KANSAN.COM / THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN / WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 26, 2011 / NEWS
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Above: Photo courtesy
SPENCER RESEARCH
LIBRARY
Frederick Grant Harvey, the middle Harvey brother, played third base on the Kansas baseball team. He transferred to Meharry Medical School in Nashville and became a physician in Lawrence.
When Sherman arrived at the University on Jan. 2,1883, he waited in the chancellor's office with three other prospective students - white students - and wondered how the office stayed so warm without a fire or a stove.
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lawyer or an active town member?
When fraternity members argued over the election of the 1889 class orator, Sherman was selected to fill the role. And when the decision was made, the shocked parties consented.
The concept of a black face appearing in a white class was not impossible or improbable then. The first black KU student enrolled in 1876, and several others filtered
When one of Lawrence's most famous residents, Langston Hughes, was expelled from Central Junior High in 1914, Frederick Harvey led a group to speak on his behalf. Hughes was reinstated.
This would be the brothers' destiny: Turning a society structured to limit their chances into one
full of opportunities.
"When we say that there should be equality, we do not mean that there should be community," the article stated. "No matter how much we contend against the idea, the fact remains that there is an impassible gulf between the races."
But the University's race relations weren't harmonious, at least in certain circles. The Harveys didn't talk much about it, but tension was there. Tension has always been there.
through in the following years.
The article was written in 1886, three years after Sherman had enrolled.
But it wasn't until 1885 that the first African-American, Blanche K. Bruce, graduated from the University. When Larry Pearce wrote an article in 1909, he counted only 60 African-American graduates.
More African-Americans took classes, of course, but many left without degrees. Many were also self-supporting, working as porters, waiters, janitors or maids. They struggled to balance school and work.
The Harveys avoided such a fate. The school provided opportunity, and they always remembered the camaraderie of those days.
In an article published in the weekly student newspaper, The University Courier, students rallied around the idea of segregation. The students weren't opposed to African-Americans being free. It's just, blacks still weren't whites, and society made that clear.
On Kansas' 1889 baseball field, where Central Junior High now stands, Sherman readies himself. In his senior yearbook, "The Helianthus," Sherman is listed as one of two substitutes on the 11-member team.
He's also part of the political science club, but "The Helianthus" describes the baseball team as the "leading athletic organization in the University." Now Sherman can add to that reputation.
With the bases loaded, a hit would give Kansas a lead.
Photos above: Chris Bronson/KANSAN
Rebecca and David Harvey moved to Lawrence in 1863 and began sharecropping on a farm owned by the local sheriff. Five years later, they bought a 15-acre patch of land by Blue Mound, southeast of Lawrence. They continued buying land through the years, and the farm has remained in the Harvey family to this day.
The Harvey brothers grabbed the opportunities at the University and held on. Sherman stayed active in school but kept to himself socially. After graduation, he passed the Kansas bar and maintained a practice in the Philippines for 19 years. He died in 1934.
Frederick, a third baseman, left the University to attend Meharry Medical School in Nashville. He became a prominent physician in the black community until his death in 1923.
Ed used athletics as his platform, playing center on the football team. He also played baseball, wrestled and competed in track and field.
Sherman Harvey, the oldest of the three Harvey brothers, played baseball on the 1889 Kansas baseball team. After graduation, he was elected clerk of the district court before opening a law firm in the Phillipines.
Later in life, he regularly attended KU football games before his health prevented him from doing so. He kept in touch with teammates until he died in 1953.
"That was Kansas at its best," said Bill Tuttle, professor emeritus of American studies at the University. "But then things changed, especially for this place with Bleeding Kansas and John Brown and freedom."
Right: Photo courtesy SPENCER RESEARCH LIBRARY
Skin color started to matter. Opportunities for African-American students slowly evaporated. Segregation took hold.
They wanted an education to better themselves. They wanted to carry on their parents' fight. And now the fight had more meaning.
It's the championship of the Triangular League featuring Kansas, Washburn and Baker. Sherman shows that winning has no color.
The Harvey brothers needed to step out of the shadow.
In his final at bat of the game, Sherman takes a swing and sends the ball flying. He ends up on third with "a 3-bagger" as Ed would later describe it. Sherman's hit is the game winner, and it's an important one.
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The Harveys had blended in with the University's white crowd. They had their reasons for going to school, but social change and racial equality weren't among them.
The brothers thrust their job titles and statuses as letter winners in front of the segregation movement like a dam containing a flood. They pleaded with Lindley and the University's administration. They even visited Lindley in person to make their case.
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But they didn't stop anything.
They couldn't stop anything.
They wrote another letter in 1921 - seven years after the original. Still nothing. And it was then that the Harveys learned, like so many before, that change doesn't always happen quickly. Not even in a town with progressive roots.
Others would eventually follow the Harveys on the University's athletic fields, but by the late 1910s those chances vanished. Two brothers would be dead before another black athlete played at Kansas.
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Epilogue:
Karen Byers, Ed Harvey's granddaughter and a contributing source for this story, died Jan. 21 at the University of Kansas Medical Center. She was 64.