SHORT STINT AT SOUTHWESTERN AT MEMPHIS

            Right after my years at Duke and Oxford I spent three years teaching at Southwestern at Memphis (now Rhodes College) and LeMoyne College, a Negro college also in Memphis. I have written about those years before so I’ll stick to salient details here. Southwestern was a first-class college in the South and was just beginning to overcome the racism deeply embedded there. I taught both philosophy and religion, and worked with several other faculty members to shut down a local “Whites Only” restaurant. I also got started with academic publishing while there.

            I also taught part-time at the local Negro College for three semesters. It was a very enjoyable and eye-opening experience for me. I made many Black friends and was able to host an integrated party at my home for my students at both my colleges. The Civil Rights movement was in full swing (1966-68) and Martin Luther King was killed in Memphis while I was living and working there. I participated in the famous “I AM A Man” march and in the Negro college’s Memorial Service for Dr. King. When I arrived in Memphis, I found that the Black gas station workers would not look you in the eye and the white owners collected the money.

             I grew a beard in the hope that it would open up more interaction with black men, and I found that nit really worked. Somehow the few of us white guys with beards seemed more trustworthy. I also made good friends with my black students at both of the colleges where I taught, especially Paula Briggs, Ethelyn Harris, Joanne Johnson, and the star of the men’s basketball team, David Merritt. I made some efforts to integrate the swimming pool in my neighborhood, but the powers that be would have none of it. In the summer term I introduced a course on “African Thought” at Memphis State University.

      Perhaps the most important cultural reality in Memphis was the dominance of Black, especially Soul, music. Many of the groups that later became famous were just getting started in the sixties and Memphis was very much at the center of this phenomenon. BookerT and the MGS gave regular concerts in the park on Sundays, and such musicians as James Brown, Tina Turner, and various Soul Music groups, like Sam and Dave did likewise. It was a short stint that I did at Memphis, but it made an indelible mark in my life.

            I probably would have stayed longer in Memphis if my marriage had not broken up. Emotionally it was a very hard time for me, and my friends advised that a fresh beginning somewhere else would be therapeutic. It was then that I accepted a position at Eckerd College (formerly Florida Presbyterian College in Florida). I thought a lot about going to teach at a Black college but a Negro friend challenged me to continue to work within the white college system where there was much work to be done. I took this advice to heart and have ever since sought to work for racial and female justice in the various predominantly white colleges where I have worked.