nccu

Brian Kennedy on the continued relevance of HBCUs

terrasig — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 06:02:01 +0000

Brian Kennedy on the continued relevance of HBCUs

As launched with yesterday's post, we'll be spending this week presenting my impressions of a symposium held on June 3-4, 2010, entitled, "Setting the Agenda for Historically Black Colleges and Universities." Sponsored by North Carolina Central University, one of five HBCUs in the University of North Carolina system, this gathering of national education leaders culminated a year long celebration of the centennial of the 1910 founding of the institution by businessman, teacher, and pharmacist, Dr. James E. Shepard.

A native of Raleigh, Shepard earned a Ph.G. in pharmacy (the original pharmacy degree) in 1894 from the Leonard Medical School at Shaw University. After establishing the first pharmacy in Durham that served African-American clientele, Shepard was central to the founding of two institutions that established the Bull City as a beacon of Black business activity in the South: the North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company (1898) and Mechanics & Farmers Bank (1907).

HBCUs have tended to focus on their rich history of struggle and accomplishment but the symposium focused on moving forward as an institution in today's highly-competitive higher education landscape and global economy. Scholars far more qualified than I have held forth on the continued relevance of the HBCU.

But as a white professor from the North at a HBCU, what I find most refreshing is learning from students about how the HBCU experience is relevant to them - today. I want to share one example with you in this post.

Brian Kennedy is a native of the Charlottesville, Virginia area and is a rising junior in political science at NCCU. He was recently elected vice-president of the NCCU Student Government Association. Brian qualifications could have easily gotten him into UVa, or any university for that matter, but he chose only to apply to Howard University and NCCU. (This reminds me of a Temple University commercial on Philadelphia television stations in the early 1980s featuring Bill Cosby speaking about specific students and their qualification with his tagline, "She could've gone anywhere. She chose Temple.")

On day one of the HBCU Symposium, Brian gave the lunch address in a session entitled, Student Matters: Manifestations of the HBCU Experience. Brian was swamped with attention following the session but he took time later in the day to share with Terra Sigillata readers the highlights of his talk. Toward the end we also shared a few laughs as to whether students want blogging professors in their social media affairs.

Many thanks to Mr. Kennedy for talking with us about his talk and his own influences and motivations for choosing to attend a HBCU.

terrasig Mon, 06/14/2010 - 02:02

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I attended Oakwood University. OU HBCU has a higher rate of acceptance of pre-med students to medical schools or graduate schools than most other schools in the country. It is the same for most HBCU's as far as their graduates being prepared for graduate schools. I was accepted with a full ride into my master's program and was pleasantly surprised to be BETTER prepared than my classmates who came from PWI's, in regards to psychology foundational knowledge.

The mentoring that occurs as well as the rigor in academic preparedness due to smaller classes are a factor this conversation gets at but does not illuminate. Thanks for sharing this.

no luck on the Historically Lily White College or University moniker then?

Dr. Gamble - thank you so much for your insights. We need more people like you to tell your personal stories. The statistics I quoted above are well-worn but there is nothing more powerful, to me at least, than hearing of one personal HBCU experience and retrospective.

The small class sizes you note are indeed another great benefit of many HBCUs because of the opportunities for personalized attention. Discussed at the symposium was the concern that economic pressures to increase enrollment runs the risk of compromising this advantage of the HBCU.

BikeMonk - Indeed, HLWCUs was the term that arose in the blog post thread back in 2008. But there is some scholarly truth in your classification as put forth by University of Pennsylvania professor Marybeth Gasman. She noted that she specifically uses the term "historically White institutions" or HWIs instead of "predominantly White institutions" because these colleges have in their history a policy of systematically excluding Blacks, many as late as the 1960s and 1970s.

Surprising to many was that Gasman, a scholar who has devoted her respected career to the study of the HBCU, Black women in the STEM fields, and the history of the United Negro College Fund, is White. I had the opportunity to chat with Dr. Gasman and will post parts of that interview later in the week.

U2 Academic Conference Registration Opens; Q&A With Organizer, Scott Calhoun

terrasig — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 04:02:37 +0000

U2 Academic Conference Registration Opens; Q&A With Organizer, Scott Calhoun

During the summer between high school and college, about this very time in 1981, I was sitting at a beach house in North Carolina listening to my uncle rail against The Beatles. He held that the band never truly took its fame and international press attention to doing anything good for the world except to glorify LSD.

