Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: Where were you before your college days at Skidmore?
[00:00:06] Speaker B: Well, I grew up in Denver.
I had aspirations, interestingly enough, to be a newspaper reporter, perhaps a columnist someday. I even had a chance to intern with old Rocky Mountain News. And so that was my junior year of college.
So I grew up in Denver, but went to school on the east coast, was undergraduate at Columbia, and something happened between my junior and senior years. I began. I began to really explore the neighborhoods in Harlem, was a volunteer at a Saturday school program, and I started to think about teaching. And so, sure enough, I was really fortunate. I interviewed for a position to be a schoolteacher at IS175 in Harlem. And Ms. Foster, who was the principal, bless her heart, you know, she took. She took a chance on me. And that first year as a school teacher, I was abysmal. I was awful. I was absolutely.
I don't think I did a single child any good whatsoever. At least that's the way I feel. But unbeknownst to me, this middle school was an alternative school, which meant everyone in District 5 that had been kicked out of every other middle school was sent there. And so, really, I had no business being there. But it was. I was a school teacher there for a year, a couple more years in the Bronx at CIS 229. That's kind of when I really kind of came into my own as. As a school teacher. I decided, you know, I think I'm either going to be in this long term or maybe I should think about going back to school. And so that's when I applied to a couple of graduate programs. It was a master's program at Cornell in Africana Studies. And so I was accepted there and, you know, went there and what was it?
Gosh, fall of 1990. And, you know, it was the best decision I ever made, not only intellectually, but more important, I. I met Lisa Grady at Cornell as a fellow grad student. And, you know, we've been together married 32 years, been together for 34.
[00:02:38] Speaker A: And you talked about. Early on, you talked about you were here at Skidmore, but then you left because the opportunity wasn't here.
[00:02:49] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:02:49] Speaker A: And what went into that decision? Did you have the ability and. And did you voice your concerns, your.
[00:02:58] Speaker B: Your.
[00:02:58] Speaker A: Your cares, and say, listen, I. I think the community needs this?
You know, how did that.
[00:03:05] Speaker B: Yeah, I tell. The interesting thing is, so my first tenure track teaching position was at Syracuse. And so I was there 10 years and, you know, was really fortunate. Worked with some amazing people, particularly mentors Ms. Sherry Mugo and Linda Carty, Horace Campbell.
But the Skidmore position, the thing that I was really curious about, so it was an American Studies, a teaching appointment, but the position was something called the Director of Intercultural Studies. And so to this day, if you ask me, what exactly is Intercultural Studies, you know, I'll smile and think, well, you know, it's a number of different things to a number of different people. But concretely, I was the member of a three person diversity team. So somebody in Human Resources, Herb Crossman, and then there was someone in Student Affairs, Marielle Martin. And so we worked together, tried to kind of chart a course for accountability for the institution to kind of move, move forward in that way. And, you know, things went fairly well. But one of the, the push factors, in addition to this, this absence of Black Studies was, I don't know if you remember the Compton's incident when, you know, some Skidmore students were arrested.
The initial narrative was that they jumped this patron in the diner. A few of us did some more research. Sue Layden, who was an amazing colleague at the time, was able to get someone, a private investigator to do some digging. And so the things got a little more complicated. There were some more layers.
Found out that the patron was a bouncer at a local bar.
There was some other things. So we basically said, look, let's complicate this narrative from what we see.
These young people, these Skidmore students, were in many ways, they were simply acting in self defense.
So it was a whole back and forth.
As you probably know, there was a key moment when we were able to get a pro bono attorney, and the attorney is advising the students in the courthouse to basically really consider taking this misdemeanor cop, the plea.
This will be off your record in a couple of years.
And the young men, I mean, two a person, one was from the Bronx, couple were from Brooklyn. One young man I remember because his father was there. We were.
He said, look, Dad, I didn't do anything wrong. I want to go to trial. I want, you know, I want to clear my name.
And then the attorney said, well, this is the reality. You're in Saratoga County. You're in a County that's 98% white.
You don't know what's going to happen with the jury.
You could end up going to an upstate prison for several years if found guilty.
And I still remember the tears streaming down his face and him finally deciding, yeah, okay, fine, I'll take the plea.
