Trailblazer: Homewood Hero
Victor Dates came to Johns Hopkins in 1956 as a day student. The Baltimore native recalls undergraduate life as intellectually stimulating, a time when he made lifelong friends and contacts. “I like Johns Hopkins,” he says. “It did well for me, particularly my psychological growth.” Hopkins liked Dates, too, apparently, because in 1966—after he had secured a law degree from Georgetown University Law Center and served for two years in the US Army—JHU President Milton Eisenhower invited Dates back to the Homewood campus to assume a newly created position. The Baltimore Sun reported then that Dates was “the first Negro to hold a high administrative post” and would report directly to Eisenhower “on all matters of equal opportunity and civil rights.” Dates worked closely with admissions and financial aid officers to help recruit more African American undergraduate and graduate students both locally and nationally, and developed initiatives for nondiscrimination in faculty and administrative staff positions. From 1970 to 1976, Dates served as secretary of the university, responsible for public relations, alumni affairs, special events, community affairs, development, and fiscal operations. He worked closely with the board of trustees, developing meeting agendas, ensuring that its policies were disseminated, and managing the day-to-day activities of the executive committee.
Although he never practiced as an attorney, Dates credits his legal education with instilling rigor and preparing him for a multifaceted and successful career. “Law school teaches you to write well and prepares you for many fields,” he suggests. By 1975, Dates was ready for new challenges. Shifting to Morgan State University, he became special assistant to the president for policy and program development, working on long-range academic planning, coordinating activities with the state legislature and educational agencies to obtain funding for operations and scholarships, and managing both internal and external relations and communications. Then, from 1978 to 1981, the University of Maryland at Baltimore County lured Dates to Catonsville to direct its Office of University Relations and Development.
During much of the ‘80s, Dates became an investment banker and acquired new skills and understanding of business and government, working with lawyers, accountants, and customer officials. By then his wife, Janette Lake Dates (JHU MA Ed ’64), had become dean of the School of Communications at Howard University; she mentioned that Howard needed instructors to teach law in its School of Business and Dates’s career took yet another turn as he embraced teaching both graduate and undergraduate courses in general and commercial law. Later, Dates also taught at Coppin State College, served as an educational consultant to the Baltimore City Public School System, and chaired the Department of Business Management at Southeastern University in Washington, DC.
Beyond his professional responsibilities, Victor Dates assumed leading roles in numerous prominent organizations, particularly Planned Parenthood and Common Cause. “I was attracted to Planned Parenthood early on, because it provides so many wonderful health services for both men and women, especially in the African American community,” he says. “At Common Cause of Maryland, we develop good, effective legislation that will improve government. I often testify about bills when the legislature is in session.”
John Guess, who was an undergraduate during Dates’s administrative tenure at JHU in the 1960s recalls Victor Dates as a trailblazer and a hero. Dates, Guess says, “led the internal fight in the mid-sixties to have the university become aggressive in its recruitment of African Americans. Through internal university memoranda and personal conversations, Victor Dates made the case to have many of us follow him in matriculation and graduation from Johns Hopkins.” Guess urges more recognition: “So many of the African American students, professors, and administrators at Homewood owe our presence at Hopkins to Victor Dates.”