I now get to tell him about U2.

That summer also saw the launch of MTV and in fall I watched four young Dubliners on a barge playing a song called, "Gloria," the opening track of their album October. And in the intervening years the band, and especially its lead singer Bono, have used their international platform to raise awareness and act upon injustices worldwide. In 2002, Bono and Bobby Shriver co-founded the humanitarian organization DATA (debt, AIDS, trade, Africa), known now as ONE. Among their many causes, the pharmacologist in me has been most impressed with ONE and Bono's personal efforts to make antiretroviral HIV/AIDS drugs available in sub-Saharan Africa.

I've long been a fan of the band, U2 - so much so that during graduate school I played in a U2 tribute band (I was Adam Clayton). So imagine my delight when I read this in a press release a few weeks ago:

ACHTUNG U2 FANS
Come spend a few days talking, listening and thinking about what U2 has done. We're bringing together scholars, teachers, students, journalists, clergy, musicians and intellectually curious U2 fans for a rich program of exploring this truly one-of-a-kind band for a truly one-of-a-kind conference, and we hope you'll be in the room.

Is it all so much hype? Are we lost in their feedback? Or is this band of ambitions, paradoxes, ironies and sincerity the real thing? If you think U2 has played a role, for better or worse, in changing the worlds of music, entertainment, popular culture, humanitarian relief, peace and social justice efforts - or has changed the world in you - then come join the conversation. Meet us in the sound!

U2: The Hype and The Feedback is the first academic conference devoted to the band and will be held on the campus of North Carolina Central University (NCCU) in Durham, NC, over the weekend of October 2-4, 2009. The date coincides with the band's 3rd October concert in Raleigh and, coincidentally, the 28th anniversary of the release of October.

Registration opened today and Tracey Hackett just put up a nice article about the conference overnight.

In addition to smaller concurrent sessions, the conference will include keynote speaker, Anthony DeCurtis, longtime contributing editor at Rolling Stone, British music critic Neil McCormick, Ugandan nurse and AIDS activist Agnes Nyamayarwo, @U2 founding editor Matt McGee, and Jim Henke by video from the Rock and Rock Hall of Fame Museum.

Conference organizer, Dr. Scott Calhoun, is Associate Professor of English at Cedarville University and teaches journalism, literature, and composition courses. I was fortunate to nail down Scott in the flurry leading up to today's commencement of conference registration.

How does one convert a love of U2 into a scholarly activity? Do you actually incorporate U2 works into your course offerings?

U2 is one of those rock bands that approaches making and performing music as a craft. The band members are well-schooled in music and art history, as well as in literature, film, religion and politics. The music they make and the performances they give are works, if you will, that we in the humanities find it natural to study and discuss. The poetics and rhetorics of the texts U2 have created are rich fields of inquiry for exploring the human condition. I've incorporated their work into discussions in my classes, from a single song to a whole album. Sometimes there's an "unfamiliarity gap" that needs to be bridged, but it's never been hard to persuade an open-minded person that U2 makes music for the heart and mind - the kind of music that makes you feel something and want to start asking questions.

So, there are scholarly publications about U2?

There is a growing body of academic writing about U2. In the past 10 years or so, more books have been coming out that are more of inquiries into the band's work than fan treatments. I have a bibliography of most of the major book treatments on U2 in English at the site. http://www.u2conference.com/biblio.php

That's a great resource on the conference page. Between the speakers and the papers listed thus far, the meeting schedule looks to be quite vibrant and eclectic. How did you go about soliciting contributors of papers for the conference?

We issued a Call for Papers through the Chronicle of Higher Education and the normal listservs that cover the humanities and theology/philosophy disciplines. I write for @U2 (www.atu2.com) and Books & Culture, and we spread the word through those channels as well. Most academics who think, write and teach about U2 are well-connected in the on-line world, so it wasn't hard to get the word out. We received nearly 100 paper proposals.

I only just learned of the conference from your press release but I just read a blogpost from June by News & Observer music writer David Menconi that you had narrowed down the conference site to North Carolina Central University and Oxford, MS (presumably at Ole Miss)? How did NCCU win out?

