Nearly 100 Years Later, Historian Steve Peraza '06 Shares the Legacy of the University's First Black Graduate

He grew up in a predominantly Black and Latino neighborhood in New York City. On campus in the North Country, he looked around and he didn’t see a lot of other students who looked like him. He has a sense of humor about it now, but says it was like being “the lone pepper in a sea of salt.”

It’s no surprise that he gravitated toward the story of St. Lawrence’s first Black graduate, eventually becoming a historian of his work and legacy. During his time as a student, Peraza was awarded a fellowship to study Rev. Jeffrey Worthington Campbell Class of 1933, the first African American to graduate from the University and the first Black Laurentian to be ordained as a Universalist minister by the St. Lawrence School of Theology in 1935. He hasn’t stopped thinking about his legacy since.

Finding Shared Humanity

Jeffrey Campbell attended St. Lawrence University from 1929 through 1933 in the early years of the Great Depression. The stock market crashed shortly after he matriculated. Meanwhile, there was no foreseeable end to the Jim Crow laws that had governed race relations in the South since the 1870s. The Civil Rights Act wouldn’t be passed for another 31 years after he graduated.

Though it’s tempting to emphasize Campbell’s identity when considering his achievements, Peraza cautions against focusing predominantly on his race.

Writing in his senior thesis in 2006, he notes that Campbell “does not see himself as identifying with 'Blackness' first and foremost, but rather attaches himself to more ‘useful’ values. Throughout his writings, both as a youth and as an adult, Campbell consistently positions himself as valuing education, personal integrity, intellectual freedom, and tradition.”

According to Peraza, Campbell was more concerned with individual humanity, his own included, and many of his works urge readers to recognize every person’s unique potential and challenges as a human being, independent of their race.

“It strikes me as significant that there was a scholar at St. Lawrence who recognized that we should not be judged by the color of our skin but the content of our character, who was working on an ideology that could supplant race as the dominant way of looking at society,” says Peraza. “Campbell gives us the language to focus on humanity again.”

Peraza developed a deep respect for Campbell, and perhaps even a kinship over time. Peraza was especially struck by his essay “How I Would Achieve My Ideal University,” published in The Laurentian in 1932.

“He was the only Black man on campus, and he was addressing the president. Giving policy recommendations at the height of Jim Crow,” says Peraza. “I thought he was bold.”

In the essay, Campbell details how he would “emancipate” his ideal university “from the ignorance, sham, and stupidity of the outside world.” His institution would not prioritize wealth and prestige over intellectual growth. He would not let the “prejudices, shibboleths, and emotional biases” of outside influences like “bequests, endowments, [and] trustee-prestige” diminish students’ ability to think critically and independently.

At a critical stage of his own intellectual growth and development, Peraza, like Campbell, saw the ways in which his university could better reflect the values that mattered to him. He saw a need for increased diversity, more dedicated resources for marginalized students, and a greater understanding between students of differing backgrounds. He too felt motivated to share his concerns with the University’s president, who at that time was Daniel Sullivan.

“I was a thorn in his side,” recalls Peraza. “I criticized him for not doing enough, but by the time 2006 came around and I was training to be a historian, I started to realize that, under Sullivan, there was a significant expansion of American-born, non-white students on campus. I give him a lot of respect because he was always willing to listen. He was patient.”

That’s the thing about Peraza: he’s vocal and honest when he thinks something needs to change, but his critiques are coupled with generosity and optimism, and he’s quick to give credit where it’s due.

Turning Research into Action

Peraza completed his University Fellowship paper on Campbell in 2006 and then pursued a Ph.D. in history from the University at Buffalo (UB). He was an assistant professor of history at Buffalo State College for several years and recently transitioned out of the traditional classroom and into the sphere of “action research” as a senior research and policy associate at Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations Co-Lab in Buffalo

Lately, Peraza has been writing a report on the “problematic” condition of childcare in New York state and specifically something he calls “the workforce behind the workforce”—the individuals who watch and care for our children while we’re working, workers who he says are “criminally underpaid.”