They all graduated. They're all doing well now. So that was kind of A push. And then the pull was that college, Access College, my hometown, Metropolitan State College of Denver, had this position for director of. It was then called African and African American Studies was the name of the department. And I said, wow, you know, when Lisa and I, when we first got married, you know, she said, you know, wouldn't it be something if we could figure out a way to work where each of the kids, grandparents are like, yeah, that'd be pretty cool. So we, you know, we spent some time in New York City with Lisa's dad. Her mom had passed away some. Some years back, and so this would be a chance to actually go to Denver, where my dad and stepmom were my brothers. And so it worked out. So that's what got me to Denver, not only back home, but more important in some ways, particularly intellectually back in Africana Studies, African American Studies, Black studies, different names, same thing. Back in. In that particular intellectual side again.
[00:07:50] Speaker A: And then.
[00:07:52] Speaker B: Yeah, but then. And then after.
[00:07:53] Speaker A: After home again.
[00:07:54] Speaker B: Yeah, and then. Exactly so. And then, I mean, after the time of Portland State School of Gender, Race and Nations, I was director, you know, great position in name, not much power, actually connected to it.
Come back here. And one of the things that I love so much when we were here from 08 to 2011, and then one of the things that absolutely brought, you know, brought us back. We're Skidmore students, and I've been really, really fortunate in terms of just being able to. This is part of what the residential liberal arts environment is about, to really develop meaningful relationships with students. I mean, there's students who went to school and graduated in 09, 2010 that I'm still in regular contact with. And that it's not something I can say with any consistency for any of the other places that I've taught. You know, there are a couple exceptions, but here, I mean, I could literally name the names of students who are now alums. Yeah.
[00:09:07] Speaker A: Where has.
Where has. Has Black Studies grown from your time as, you know, a student? Yeah, as a young man.
[00:09:21] Speaker B: Yeah. Oh, absolutely. It's grow. It's.
It's. There were. There were times when, particularly when I was an undergrad at Columbia, Columbia didn't have a formal Black Studies or African American studies department, unlike most of the other Ivy Leagues schools by that time I was there from 83 to 87.
And so a lot of the work that I would do was outside the classroom in terms of just doing my own reading, kind of getting a sense of things, and also being pretty active as a student activist. On campus.
Fast forward now. Skidmore was the last New York 6 school. So, you know, Colgate, Hamilton, Hobart and William Smith colleges, Union College, St. Lawrence University, of course, Skidmore.
Skidmore was the last of the, of the six to actually have Black studies or Africana studies in place. You see it so many institutions nationally.
One of the things that Black studies did in the late 1960s is that it helped to really pave the way for other Latino studies, Chicana, Chicano studies, Women's studies, gender studies, Black studies. Really kind of opened the door to these fields of study that my former mentor and colleague, Ms. Cheri Mughal, would call liberatory fields. And of course, there's some controversy, particularly now, because just to cut to the chase, this, this current assault on diversity, equity and inclusion, gender studies, Black studies, I mean, it's palpable and it goes to what I do. And I can understand ostensibly why some folks, particularly if you haven't taken a course or if you haven't had any familiarity with. With the courses, would say, oh, this is about indoctrination, or it's the term that folks will often use as, you know, woke ideology.
And I'll simply say it's actually an effort, I can say this as a historian to, you know, seek truth, to really explore dimensions of US History, world history, that are often ignored. And then it's often a really illuminating experience, in some cases a transformative experience for students. And I tell anybody that's got any doubts, any detractor, I said, look, either audit a class or just give me a heads up, come to a class I teach. Welcome to come. See for yourself. See what's actually happening in those four walls.
[00:12:16] Speaker A: How has your classroom changed? Your. Your auditoriums, your lecture halls, how they change? And has the demographic changed?
[00:12:27] Speaker B: It has. Yeah, it has. The great question, when I was teaching at Syracuse in a big university Intro to African American Studies, I would have anywhere between 75 and 100 students in the class, would have graduate students who were teaching assistants who would have recitations with them.
Maybe, maybe a fourth of the students would identify as white.
I'm looking now here at Skidmore, every semester that I've taught Introduction to Black Studies, there may be a slight majority of students who are. Who self identify as students of color. There's always a significant number of white students as well. And so they're among the most consistently diverse courses in terms of who's in the classroom. And that's great. And what's interesting, too, in terms of the students who decide to minor in Black studies. Those numbers are diverse as well. Now I've noticed past couple of years more students of color minoring in black studies, but I know that in 2023 we had a significant number of self identified white students who were minoring.
And so it's, so it's encouraging that folks are getting something in the classroom that they didn't necessarily get in high school or in middle school. And it's often eye opening.
[00:14:06] Speaker A: The February is Black History Month.
We hope it always will be.
[00:14:14] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, you got that right.