Both schools made appealing offers, and Durham and Oxford have great U2 fan communities. Some really motivated U2 fans in Durham kept reaching out to us and helped us connect with NCCU. With NCCU's rich history of educating the community through the arts and music, as well as their special focus on honoring the oppressed and the champions of freedom for all peoples, we thought this was a great place to have the first academic conference on U2. The more you look into the missions and histories of NCCU and U2, the more you see both have had a common "goal of soul" and "elevation." ;) There's also a U2 concert close by the same weekend as the conference!

There is an interesting aspect of the spirituality and commitment to social justice and civil rights evident in the lyrics of U2. NCCU is a historically-black college/university (HBCU) currently celebrating the 100th anniversary of its founding - despite being a state university now, NCCU was originally founded as "The National Religious Training School and Chautauqua for the Colored Race." Did this convergence of the university's centennial and its original mission play any role in having NCCU host the conference?

We're thrilled to be a part of NCCU's centennial year celebration. When I learned of NCCU's original founding purpose, all I could think of was how the spirit moves in mysterious ways. ;) I hope we honor the intentions of those early Chautauquians!

The question whose answer everyone wants to know: Any chance that any U2 members will make a cameo at the conference?

If they can come and not affect our academic objectivity, they are more than welcome to stop in! We've invited them, of course, and don't know of their intentions at this time.

If readers have any other questions for Dr. Calhoun, just drop them in the comments and I'll see if he can get to them.

Thanks, Scott, for taking time to give us a little more insight about the conference.

Here is an overview of registration information from Tracey Hackett's article:

Early bird registration fees, which run from Aug. 1 through Sept. 7, are $129 for students with active identifications and $179 for the public. Standard registration fees, which run from Sept. 8 until the conference reaches capacity, are $149 for students and $209 for the public. Both early and standard conference registrations include costs for a reception on Friday and lunch on Saturday and Sunday.

One-day registrations, for either Saturday or Sunday and includes lunch for that day, is $89 for students and $129 for the public. A ticket for the Friday evening kick-off event and reception only is $25.

Conference registration does not include the cost of lodging or purchase of a ticket to U2's Raleigh concert.

The cost of registering for the conference can be paid for by check, PayPal account, or credit card via PayPal.

For more information and registration for the conference, log onto its web site at www.U2conference.com. You can also follow conference development on Twitter, Facebook, and the official conference blog.

terrasig Sat, 08/01/2009 - 00:02

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R U @WordCampRDU?

terrasig — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 08:37:05 +0000

R U @WordCampRDU?

WordCampRDU is a community oriented one-day conference on all things related to the blogging and website platform WordPress. There are tracks for beginner and advanced WordPress users with presentations and useful information. WordCampRDU will be highlighted by a much anticipated keynote speech by WordPress Founder, Matt Mullenweg. http://wordcamprdu.com/2009/

This is my first "camp" conference after having gone exclusively to science-related blogger gatherings. I'm also very excited that this conference is being hosted at the School of Education at North Carolina Central University in Durham, NC, one of five historically-black colleges or universities (HBCUs) in the University of North Carolina system.

Although I started on Blogspot, many of my blogger buds here got started on WordPress and I write (infrequently) at Science-Based Medicine on a WordPress interface. So I'm currently sitting in a WordPress 101 for Beginners session with Phillip Barron. Phillip writes an aesthetically fabulous and content-rich cycling blog but I hadn't known until 10 min ago that he is a mega-media dude.

Trained in analytic philosophy, Phillip Barron is a scholar and award-winning digital media artist living in Durham, NC. His works have appeared in the Radical Philosophy Review among other progressive publications and concern issues of justice.

Barron works as a Digital Media Specialist at the National Humanities Center, where he is managing editor of the On the Human project. He is also the sole proprietor of the digital media design company, nicomedia, LLC.

From 2004 to 2008, his newspaper columns "The Outspokin' Cyclist" appeared monthly in The Herald Sun. A sample of his op-ed contributions to local newspapers can be found here. He has taught courses in philosophy at the Chapel Hill and Greensboro campuses of the University of North Carolina as well as Duke University.

Just as I love meeting new science colleagues at events like ScienceOnline'09, these more broad events get me jazzed by meeting a bunch of amazingly talented and creative people from all areas of communications technology.

I'm going to get back to it now but I wish you were here.

terrasig Sat, 06/13/2009 - 04:37

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Abel! Thanks for your kind words. It was great to meet you at WordCampRDU, and I hope to see you again at another local blogging/social media event.

Phil, it was a pleasure to attend your talk and I wish I could've stayed around to speak with you in more detail - look for an e-mail from me.

