So, the third time was a charm. Columbus Short finally made it to Philander Smith College. His two previous engagements were postponed because the flu doesn’t care who you are! So there was a lot of excitement for his visit.

Of course, with him starring in the film “Stomp the Yard,” and I being the expert on Black fraternalism, my introduction talked about the history of stepping. I even tricked the crowd to make them think I was going to step right then and there (by the night’s, both Columbus and I stepped).

He talked about “When your dream meets your destiny” which was essentially his life story until now. He shared his struggles openly with the students, really trying to find himself as a young man. He shared his father was a police officer in Kansas City and was killed when Columbus was one. So he felt some of his struggles were due to his father’s untimely demise.

He also shared his struggles with faith, trying to understand his talents and how to use them. I was fascinated that at the age of 20 he was directing Brittney Spear’s In The Zone tour, after spending two years traveling the world with Stomp! He did attend a performing arts high school in Orange County, CA, and said he learned to dance in roughly one month.

He said that “celebrity let’s people hear you for some reason.” This is one of the reasons why we mix in a few celebrities with Bless the Mic. They may not be the most profound or accomplished lecturers, but I have seen them connect with students in a way many of us older folks can’t. I wish more celebrities realized their power and if they used it for good, we really could better our communities. Columbus Short is a good example.

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Yesterday, our Black Male Initiative sponsored a program, "What Real Women Want." A group of professional women came to have lunch with our guys to talk about their expectations of men. The group included a prime time TV anchor, a bank vice president, a hotel executive, and a Governor's staff person.

These dynamic women kept the guys full attention. It was actually funny watching them so engaged and crowded around hanging on every word. The best thing was that we had some guys attend who had not been to a Black Male Initiative event, so it was a way to reach more guys and get their feedback on programs they would like to see.

Well, you know I heard it from the women. They want a similar event! So our Platinum By Design program will need to step up their game. In the meantime, I asked members of the Bless the Mic Street team if they wanted to go to Pine Bluff to see Susan L. Taylor. Susan spoke at PSC in March for Bless the Mic, and I knew some of my new students wanted to see her. So I was accompanied by six young ladies to UAPB.

Their student government association has started a lecture series called Empowering the Next Generation of Leaders. Kudos to SGA president Randall Walker for his initiative. The program was well done, and Susan Taylor was great! They will be bringing Jamal Harrison Bryant and Jeff Johnson this spring. We enjoyed ourselves and glad to share with a sister institution.

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So, this is season five of Bless the Mic. The series is established enough that I can start to bring in some heavy hitters that aren't household names, but who will deliver a powerful message. Last night, Tim Wise just ripped up the mic! We started with our dinner. Our special guests were members of the Little Rock racial and cultural diversity commission.

Ou speaker, Tim Wise, has started to gain national popularity as an expert on white privilege. He was interviewed a number of times after the Henry Louis Gates situation this summer. Veronica and Kerry participated on the program.

After my comments, Tim Wise took over. His central thesis was that there is a difference between guilt (what you did) and responsibility (who you are). Too many people won't take responsibility for dealing with issues of race and privilege in this country. He challenged anyone in a dominant group (not just race but gender, sexual orientation, ability, etc.) to think about how they respond to the responsibility of advantage.

He shared the danger of allowing Obama to become an "achetype of acceptable Blackness" since no previous presidential candidate had the type of substance and style combination before.

We had a great, diverse crowd. I know some wiggled when he bluntly addressed certain topics. Others were shocked to hear someone who looks like Tim present with the fire and cadence of a Black preacher. He definitely was a hit in only his second trip to Arkansas over the past 15 years.

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At the September 2009 meeting of the Philander Smith College Board of Trustees meeting, the trustees discussed changing the formal address of the college. Two reasons were presented for the renaming of the address. First, through expansion, the entrance to the College physically sits on Daisy Bates Drive. As the College has increased its outreach which has caused a subsequent increase in visitor traffic, having a more accurate address helps to readily identify the location of the College. In addition, the new campus master plan calls for the elimination of the grid system on the campus so our entrance will eventually loop in and out, and the streets will mostly be eliminated.