[00:14:20] Speaker A: Is there, is there a difference in the month of February? Is there a vibe about February? Is there an awareness throughout the month of February that this is Black History Month?
[00:14:33] Speaker B: Well, that's a fantastic question. And you know, kind of ebbs and flows. I think right now it's a bit more palpable. I think that that's a good thing. But for several years there was this kind of intra group or intra racial, within the group, kind of a critique of February, particularly from folks who didn't know the history of Black History Month and say, oh, February, shortest month of the year. That's what, you know, that's all we could get, you know, but, but if, you know, folks who know the history. So historian Carter Goodwin Woodson, Dr. Woodson, established the month first as. And some folks will kind of rankle at the words, but we have to be clear. We're talking about the mid-1920s Negro History Week. That's, that's where it started. And it was intentionally done in the week in February that included Frederick Douglass's birthday, Abraham Lincoln's birthday. And so that's, that's why the anchor is in February. And eventually it became a full month. Now it's Black History Month, African American History Month, whatever.
But it's always a special moment. I mean, even this evening on the Skidmore campus, you know, we're going to have some folks, field horn, local historian, and then Mary Liz and Paul Stewart from the Underground Railroad Education center are going to talk about, you know, black history in Saratoga.
So there is an excitement. You know, students look forward to this time and I know members of the community absolutely look forward to the events that take place on the campuses and the libraries, you know, throughout the Capital District.
[00:16:23] Speaker A: Is it enough?
[00:16:27] Speaker B: It's, the answer is no, it's not enough. Right. It would never be enough, just the, the one month. But it's very important symbolically, particularly in this, in this specific moment politically when there are individuals. And first, it started with the former Confederacy, right At the state legislative level, there are individuals that are saying, what I do for a living, what other scholars do for a living, that there's no place for that. Right. That there's no greater good, that as a matter of fact, it's pernicious.
What started as a movement in the former Confederacy and has now gotten much, much bigger.
I'd argue for that reason, what we're doing this month and every month, though, it's not enough. It's absolutely necessary. And it's a reminder. It's a reminder kind of because we're coming on almost a century that we've celebrated this.
It's a reminder that it's as needed now as it was a century ago.
[00:17:42] Speaker A: What more can be done?
And the list may be too big.
[00:17:49] Speaker B: Okay.
What would you.
[00:17:52] Speaker A: In your lifetime.
[00:17:53] Speaker B: Sure.
[00:17:54] Speaker A: What do you. What would you encourage your students who are going to be making these decisions and making these in war roads? What would you ask of them?
[00:18:02] Speaker B: Sure.
[00:18:03] Speaker A: In their future.
[00:18:04] Speaker B: Yeah, I would. I would sincerely ask them to. One, keep reading. I mean, I'm arguing. I've been saying this a bit. Some other colleagues have, too. One of the casualties of the pandemic, COVID pandemic was that, and this goes not just to students, but for faculty staff as well. Our attention spans aren't what they were five, six years ago.
You know, I've spoken to folks that just don't do casual reading as much as they used to now that we're out of the pandemic. But to keep reading, have an appreciation for, you know, what scholars are doing, not only those of us with PhDs and terminal degrees, but just amazing local historians who are in archives and who are writing, who are giving talks. You know, keep reading, keep attending events. But also, and I mean this sincerely, have that classroom experience be communicated with family members, friends, colleagues at work in terms of just the importance of this, particularly for those folks who are like, ah, bad stuff. I don't want anything to do with. To do with it. Just kind of a general reminder of, wow, you know, when, you know, when you get a fuller sense of history, not only black contributions, but also how some of the narratives we learned in elementary or middle school or high school in terms of just US History, how they become complicated in ways that just kind of lead to all these epiphanies.
That's the important work that has to happen. Just those casual conversations. You don't have to get at a debate in CNN with someone who may have a different point of view. But if you can have a conversation with them and say, well, look, I tell you what, take a course or go to an event, do your own research. That's what critical thinking is about. I mean, what happens this month is absolutely foundational in terms of critical thinking. And I would argue, and maybe I'm wrong, but I would argue that there's some folks in power right now that would like to see less critical thinking in terms of the broader US Population and not more.
[00:20:38] Speaker A: If you put on your recruiter hat, your black studies recruiting hat to.
[00:20:48] Speaker B: Do.
[00:20:48] Speaker A: You want to talk to a high school senior class, junior class? Do you want to talk to high school freshmen? Do you want to talk to elementary school students about the world that could, they could, they could see in black studies?
