If I Had a Hammer

  “If I had a hammer

I'd hammer out danger
I'd hammer out a warning
I'd hammer out love between my brothers and my sisters
All over this land”

         “If I Had a Hammer,” Lee Hays and Pete Seeger

In “From Cotton Fields to University Leadership: All Eyes on Charlie” by Charlie Nelms the chapter on Nelms’s six years as an IU Northwest administrator between 1978 and 1984 is titled “If I Had a Hammer.”  Nelms is a self-described a county guy from the Arkansas Delta and former marine who benefitted from numerous mentors during a distinguished academic career.  One of these was IUPUI Dean of Faculties Jack Buhner, who during the 1960s had run IUN’s Gary campus.  Nelms completed an Indiana University PhD dissertation while working as a Lilly Endowment fellow in Buhner’s office. Partly through Buhner’s influence Nelms was offered the position of director of University Division at IUN.  His efforts to find decent housing were so frustrating he initially stayed only a few months, explaining:

 I had no idea of just how racially segregated communities were in northwest Indiana.  I quickly discovered that Blacks were restricted to overwhelmingly Black neighborhoods dominated by substandard housing.  My wife Jeanetta and I were not prepared for the blatant racism we encountered in our housing search.  Upon finding something we liked, we’d telephone only to be told that it had been rented earlier that day.

 Jack Buhner with Hertha Taylor in 2015

In frustration Nelms accepted a position at the University of Arkansas in Pine Bluff, his undergraduate alma mater. When that job proved disappointing, he called IUN Dean of Students Bob Morris, who arranged for him to be appointed head of University Division beginning June 30, 1978.  This time he found satisfactory housing at the Mansards Apartments in Griffith, which he described as a “relatively new and overwhelmingly White tennis community approximately a 15-minute drive from the university.”  Owner-developer James Dye later became a mentor to Nelms as an IU Trustee.  Charlie wrote that he and Jeanetta never had a moment of trouble at the Mansards, and while training for the Chicago Marathon, Nelms “became a familiar face on the streets of the all-White towns, hamlets, and villages of northwest Indiana.”

Nelms described Gary was a “gritty, working-class city”that underwent white flight, especially after the election of Richard Hatcher as mayor in 1967.  Noting how polluted the area was, Nelms cited the work D.C. Richardson did with the Gary Board of Health to “hold the EPA’s feet to the fire”and enforce anti-pollution standards.

Much like Jack Buhner, Dean of Students Bob Morris, who had come to IUN two years before, was, according to Nelms, “a thoughtful and politically liberal man” and a“passionate, authentic, and caring supervisor.”  During Morris’s tenure, in addition to Nelms, African Americans rose to leadership positions in Admissions (Bill Lee), Financial Aid (Leroy Gray), and University Division (Ernest Smith). Unfortunately, Morris bumped heads with Dean of Academic Affairs Marion Mochon, whom Nelms described accurately as “a chain-smoking cultural anthropologist [whose] personal skills left a lot to be desired.”Determined to get rid of Morris, she first cut his budget and then hatched a scheme to combine Academic Affairs and Student Services and replace Morris with an associate dean. Just three months after Charlie’s arrival on campus, Chancellor Danilo Orescanin offered him the new position on Mochon’s recommendation.  Though asked to keep the offer confidential, Nelms, reluctant to betray Morris, consulted with him.  Nelms wrote:

 Bob assured me he knew something was brewing and that I was not part of the move to oust him. A consummate professional with real class, Bob told me that he was prepared to do everything possible to help me succeed in my new role. Thankfully, Bob got a respectable severance package. And a good job 4 months after leaving IUN.  Two years later, still in his early fifties, Bob [a chain smoker and coke drinker] died of lung cancer.

Not long after Morris’s departure, Marion Mochon was dead and Dan Orescanin had accepted a position in Bloomington. Meanwhile, in addition to his university duties, which included teaching a class each semester, usually Introduction to Psychology, Nelms accepted offers to serve as president of the local Urban League’s Board of Directors, member of the Gary school board, and on the Post-Tribuneadvisory board. Once he was offered $2,000 by a bus company hoping for a lucrative contract with the school city. He angrily turned the bribe attempt down and wrote: 

 Two years afterwards, I was subpoenaed by a Lake County grand jury to testify about alleged graft and contract kickbacks within the Gary School Corporation.  Words cannot convey how happy I was to testify that I had not been a part of any kickback schemes.  As the questioning proceeded, it became increasingly clear that Mayor [Richard] Hatcher was the real target of their inquiry.

