Faculty Profile: Max Maxwell

           Less than 60 years ago,  Lawrenceville’s first Black teacher arrived on campus. Roland Hence, a teacher who previously worked at Trenton Junior High, worked in Lawrenceville’s English Department for only a year before leaving. He was then replaced by Max Maxwell H’74 ’79 ’80 ’81 ’91, both as an English teacher and as the only Black teacher at the time. “My goal was to spend two years [at Lawrenceville] and then go off to the University of Michigan, where I had been offered a job. Then I grew to love this place,”  Maxwell said. Maxwell worked in the English Department for around 40 years before moving to the Educational Support Department where he currently works as a writing specialist.

          When Maxwell came to Lawrenceville in 1969, “America was boiling with new ideas about race, especially in the universities. The Civil Rights movement was in full swing, and every school in New Jersey was looking for qualified Black teachers. Still, shockingly few schools had Black representation of any kind,” Maxwell noted. Unlike many of his peers, Maxwell was looking for a job as a  high school teacher. Only 10 years prior, he moved from Jamaica to the United States. Having been in an integrated high school system in Jamaica, Maxwell did not face significant challenges  being the only Black teacher at Lawrenceville. “I knew what the situation was, and I knew that the 15 or so Black students at Lawrenceville needed someone they could relate to… I suspect that [my goal] was making sure the Black student population at Lawrenceville was more comfortable when I left than when I came in,” Maxwell stated.

          This goal of connecting with Black students at Lawrenceville did not come without obstacles. Maxwell worried about his ability to actually relate to the Black students at Lawrenceville. “I was, after all, a foreigner. I didn’t know that much about the experiences the students here had gone through, but I was hoping that once I came in that would change,” he noted. For a while, the numbers of Black students and faculty at Lawrenceville stayed constant, with only Maxwell on the faculty and around 20 to 30 Black students out of about 800 students, making up three percent of the population.

          That began to change in 1987 when Josiah “Si” Bunting H’37 ’59 ’88 ’91 ’95 P’88 ’97 became Lawrenceville’s headmaster, and the Board of Trustees decided to integrate girls as part of Lawrenceville. “Bunting brought very revolutionary—at the time—ideas to Lawrenceville. As he put it, having one Black teacher and 30 Black students is a disgrace, and we had to change that,” mentioned Maxwell. Finally, after Maxwell’s first 18 years of working at Lawrenceville, a second Black teacher joined the faculty, Lawrenceville alumnus Armond Hill ’73. Soon the numbers of Black students and teachers began to rise and gradually, Lawrenceville built a more diverse faculty.

          With the addition of girls into the Lawrenceville community, teachers like Maxwell faced a new set of challenges. Maxwell initially struggled with teaching girls, having traditionally only taught boys. “When it was an all-boys school, I had never seen this single point of view so blatantly expressed… Once the girls came in, I had a very strict rule that [the male students] listened and did not cut off people when [they’re] talking. You have no idea how often boys would cut the girls off. After a few weeks, suddenly they got the idea,” Maxwell described. 

          Lawrenceville’s commitment to diversity has come a long way since Maxwell first joined the faculty. While the School is far from perfect, the administration has made significant strides to improve the School’s diversity, and hopefully will continue to do so. Maxwell applauds the fact that “the School has consciously attempted to make itself better.” As Lawrenceville works towards self-improvement, it is critical to highlight the members of the School community like Maxwell who helped make equality and inclusion a priority at Lawrenceville.