A scholar's life told strictly by the book

Long before there were endowed chairs and Ivy League dream teams, before there were collegiate bidding wars to attract Black talent, there were ad hoc thought committees bent on proving that the term Black scholar was not an oxymoron.

At least since the days when Frederick Douglass stole literacy from a children's primer, education has been as central to Black American life as improvisation is to jazz. Successive generations of Black children have had the axiom of education-is-salvation instilled as an elder tapped them on the temple promising, "Once you get it up here, nobody can take it away from you."

Horace Porter's memoir The Making of a Black Scholar details a largely under-explored area in African American autobiographical narratives. Early on we learn of Porter's prodigious talent and inclination toward reading. Born to a farming family in Midland, Ga., book-learning provided Porter, a professor of English and chair of African-American studies at the University of Iowa, with a literal and figurative escape route from Jim Crow. Education is both a personal passion and Porter's career field; academic life has fostered many of his treasured friendships, as well as his marriage - he met his wife during graduate school at Yale University.

As fertile as this subject matter is, however, Porter's narrative is curiously under-seasoned. The author seems reticent to discuss his personal or family life, which makes it difficult to connect the outer journey (to the Ivy League) with the inner journey of the spirit and intellect. We surmise that learning is important, perhaps at the core of Porter's existence, yet he never quite conveys its personal, political, indeed spiritual significance in his life. We are left to wonder what precisely does the unsanctioned curiosity of a Black boy in Jim Crow Georgia mean?

The Making of a Black Scholar touches upon vital threads, but doesn't fully develop them. When Porter was 9, his father left a wood stove burning as he worked outdoors. The house caught on fire and burned to the ground. The fire was a turning point in the family's life:

"I knew in a deep way that the afternoon of fire and smoke, ashes and dread would somehow forever change my life. The rural life we had known - rows of green corn and the ivy-like sprawl of sweet potato vines - was over," Porter writes. "I was sad, but I remember sensing intuitively the opportunities afforded by city living...At first my father seemed to take the destructive episode in his stride. As the months passed, however, it became clear that he was emotionally devastated. He blamed himself for the loss of everything."

The fact that his educational opportunities expanded as a result of the same event that psychically eviscerated his father is compelling, but the theme is dropped. What were the consequences for his father? In short, what happened next?

Such ironies and paradoxes abound in Porter's educational journey. His preparation for his Ph.D. oral qualifying examinations coincides with his foster brother's trial for armed robbery. The brothers' contrasting fortunes instill a sense of survivor's guilt in Porter. He passes his exams; his brother is convicted and sentenced to prison. Ultimately, his brother's arrest leaves Porter with a deep fear that he has left home metaphorically as well as geographically. Ironically, the literary masters he turned to for answers compounded his sense of alienation. "Relatives and neighbors who loved me, who had nurtured me, and now who doted on me had never heard of Ellison, Sartre, and Camus, had never heard of Kafka's The Metamorphosis. Yale, it seemed, wasn't doing me much good."

This stark honesty and candor serves to highlight the absence of emotional detail elsewhere. In charting the travails of graduate school, Porter passingly notes another important personal development that is intimately connected to his educational life: He devotes only one paragraph to meeting his future wife at Yale.

This personal circumspection is contrasted by Porter's discussion of his academic career. He recalls in bright detail the books, teachers and mentors who served as formative influences in his intellectual development. Lest one believe that Porter was an intellectual anomaly, a Negro savant couched among bumpkins, he also makes mention of every talented peer whose brilliance was burnished in the midst of Jim Crow inequality.

The book docs not lack for interesting material, but it ultimately leaves many important questions not fully addressed. At only 149 pages, one suspects that a longer book would have further explored these details. Still The Making of a Black Scholar is important as a record of intellectual development against tremendous odds - even as it establishes that it is possible to hear someone's life story without getting to know him very well.

William Jelani Cobb is an assistant professor of history at Spelman College and editor of The Essential Harold Cruse: A Reader (Palgrave Press).

Copyright Crisis Publishing Company, Incorporated May/Jun 2003
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