By Norman Cain, July 23, 2020 — My first evening on the college campus that I attended and that was in 1961. And it was traditional during that particular period at HBCUs [Historically Black Colleges & Universities] that freshmen went through a hazing process.
I traveled by train from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to Bluefield, West Virginia where I would begin my freshman year as a student at Bluefield State College in Bluefield, West Virginia. After arriving in Bluefield around 7 pm. I took a taxi from the train station to the campus. Immediately after disembarking the taxi in front of the boys’ dormitory. I was overwhelmed by a penetration of the intense wind-driven air that slashed through my thick woolen coat, extra bulky sweater, long johns, and onto the innards of my body. Seeing a step, I could not recall having been subjected to such a vehement chill.
Additionally, I was temporarily thrown off guard by the extraneous appearance of a cluster of boisterous upperclassmen chanting “Crab, crab, crab” as I thought I was a dormitory entrance and descended the slightly snow-covered steps and ambled across a bed of slick ice up to the taxi where I stood frozen because of the brisk wind and being startled by what for a second I could see to be a berserk mob.
I quickly regained my composure realizing that incoming freshmen at Bluefield State College were named “crabs.” That was the name they were given during the traditional HBCU hazing period. Several upperclassmen hastily retrieved my luggage from the trunk of the taxi and with me in the middle and their chanting, they generally trotted across a blanket of milky frosted snow through the (unclear) snow flurry that suddenly began to plummet from the sky.
Once inside the dormitory, I felt the warmth emanating from there. I was led down to a door and the occupants within commenced to join the chant of “Crab, crab, crab.” Finally, I was guided into a room where I was instructed to sit in a chair that was placed directly in the middle of the room. I apprehensively followed directions and sat, swiftly braced to myself, then I relaxed cause I guessed that whatever was about to transpire would be a part of an old-age African American collegiate hazing tradition. The light came from a high voltage light bulb that extended from the ceiling. The heat from the chimney radiated through the wall.
The room’s (hot and glistening floor) was a mirror that appeared as if it had recently been buffed with pine oil and it had a sweet aroma. The room was filled with upperclassmen who for some reason or another remained on campus during the winter semester break. One said “You should have come in September. Then you would have been with 100 other crabs. Now there would be no more than 50 that would come for the second semester.” Everyone in the room laughed but me. Suddenly I felt a pair of buzzing hair clippers roving across my head and the chorus of the old religious song Amazing Grace. I was being initiated into collegiate life. I started classes a week later.
I was there for about a week before the returning students came from the Christmas break and I think during that January we had no more than 50 new students come in and most of those were commuting students, so I was there by myself. In those days you had Veterans from the Korean War, because this was in ’61. I took the harassment up until the Sunday when the students came back. That Sunday was like one of the best days in my life because I was a young guy, 18 years old, and I saw all of these beautiful girls. I was not going to be acting silly around them.