Carter spoke with FORDHAM magazine about his time at WFUV, Fordham’s radio station; his experience as one of very few black men on campus during the early 1960s; his eventful career; and his ill-fated judgment call regarding four mop-topped blokes from Liverpool.

As a Brooklyn boy, how did you choose Fordham?
Fordham was chosen for me. I went to Regis High School in Manhattan, an all-boys Jesuit school. The principal insisted students apply for Catholic universities. I was accepted at Fordham and offered a full four-year scholarship. As a poor kid of a single mother from low-income housing projects in Brooklyn, I certainly had to take that offer. I wasn’t given room and board, so my mother said, “We’ll move to the Bronx!” So I was a day hop. I majored in classical languages—Latin and Greek.

And you ran for student government?
In freshman year I boldly ran for student council office. I was vice president of the freshman class. I had what we called “the Regis vote.” In sophomore year I was treasurer, and I was in charge of funding for the concert committee [which arranged to bring musical acts to campus.] Our concerts included the Kingston Trio, Ray Charles, and Peter, Paul and Mary—my favorite. Our class started that committee—or at least formalized it.

You became sports director at WFUV. What was it like in those days?
I joined WFUV in my sophomore year. There was an opening right away in sports, and I just slid into doing play-by-play for Fordham basketball and baseball. I later became sports director.

WFUV was on the third floor of Keating Hall at the time. There was a studio, a half office for the station manager, two turntables in the engineer’s booth, and a record library behind the booth. That was it. We were all student volunteers. It was comfortable. You could bring your books and study.

I did a segment called Around the Town about things to see and do in New York City. I covered the Beatles coming to Carnegie Hall in February 1964, [three days after their famous Ed Sullivan appearance].  I captured the excitement and the screaming young ladies.

Working with the concert committee, had you heard of the Beatles before they came to the U.S.?
In early 1963, the concert committee had gotten wind of this group from Liverpool called the Beatles. Someone said, “Let’s fly them in to the Fordham Gym and have them do a concert.” As the money guy, I was skeptical. I said, “What? The Beatles? What are they, some kind of insects? We’ll lose our shirts!” So I said no.

So when people say, what was the worst decision you ever made—that was the worst decision I ever made in my life. Fordham could have been the first place the Beatles ever appeared in the United States if not for Peter Carter.

As sports director at WFUV, you covered the return of Fordham football in 1964. What do you remember from that broadcast?
The highlight of our class, the Class of ’65, was that it was the one that brought football back to Fordham [as a club team]. This was a total student-run operation.

Our first home game was against NYU. We broadcasted it on FUV. We had to get a telephone line so we could hook it up to our tower at Keating Hall. Then I had to figure out how was I going to get on-field interviews. With microphone wire in hand, I crawled under the stands, which had been built by students, to have a microphone in place on the field. I did those interviews personally. Not everyone could buy a ticket, but people tuned in to 90.7 for a very live broadcast. And Fordham was victorious.

You were one of very few African-American students on campus at the time. What was that like for you and your classmates?
I was one of seven African-American students—or as they called us then, Negroes—out of 2,000 undergraduate students at Fordham College. I had to learn how to navigate around human beings who, through no fault of their own, had never met anyone like me. Their view of black people was from television. Or from watching black athletes. I chose not to be an athlete. I became a campus politician. It was an all-white campus, and I’m a campus politician. And the radio station sports director. [It was] a world that these guys kinda had to get used to. They liked and respected me. We all learned something about one another, which made us better off.

What was it like starting out as a teacher in New York City?
I wanted to give back to the Jesuits what they gave me, so I taught Latin and Greek  for a few years at Brooklyn Prep [a Jesuit high school that closed in 1972]. Then the diocese opened an alternative school [for troubled students] called the New High School. I was maybe 26, and they asked me to be assistant principal. We did the best we could to help those kids grow, even though circumstances put them in a position where the world looked at them askance.

