CUNY

DIGITALHISTORYARCHIVE

CUNY Digital History Archive
An Oral History of the CCNY 1960’s SEEK

Interview with Eugenia Wiltshire
Interviewer: Sean Molloy

April 1, 2014
New York, NY

In 1965, City College launched its “Pre-Bac” program by admitting and supporting poor
and working class students who did not qualify under CCNY’s traditional standards
(Levy 1965). Pre-Bac was a huge success. After one year, 72% of its students were still
studying at CCNY. Over half had a “C” average or higher (Berger 1966 3). Renamed
“SEEK” in 1966, the program got even better: 85% of the new Fall 1966 and Fall 1967
SEEK students were still studying at CCNY after one year. (Berger 1969 Table 40).
Close to 40% of the 1965 -67 SEEK students would graduate from City College by 1972
(Frost 1972 1). One of those graduates was Dorothy Eugenia Robinson. In 1975, Dorothy
changed her name to Eugenia Wiltshire. After graduating, Eugenia worked for WCBS,
Channel 13 and other news organizations for two decades as an associate producer, unit
manager and associate director. She then traveled to Nigeria for a year to teach broadcast
journalism. Starting in 1991, Eugenia began her second career with Manhattan’s
Community School. Since 2005, her third career has focused on peace and justice work
as well as teaching adult language learners.

Wiltshire “T remember living across from a stone wall.... But behind that
stone wall was a college.”

Oddly enough, the first place I ever lived was on Convent
Avenue across the street from City College. And I spent the first
ten years of my life there [00:02:00] and I remember living
across from this stone wall that was much taller than I. You
couldn’t look over it, but behind that wall was a college, and I
never got to see it, but I knew it was there. But then, I always
assumed that I would never go there, because it was too familiar
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and I didn’t want to go there. It was, it was a very weird kind of
experience because it was part of my neighborhood and college
meant leaving your neighborhood. So I, I look back upon that
now and it’s quite amazing to me and in fact there was
something called Lewisohn Stadium on the grounds of the
campus and they had the outdoor concerts there and as a child I
would go up in the summers and they had gates all around the
stadium, but there were certain places where you could go and
peak and actually see some of the concerts. I was a child, I would
go up there and stand outside the gate and kind of peak and listen
and I think my graduating class or the one after was the last to
graduate from that stadium because then they tore it down, but
that was my first knowledge of City College.

My father was a shipping clerk. He never made very much
money in his entire life. He was a very, he was a very sad man;
he seemed defeated. As I look back on it now, I know that he
suffered from depression. He was a very kind man and a very
loving man, but not ambitious at all. My mother when she got
older and I would say she was probably in her 60s [00:04:00]
when she took some courses to become a nurse’s aide. Someone
who took care of older people in hospitals or in their homes.

So, when I was about 10 my family moved from Convent
Avenue to the Grant housing projects, because my mother
thought that was a step up, little did she know. But we wound up
there and I went to a public school, which was a couple of blocks
away and my elementary schooling after the second grade, I was
in SP classes — special progress, now they call it gifted and
talented. So I was always on an accelerated academic track,
which I loved. I loved school and elementary school. And um I
loved the challenge of it and the experience of it. So I think that
kind of fed into the expectation that I would go to college and it
wasn’t an imposed expectation, it was just an assumed um track,
path that I would take and I was comfortable with that.

But it was P.S. 125 and it was in West Harlem — about 122nd

Street off of Amsterdam Avenue. And because I was in the SP

classes, these classes were specially configured and so — and

very, very integrated. I remember that ah at one point my best
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friend was Japanese and [00:06:00] then there was a kid from
China, Argentina, Greece, Norway. There was a Native
American in the class for a while. I think somebody from Cuba.
There were blacks like myself from, with parents from the south,
some from the Caribbean, and it was such a mixture when I take
out that class picture now and look at it, it’s amazing — it’s
absolutely amazing. But for me it was a wonderful experience
because I had that exposure in, as a young kid and I didn’t see
myself in that situation as other. And I also appreciated other
people for their cultures and for their experiences, and as a class
they really played on that. We had something every year called
the tasting party and what it was is that the parents of the kids
made foods from their native culture and brought them in and it
was great; we did this year, after year, after year and the foods
and the flavors and the parents came, and it was really wonderful
but—. So for me I’ve always felt like a citizen of the world. I
never felt confined to one neighborhood, one ethnicity, one way
of thinking, one religion— that was just never a part of my
consciousness. I was curious and I wanted the exposure, I
reveled in it, and it stood me in good stead throughout the rest of
my life.

