Bill / Justin

Bill at Virginia Episcopal School

Bill with V.E.S. varsity baseball team 1967-68

Bill in 2017. Photo: Awol Erizku for The New York Times

Colin Hanson Alexander, Paul Alexander ‘82, MBA ‘87, Evelyne Martial, Avarita Hanson ‘75, Bill Alexander ‘75, Tamu Brown, Justin Hanson Alexander ‘03

Bill Alexander and his son Justin (Class of ‘03) talk about Bill’s experience integrating an all-white prep school in Lynchburg, Virginia in 1967.

Justin and Bill compared notes on their Harvard experiences and how, to them, Black Lives Matter.  Bill left his home in Nashville, Tennessee to help fulfill his family’s multi-generational aspirations for and achievements in higher education.  Bill tells how he made that decision supported by his family and a North Carolina heiress benefactor who wanted to expose the wealthy sons of the South at VES who would be leaders in their communities to black scholarship students to see if the South would change if its future leaders were socialized to be less bigoted.

He evaluates that experience–now more than 50 years later – and tells us how as a practicing physician and medical director he fights racial disparities, has experienced discrimination and how he sees the current socio-economic conditions for black people, particularly men.

For more, see this 2017 NY Times article: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/07/magazine/the-way-to-survive-it-was-to-make-as.html