Throughout the 1980s during the Ronald Reagan administration there was a persistent effort to indict Black mayors. Hatcher emerged unscathed in spite of the harassment.

I recall Charlie Nelms as a friendly, confident guy who preferred to rule with a velvet glove rather than an iron fist.  We both served as Student Activities Fund Trustees, charged with approving money for student proposals, some of which seemed ill-advised and too costly. In one case student hired a rock group, the Romantics, to put on a concert and then learned it couldn’t be held in the auditorium, so it took place on the campus of Valparaiso University.  Charlie tried to curb wasteful spending while my view was that, within reason, student input should prevail. Despite his efforts to reach consensus, he clearly intended to rein in many proposals.

While researching a history of IUN I interviewed Director of Admissions Bill lee and Barbara Cope, who went on to become Dean of Student Services.  Bill recalled:“Charlie Nelms reminded you of a good social workler.  He could get you to see if you made a mistake without browbeating you.”  Barbara recalled:

 I was on the committee that hired Charlie Nelms.  The evening before we were to interview him, Kathy Malone and I were working late, and this bearded guy in a sports shirt walked in asking all sorts of questions. We thought he was a prospective student and got him brochures and answered his inquiries.  The next day there he was in his suit and tie.  When I did a double take, he laughed.  Charlie was quite charming and very effective in giving people little hints to go out and do what he wanted.  He wrote beautifully and was an excellent speaker. He liked my patient style and level of awareness in dealing with our wide diversity of students.

Despite his myriad administrative and community activities and popularity with students and staff, Nelms ran into trouble from the so-called “Old Boys” network when he went up for promotion and tenure.  As he put it, most faculty on the Promotion and Tenure Committee “had a very traditional and narrow view of the requirements” plus “some members held it against me that I was an administrator.”  Even so, by narrow margins, both the Education Division and the Promotion and Tenure Committee voted in his favor.  Mochon’s replacement as Dean of Academic Affairs, George Dahlgren, whom without mentioning him by name Nelms branded a closet racist and sexist, suggested he resign and seek another position elsewhere. Acting Chancellor Peggy Elliott offered a compromise that would allow him to retain his administrative post while resigning his academic position.  Nelms described his reaction:

 I said, “Chancellor, my record is equal to or greater than most of my colleagues in the Division of Education.  I feel I have earned the right to be promoted and tenured.  I have a four-year-old son.  I don’t ever want to look at him and say I took the easy way out by resigning rather than do what I thought was right.  So you do what you feel you need to do, and I’ll do what I need to do.”

Instead Nelms accepted a position at Sinclair Community College in Dayton. Having recently served as an ACE Fellow in Bloomington, Nelms was popular within the IU hierarchy and within three years was offered the chancellorship at IU East. Thankful that IU President Tom Ehrlich had confidence in “a country guy from the Arkansas Delta,” he referenced “If I Had a Hammer” and wrote: “We used our voices, energy, and action to hammer out the dangers of ignorance and hate – and to hammer in love and justice for people from all walks of life.”

 Charlie Nelms, Justice John Roberts, Kwesi Aggrey

Nelms valued research to the extent that it was useful for framing and articulating a rationale for change but admitted having little interest in becoming “an extensively cited academic scholar . . . attending national meetings and listening to scholars read academic papers to each other.”  He added: “Hell, I felt that America was in dire need of transformation with respect to racial equity and equality, and I wanted to do my part to change thing now, not 50 years from now.”

Looking back on his brief time at IUN, Nelms noted than when he arrived, Black enrollment was 23% of the student population.  In 2016 it has declined to 17%.  He added:

  Similarly, the number of Black faculty remains meager, in no way reflecting the city’s population, and there are no Black members of the university’s executive leadership team. These realities stand in contrast to an era when the campus enjoyed a Black female chancellor (Hilda Richards) as well as a Black vice chancellor (Kwesi Aggrey), dean (F.C. Richardson), and several senior administrative employees.

There are several reasons for the decline of Black student enrollment, including fewer Gary high school graduates, scholarships at campuses away from home for college bound seniors, and competition from Purdue Northwest and IVY Tech.  Regarding Black faculty, the reasons are less clear but the shabby treatment of Vice Chancellors Kwesi Aggrey and Mark McPhail played a not insignificant role.

Nelms mentions Dr. Lynn Merritt, a nationally acclaimed chemist who, after retiring after as dean of IU’s graduate school, was a troubleshooter at IUN, serving in various capacities as department chair and dean.  It was Merritt who told him that people in Bloomington had their eye on him for a future leadership position.  Merritt was a rather mysterious presence on campus whom I regarded as Bloomington eyes and ears, assessing administrators from the chancellor on down