Willa Beatrice Player (August 9, 1909 – August 29, 2003) was an American educator, college administrator, college president, civil-rights activist, and federal appointee. Player was the first African-American woman to become president of a four-year, fully accredited liberal arts college when she took the position at
Bennett College in
Greensboro, North Carolina. From 1955 to 1966, Player served as president of the
historically black college during a period of heightened civil-rights activism in the South. She supported Bennett students who took part in the lengthy
sit-ins started by the
Greensboro Four to achieve integration of lunch counters in downtown stores. After leaving the Bennett presidency, Player was appointed in 1966 by President
Lyndon B. Johnson as the first female director of the Division of College Support in the
United States Department of Health, Education and Welfare, serving in that role until 1986. This 1930 photograph of Player is from the archives of
The Crisis.
Photograph credit: unknown; restored by Adam Cuerden
Then read some poetry
Beyond Forgetting by Rolando A. Carbonell
For a moment I thought I could forget you.
For a moment I thought I could still the restlessness in my heart. I thought the past could no longer haunt me-nor hurt me.
How wrong I was!
For the past, no matter how distant is as much a part of me as life itself. And you are part of that life. You are so much a part of me-of my dreams, my early hopes, my youth and my ambitions-that in all my tasks I can’t help remembering you. Many little delights and things remind me of you.
Yes, I came. And would my pride mock my real feelings? Would the love song, the sweet and lovely smile on your face, be lost among the deepening shadows?
I have wanted to be alone.
I thought I could make myself forget you in silence and in song . . .
And yet I remembered. For who could forget the memory of the once lovely, the once beautiful, the once happy world such as ours?
I came because the song that I kept through the years I waiting to be sung. I cannot sing it without you. The song when sung lone will lose the essence of its tune, because you and I had been one.
I have wanted this misery to end, because it is part of my restlessness.
Can’t you understand? Can’t you divine the depth and the tenderness of my feelings towards you? Yes, can’t you see how I suffer in this even darkness without you?
You went away because you mistook my silence for indifference. But silence, my dear, is the language of my heart. For how could I essay the intensity of my love when silence speaks a more eloquent tone? But, perhaps you didn’t understand...
Remember, I came, because the gnawing loneliness is there and will not be lost until the music is sung, until the poem is heard, until the silence is understood . . . until you come to me again.
For you alone can blend music and memory into one consuming ecstasy. You alone . . .