Tuesday, December 14, 2021
Stepping down
A lot of wonderful things have happened for me because of this blog. One of the very best is it helped me to reconnect with one of my great mentors, Dr. Joanne Braxton, who taught me at William and Mary. I wrote about that here in 2012, and she then reached out to me after stumbling on the blog post about her-- something I wrote about here.
Once we reconnected, we had a lot of adventures together, like this one, or this one, or this, Most importantly, she invited me to be the vice-president of the Braxton Institute that she headed, and we worked together with others to build it into something fascinating. Over the years, I have been able to combine the Institute's work with the work of some of my remarkable students and collaborators like Nkechi Taifa. It has enriched my life.
I remain, and always will be, her student. I believe in academic legacies-- lines of connection that pass from teacher to student rather than parent to child--and the legacy I connect to through her is remarkable: she learned from John Blassingame, who studied under C. Vann Woodward,
who met and was influenced by W.E.B. DuBois, who learned from William
James, who was influenced by his godfather, Ralph Waldo Emerson. And from them to me-- along with Dr. Braxton's other lines of influence, which pass through legends like Gerda Lerner.
Today is my last meeting as the Vice-President of the Braxton Institute, as the time has come for me to rotate off. But I will not rotate off any of what I describe above; it is in my bones, my cells and molecules, indestructible so long as I am, and perhaps beyond.
