Original Article: http://dartreview.com/archives/2001/06/11/dartmouths_shameful_censorship_the_humphries_murals.php
Monday, June 11, 2001
In 1894, Richard Hovey, a poet and prodigious writer of songs for Dartmouth (including the Alma Mater), wrote a comical song about the founding of the College. The song, 'Eleazar Wheelock,' is a story of Eleazar Wheelock going out to teach the Indians, eventually founding a college. Hovey was not writing a serious account; instead he decides to have a bit of fun with everyone involved. Among Wheelock's resources for educating the Indians are 'a Bible and a drum / And five hundred gallons of New England rum.' The song was a favorite among students for years:
Eleazar Wheelock
Oh, Eleazar Wheelock was a very pious man;
He went into the wildernes to teach the Indian,
With a Gradus ad Parnassum, a Bible and a drum,
And five hundred gallons of New England rum.
Fill the bowl up! Fill the bowl up!
Drink to Eleazar,
And his primitive Alcazar,
Where he mixed drinks for the heathen in the
goodness of his soul.
The big chief that met him was the sachem of
the Wah-hoo-wahs;
If he was not a big chief, there was never one you
saw who was;
He had tobacco by the cord, ten squaws, and more to come,
But he never yet had tasted of New England rum.
Fill the bowl up! Fill the bowl up!
Eleazar and the big chief harangued and gesticulated;
They founded Dartmouth College, and the big chief
matriculated.
Eleazar was the faculty, and the whole curriculum
Was five hundred gallons of New England rum.
Fill the Bowl up! Fill the bowl up!
During the 1937-38 school year, Walter B. Humphries, class of 1914, decided to create a painting to immortalize the beloved song. He caricatured the song and painted it for the walls of Hovey's Grill, the establishment on the first floor of Thayer Dining Hall named for the poet. Humphries' murals adorned the walls of the Grill until 1979 when, with John Kemeny as president, the College decided that the paintings were too offensive. The murals were boarded up, and Hovey's Grill was closed off and used only for storage. The paintings remain censored today; they are very rarely uncovered for private viewings.
The paintings, like Hovey's verse, are whimsical and comic. There are Indians, clad in loincloths, drinking with a fat, oafish Eleazar Wheelock.
'There are two Eleazar Wheelocks in the Dartmouth dramatis personae,' wrote Paul Zeller, the director of Dartmouth's Glee Club, in 1950. There is the earnest, tenacious divine whose faith carried him over obstacles which would have turned aside lesser men to found a college that became a living monument not only to the man himself but to his overriding strength of purpose. The other Eleazar Wheelock is the slightly comic opera figure celebrated, if not created, by the verses of Richard Hovey '85 composed on Easter Day, 1894, and set to music by Hovey's friend, Miss Marie Wurm, an English composer.' Humphries' art furthered
the latter tradition.
One of the reasons for the College's location was that men of 'steady habits' would surround the Native Americans and keep them from falling victim to hard drinking. How ironic, then, that Eleazar himself should be mixing the drinks!
Of course, Humphries painted a cartoonish portrait of not only the Reverend, but also of his Indian students; it's understandable that some would consider the work 'offensive.' Still, says Art History Professor Robert McGrath, the paintings 'convey a certain mindset of the times.' They are 'not treasures but pieces of art nonetheless. Once you open the Pandora's box of censorship, then there is no place to stop it.'
In the past, Dartmouth has had a proud tradition of defending First Amendment freedoms, including President Eisenhower's famous 'book-burners' speech at the 1953 Commencement and, of course, President Ernest Martin Hopkins' defense of the Communist José Clemente Orozco, who painted his own set of murals in Baker's reserve corridor.
The Orozco murals, like Humphries', are gaudy and overdrawn. Beyond that, the murals are also offensive, being explicitly anti-Protestant. In the last panel, Christ chops down his own cross and adds it to a trash heap of symbols of barbarity. The murals attack many traditional ideologies; a New England town meeting is portrayed as a mindless robotic exercise. Yet, while the Orozco murals are offensive to many students, the College doesn't board them up. On the contrary, they're hyped on every Dartmouth tour, and are, rightfully, preserved for educational and historical value. Hopkins called them 'a lecture in paint.'
Humphries' paintings were an answer to the Orozco murals; ironically he had been campaigning for their extirpation from Dartmouth. Hopkins gave him Hovey's Grill and commissioned the Hovey paintings as a compromise. But now Orozco remains, and Humphries is suppressed by the heavy hand of Big Green censorship. The non-censorship of the Orozco murals should be reason enough to take down the boards.
Still, the Humphries murals also have educational value. First, they are important period pieces; they are painted in the aggressive, overdrawn style found in many paintings of that era—a style 'which can be found in many cafes and bars across New York,' says McGrath. Whether we like it or not, the paintings are part of our artistic heritage.
Second, the murals reflect the society of the time. 'We cannot deny how Native Americans were viewed in the past at Dartmouth and in this country, said Colleen Larimore '85, a member of the Comanche tribe. 'Rather than flee from this past, we must face it and learn from it.'
Dartmouth isn't interested in learning, though. Dartmouth has fully bought into a PC ideology that privileges minority demands, even if they're ridiculous or anti-intellectual. The new attitude was epitomized in a Daily Dartmouth column last May by Randy Stebbins '01, who advocated dragging the Humphries murals out to the Green and burning them.
'Don't join the book burners,' Eisenhower told Dartmouth's class of 1953. 'Don't think you are going to conceal faults by concealing evidence that they ever existed. Don't be afraid to go into your library and read every book.' That's still good advice.
This fall, Hovey's Grill reopened its doors to students as 'Hovey's Lounge,' and it includes a pool table, foosball, and other games. Yet, instead of the bright murals, the walls are covered by plain, gray, canvas-covered boards. Students should tear them down.
It should go without saying that censorship has no place in an academic community, that a liberal educational institution like Dartmouth College shouldn't be sitting as the supreme authority over what students see, read, or listen to.
There are many books in the library which are extremely offensive but we do not respond with a mass book burning session on the Green.
The paintings are serving no purpose whatsoever in their present state. An easy solution would be for the College to uncover the paintings and create an exhibit, looked after by the Hood Museum. A plaque could explain their context. This was the idea in 1993 but somehow Dartmouth managed to forget about it.
No one is forced to look at the Hovey murals—Collis provides an alternate billiards room. But Dartmouth College remains terrified that students might—might—look at the paintings.