A life of service and activism: A. Deane Buchanan '68

When A. Deane Buchanan '68 arrived on the Princeton campus in the fall of 1964 — a graduate of a small town high school in Darlington, PA ready to play college football — he was one of about 13 African-American students in the freshman class. In the year ahead of him, there were even fewer black students — about four. One of these was Buchanan's older brother. For many African-Americans, entering such a racially unbalanced environment would not be easy. For Buchanan, however, having a brother at the University gave him a sense of familiarity with the school, a feeling that he "understood what Princeton was all about." Now, Buchanan remembers his years at Princeton with fondness.

"Overall, being a student was a tremendous experience during that period of time," Buchanan said. "There was a great deal of turbulence throughout the country — a lot of it having to do with the war in Vietnam. There was more or less a social revolution going on at that time."

"Overall, the student body was accepting to us [black students], but, certainly, there were notable exceptions," Buchanan added.

Since so few black students were enrolled, members of the group relied on each other's support. The desire to develop an environment in which black students could prosper led Buchanan and a fellow African-American classmate, Paul Williams Carryon '68, to found the Princeton Association of Black Collegians.

"It was, at the time, the only organization on campus that was exclusively African-American," he said.

At a time when black students were still establishing their place on campus, the group represented a haven for many of them.

"This was the one organization on campus in which every black student knew that they were welcome," Buchanan recalls. "As a group, we addressed such issues as living arrangements, eating arrangements. The group shared information with each other on how to deal with academic requirements. Really any issues that were problematic could be dealt with as a group."

Buchanan also joined Tower Club in the spring of his sophomore year. Even among the black students, he was not alone. Between 60 and 75 percent of African-American students joined clubs.

Buchanan, however, was not entirely at ease with the situation. While clubs as a unit did not specifically discriminate against black students, individual members did create problems. Although he recalls "a diversity of opinions about [the clubs]," many African-American students presumed discrimination and chose not to take part in the eating club process. Buchanan, too, decided to leave the club system.

"My recollection is that there was no feeling of comfort at the club for me . . . not that I was discriminated against, but just that there weren't enough other black students there to make me feel comfortable," he said.

Despite the obstacles he had to overcome at the University, Buchanan graduated from Princeton in 1968 with a degree in politics and fond memories of the school. Since then, the highlight of his undergraduate career — African-American activism — has remained important to him.

Immediately after graduating, Buchanan went to work for the Black Economic Union, a group whose mission is to assist African-Americans in becoming involved in the country's economic "mainstream." He then enrolled in law school at Case Western University and later became a founding partner of the Cleveland law firm Hardiman, Buchanan, Howland and Trivers.

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"There were about fifteen lawyers in the office, most of whom were minorities, and we did primarily civil rights type litigations — things such as employment discrimination and police brutality," he said.

Buchanan worked at the firm — which Black Enterprise rated in 1993 as one of twelve leading black law firms in the country — until 2001, save the two-year interlude he spent working as the legal council for Ohio's then-governor Richard Celeste. Last year, Buchanan was elected to the Cleveland Heights Municipal Court, where he hears both criminal and civil cases from the relatively small but diverse community.

Even through the busy years Buchanan has spent in his career since graduating, he has continued the activism and service that characterized his days at Princeton. Most notably, he is now active as a member of the board of directors of the Tiger Woods Foundation.

"The organization was formed by Tiger and his father with the basic goal being to make opportunity available to young people — disadvantaged or not — to pursue their dreams, and we do our best to help them do that," he noted.