What were some of the greatest challenges of your career?
In 1975 I became principal of a middle school in New Castle, Delaware, that was educating 1,300 kids in a space with 986 capacity. I always remember that number—986. We turned that school around. The courts had just ordered the schools to be desegregated and we bused in black students from Wilmington. That was quite a challenge. They weren’t warmly received and they were scared. We worked very nicely—had a lot of social events and such—and soon they weren’t scared anymore.

Later, as Essex County superintendent of schools in New Jersey in 1989, I was responsible for 23 school districts, including Newark, which [the state] eventually took over because they weren’t able to get the job done. I helped lead that process. No one was happy and no one was pleasant. However, the important part is, we helped the kids.

The biggest challenge I had was in 1995, as superintendent of schools in Irvington, New Jersey. When I came, the district had a $9 million deficit. After four years, I left it with a $3 million surplus. I persuaded the entire staff, including myself, to take a one-year salary freeze. One time I had 24 hours to make a payment of half a million dollars to the insurance company or they were going to cut benefits to the entire staff. Using my persuasive skills—learned in part at Rose Hill—I got an advance in state aid and made the payment in time. That was the greatest challenge of my career and perhaps my greatest accomplishment. We can balance that out with the Beatles fiasco.

Interview conducted, edited, and condensed by Nicole LaRosa.

Hey! Ho! Let’s Go! Back to April 27, 1984.

Thirty-two years ago, iconic punk rockers the Ramones played to a nearly sold-out house at Fordham’s Rose Hill Gym.

Joe Cerra, FCRH ’84, was chair of the Fordham concert committee back then. “We originally wanted the Go-Go’s. They were red hot at the time,” he says. But the all-female group’s drummer needed open-heart surgery, and they canceled one month before the gig. “The Ramones were available for that day, and we scooped them up. … Everyone enjoyed that show.”

The seminal band from Forest Hills, Queens, released their debut album in 1976 and toured relentlessly, playing often at the now-shuttered East Village venue CBGB. Even though their popularity was waning by 1984, their hits had staying power. “At every college party you went to, ‘I Wanna Be Sedated’ was playing,” Cerra says.

Backstage, the Ramones’ demands were few. “They were pretty straightforward and pretty down-to-earth guys,” says Cerra, although they did have one special request. The concert coincided with the fifth and deciding game in the New York Knicks’ opening-round playoff series against the Detroit Pistons. Concert committee member Rich Srsich, GABELLI ’85, “had to keep giving Joey Ramone updates on the Knicks game.” Joey must have been pleased by the result: The Knicks beat the Pistons in overtime that night.

To celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Ramones’ debut album, the Queens Museum is presenting “Hey! Ho! Let’s Go: Ramones and the Birth of Punk.” The exhibit, which runs until July 31, explores the band’s Queens roots and their notable influence on music, fashion, and art. On display are band members’ black jeans, guitars, artworks by Dee Dee Ramone, and more.

Dust off your motorcycle jacket and check it out!

On February 26, 1983, three years after releasing his smash single “The Breaks”—the first-ever rap hit on a major label—Kurtis Blow played a sold-out show in the McGinley Center on Fordham’s Rose Hill campus.

“It was a great performance. He was really, really entertaining,” said Joe Cerra, FCRH ’84, chair of the concert committee at the time. “We opened the doors early and had a mixer with a DJ.” Mimes and Mummers, Rose Hill’s theater company, had an earlier performance that evening, so people were able to go to both shows. “It was a really great night on campus,” Cerra said.

Considered by many to be the first commercially successful rap artist, Blow was a breakdancer and club DJ in Harlem and the Bronx in hip-hop’s early days. His influence became so significant that rapper Reverend Run of Run-D.M.C.—who was Blow’s regular DJ for a time—called himself the “Son of Kurtis Blow” when he was first starting out.

Mark Naison, PhD, professor of history and African American studies at Fordham, interviewed Blow in 2004 for the University’s Bronx African American History Project, which just made public its digital archives containing more than 300 oral histories.