Chalkboard Winter 2009 - School of Education - Indiana University

Students in a counseling class, 1948.
“I enjoyed the warmth
of the professors at
IU. They made us
feel so welcome.” —
Dorothy Hawkins-Brooks
to,” Prewitt said. “I didn’t want to go to
any clubs.”
She credited caring professors for
guiding her through the experience, even
watching out for her away from campus.
Prewitt recalled a professor who saw
her at a Bloomington burger place with
some older African American men who
were military veterans. He ordered her
to go home, then called her to his office
the next day. “He said ‘why were you out
with that gang last night?’ Prewitt said.
He then told her she was too young and
too smart to be with those men. Though
it made her angry at the time, Prewitt
now remembers the incident with fondness.
“He looked after me when I didn’t
know I needed looking after.”
“I enjoyed the warmth of the professors
at IU,” Hawkins-Brooks said. “They
made us feel so welcome. They valued
us. And most of them saw something in
us — the yearning to accomplish.”
Burns said those professors also
expected nothing less of the southern
black students. “We were accepted and
we were helped if we needed help,” she
said. “They pushed us. They didn’t make
any exceptions for us, and sometimes, it
was really, really difficult.”
The IU degree helped her career path
tremendously, said Burns, who went on
to be the supervisor for speech pathologists
in Orleans Parish Schools for 30
years until she retired in 1998. Hawkins-
Brooks became a professor at Southern
University and later Jackson State University.
And Prewitt, who completed degrees in
business education, has had an amazingly
varied career path. She worked with
Wehrner Von Braun at NASA, helping
the project that designed the Saturn 5
rocket that lifted the Apollo spacecraft
to the moon. She was a manager in the
headquarters of Pfizer Pharmaceuticals,
IBM, and AT&T. She consulted for the
General Services Administration, lectured
and advised companies, agencies,
and others in 48 countries. She’s also
been a diplomat to four countries and
served on a Congressional commission
on affirmative action and higher education.
For all, the careers began with an
opportunity to travel north to the IU
School of Education.
“The Southern culture robbed us of
our dignity and of our self-esteem and
our self-worth,” Prewitt said. “Indiana
restored my self-esteem. And Indiana
exposed me to the world. That gave me
a confidence that I can’t explain.”
(LEFT) CHUCK CARNEY, (RIGHT) IU ARCHIVES
18 • Chalkboard