The second, and probably most important point, was that the new address would strongly reinforce the social justice mission of the College. Daisy Gatson Bates is recognized worldwide for her active role in the desegregation of Little Rock Central High School. She and her husband used their newspaper, The Arkansas State Press, as a vehicle for activism. She served as the state president of the Arkansas Branches of the NAACP, and later served on the National NAACP Board.

She wrote her memoirs, The Long Shadow of Little Rock, in 1962. In it, she revealed several connections between Philander Smith College and the Little Rock Nine. She shared that our faculty tutored the nine, and that the wife of PSC professor Lee Lorch, Grace, rescued Elizabeth Eckford from that now famous photo. Bates also shared that when PSC started the flight program under the leadership of Tuskegee Airman Milton Crenchaw in the early 1940s, she was the only woman enrolled. Daisy Bates was also the only woman with a speaking role at eh 1963 March on Washington, solidifying her palce as a civil right icon. She died on November 4, 1999.

On November 10, 2000, 14^th Street was renamed Daisy L. Gatson Bates Drive, right before her birthday (November 11^th). In 2001, the Arkansas legislature formally recognized the third Monday in February as “Daisy Gatson Bates Day.”

After further research, the executive committee of the Board voted in October to change the address. So today, our new official address is 900 Daisy Bates Drive (the full address is 900 W. Daisy L. Gatson Bates Drive, but the shorter version is acceptable).

I shared the extensive background on Ms. Bates because we should definitely take any opportunity to tell the significance of our address as it links to Central High School and the role Philander Smith College played in the first major event of the Civil Rights Movement. It is only fitting that we too honor the legacy of Daisy Bates since Philander Smith College played a role in her work with the Little Rock Nine.

 

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Born on election day in 2008!

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This op-ed appears in today's Inside Higher Ed.

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The Benjamin Mays Model October 30, 2009 By Walter M. Kimbrough

Recently, Robert Michael Franklin, president of Morehouse College, lectured on my campus. As I introduced Dr. Franklin, I remarked that it was strange that I did not attend Morehouse. I grew up 15 minutes from the college, and having been salutatorian and student body president, I fit the Morehouse man image. In fact, I am often asked if I attended Morehouse.

The link between my life and the legendary president of Morehouse, Benjamin Elijah Mays, further suggests that I probably should have matriculated there. Mays became president the year my father was born, and left the year I was born. I drove down Benjamin Mays Drive on my way to the Benjamin Mays High School and Academy of Math and Science. My son is named Benjamin after Mays, suggested by my wife as she ran across his autobiography on a shelf.

Mays provided the model for my five years as a college president. In fact, he is one of the few truly great presidents, regardless of institutional type. By reading many of his thoughts through his speeches and texts, I find three major components of a college presidency using the Mays model, a model that is desperately needed in higher education today.

First, we need advocacy from presidents. In today’s tough political climate, many presidents dare not risk their jobs or potential donations by taking a stand on an issue. In the wonderful text, Crisis in the Village, Franklin suggests presidents like Mays were “public intellectuals and, in some cases, public theologians ... they were thinkers who brought research-based, analytic, historical, comparative, critical and constructive cognitive powers to practical problems facing their people.” Today, it is rare to read a passionate argument by a president.

In Mays’s autobiography, aptly titled Born to Rebel, he writes “I never ceased to raise my voice and pen against the injustices of a society that segregated and discriminated against people because God made them black.” Mays, through a number of editorials, often challenged the notions that historically black colleges should be abolished, and suggested reparations were in order. In my own way, I have sought to speak out as well, dismissing the U.S. News ranking system, one that rewards colleges for enrolling low numbers of poor, working, and students of color, to the ridiculous celebrations of “philanthropy” when the wealthy give to already wealthy colleges whose assets rival those of many countries.

Second, the Mays model means that the president is what Franklin would call “chief ethical officer.” The values of a college community should be reinforced by the president. At many small colleges, including most private black colleges, the tradition of chapel continues to exist in part because it is that opportunity to reinforce the values of the institution. Many other colleges have reduced or eliminated chapel, and often the president is not a major presence, some believing that more important duties require their time.

