Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, May 23, 1994 TAG: 9405230054
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: CHARLOTTESVILLE LENGTH: Medium
The law school's first black graduate also believes he received lower grades than he deserved.
This year, Merchant was invited to deliver the law school graduation address at Sunday's commencement.
"It's hard to explain to anybody how I feel about this," said Merchant, whose daughter is among the 370 graduates.
"It makes me feel good. It really does."
Merchant, 61, is Connecticut's consumer counsel, responsible for representing ratepayers in public utility matters.
Merchant was appointed to the post by Gov. Lowell Weicker in 1991. Weicker was a classmate of Merchant's at the Virginia school, but Merchant doesn't remember meeting him.
Merchant lived in a different world then. He remembers feeling lonely as the only black member of the 1958 class.
"It was not welcoming, and I would not give the school credit for even being neutral," he said.
"I would say the reaction from the student body was mixed. I don't think a significant number of the faculty were thrilled with my presence."
Merchant, who graduated from Virginia Union University, applied to Virginia's law school at the urging of Virginia Union President Samuel D. Proctor Jr., "who wanted the first black graduate [from Virginia's law school] to be a Union man."
Proctor, now professor emeritus at Rutgers University in New Jersey, remembers Merchant as "one very good student. He was tough-minded and capable of standing the heat. He was durable enough to survive."
Merchant said he did not want to attend his graduation from law school but went "because my parents, native Virginians, deserved to be there to see it."
For 17 years, he stayed away from the university.
"I had no good feelings, no good memories about the place," he said.
He was invited back in 1975 to sit for a portrait that was part of a series on groundbreakers in Virginia. He came back again in 1986 when his niece and daughter were looking at colleges.
Merchant's niece received her undergraduate degree from the University of Virginia.
His daughter, Susan Beth Merchant, 24, went to the University of Pennsylvania as an undergraduate and will be the first child of a black graduate to graduate from Virginia's law school.
"The best thing about my father coming back is that people are celebrating him coming back," Susan Merchant said.
"I feel the law school owes him something for what happened 35 or 36 years ago. . . . I want him to feel as welcome as I did here."
by CNB