A Short History of the Pomona College Alma Mater

The Pomona College Alma Mater was written for a blackface minstrel show in 1909-1910 that was put on to benefit the baseball team. It was written by Richard N. Loucks, Jr. ex ’13, for the closing chorus of the “olio” – the ensemble finale – of the show. Loucks stated in notes kept in the alumni house that it was “written only for [the] show closer”. He also reported that at the end of that year he was forced to resign from the college for poor academic performance. Loucks was the first recipient of the Trustee Medal of Merit, an honor bestowed in gratitude for composing several important Pomona College songs. (Loucks’ son, also Richard Loucks ‘42, was a faculty member in the music department from 1948 to 1989.)

Loucks reported being unable to find a program for the show, though we have programs for similar shows and photographs from similar shows. Blackface minstrel shows and other shows where students were made-up as other minority groups seem to have been very popular on campus (and indeed in society at large) at that time.

Loucks reports that he did not know when the college adopted “Hail, Pomona, Hail” as the alma mater, but in notes from an interview for the alumni magazine, he is quoted as telling the following story:

“Dean Norton came to Bill Clarey and Bill was sort of a student leader, a very serious fellow, but he had a lot of humor. He told Bill that he would like him to persuade the students that it is not proper for the college to accept this as something that was the work of somebody that the college didn't think was worthy of staying in the college. When that got out, I think that's what got the vote.”

In a letter published in the Pomona College Magazine in the spring of 2002, alumnus Carl L. Olson ’66, talking about the creation of a new version of the college songbook in 1966, relates:

“In order to be as accurate as possible about the origins of "Hail! Pomona, Hail!”, I tracked down a photograph of the blackface show for which it was originally written in 1909. Because I had departed for Columbia University in 1966, I was not around on campus in 1968 when the songbook was finally printed. Somehow that blackface photo was the only one that was omitted from the ones that I had designated, and the text of the narrative had mysteriously been altered to say "minstrel" instead of "blackface." This was an unsettling departure from the academic honesty that is the norm of Pomona pride.”