So that great initial multicultural experience was real for me and
that was [00:08:00] throughout elementary school and then I
went to middle school and it continued— that middle school is
called Manhattanville and it’s still there. And then I went to high
school, which was totally different. It was an integrated high
school at the time, in fact it closed after my junior year. I
went to my senior year in another school that had just opened
and it’s called Brandeis, but it was the first year and a brand new
building of a new school, and um high school — I really didn’t
enjoy high school a lot, it ah, because it was more regimented;
there was less enrichment I would say. There were, ah— it just
didn’t really hold that much interest for me. I was in the debating
club. That I liked a lot, because I got to open my mouth and
argue I guess, and make a case, I was a fighter, so — but other
than that I don’t really have great memories of high school
except that I know the teachers liked me. I was always a good
girl and teachers liked me and I remember struggling with
chemistry. I just could not really get it and uh I failed the
Regents, the chemistry Regents, and my teacher felt worse about
it than I did, because I knew I didn’t need to graduate and was
done, over, I was leaving and— but he was — he said, “you know,
you missed it by three points and I went over your paper so many
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times trying to find those three points.” And I wound up
consoling him saying, “it’s okay, it’s not a big deal,” [00:10:00]
but I could care less. But — so high school was just another
passage on my way to what I hoped would be college, what I
expected to be college.

“And to this day, I’m still involved in lots of protests...”

At one point I remember going to... going on a protest march to
the south and I was in high school at the time, I think. Because I
was a member of an organization called the National Council of
the Christians and Jews. And that was my first experience going
south, and it was quite interesting to me. Well actually as part of
a movement I had gone many, many years earlier as a child to
visit relatives, I guess, I don’t really remember much about that
except for walking along back roads. But uh going in high school
was a pivotal point for me because it was my first experience of
being part of an organized group with a mission.

In terms of the March on Washington, I wanted to go in the
worst way, and my mother would not let me go because she was
afraid that there would be violence. That was her thing, my
mother was always playing it safe and uh —. So she wouldn’t let
me go and I was very angry about that, but I think it fueled my
activism to the point [00:12:00] where I knew that when I was
out under her thumb I could make my own choices and do the
kind of — engage in the kinds of activities that mattered to me,
which I did in short-order, and to this day I’m still involved in
lots of protests. I still have the uh, the paper handcuffs that were
put on me in front of the White House many years ago
protesting.

But yeah, I felt very uh, very restrained and my mother gave out
mixed messages. She was a Martin Luther King Jr. fan. He was
the God to her, because he was safe and he was non-violent, and
anyone else ah, was just to be scorned. She — oh Malcolm X,
God forbid, he was just the most horrible person you can imagine
in her mind. And um the Student Nonviolent Coordinating
Committee and Stokely Carmichael, Rap Brown, Bobby Seale on
and on and on, oh my God horrible, horrible, horrible! And I
could never figure out where she was coming from with that, and
she had this whole thing of playing it safe, playing it safe. And it
took me awhile, but I finally got that out of my system because

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there was no gain in that. But I had to overcome that and thank
God I did.

“That was my ticket out”

[00:14:00] In high school, I had a counselor who um at that time
was really paying attention to her students and she was aware of
this program called the Pre-Baccalaureate Program, which
became SEEK, and presented it to me as a great opportunity and
she thought I would be perfect for it and I listened to what she
had to say and I agreed, I thought, “oh yes, this is it, this is
exactly what I would like to do.”

I guess if we’re talking about how I got into the SEEK program,
in terms of grades and qualifications and all of that, I wasn’t a
bad student in high school, in fact, I was a better student in high
school than I was in college in some respects, but what really had
a serious impact on me was my home situation, it was just very,
very stressful. At young age, I guess I was about 10, I had an
older sister, half-sister, and she died, and she had six children
and three of them came to live with us. So at the age of ten, I
went from being an only child to uh a child with other people in
the house.

My mother, she was very controlling and domineering and uh not
a very nice person; she treated my father horribly. She treated ah
my nieces and nephew, her grandchildren horribly.

And out of my knowledge of the situation, the guilt that I felt
about it, I played the mediator and I tried to fix it [00:16:00] and
be the pacifier in all the disputes and all the confusion and it took
a toll.

