Teacher and Coach: Dr. Sharon Egretta Sutton on Discipline, Intellectual Leadership, and Being the First
By Julia Gamolina
Dr. Sharon Egretta Sutton, FAIA is distinguished visiting professor at Parsons School of Design and previously served on the faculties of Columbia University, Pratt Institute, the University of Cincinnati, the University of Michigan, and the University of Washington. She is a distinguished professor of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture and a recipient of the medal of honor from both AIA Seattle and AIA New York and the Life Achievement Award from the Michigan Women’s Hall of fame. Her fine art is in numerous collections and in the Library of Congress.
In her interview, Dr. Sutton talks about being the first and becoming a teacher, advising those just starting their careers to believe in something larger than themselves and to develop relationships around that.
JG: Tell us about how you grew up.
SES: I grew up as a “colored girl” in Cincinnati, Ohio, recognized as the gateway to the South not only because it was a scenic spot along the Ohio River for travelers headed north but also because the Jim Crow laws that mandated racial segregation in former Confederate states were widely practiced there. I would have liked to go to the swimming pool, skating rink, and movie theater in my neighborhood, but colored people like me were barred from entering these facilities.
Instead, I began playing the piano at age five, taking lessons in the small apartment of the organist at my mother’s church and practicing on the baby grand pianos that were in the homes of two more affluent women in my neighborhood who felt compelled to provide opportunities so lower-income children could flourish despite racial oppression.
Cover, When Ivory Towers Were Black: A Story about Race in America’s Cities and Universities with Foreword by James Stewart Polshek (New York: Fordham University Press, 2017).
Tells the story of how a cohort of ethnic minority students were recruited to Columbia University’s School of Architecture and the institutional transformation that enabled their successful careers. Photo courtesy Sharon Egretta Sutton.
Yes, you were first a professional musician! Tell me about that.
A full scholarship from the Manhattan School of Music allowed me to escape Cincinnati’s racial restrictions “up north” in New York City. After earning an undergraduate degree, I toured with Sol Hurok Attractions, performed in symphony orchestras, in Radio City Music Hall, and on Broadway, appearing in over 1,000 performances of Man of La Mancha and recording its original cast album.
How did you get your start in architecture?
I got my start in architecture because I was unable to rent an apartment in New York City (which remains the third most segregated city in the nation). At the time, I was unsure about whether this difficulty was due to my race, the city’s housing shortage, or because I made a lot of noise practicing my French horn.
To solve the problem, I purchased a vacant rat-infested former rooming house and renovated it into a rent-controlled class-A multi-family building. So I practiced architecture and community revitalization before I knew the meaning of those terms. When I did begin studying architecture, I learned that the discipline that I had acquired as a musician was more than sufficient to overcome the hurdles I encountered due to racism, sexism, and classism.
“I determined that my agency would derive from intellectual leadership. That is, I would learn to lead through the power of ideas and voice rather than through a formal position.”
Walk me through your career steps chronologically, focusing on significant moments and key milestones.
Subsequent to my 11-year career as a professional musician, which concluded with studies in interior design, my trajectory shifted toward the civil rights activism of the era and a degree in architecture. Having become the 12th African American woman licensed to practice architecture, I knitted together the pieces of my interdisciplinary outlook in a Fifth Avenue loft where I practiced architecture and fine art and also lived, while teaching architecture at Pratt Institute and Columbia University and earning three additional postbaccalaureate degrees in philosophy and psychology.
After making a frightening leap out of New York City and back to the Midwest for a position at the University of Michigan, I was selected for a prestigious W.K. Kellogg National Leadership Fellowship, which resulted in additional funding to establish and evaluate a national K-12 outreach program in urban design. With this award-winning program as anchor for my scholarship, I authored two books, Learning through the Built Environment and Weaving a Tapestry of Resistance, and numerous scholarly and popular articles and lectured internationally, resulting in my becoming the 1st African American woman to be promoted to full professor of architecture, the 2nd to be elevated to fellowship in the AIA, and the 1st to serve as president of the National Architectural Accrediting Board, concluding by being inducted into the Michigan Women’s Hall of Fame.
