Journey to Dartmouth: Escaping Segregation
Robert Bennett was born on April 14, 1947, in Columbus, Georgia, and raised primarily by his mother, Annie Mae Bennett. He grew up only eight-two years after the end of slavery in America, so he was at the heart of the civil rights movement. He was surrounded by an area where not only his friend’s great grandparents were past slaves, but his own as well. He grew up listening to stories from his grandmother’s experiences working as a homemaker for a white family; she washed their dirty laundry, folded and ironed their clothes, cleaned their homes, cooked them food, and more. When he was around eight years old, he visited his aunt who was a prisoner at a chain-gang camp, another post-slavery term of “Slavery by Another Name.” Chain gangs were groups of convicts forced to do tasks such as road construction, ditch digging, or farming, while chained together.
As a young child, it was very difficult for Bennett to grasp the severity of the mistreatment of Black people. To him, it was just the way of life; this doesn’t necessarily mean his family embraced it, but instead were just forced to live with it. The community in which Bennett grew up was segregated. He went to underfunded public schools, was denied the right to vote, and feared the police (who were all white). In spite of all of this, Bennett said he did not grow up with a negative self-image, and in fact, he enjoyed his childhood.
“We were an oppressed people and without question, but at the same time we didn't live that way.”
Bennett spent most of his time just being a kid. Almost every day he would go outside with his buddies and play sports with toys they made out of sticks and rags and other random items they found laying around. His teachers at Claflin Elementary School (pictured above) were all Black and made sure that they held high standards for all their students.
Bennett then moved to Cincinnati, Ohio to be closer to family and attended Harriet Beecher Stowe Elementary School for fifth and sixth grade. This was Bennett's first experience in a integrated Black and white school. He then went on to attend Abigail Cutter Junior High School for seventh, eighth, and ninth grade. Both of which happen to be in Cincinnati.
Finally, for high school his mother moved him to Chicago, Illionis where he attended an all-Black school. His mother moved back to Georgia with his stepfather, two brothers, and a sister, with whom he shares the same mother but different fathers. Robert decided to stay with his uncle and family friends in Chicago so that he would have access to better opportunities for his future. While in Chicago, Bennett participated in many school clubs, interdistrict student council, newspaper, key club, several honor societies, athletics, and more. On top of that, he was also one of the top students at his high school and athlete, earning him a football recruitment from Dartmouth College.