When Renee Alexander ’74 matriculated on the Hill in fall 1970, she was one of about 275 Black students in her freshman cohort. Hers was a significantly more diverse entering class – one that was also the first to have applied and been admitted following the 1969 Willard Straight Hall occupation and the ongoing racial strife on campus.
The tension at the time “was impossible to ignore, and it impacted everything that we did, everywhere that we went,” she recalls. “But the flip side is that I also had this welcoming, warm, insulated Black community that came together because we felt safe together. My community was my life here.”
And as she and her peers began to graduate, she says, it was clear they had to do something to extend the vibrant network they’d created.
“We knew that many of these people would be in our lives for the rest of our lives,” she says. “So how would we build an organization that preserves this community?”
The Cornell Black Alumni Association (CBAA) sprang from that effort: Alexander and several others—Sandra “Sandi” Black ’73; Conway Boyce ’75, BA ’76; Carlton Holmes ’72; and Irene Smalls ’71—founded it in 1976.
The organization “has served as a national home for Black Cornellians—built by alumni, sustained by community, and driven by purpose,” says Shannon Cohall ’14, LLM ’25, the group’s current president.
This spring, CBAA—which now has more than 1,000 dues-paying members, with about 12,000 more subscribing to its newsletter and listservs—is celebrating its first half century with a gala in Washington, DC, April 24–26.
CBAA at 50: A Golden Celebration Honoring the Past, Celebrating the Present, Securing the Future will include receptions, panel discussions, storytelling, and collecting memories for an oral history project. (The last day to register and purchase tickets is April 15.)
Three alumni—University benefactor and trustee emeritus Thomas Jones ’69, MRP ’72; prominent legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw ’81; and progressive activist Svante Myrick ’09, former mayor of Ithaca—are being honored at the gala.
The event will also serve as the public launch of the CBAA Legacy Fund, a campaign with a $1.5 million goal to support and grow the group’s scholarships, mentorship, engagement, cultural preservation, and more.
Read the full story on the Cornellinas website.
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