The first (Norma Merrick Sklarek) and the second African American female to be elevated to fellowship in the AIA and the first and second African American female to be awarded the AIA Whitney M. Young Jr. Award. At the 2009 AIA National Convention. Photo courtesy Sharon Egretta Sutton.
Seeking an urban environment where I could practice my increasing trajectory toward civic engagement, I accepted a professorship at the University of Washington where I was principal investigator of a $.5m Ford Foundation study of civic engagement by low-income youth—work that contributed to my becoming the 2nd African American woman to receive the AIA Whitney M. Young, Jr. award. To understand civic engagement in real time, I served on the Seattle Design Commission and chaired the Capitol Hill Design Review Board resulting in the AIA Seattle Chapter Community Service award and Medal of Honor award.
Eventually losing patience with the university’s and city’s whiteness, I returned full circle to my beloved New York City as distinguished visiting professor at Parsons School of Design, welcomed by the AIA New York Chapter Medal of Honor, the Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation Oculus Award, and many book signings for When Ivory Towers Were Black (Fordham 2017).
Looking back at it all, what have been the biggest challenges?
The biggest challenges have been sexism and racism, especially the heavy lift of integrating three faculties as either the first female, first African American, or both and, relatedly, teaching students from small towns in northern Michigan and western Washington who had never before encountered a African American female instructor.
“The highlights have come from being a teacher and coach...hearing about the achievements of former students who are senior-level academics, practitioners, and public servants, many of them engaged in social change work that extends my own passions.”
What have been the highlights?
The highlights have come from being a teacher and coach. For example, one highlight is hearing about the achievements of former students who are senior-level academics, practitioners, and public servants, many of them engaged in social change work that extends my own passions. Another is mentoring AIA members to fellowship—I insist upon calling them “my fellas”—or serving as an external reviewer for academics who are seeking promotion.
However hands down, the biggest highlight was upending a plan by the presidents of the five collateral organizations in architecture to eliminate the Bachelor of Architecture degree, which would have disadvantaged less-well-heeled students even more than they already were. I argued so fiercely about this elitist plan at a seminar of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture that it vanished into thin air and still has not reappeared.
Who are you admiring right now, that is doing work you'd like everyone to know about?
I am admiring Richard Rothstein, author of The Color of Law (Liveright Publishing), distinguished fellow of the Economic Policy Institute, and senior fellow (emeritus) at the Thurgood Marshall Institute of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. I thought I knew everything there was to know about racial segregation and redlining in America having lived and taught the subject over a lifetime, but Rothstein’s exacting research about the explicit government policies that systematically impoverished people of color is breathtaking. I am also admiring the community-based youth programs I began studying in 2004 with Ford Foundation funding. I cannot reveal their names as my research contract requires anonymity, but you can read about their efforts to uplift themselves and their communities through hands-on, place-based activism in my forthcoming book, A Pedagogy of Hope (Fordham).
A Series of Fragmentary Memories
The Muses Were Daughters of Memory—in Winter
Lacquered Hand-colored Transfer Print with Gouache and Collage
30" x 60" on Fabiano Etching Paper, 01 January 1987
Photo courtesy Sharon Egretta Sutton
What is the impact you’d like to have in/on the world? What is your core mission?
During my W.K. Kellogg National Leadership Fellowship, which built fellows’ aptitude to work across disciplines as change agents, I determined that my agency would derive from intellectual leadership. That is, I would learn to lead through the power of ideas and voice rather than through a formal position. To that end, I have aspired to understand the ways that place—locality—intersects with collective human agency to spark transformation in oppressive and unjust conditions, whether large or small. Most importantly, I strive to communicate my understandings in a way that motivates others to take action.
Finally, what advice do you have for those starting their career? Would your advice be any different for women?
My advice for young people, regardless of their birth gender, would be: believe in something that is larger than yourself—that connects you to your genealogy, culture, and locality. Then build relationships around that larger something so that you will have the audacity to resist the flattening seduction of neoliberal capitalism.