For readers, check out Phil's website/blog: http://nicomachus.net. Not only is he a terrific designer, he's a local cycling evangelist.

Civic pride: We don't need no stinkin' Viagra!

terrasig — Sun, 24 May 2009 07:27:05 +0000

Civic pride: We don't need no stinkin' Viagra!

Award-winning investigative journalist friend, Barry Yeoman, passes along this morning a fantastic post from awesome local Durham, NC, blog, Bull City Rising.

Heh. Rising.

Now Men's Health magazine has given Durham another trumpeting tribute, having taken a long, hard look at one of the rankings that only such a periodical could bring.

Durham found itself in stiff competition -- one hundred other cities and metro areas, to be precise -- but stood tall to prevail, ranking sixth in the U.S. among...

...cities that don't need Viagra.

Just what we need: another reason for the University-That-Tobacco-Built to recruit and retain more deadwood greybeard faculty members.

Deadwood. Heh.

After examining rates of erectile dysfunction contributing factors like smoking and obesity; exercise rates; and the rates of urologists per capita and the number of ED prescriptions filled per capita, Men's Health came up with their ranking.

Well, what else would you expect from a city whose mascot is a well-hung bull?

In all seriousness, let me take this opportunity to plug Kevin Davis who edits and runs Bull City Rising, easily one of the top three blogs in the city (Endangered Durham gets my vote for being one of the most unique resources for historic preservation anywhere I have lived; Carpe Durham for local food, especially taco trucks and taquerias.).

For those outside of the NC Research Triangle area or those who've been students or postdocs in the area in the 1980s and 1990s, you'd know that Durham had usually been relegated to a distant #3 in quality of life comparisons with the state capital, Raleigh, or Chapel Hill, home to the state's flagship university.

But how things have changed. Kevin promotes the city of Durham that I moved to: one of the most vibrant and funky mid-sized cities in the southern US, warts and all. For some examples, here is a nice cross-section of this place: 300+ Great Things About Durham. Very much a southern version of the downtown Denver that I saw rise again in the 1990s.

Here Ginny Skalski, 30Threads.com journalist, new Twitter friend, and blogger at Ginny From The Blog, interviews Kevin:

So, congratulations to my upstanding city and all of my friends who work so hard to promote it to the blogosphere!

And feel free to add to the comments any other penis puns I may have passed over.

terrasig Sun, 05/24/2009 - 03:27

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upstanding city

HA HA HA HA!

hah!

but don't many of the greybeards at said university live in the next town over?

Yes, leigh - we ever-so-starting-to-grey bearded folk have to take advantage of Durham's reasonable housing prices. But that's kool - Durham keeps me young and makes me appear more hip than I actually am.

Ernie Barnes 1938-2009; Artist and NFL Football Great

terrasig — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 12:33:31 +0000

Ernie Barnes 1938-2009; Artist and NFL Football Great

Word around town and just tweeted by local hero, Ayse, is that the great Ernie Barnes passed away yesterday at the age of 70.

From the biography at Mr Barnes' website:

Born Ernest Barnes, Jr. on July 15, 1938 to Ernest Sr. and Fannie Mae Geer Barnes during the Jim Crow era in Durham, North Carolina, his mother worked as a domestic for a prominent attorney. As a child, young Ernest would accompany her to work and was allowed to peruse the extensive collection of art books. One day in junior high school, a teacher found the self-admitted fat, introverted young Barnes drawing in a notebook while hiding from the bullies who taunted him daily. This teacher put him on a weightlifting program and when Barnes graduated from high school, he had excelled in football and track and field.
Segregation prevented him from considering nearby UNC or Duke University, so he attended North Carolina College on a football scholarship and majored in art. He was drafted by the then-World Champion Baltimore Colts football team. He then spent the next five seasons as an offensive lineman for the San Diego Chargers and Denver Broncos. In 1965, New York Jets owner Sonny Werblin recognized Barnes' artistic potential and replaced his football salary for one season so he could devote himself "to just paint." [emphasis mine]. One year later, Barnes made his debut in a critically acclaimed solo exhibition at Grand Central Art Galleries in Manhattan and retired from football. His autobiography "From Pads to Palette" chronicles his transition from athlete to artist.

[. . .]

His famous 1971 "Sugar Shack" dance scene appeared on the "Good Times" television show and on the Marvin Gaye album "I Want You." This image has been widely imitated and Barnes' expressive style has influenced countless aspiring artists.