So, all those years later when it became time for me to go to
college, my grades would not have gotten me into the City
University. They would have gotten me into other colleges, but
then I would have needed a scholarship, and uh we just never

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investigated that. And even though I grew up knowing that I
would go to college and wanting to— it was just totally
expected— there was no preparation for it. There was no savings
account for me to get to college, so when I was presented with
the opportunity of going to the City University as part of a Pre-
Bac program, I jumped at it and I said, “yeah, this is great and
free yeah, I’m there. That was my ticket out.

“Betty Rawls.... Her approval and encouragement was like an
armor...”

When the opportunity was presented to me ah to go to City
College, I was thrilled, but I also knew that it was a highly
academic, white school. And it, it seemed like the meshing of a
dream to go to college and to go to a good one and it was free. I
felt a little intimidated by it, but because the way that the
program was presented with all the supports, I felt I could do
this.

I remember [00:18:00] registering for classes and getting my
books and they had a special process set up for the SEEK
students to get books from the bookstore and we were on a
separate line from the regular students getting their books,
because we didn’t have to pay for ours. So we all lined up and
we went into this little room in the back of the bookstore and we
got our books, and I walked out with my books and my supplies,
and, and once I had a schedule of classes that I was going to take,
I was a real college student. And that, it was a wonderful,
wonderful feeling, because I was there; it was legitimate, this
was really happening to me. And with all the supports that the
SEEK program had for us, I always had a resource, someone to
go to or talk to, who would answer my questions. So I never felt
like I was fending for myself and that was one of the strengths of
the program.

I think the key element in my feeling cared for and not alone was
the counselor I had and her name is Betty Rawls, and she was
fabulous. I don’t know anybody who could have had any
encounter with her who wouldn’t say the same. And for me she
was just kind and caring and focused. She was young, she was

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beautiful, wonderful personality, wonderful smile, she loved to
laugh, but so, so caring and I wanted to be her. She was
absolutely my idol. And [00:20:00] um so with someone like that
in your corner, it just makes all the difference in how you— how
I proceeded with what I had to do, because I— her self-
confidence was infectious I guess. And also I think her approval
and her encouragement was like an armor in a way; it gave me
what I needed to do what I needed to do— I felt very
comfortable.

I remember having one class, I think it was a history class, and
there was a test with questions of course, and when the teacher
gave back the exam, I don’t remember what I got on it, but one
of the things was that you had to interpret the question and I had
never encountered that before and I’m thinking, “what do you
mean interpret? This is the question, the question says blah, blah,
blah, you answer the question. Why do I have to interpret the
question?” that was like a whole new thing for me, and that I
think happened maybe in the second year— first or second year
that I was there and I was one of the few black students in the
class, so I thought, “is this a white thing where you have to figure
out what the question is before you can answer it?” Because I
hadn’t experienced that before, it I was, like, oh my God, so that
was like a red flag. So, of course I went to Betty with this and
she basically talked me through it. Friendship in The SEEK
dorm:

“Tt became a community, in and of itself... And it was just a
blessing.”

Living in the residence hall or the dorm was the next step for me
in really being in college, because I now was no longer living at
home, and grateful. [00:22:00] And it also was the next step in
being an adult and in being responsible for everything that I
needed. It was a place to live. They made arrangements for us to
have vouchers to eat in restaurants, and it was my go-to place
that I could make into what I needed it to be, and I was grateful
for that. It was a safe environment; it was in a great location. And
um, it became a community in and of itself— how could it not?
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When I think back about the dorm, one of the people I have to
talk about is Francee Covington. I was so intimidated by her. I
was afraid of her, because she, as far as I was concerned, had it
so together. It appeared to me that she never had a doubt about
anything, didn’t second-guess anything, was so committed, and
positive, and, and quick with an idea, with a response to
something; this woman was just indomitable. And I was envious
and fearful at the same time because I just couldn’t imagine how
someone at that age could be all that.

What happened was we both got involved with a program at
WCBS-TV [00:24:00] and we became the SEEK interns at the
local TV station. She was interested in journalism and writing as
I— so, ah I think there were five of us at the time— so through
that experience we got to know each other very well. And in fact
for a while we were both— I think it was a couple of years— we
were on a TV show together called “The Learning Experience,”
which came on Saturday afternoons about 2 o’clock, which we
all called ghetto prime time. And so our relationship grew and
then when the dorm closed and we moved out of the dorms, she
and I both got apartments near each other in the Bronx. So this
was a relationship that grew over time and I am so grateful for it
and for her, because we are great friends now and her son is just—
he just hold a place in my heart that I am so glad that he’s there.
He’s wonderful, and she’s a wonderful mother and person. But it
goes to show because I thought she was this flaming radical that
I wanted to be, and uh and she was. And in some ways I think
that there’s got to be a point almost where we switched sides and
I became this— this, uh more radicalized and as I said when I got
arrested, but people have done that so many times more than I
ever have— but it’s a relationship that started at City College and
I’m really, really grateful for that, so I’m lucky.

