1947: The Kinsey Institute, the National Student Association, “The Respectful Prostitute” & Massachusetts State College Becomes the University of Massachusetts Amherst, My Alma Mater

[photo of the University of Massachusetts Amherst W. E. B. Du Bois Library taken from the front porch of my childhood home]

The Kinsey Institute [for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction] is established as a research institute at Indiana University.

Established in Bloomington, Indiana as a nonprofit, the institute merged with Indiana University in 2016 [the year my grandfather passed away and the draft dodger, felon and rapist was elected president], “abolishing the 1947 independent incorporation absolutely and completely.”

The institute's mission is “To foster and promote a greater understanding of human sexuality and relationships through research, outreach, education, and historical preservation.”

Research, graduate training, information services, and the collection and preservation of library, art, and archival materials are main activities carried out by The Kinsey Institute.

The institute and Alfred Kinsey himself have been the subject of much controversy.

As of July 1, 2019, evolutionary biologist and sex researcher Justin Garcia holds the title of executive director of The Kinsey Institute, previously noted as the institute's research director.

Garcia is the institute's eighth executive director and their youngest in history at 34 years old when appointed as executive director.

The National Student Association is established as a confederation of college and university student governments in the United States that was in operation from 1947 to 1978.

NSA held annual national conferences attended by student leaders, especially student body presidents from their respective student governments.

From the early 1960s, the NSA played a significant role in the student activism movement, advocating for a student-centric vision within American universities.

Many founding members of Students for a Democratic Society began their involvement in national activism through NSA, and numerous students were introduced to civil rights and antiwar movements through NSA events.

The NSA was also American host for student Eurail and air passes, and for many years served as American students' representative to IATA, the International Air Transport Association.

In the early 1960s, the NSA housed the United States Student Press Association and its news agency, Collegiate Press Service.

Both groups spun away as independent groups but eventually shut down as student-run organizations.

From the early 1950s until 1967, the international program of the NSA, and some of its domestic activities, were underwritten by clandestine funding from the Central Intelligence Agency.

The Respectful Prostitute is a French play by Jean-Paul Sartre, written in 1946 and published in French in 1947, which observes a white woman, a prostitute, caught up in a racially tense period of American history.

The audience understands that there has been an incident on a train with said woman involved, but also a Black man on whom the blame is laid by the prejudiced law enforcers.

What comes to the viewer's realization is that a white man instigated an attack, but it is in the interests of the law to preserve the perception of the white person at the expense of the Black “devil.”

The tale takes a brief look at the loss of freedom inside a cruel world, a subject that dominates Sartre's literary career.

The play premiered in November 1946 at the Théâtre Antoine-Simone Berriau in Paris.

When the play was produced in the United States, Sartre was accused of anti-Americanism.

Sartre's play is believed to have been based on the infamous Scottsboro case, in which two white prostitutes accused nine Black teenagers of rape on a train traveling through Alabama in 1931.

The University of Massachusetts Amherst hosts the W. E. B. Du Bois Library which can be seen from the front porch of my childhood home.

It is home of the memoirs and papers of the distinguished Black American activist and Massachusetts native W. E. B. Du Bois, as well as being the depository for other important collections, such as the papers of the late Congressman Silvio O. Conte.

The library's special collections include works on movements for social change, Black American history and culture, labor and industry, literature and the arts, agriculture, and the history of the surrounding region.

I graduated from the University of Massachusetts Amherst under the prestigious ‘Bachelor’s Degree with Individual Concentration’ in Latin American, Caribbean and Latino Studies in 1997 and again with a Master of Education in School Counseling in 1999.

This culminated in a 26-year career managing and directing undergraduate and graduate programs at two nationally ranked public research universities, the bulk of which was at the University of Florida, a top ten, and where my 20-year-old son is currently pursuing a major in sports media in the College of Journalism and Communications.