Barnes' art has been used as an educational tool to empower youth. The power, grace, intensity and fluidity of his work - combined with his celebrated variation of genre and sports themes - has given him an unequaled place in the history of modern art, despite the domination of abstract art throughout his career.

terrasig Wed, 04/29/2009 - 08:33

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Join me online tonight for the WNCU-FM Spring Fest '09 Fund Drive

terrasig — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 11:02:13 +0000

Join me online tonight for the WNCU-FM Spring Fest '09 Fund Drive

Well, it's that time of year for public radio stations in the United States: the biannual fund drive to support operations and programming. Many public radio stations are run by or associated with universities, thereby giving provide course and internship opportunities to students in print and broadcast journalism, graphic design, recording engineering, and music studies.

I love my radio station, WNCU-FM 90.7 in Durham, North Carolina - "Your Connection To Something Different." WNCU is a jazz-intensive station run out of North Carolina Central University (NCCU), a HBCU within the University of North Carolina system. In addition to classic and contemporary jazz and blues, the station's music programming extends to African and other world music, reggae, and gospel. News programming includes the more diverse offerings from NPR, PRI, and Pacifica such as The Tavis Smiley Show, Tell Me More with Michel Martin, and Democracy Now! with Amy Goodman, and Juan Gonzales. Listening to WNCU-FM has broadened my mind and is an integral part of my continuing liberal arts education in music, local and US history, and cultural diversity. And if you're here or traveling through the Triangle for speaking visits at local universities or biotech or pharma companies, you can check WNCU's up-to-date calendar on where to catch live jazz in the area.

So, tonight from 6 pm to 10 pm EDT, I'll be on WNCU-FM with jazz wizard, Ken Grady, to raise funds for an organization that I hold very dear. And while I am primarily targeting the large group of readers in the Research Triangle area, the rest of you around the world can dial up the livestream of the broadcast tonight or anytime. It's a tough time for giving so I told my friend and development director, Uchenna Bulliner, that I would marshal all of my online resources to try and boost donations during my four-hour stint.

The show will start at 6 pm with Democracy Now! and then I will have the honor of sitting in on Ken Grady's Evening Jazz show from 7 pm to 10 pm. I'm pretty nervous because Mr Grady is a living encyclopedia of jazz. So tonight, I will be the student. I'll also be on Twitter throughout the evening (follow me: @abelpharmboy with hashtag #wncu), acknowledging donors and keeping a running commentary on what it's like to be behind the mike.

What's in it for you? Well, lots of very cool and hip swag from one of the coolest and hippest radio stations in the US. And even if you don't donate, you be let in on the little secret of who I actually am in real life. You can ring us on the old telephone at +1 919 560 9628 or you can also donate via an online form at the WNCU website.

And if you need to find out easily when 6-10 pm EDT is in your neck of the woods, use this handy world clock converter and select "USA - North Carolina - Raleigh" as the zone to convert from.

You have no excuses. I'll talk with you tonight.

terrasig Tue, 04/14/2009 - 07:02

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listening to your silken pipes now. You and PalMD should have a radio show.

Scholar, Historian, American Legend: Dr John Hope Franklin (1915-2009)

terrasig — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 09:02:05 +0000

Scholar, Historian, American Legend: Dr John Hope Franklin (1915-2009)

Dr John Hope Franklin was a 1935 A.B. graduate of Fisk University in Nashville, TN, then earned his M.A. (1936) and Ph.D. (1939) from Harvard University. [For reference, W.E.B. DuBois also graduated from Fisk (1888) and was the first Black to earn a Ph.D. from Harvard (1895).] Franklin's doctoral dissertation, The Free Negro in North Carolina, 1790-1860, planted the seed for his classic 1947 work, From Slavery to Freedom: A History of Negro Americans (subtitle later changed to "A History of African-Americans"). This book, now in its eighth edition, was written originally during his four-year tenure at North Carolina College for Negroes, now North Carolina Central University, in Durham. While he conducted much of the groundwork then at the National Archives in Washington, DC, he was supported by his beloved wife, Aurelia, as she worked in the college library.

One can read about the extraordinary life of Dr Franklin everywhere this weekend, perhaps beginning with his three-screen New York Times obituary, Jane Stancill's Wednesday afternoon News & Observer article and resources therein, or the Jeff Edgers' and Laurie Willis' 1998 News & Observer article on Franklin's election as Tar Heel of the Year documenting how he was still fighting racial issues and conflict during the 15 months after President Clinton appointed him to "The President's Initiative on Race" in 1997.