[00:21:03] Speaker B: So the answer is easy for me just because the last year that I was a school teacher got to teach fifth grade, and the way that the school where I taught CAS229 in the Bronx was set up, it was a fifth through seventh grade middle school. Even though we think fifth grade usually is elementary school, fifth grade is amazing. And so I would, I would like to make that pitch to youngsters. And I say this from personal experience, not only as a school teacher, but more important as a student.
When I lived in Denver, when I was growing up, it was during the time of court ordered desegregation. And so with the exception of one year, my whole K12 experience, I was bused from my black neighborhood in Park Hill to white, majority white, or in some cases, almost overwhelmingly white neighborhoods in southeast Denver.
But the individual who absolutely made a difference for me and the reason why I'm a teacher now a professor was Ms. Romero, my fourth grade and sixth grade social studies teacher. She absolutely opened this, this door to just like thinking, thinking critically, thinking beyond the narratives that I, that I become familiar with. This is I was an elementary school student and the seeds that she planted. Got a chance to speak to her several years ago and just thank her.
We're pivotal. So the answer to your question is simple. High school is great. Middle school is fantastic, but the younger the better.
[00:22:51] Speaker A: Talking about Denver, and that was, that was a question is, you know, what was Denver like and what was that childhood experience like? Did you have a comprehension of the busing of why am I not going down the street with my friends?
[00:23:07] Speaker B: Yes. Oh, absolutely. It, it was, the comprehension was there, you know, understood pretty well. Denver was one of the first cities out, you know, north of the old Mason Dixon line where corridor busing happened. You know, happened prior to two in Boston. And like Boston, there was Some violence, not to the same extent as in Boston, but there was thankfully an empty bus that had been bombed shortly after the decision there in Denver, kind of a message sent.
Significant number of white families chose not to have their kids bused to black sections of town.
That left a committed minority who did, you know, have their kids bust. But it was, I mean, Denver at that point, good friends and I will joke now, was like a cow town trying to be a big city. And some of the attitudes, you know, would not be unusual to hear the N word, you know, used.
And I don't mean in the way that it's often used in a hip hop context. I'm talking about, you know, from white students, directed at black students.
So there was that dynamic. And at the middle school that I attended, which was called a junior high school at the time, there's this added dynamic of there being almost equal numbers of white students, Mexican American, Chicano students and black students, and the black and brown students who were always at odds with one another and then even made the local news. It's like race wars brewing at local junior high school. So finally a few of us were like, why are we going at each other's throats? And the white kids are just kind of like sitting there just popcorn in hand, watching this all take place. And so finally there was this effort to kind of like just kind of like squelch that, that nonsense. But so the Denver experience was, it was tough in some ways. I mean, I was in classes that were accelerated or advanced placement. There were just a handful or fewer of self identified black students in these classes.
So I never felt completely connected to white students. I was proud of my neighborhood, you know, I was proud of my, you know, blackness. But there were moments when, you know, I'd been called an Oreo or kind of not fully been embraced by like all the black students either. And so it was, you know, it's just kind of this in between kind of feeling. And it's a feeling, though not expressed in the same way that I know some students, students of color now on college campuses, that that was their, their experience in A K through 12 context as well. So it's kind of, it's kind of interesting. College for me was just. I was miserable the first month in New York City. I'd never been there. I wouldn't have money, so I didn't fly out. It's just, I just went, you know, to Columbia first. I was so miserable, it just, it wasn't even funny. If I had the resources, I would have just gone back home.
But I ended up really, though I had an adversarial relationship with the school administration, the experience was amazing. I wouldn't trade it for the world.
[00:26:52] Speaker A: Who did you read?
[00:26:54] Speaker B: Who did you look up to?
[00:26:57] Speaker A: Who were the leaders in your youth and had a lot of.
[00:27:02] Speaker B: Yeah, well, I tell you in, in many ways, when I was really young, someone who I, who I looked up to was my dad, because my dad and my mom too, but my, my dad, because when he was a counselor at the University of Colorado, my dad, Leon Willis, was someone who went to school through mid first, first year in middle school in Texas, but then part of the migration patterns. My grandma Bernice took him, his brother and sister to Colorado Springs, Colorado. And so there, you know, he was three sport athlete, did really well in the classroom, went to the University of North Northern Colorado, and really was so miserable. I mean, he, he dropped out and then he went into the Air Force, became an air traffic controller, and ended up going back to school on the GI Bill and eventually earned his master's degree in psychology, became a psychologist. But when he was a counselor, guidance counselor at the University of Colorado, he and a colleague, Dave Butler, exposed corruption in the program. I mean, they took a stand and they ended up losing their jobs because of it.
