin on weekends and he'd supply me with more women than I could handle.
—From Breaching Jericho's Walls: A Twentieth-Century African American Life, by Allen B. Ballard '52 H '04 (Excelsior Editions, State University of New York Press). Ballard, professor of history and Africana studies at the University at Albany-SUNY and professor emeritus of political science at City College of New York, was one of the first African-American students at Kenyon.