English classes at City: “I mean, this was just a whole new
world.”

[00:26:00] One of the teachers that I remember, ah was Barbara
Christian. She was an English teacher; and she was amazing,
because all of these SEEK teachers were young, but they were so
knowledgeable, and they taught in a way that was just easy to
absorb. They were communicators; they weren’t instructors and
they didn’t tell us what to think. They just shared with us their
knowledge; that’s how I received it. And, um, with Barbara it’s—
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I remember once asking her how she knew so much about
something and she was I guess surprised at the question, maybe
it was a stupid question, but I was just in awe of the amount of
knowledge this women had: about literature, about authors that I
never heard of, about language. She could go back and forth
from literature to poetry and, and it was it was just absolutely
amazing. And from her I learned that there was a larger scope to
literature and knowledge than I had really ever thought about. I
knew fiction, non-fiction, what else? Well, and of course then the
black authors and the black poets, and African authors. I mean,
this was just a whole new world. So I’ve always been grateful to
her for that.

In terms of a learning experience, yeah she was, she had that
great impact on me. And another one was not a SEEK teacher,
but her name was [00:28:00] Eve Merriam and she was a writer
and I think she mostly wrote, well I know she wrote children
stories and short stories. And um I got an A in her course and I
remember what I learned from her. I got a lot of encouragement
from her and I used to write and write and rewrite until I thought
it was perfect and what I learned from her was that you could
always do it another time. It can always be better, even when you
think it’s perfect. And that stood me in good stead, because ever
since that time whenever I write something, I go over it again,
and I go over it again; so everything I write in my mind is draft,
because I know it can always be made better. And um I learned
that from her and I am very grateful, she really just clicked with
me.

“And the problem was not that I was incapable of learning — she
was a bad teacher.”

Interestingly, when I think back on my years at City, there are so
many lessons learned that I can now look back upon as life
lessons. I had a math teacher at one point, I think I was probably
in my junior year, and it was— I don’t even remember the
course, and it wasn’t algebra or trig, I’d had those, but it was
something along those lines. And I just was not understanding
anything she had to say. And I was getting 30s and 40s on the
tests, clearly not understanding. And I worked and worked and I
just couldn’t get it. [00:30:00] And I went to her at one point and
I said, “what happens”— stupid question— but I said to her,
“what happens if I don’t pass this course?” hoping she would
say, “well you can take something else.” Then she said, you’ ll

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have to repeat it. And a light bulb went on in my head and I just
said, “hell no, no this is too painful, I’m not doing this again.”

The night before the final exam, I was living in the residence
hall. So I got the big black chalkboard that was there on wheels
and I rolled into the lounge, with an eraser, chalk, and my math
book. And from about 6 o’clock that night to 12:30, one o’clock
the next morning, I taught myself that course. I started at the
front of the book— the answers were in the back— and I worked
the problems and checked the answers. And when I got the
answer right I knew that I knew how to do the problem, and I
went through the entire book that night. There was one thing that
I couldn’t do, something called reverse fractions; but I figured
okay, I was tired, it was late and if that’s the only thing I didn’t
know it was fine. So I went in the next day and I took the test and
laced the test. The only thing that I couldn’t do again was this
reverse fraction problem, but that was just one problem out of a
whole slew of them, so I knew that I aced the test. And I got aD
on the course— in the course, and I thought that I at least
should’ve gotten a C because I had pretty much aced the test; but
that’s not what happened I got a D.

And what I didn’t know then, which I figured out years later was
that this teacher [00:32:00] gave me the D, because I passed the
test. But then I thought she didn’t really believe that I took the
test. I got somebody to sit in my seat put my name on the paper
and take the test; it wasn’t me. Because that was not possible. It
wasn’t possible for a student to do that, it certainly wasn’t
possible for a black, female student to go from not passing a
single test to acing the final— just not possible. And then I
thought later— I wish that I had understood that at the time,
because I would have gone to that teacher, challenged her on the
grade, and said, “I will sit down right now in front of you, give
me a problem, from the test — make it up, whatever, I will sit
down in front of you and do the problem and get it right and
show you.” What that taught me was not to allow what other
people think of me to impact in a negative way what I think of
me. Not to absorb their negativity and their lack of confidence.