Low wages for childcare workers create a perilous domino effect, driving them out of the industry and leaving parents without the support they rely on to be able to work themselves.

“The solutions are often policy-related. They require convening groups and building coalitions of researchers, elected officials, advocates, and people affected by an issue,” says Peraza, adding, “This is where scholarship belongs.”

In other words, not hidden away in a library or behind a paywalled academic journal but produced in partnership with and made available to the broader community it directly impacts—democratizing knowledge, not hoarding it.

“Sometimes, the scholarship is difficult to understand,” he says. “It’s up to scholars to translate our work so it can be understood by the public. We’re generating new knowledge, but it’s not useful if we’re not also communicating it in a way that lawmakers, those directly affected, or the average person can understand and use.”

His work starts with finding common ground, and in that way he’s able to channel the teachings of Jeffrey Campbell every day. In a way, Peraza’s brand of scholarship is about restoring a sense of shared humanity.

United by St. Lawrence

In March, Peraza will return to the North Country to talk about St. Lawrence’s culture in the late 1920s and early ‘30s and explore what Jeffrey Campbell’s presence on campus meant to the institution at that time.  

He plans to focus on Campbell’s essay “Going Home,” which discusses the impact of the Great Depression on St. Lawrence and reveals how the economic conditions of his day and the socio-economic disparities at the University shaped his political views.

“Campbell saw that the students who weren’t from the most affluent families were forced to decide if they could return to school because they couldn’t afford it. The kids who worked the hardest were the first ones to drop out because of the problems associated with runaway capitalism,” details Peraza.

After his time at St. Lawrence, Campbell went on to attend the London School of Economics. He organized workers and worked with unions. In 1938, he ran for governor of Massachusetts on the socialist ticket, coming in fourth out of 11 total candidates.

“He had a worldview that focused on equity,” says Peraza. 

Later in life, when Campbell did eventually enter the national debates about race in America, he didn’t necessarily see himself as a “Black man fighting for racial equality.” Writing in 2006, Peraza noted that “he entered the national debates about race, not to end the brutal racial discrimination and disenfranchisement of Blacks in America, but rather to delineate how racism in America tarnishes the humanity that joins all people.”

In the time since graduating, Campbell’s memory has kept Peraza connected to St. Lawrence. Peraza has returned to campus both virtually and in person several times to help illuminate the life and teachings of the late reverend beyond the context of race. There’s a note of gratitude in Peraza’s voice when he talks about his undergraduate days spent poring over Campbell’s work and digging into archives to learn more about him.

Jeffrey Campbell provided the inspiration, Peraza says, but “Elizabeth Regosin is why I became a historian. She was my honors thesis advisor and she insisted I do archival research to see if I liked it. I visited two archives in New England, including one in Amherst where Campbell was a Black preacher to a white congregation. It was exactly what I would be doing for the next 10 years.”

Peraza’s relationship with Charles A. Dana Professor of History Liz Regosin didn’t stop after he graduated. She mentored him throughout his Ph.D.—a process he says he felt over-prepared for.

“There are 2,100 students at St. Lawrence, and the resources and learning experiences are comparable to what I saw 21,000 students getting at UB.” he says. “More and more over the years, I’ve become an unofficial St. Lawrence booster. 

When Peraza first encountered Jeffrey Campbell, he couldn’t help but imagine how alone he must have felt at times. Early in Peraza’s St. Lawrence career, he could relate. But like so many college students who find their footing, find their people, and flourish, Peraza looks back at his college experience and can point to the St. Lawrence support systems that helped him become the accomplished scholar and advocate he is today.

“Jeffrey Campbell was an example of someone I knew of who had it harder. By the end of my time at St. Lawrence, I was in a theme cottage, I had my HEOP family. That made me appreciate what we did have,” he says. “By the time I knew I was going to grad school, my support system turned into a launch pad. I made it really far and I’m standing on the foundation of St. Lawrence.”