A Kalamazoo College Homecoming and Reunion Weekend tradition will offer a twist this year by presenting a posthumous honor during the Alumni Association Awards and Athletic Hall of Fame Ceremony at 7:30 p.m. Friday in Dalton Theatre.
K alumni and friends will recognize 1861 graduate Rufus Perry, who is believed to be the first Black person to attend the College, with the Distinguished Achievement Award, which celebrates graduates who have achieved distinction in their professional fields.
Perry settled in Chatham, Michigan, after escaping enslavement at the Overton plantation in Tennessee. In Chatham, he might have met Martin Delaney, the father of Black nationalism, who was planning to emigrate to Africa. Perry became interested in emigrating as well, motivated by a desire to establish competition against the American South in the cotton industry.
Perry enrolled at K in 1859 when the Reverend John Booth, intrigued by Perry’s Africa aspirations, sponsored his education. Soon after graduation, the African Civilization Society selected Perry to lead an expedition to Western Africa. As a member of the society, Perry had joined some of the most progressive members of the country’s Black elite.
Perry’s plans changed after the Emancipation Proclamation. The African Civilization Society began working with freed people in the South and appointed Perry superintendent of its freedmen’s school in Washington, D.C.
In the late 1860s, Perry moved to the Weeksville neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York. As Judith Wellman writes in Brooklyn’s Promised Land, “national leaders such as Henry Highland Garnet, Rufus L. Perry, and Martin Delany consciously attempted to make Weeksville part of … the ‘golden age’ of black nationalism.”
Perry later served as corresponding secretary for the Consolidated American Baptist Missionary Convention (CABMC), a national Black Baptist organization. He was co-editor of two publications for CABMC, The American Baptist and The National Monitor. During those years, he argued with the white-run American Baptist Home Mission Society, bristling at the idea that Black people couldn’t serve within the Baptist power structure. Perry also served as pastor for several churches including the Messiah Baptist Church, which he founded in Weeksville in 1887.
Perry died in 1895 at the age of 61. The Brooklyn Eagle eulogized him as “one of the best-known colored clergymen in the country,” who “enjoyed a considerable reputation outside of Brooklyn. He was clear, concise and earnest in his speech, and wrote with ease and force.”
Perry’s nomination for the Distinguished Service Award developed during a discussion between Tom Ticknor ’67, Donna Odom ’67 and Anne Dueweke ’84. At the time, Dueweke was performing research for her 2022 book, Reckoning: Kalamazoo College Uncovers its Racial and Colonial Past, when Perry’s record came to their attention. Their recommendations to the Emeriti Club Leadership Council and the Alumni Association Engagement Board (AAEB) secured the honor for Perry through both alumni groups.
Perry’s great-great-grandson Freedom Williams will be on hand to accept the award on Perry’s behalf. Williams is the lead rapper for the popular group C+C Music Factory, which rose to fame in 1990 with their first album, Gonna Make You Sweat. He said the recognition for Perry is a prime honor for their family.
“I have worked very hard to keep the Rufus Perry legacy alive and at times not hard enough,” Williams said. “To say that this is a daunting task to build a legacy from scratch and carry the name of a loved one several generations past is beyond difficult. Thanks to his grand schemes and painstaking work of love, he provided me and us with enough thrust to move the ball forward rather easily. Ancestral veneration is an undertaking lost on a lot of my people, considering the bondage and tribulation prescribed upon them in the hopes that they would forget. Regardless of the hardships and erasing of lineage, I firmly believe in it and its benefits as I believe all lovers of history do whether they believe so or not. Although we prescribe to move into the future, it is the memories and relationships of the past that shape and mold us. I am eternally indebted to Kalamazoo College because you allow us one more point of light we can use as a guide to clear the path forward for the sake of all humanity and its endless possibilities in a time where good humans and their stories of triumph are so needed to help blight the chaos and hopelessness so prevalent in our world today.”
Others honored during the Alumni Association Awards and Athletic Hall of Fame Ceremony will include Don Schneider ’63 with the Distinguished Service Award, praising voluntary or elected leadership positions for the Alumni Association or College; Melanie Williams with the Weimer K. Hicks Award, saluting a current or retired employee of the College who has provided long-term support to programs or activities beyond the call of duty or excellent service in their job; and Darrin Camilleri ’14 with the Young Alumni Award, given to graduates within 15 years of their graduation on the basis of outstanding achievement, personal growth in their career or outstanding professional, civic and cultural service in ways that positively reflect K. Athletic Hall of Fame Awards will also be granted to Kelsey Hassevoort ’12, women’s tennis; Branden Metzler ’17, men’s tennis; Ryan Orr ’18, baseball; Colleen Orwin ’17, women’s swimming and diving; and the 1994 men’s tennis team.
A livestream of the awards ceremony will be available through Vimeo.