However, the website above contains photos, letters, and other historical artifacts documenting Dr Franklin's connection to NCCU over the years. I wish to extend my gratitude to university archivist and historian, André Vann, in providing these treasures for all of us and working with writer Cynthia Fobert and Office of Public Relations Director Miji Bell in drafting the copy, the graphics wiz that is Chantal Winston, and ITS specialist Mike Render for site functionality.

In our neck of the woods, we've all been mourning the loss and celebrating the life of historian and civil rights legend, Dr John Hope Franklin. Dr Franklin passed away on Wednesday morning at Duke University Medical Center of complications from congestive heart failure. He was 94.

Dr Franklin, or John Hope as he preferred to be called, will forever be recognized as one of the most influential African Americans of the 20th century. Franklin is perhaps best known as a historical scholar for his 1947 treatise, From Slavery to Freedom: A History of African-Americans.

Jane Stancill wrote in the News & Observer:

His scholarship helped ensure that no American history book could be complete without the story of African-Americans, and that America had to confront the reality of slavery and segregation in its past.

He was at the forefront of some of the biggest turning points in the nation's civil rights history. In 1953, he helped NAACP lawyers with research for the landmark Brown vs. Board of Education school desegregation case. In 1965, he joined a group of historians who marched with Dr. Martin Luther King from Selma to Montgomery. Five decades after his masterpiece was published, he was appointed by President Bill Clinton in 1997 to lead a national initiative on race.

The two Durham universities where Franklin had been on faculty have excellent online remembrances of this legend. Of course, I am partial to the outstanding site put up by my aforementioned colleagues at North Carolina Central University. From the introductory page:

Franklin was teaching at Saint Augustine's College in Raleigh in 1943 when he contacted North Carolina Central University founder Dr. James E. Shepard regarding selective service and also, the potential to teach at North Carolina College for Negroes (now North Carolina Central University).

Dr. Shepard was the only African-American to serve on the Selective Service Board. In this role, he was in a position to excuse Franklin, who was a committed pacifist, from service during World War II. Franklin would later write in his autobiography about the contradiction of fighting in Europe for human rights denied to black people in the United States.

Shepard recognized Franklin's brilliance. He had him excused from service and brought him to his Durham campus to teach in the history department. It was during his tenure as a history professor at NCC from 1943 to 1947 that Franklin wrote the first edition of his seminal work From Slavery to Freedom: A History of Negro Americans.

The 1998 N&O article (only just added online this week) describes in greater detail, while at dinner with colleagues, Franklin's recollection of how his move from St. Aug's to NCC transpired:

At the table, talk turned to Franklin's days at St. Augustine's in the early '40s. He had just finished his doctorate at Harvard and his first book. But Franklin had a conflict with the school's white president, the Rev. Edgar H. Goold. In the past, Goold had condescendingly advised him to stay humble. On this occasion, Franklin asked Goold to write a letter to the draft board exempting him from the army. In 1941, in the wake of Pearl Harbor, Franklin had tried to volunteer for what he had been told was a national emergency. He was turned away because he was black. After that, Franklin was determined not to serve. But in 1943, when he asked Goold to write the letter, the president refused. "The army might be good for you," he said. "It might teach you to hang up your clothes."

Franklin stormed out of the office, slamming the door. He phoned James E. Shepard, the president of North Carolina College for Negroes in Durham, and found himself another job.

"Weren't you angry?" asked Debi Hamlin, Franklin's assistant.

"For a day," he said. "The next day I just moved on."

[For those who read here about science and medicine, I'll have another post on James E Shepard at another time. Shepard received a graduate pharmacy degree (PhG) from Raleigh's Leonard School of Medicine at Shaw University in 1904. From 1880 to 1918, Leonard trained over 400 of the most influential Black physicians (and about a hundred pharmacists) to provide care to people, especially in rural areas, to whom many white physicians would not minister. The 1910 Flexner Report that defined the standards for US medical education required upgrades to Black medical schools that led, arguably (PDF), to the collapse of five such medical schools, leaving on those at Howard University and Meharry Medical College today. Historical evidence supports that Flexner was in favor of maintaining and building the programs of these two medical schools but this remains a point of contention among historians of Black US medical education.]