Mays’s take on chapel was different. He writes, “Though like some classes- occasionally dull- [chapel] was nevertheless as much a part of the educational process as the classroom lectures and discussions… It was here that students and faculty assembled as a family. It was here that students could hear firsthand from the president about the state of the college.” Mays took chapel seriously, being personally responsible for the Tuesday chapels either by speaking or by organizing them, but he took it as seriously as any other speaking engagement so the students could learn, and even question, his thinking or philosophy.

My campus has weekly chapel programs, with the first Thursday being a worship service, and the others ranging from informational to educational. I generally have the first chapel each semester, and then insert myself on other programs as needed. For my chapel this fall, I told the students that in order to Do the Right Thing (the 1989 Spike Lee movie), they would have to “Fight The Power" (the 1989 Public Enemy song from the movie).

The powers I indicted were purposelessness, promiscuity, and pain (inflicted on both self and others). In plain (sometimes colorful) language, I chastised those who aren’t taking college seriously. I decried this golden age of sexual irresponsibility and asked for maturity. And I essentially threatened any more young men who physically abuse women, especially after a student shared that she was choked by a recent graduate. She said she still had “feelings” for him -- I told her she needed new feelings. Mays would have been more diplomatic, but he would have challenged the behavior.

Finally, a Mays presidency develops real relationships with students. I was humored by an article I read about presidents with "monthly" office hours as a way to engage students. Many presidents find themselves on wild goose chases trying to raise funds, when the simplest way is to create an environment that supports and nurtures students, and those students will become giving alumni. No current president wants to do that because they are under pressure to raise money now. But for the long term viability of an institution, the only guaranteed sources of support (as our current economic crisis has shown) are not foundations or corporations, but alumni.

One of the reasons we have not seen the next Martin Luther King Jr. type figure is because we aren’t nurturing them. In reflecting on their relationship, Mays indicated "I am convinced that it was my contact with Martin Luther King, Jr. in chapel at Morehouse that brought us close together. There we began a real friendship which was strengthened by visits in his home and by fairly frequent informal chats on the campus and in my office." Mays shared that King would hang out after his Tuesday chapel speeches to discuss some point, both agreeing AND disagreeing.

It is my sense that this occurs too infrequently on campuses today. The idea of a president calling a student "friend," visiting the student’s home, and frequent informal chats seems unbelievable. However, this is exactly my experience. I often take students to lunch at local restaurants. Students are in and out of my office, and if they don’t mind my multitasking, they can sit until I tell them lovingly to get out. I’ve loaded up a van of students to hear a lecture on another campus.

I think this is extremely important in an age when students are in psychological distress. The president needs to be a friend, mentor, sibling, parent, and even pastor to students with so much hurt. Recently, I had a chance to go to lunch with a student who in less than 30 minutes shared about being raped, a lunch scheduled after she told me she was a cutter, showing me the thin scars from a razor. Another sat in my office to tell me about having two abortions in one summer. One came to ask for $5 to wash his clothes -- he had no money.

This is what the Mays model means. It means the president removes his or her title, and becomes a real person sensitive to young people trying to improve themselves but facing many obstacles. The Mays model means setting the tone for the campus -- that the elders also make themselves available for the students, and not simply talk about being a family, but doing it. The Mays model means challenging injustices, injustices that help to create the misery and despair that students bring with them. At some point, we need to fix the problem and not simply treat the symptoms.

I’m still learning how to be a president, but the more I interact with students the stronger my belief is that we need a new model of presidential leadership to support them. For me, I have found no better role model than Benjamin Elijah Mays.

Walter M. Kimbrough is president of Philander Smith College.

Last Tuesday and Wednesday we hosted the inaugural meeting of our Justice Project advisory board. We found scholars, activists, and executives from across the country to help us strengthen our new social justice emphasis. This group is extremely impressive. But listening to them Wednesday was absolutely phenomenal. I'm listing some of the great quotes below. You'll hear more about what we've done with their initial suggestions soon.

"Not just what do you want the world to look like, but what are you going to do?"

"There is a difference between service and disaster tourism"

"Help students determine what issues are pertinent to them and for them; don’t put our biases/experiences on them."

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