Notes from the Master Teacher of Black Studies: Dr. Nathan Hare

Marvin,

I see you’re still working on it, still a poet. Dr. Ruth Love said she was going to be sending somebody to help with the archives.

Speaking of Asa and the maroon within us, I first learned about the maroons in a course in “Negro History” in 1948 (textbook by Carter G. Woodson) as a high school sophomore at Toussaint L’ouverture High in Slick, Oklahoma.

Something pathetic,, as Harold Cruse would say, about the fact that a scholar of the magnitude of Asa Hilliard would have to be hipping black people to the Maroons at this late date.

By the way, I just now learned for the first time that Asa was also, like me and Khalid, a member of the Omega Psi Phi fraternity.

This just shows the confusion of the concept of blackness in our midst, when Negro colleges founded by white post-slavery racists we so proudly hail as “black colleges, or for reasons that call for speculation, “historically black colleges.” When did that history begin? When were they not black colleges. Why are they black colleges now. Why is it only historic? Does it mean their blackness has past and they were black historically but no longer?

Coincidentally, you just called with potentially good news, so I say so much for philosophy. Enough already. Now when I get to Heaven I can put on my shoes and sing and Suzie-Q and  fox trot and huckle-buck all over all over God’s heaven. I might even buck-dance if I wind up with some bucks.

Nathan

Note: Dr. Nathan Hare is the Father of Black Studies. He formulated the first curricula for Black Studies at a major American university. For his radical ideas and activism, he was removed from the faculty of Howard University and San Francisco State University. Marvin X is organizing his archives for acquisition. www.blackbirdpressnews.blogspot.com