In 1949, a black kid named Bob Polk, who’d grown up on the south side of Chicago, applied to Doane College, a small, picturesque college in the small Nebraska town of Crete.
Administrators turned him down initially, saying they could not find anyone who wanted to be his roommate.
He appealed to leaders in the Congregational Church -- which had initially brought him to Doane for a youth conference just days after his high school graduation in 1946 -- and shortly thereafter the college had a new dean of students and Polk was on his way to Nebraska.
He and Georgetta Cooper, a friend from Chicago who followed him to Doane, became the only black faces on the small campus, and his experiences helped lead him to combine a calling to the ministry with a commitment to social justice.
Four years later, he became the first black student to earn a degree from Doane, followed a year later by Cooper.
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On Monday, after 63 years of following his calling, Polk was back on campus to accept Doane's highest alumni award and to kick off a new college lecture series he’d established.
On Monday evening, he was to become the first speaker at the Robert L. Polk Lectureship on Race and Social Justice. The topic of his speech: “Why Race Still Matters.â€
“I want to say that the more things change, the more things remain the same. I’m going to talk about what students can do, what colleges can do, what individuals can do,†he said Monday afternoon. “It won’t be a harsh tone, but it will be a deliberate tone about why race still matters.â€
At a Monday lunch where Polk met with students and faculty, it was clear it still matters.
Students talked of their own experiences and frustrations at the college, where 10 to 14 percent of the slightly more than 1,000 students on the Crete campus are students of color -- many of them there to participate in athletics.
Students told Polk that minority students who come to Doane tend not to stay.
“They’re not feeling comfortable here; they don’t feel like they have a voice here at Doane,†said sophomore Jordan Zonner.
Students of color are not represented in student organizations and government, said student Rachel Lukowicz, and there seems to be little administrative support for starting the conversations necessary to change the culture.
Zonner and Aspen Green, who both came to Doane from out of state to play volleyball, were inspired by the riots in Ferguson, Missouri, to start a student organization called IDEA (Inclusion, Diversity, Equality, Access) to find ways to help all students feel welcome.
Zonner and Green no longer play volleyball, but they’ve stayed at Doane and thrown their passion toward their new club, approved by administrators two weeks ago.
They asked Polk, what should they do? How can they be advocates and encourage students to stay and feel a part of the college? How do they move past posters and signs to something real?
Be vigilant, he said. Find students, bring them on board. Don’t give up and things will change.
Another student, Kennerly Benraty, who came to Doane from Virginia to wrestle, said part of the solution is using social media and making other efforts to reach out to students to encourage them to be involved -- especially athletes. He had no idea, he said, that there were no students of color in student government.
Students must learn to be comfortable being uncomfortable, he said, to put themselves in new situations.
Minority students -- especially those from urban areas -- find a very different culture at Doane, he said. Where he grew up, the division was between the "haves" and "have nots."
“In the place I grew up, race didn’t matter. We were all broke,†he said. “We were all working toward a common goal, to get our butts out of there.â€
He no longer wrestles, he said, but he’s joined the forensics team. And it’s not always comfortable, but that’s OK.
“I feel uncomfortable. Every day when I wake up, I'm uncomfortable. But when I go home, I see kids in the same place. I see how comfortable they are. It’s humbling to realize I came home and I’m comfortable. But it’s a break. For them, it’s a lifestyle,†he said. “We have to make people on the campus comfortable with being uncomfortable.â€
Doane chaplain Karla Cooper said getting two diverse groups to mesh -- students of color who have had little interaction with white students and white students who have had little interaction with students of color -- is difficult.
And that means the idea of students getting comfortable being uncomfortable means white students as well.
Although his initial application was rejected, Polk said he felt accepted by fellow students once on campus in the 1950s. But it was still very different.
“Trying to meld and be a part of campus without shedding our roots or giving up our identities was interesting,†he said.
Polk went on to become a youth minister at the multi-cultural and interfaith Riverside Church in New York and later became minister of outreach and urban affairs.
He worked at New Orleans’ Dillard University, a historically black liberal arts college, during the height of the Civil Rights Movement.
He organized the first Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Service in New York City. He established the first AIDS program in New York City under the Council of Churches.
And he's maintained his ties to Doane and its students.
He said he supports the work of Black Lives Matter, a group that formed after George Zimmerman was acquitted of charges in the shooting of Trayvon Martin.
“I think it’s the new Civil Rights Movement in the country,†he said. “Hopefully, they will be a voice in this political election.â€
He encouraged the Doane students to keep working, keep talking.
“Just think about what you can do and don’t give up on it.â€
It’s the same message he planned to give Monday night.
“Look what everyone said around the table,†he said. “Race still matters.â€