Scope and Contents: This record group contains papers relating to Fred Easter's personal life and many of his pofessional activities while he was associated with Carleton.
Almost half of the material deals with Project ABC (A Better Chance). This program, begun in the mid-sixties, gave socially underprivileged young persons the opportunity to attend private and first rate public high schools so that they had "a better chance" of succeeding in college.
Before entering ABC programs in the fall, students underwent a summer orientation program involving intensive study of english and mathematics, as well as cultural and athletic activities. With Arthur Gropen serving as Director, and trained Carleton Students serving as tutors, Carleton hosted its first summer orientation program in 1966. This was the first ABC orientation program to be co-educational. Gropen directed the next summer orientation program in 1967; Easter directed the programs from 1968-74. In addition to hosting orientation programs, Carleton provided a residence house for ABC students attending Northfield High School.
Fred Easter also Served as Director of the Midwest ABC, supervising orientation programs, high school programs, development, and other aspects of ABC for the region. In a letter to Jim Cooper dated 10 April, 1974, located in the Correspondence A-L folder, Easter expressed his anger and his view of the reasons he was fired by Bill Berkeley, President of ABC. The ABC topical Subseries contains two folders, Awards Banquet, 1967, and Carleton ABC Publications, 1967 that are pre-Easter.
The next series, Minority Affairs, concern Easter's involvement in Black Activities and, after a name change, Minority Affairs. As the Director of these offices, Easter provided academic and personal counselling for minority students.
The next series pertains to Easter's role as the Campus Coordinator of Special Services. His duties included counselling minority students and channelling funds from the Associated Colleges of the Midwest, who ran the Special Services program, to the tutoring office. The funds covered the cost of tutoring minority students.
The next two small series deal with Easter's jobs as an assistant director of Admissions, and as an English teacher. Of interest in the formere series is Easter's 8 December, 1969 essay "On Admission of Minority Groups," in the Admissions Task Force committee folder.
The personal series, which sheds little light on Carleton, does illuminate Fred Easter's character. His professional papers show that he was outspoken, combative, and occasionally contumelious. But his personal correspondence shows that he was accomodating and compassionate as well. It seems that Easter was concerned about every aspect of minority education. During his association with Carleton, he counselled and befriended minority students in both official and unofficial capacities. Many former students expressed gratitude and affection. Easter's Correspondence folder also contains letters to and from well known persons: author Alen Haley, basketball player Kareem Abdul Jabbar (no letters from Jabbar), musician Jack Lucas, director of CBS Sports, Sandy Grossman, and football players Clinton "Cadillac" Jones and Gene Washington
There is no material in this record group relating to Easter's role as an Associate Dean of Students.
Please see also the Central Records record group for additional material on project ABC.
No scanned images or documents are available for this collection.
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