Rogers, Judy

Dickinson junior Judy Rogers, after spending the summer in Sierra Leone as part of the Operation Crossroads Africa (OCA) program, shared her experiences with her classmates and local communities.

Rogers remarked on the similarities between African cities and American cities, and her own intimate participation in Sierra Leonean culture: students were expected to live as the local people did, eating their food and donning traditional dress when appropriate.

In her 1984 research paper "The Presence of the Black American at Dickinson College from 1773 to the Present," Elaine Vivian Watson researched the influence of "Black America" upon Dickinson College. Her paper includes information on "unfamous firsts" at Dickinson as well as information on the Black Alumni Questionaire.

 

Some "Unfamous Firsts" Include:

 

1901: John Robert Paul Brock is the first black male student to graduate from Dickinson College.

 

This photo depicts student Judy Rogers and Jim Robinson during a Project Africa event in 1964.

At the close of her sophomore year, Judith Rogers, one of the first African Americans to receive campus housing at Dickinson, had received two distinctions.

OCA (Operation Crossroads Africa) was founded at Dickinson by Judy Rogers, '65. Rogers was the College's first representative in Africa in the summer of 1963. The following summer ('64) three other Dickinson students followed her lead.

In her "Women as Leaders" survey response, a female Dickinsonian remembers how the Dickinson experience was for her. Being only one of two African American women on the campus, she felt that her social life was restricted. She remembered the two other African American students on campus, Judy Rogers and Skip (Everett) Hewlett.