From Franklin's obituary posted at the Duke University's extensive remembrance site, the institution where he finished his career as a James B Duke Emeritus Professor of History and is recognized with the John Hope Franklin Center for Interdisciplinary and International Studies:

In January 2005, he spoke at Duke at the celebration of his 90th birthday, displaying the fire that motivated him throughout his long life. While others at the event talked about the past and reminisced about his accomplishments, Franklin focused squarely on the future. He described the event, held the same day as President George W. Bush's second inauguration, as a "counter-inaugural," and gave a talk in the form of a letter to a fictional white man he called "Jonathan Doe."

He recounted some of the historical inequalities in the United States and recalled some of his own experiences with racism. He said, for example, that the evening before he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Bill Clinton, a woman at his club in Washington, D.C., asked him to get her coat. Around the same time, a man at a hotel handed Franklin his car keys and told him to get his car.

"I patiently explained to him that I was a guest in the hotel, as I presumed he was, and I had no idea where his automobile was. And, in any case, I was retired," Franklin said. Both of these incidents occurred when he was in his 80s.

I note this particular anecdote because I first learned of Franklin's death on Facebook from journalist Barry Yeoman.

Barry noted that he was fortunate to stand behind Dr Franklin as he cast his 2008 presidential ballot for Barack Obama. What an amazing moment in history that must have been.

This YouTube video from Duke shows Franklin's commentary on the nomination of Obama, the election of Obama and, here, Obama's April 2008 comments upon meeting Franklin (yes, there is a science aspect to this post: Franklin felt that caloric restriction contributed to his long life).

I am sad to say that I never had the pleasure of meeting Dr Franklin despite living in the same town as he for almost ten years. But every time I went into my independent local bookstore to pick up a book on Black history to support my personal continuing education, there was always Dr Franklin's warm face smiling back at me from the jacket of his last book, his autobiography.

So, next on my reading list are From Slavery to Freedom and 2005's Mirror to America, the autobiography by this remarkable man. A final quote from Stancill's article:

"I hardly needed to seek a way to confront American racial injustice," he wrote in his 2005 memoir "Mirror to America." "My ambition was sufficient to guarantee that confrontation."

It's always interesting to me to look back at how a week's blogging ultimately seems to assume a theme even when one is not trying. For example, I'd been wanting to write a post about the first interracial collegiate basketball game in the South and meant to do it exactly on 12 March for the 65th anniversary. I missed that goal, but then DrugMonkey's post, Major, Jack, Willie, and Warren, on African American sports pioneers let me to write about The Secret Game between Duke and the then-North Carolina College for Negroes and the great Coach John McLendon.

Franklin began his academic career with one and then completed it with the other.

In that post, I also noted that The Secret Game author and historian Scott Ellsworth is best known in scholarly circles for his book on the 1921 race riots in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Turns out that Franklin, as a child growing up in Oklahoma, witnessed those very 1921 race riots as his father's law practice in Tulsa was destroyed.

In writing about women in the STEM disciplines for the Diversity in Science carnival, the woman I chose to profile, Dr Geraldine Pittman Woods, was another Harvard Ph.D. (well, Radcliffe to be precise) who worked to increase minority representation in the biological sciences. I had no sooner pressed "Publish" on those posts when Barry Yeoman a Twitter bud Ayse informed me of Franklin's passing.

We've strayed a bit from our general theme but I hope you've found this week of reflection enjoyable. I know that I have gained much from writing these posts, both emotionally and intellectually.

terrasig Sat, 03/28/2009 - 05:02

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JH Franklin told an interesting story, on NPR, a few years ago. His research took him to archives across the South to study original documents pertaining to slavery. (For those who do not know, archives house rare, sometimes one-of-a-kind, documents; so one cannot simply walk in and look through the material as you can in a library.)

His first stop was in the not-so-deep south (Virginia?) and, when he presented his credentials the archivist said he could work there; but they weren't set-up to accommodate his kind so he should come back in a little while. When he returned, they had a desk in a closet for him so he could work without bothering the other people.

Then he went to Alabama, where the archivist welcomed him and said he could just get to work. He looked around and saw several people working at tables on one side of the room, and several empty tables on the other side. So, he headed towards the vacant tables; but the archivist said "You can't work over there. That is the south side and it becomes unbearably hot as the day goes on. If you come with me I will introduce you to the other scholars, over there."(!)