Like, look, we don't care if you're black, white, brown, it doesn't matter. You can't do this with the funds that are supposed to be going to programming. And so when they did this, they ended up losing their jobs. And so that kind of, taking that kind of position was, was so important. And my mom, Verlin Willis, who just, just passed away last year, my dad in 2019. But my mom was a hero for, for my brothers and myself because she would always take us to the public library when we were little. I mean, she just this, this love of books and reading, I mean, she just absolutely instilled it in us. Even though she only went to college for one year. She grew up in Portland, Oregon. That's Portland State. Right.
But because of financial, you know, difficulties, she didn't get to realize her dream. But it didn't keep her from. She was an absolutely voracious reader. Fiction, nonfiction, you name it. So those were really kind of those key heroes. These are my folks. Eventually divorced when I was 10. You know, my dad stayed very much in our lives. Not a week went by we didn't spend time with him. And then in college, there was no black studies program, but there were individual professors. Professor Quandra Prettyman at Barnard College Literature professor, who was just amazing. And Marcellus Blount, who was also a professor of English at Columbia, Columbia College, who was just amazing. But the real heroes in many ways were student activists. So, I mean, there were folks like Tanakil Jones, Barbara Ransby, who were associated with the Coalition for Free South Africa.
I could name so many other students. So these folks were really kind of guiding lights because they were not only great activists, but they also, like, took their schoolwork seriously. It was kind of this mantra. It's like, okay, if the administration's gonna kick us out for engaging in nonviolent direct action, fine. But don't kick yourself out by not taking care of business in the classroom. And so, I mean, we were up all night. We developed study groups, but that's what we did. And then finally, I kind of like familial heroes.
Grandparents were really important because they'd all experienced Jim Crow first. I mean, just palpably. I mean, this was what they knew. And my granddad on my mom's side, my mom's father, John Henry Sylvester, went from sharecropping as part of the great Migration. Left to go to Portland. Left Louisiana, was in Portland, Oregon. Two jobs for almost 25 years. He was a laborer in a foundry, and he was a janitor in a number of different places. A hospital later on at the post office, sometimes six days a week.
Never called in sick until he got hurt at the foundry one time.
Soft spoken, deacon at his church.
Just an extraordinary human being. And so, I mean, these are the folks on whose shoulders I stand.
[00:32:06] Speaker A: Toughest question.
[00:32:07] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:32:09] Speaker A: What's next?
[00:32:14] Speaker B: Well, I hope, particularly in terms of like, just the immediate Skidmore moment. The thing that I hope next is just for black studies to grow. You know, we're fortunate to offer a minor, but I'd like to see us offer a major.
I think that there's enough interest. I know there are enough faculty whose. Whose tenure home or whose structural home is in another department. But so much of their work is also in black studies, and they're affiliated with the program. I think that they're definitely the critical mass of faculty foundationally. Is there. We'd love an additional line. That would be great, but, you know, who wouldn't?
But so that's the next step there. In terms of my own research, a project that I've kind of left alone, but would like to come back to at some point. It's just a biography of James Forman, who was an activist with the student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. Really interesting individual And I'd like to return to that as well as just work with just local historians. There's some amazing historians here just in terms of just unearthing the history of this region, from the Underground Railroad up to the current moment.
[00:33:37] Speaker A: That's it.
[00:33:38] Speaker B: I want to thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. That was an absolute pleasure. Thank you.
[00:33:46] Speaker A: We usually call. That's usually a million dollar interview.
[00:33:48] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:33:49] Speaker A: Just absolutely wonderful. You hit everything.
[00:33:51] Speaker B: No, you're too.
[00:33:53] Speaker A: No, it's. It's great.
[00:33:53] Speaker B: It's.
[00:33:54] Speaker A: It's when we look at everything back and it says, Stan 5% and then Speaker 95. Okay, I did my job.
[00:34:03] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:34:04] Speaker A: Because the last thing, when you. When you do these projects and you're just hearing yourself, you're like, you're an idiot.
Um, is not a word in the English dictionary. It's not in Webster's. I looked it up time and time again.
And it's interesting because when we do. When we do the laid back banter of Shenai.
Her name's Shenandoah is her given name. And of course, she comes to work in the capital region. And the first conversation is, okay, we can't call you Shen because that's a high school.
So you're going to be Shen.
Thank God. That's good.
[00:34:47] Speaker B: And.