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That was quite an amazing lesson. At the time, what I knew was
that I could do it, I could do it. And the problem was not that I
was incapable of learning, she was a bad teacher. It wasn’t me.

“SEEK....got me into college. It got me a career. And it got me
one stellar friendship.”

I didn’t go to college out of a love for learning. To me, college
was a ticket. I knew I wanted a better life than the life that my
parents lived, and that was the tool [00:34:00] that I needed to
get me there. This, this sheepskin, the BA degree, was what I
needed; that would be my ammunition. And really, that’s all I
ever wanted out of college; I didn’t have any lofty ideas about
being an academic. I knew I was interested in journalism; I
wanted to do that. I enjoyed writing; I wanted to do that. And —
but in terms of the whole college experience, it was a ticket. And
to this day, I view it as that, because there were things that I had
to do that I didn’t really— subjects I had to take that I had no
interest in. Now that I’ve been out of college so many years, I
can choose the courses that I take or the lectures that I attend or
whatever, it’s a much different environment.

When I left City College, I went to WCBS-TV to collect my job
as promised as an intern, and I became a researcher for local
news. And I did that for maybe a year, a year and a half. The
reason I left CBS was because I felt labeled and identified as “the
SEEK student’. I don’t know how much of that was real or
imagined, but I believed it and I felt that that was going to be a
negative label, that I would always be identified as that and
therefore not be allowed to move up.

But when I think about that identification, and um years later in
situations where people talked about college, I always said well I
went to CCNY, I never said I was a SEEK student.

It [00:36:00] becomes a question of how to explain it and then

we get into the negatives. What did it mean to be a SEEK

student? How did you— what did that involve? Well the

negatives — uh, I had to be a minority, not qualified, not as good

as, needing special help, all of the negatives would have to go

into an explanation of how or why I was a SEEK student. Who
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wants to go through that? Who wants to explain that? And, uh, so
I never, never really talked about it much as being a SEEK
student. I can talk about it now because I am grateful for the
program, and I, I am proud of what it accomplished for me and
so many other students— but I had to get to that point. A lot
sooner in my life, I wasn’t there and I didn’t want to have to
apologize for the fact that I got into the City University “on a
pass” quote, unquote. So even though all these years later I can
talk about how wonderful SEEK was, for awhile there I wore it
as a label and as, it was a negative, and I’m just glad I got
beyond that but at the time, no.

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Wiltshire All the things from time to time that I thought of as negatives, I
can look back on them now and understand them. And I can
explain them to myself with a clearer understanding and a lot
more compassion.

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Wiltshire [00:38:00] Looking back on it, I see that SEEK was a wonderful
opportunity. It got me into college, it got me a career, and it got
me one stellar friendship. And all of those things are tremendous
gifts.

Credits:

Eugenia Wiltshire: An Oral History of the CCNY 1960s SEEK Program Special Thanks
to Eugenia Wiltshire Produced, Directed & Edited by Sean Molloy

“Put Love in” by Linda Draper (2013)

Courtesy of Linda Draper by Creative Commons: Attribution-Noncommerical. No
Derivative Works 3.0 U.S. License

Works Cited:

Berger, Leslie. “The Pre- Baccalaureate Program at the College.” City College Alumnus.
Dec. 1966. Archives and Special Collections, Buell Gallagher Files, “SEEK Program
1964-1969.” Morris Raphael Cohen Library, CCNY. TS.

Berger, Leslie. “Annual Report 1968-1969 SEEK Program The City University of New
York.” 21 Oct. 1969. Archives and Special Collections, SEEK Box One. Morris Raphael
Cohen Library, CCNY. TS.

Frost, Olivia, Memorandum to Dean Robert Young et al., 19 Apr. 1972. Olivia Frost
Papers, Box 10, Folder One, Research collections at the Schomburg Center For Research
In Black Culture. NYPL.TS.

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Levy Bernard. “Information Report by Professor Bernard Levy On the Pre- Baccalaureate
Program.” 2 Dec. 1965. Archives and Special Collections, Buell Gallagher Files, “SEEK
Program 1964-1969.” Morris Raphael Cohen Library, CCNY. TS.

This work is Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercia-
ShareAlike (CC BY-NC-SA)

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