Month: September 2021

Last month, I was gifted with an opportunity to present some research at the annual board meeting for the Arizona Historical Society. This was an immense honor – some of my earliest archival research occurred in their collections. It was such a blessing to share my findings with this community and I am deeply appreciative that they chose to recognize my scholarship in this fashion. Below is a YouTube clip of my address. I hope you all enjoy it as much as I did.

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I vividly remember getting my application to Howard submitted at the deadline. I was a National Achievement Finalist due to my SAT scores – which were pretty decent, not worldbeating, but best in my class – and they offered scholarships for all Finalists. So, during basketball practice, my dad picked up my application and took it to the post office. I ran out to the parking lot in the middle of warmups, my sweaty body shivering in the February chill, knowing in that moment my life had taken a new trajectory. I mean… I didn’t know. But I still remember that parking lot because, even if I didn’t know, I understood that I had charted a new course.

At that time, I wanted to work as a history professor at Arizona State University. I saw myself going to Howard so I could do that. I mean, I didn’t want to ATTEND Arizona State. Most of the students in my class went to school in-state. I was tired our local education. I wanted something more challenging; I wanted to feel connected to my curriculum. But I heard of a Black history professor at ASU and that sounded nice – a cool job with the comfort of home. That vison became my objective.

My dad and I drove to campus from Glendale. We left (from my recollection) on August 16, 2006. We stopped and said bye to my mom at the Denny’s on 27th/Bell. She was crying and had been trying to avoid me so she wouldn’t. But we said our goodbyes, and we drove away, and I fell asleep listening to Flyleaf as my dad drove us up the I-17. I started driving on the Navajo nation, but got pulled over pretty quickly, so my dad did most of the driving after that. We had planned to drive straight through but stopped for a night in Memphis. So we had to drive about sixteen hours, through the night, to get to DC by 9am on August 19, 2006. We arrived at 8:45am.

I was homesick for the first two years. I did a transfer semester in Tucson – not Tempe – but went back to Howard because I knew it was my best shot of getting into Grad school. I did – I went on to become the first HBCU grad to get a history Ph. D. from Penn – and had transformative personal experiences along the way. Had some girlfriends, had some breakups, had some good times, had some bad times – I even had a kid – but all the while I just wanted to go home and teach history at Arizona State.

When my fellowship ran out I did just that. I taught at community college and at ASU West. I started my research career as an unpaid assistant there, so things really came full circle. As I was finishing, I was a finalist for a Lecturer position at the Tempe campus, but didn’t receive an offer (probably because the person who got the position was a wonderful candidate) after an interview when I was asked why I wouldn’t leave for a tenure track job when one became available. Well, I took a couple postdocs, and declined lecturer opportunities when I had better opportunities out of state. But I kept applying for tenure track jobs, and was crushingly denied in search after search. It was all politics – of course – but they left me unemployed as the pandemic ended hiring opportunities. I took a forced sabbatical – really, I declined adjunct work – until I was offered an Honors Faculty position in Barrett, the Honors College at the Tempe Campus.

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Today, Thursday, August 19, 2021, was my first day as a full-time faculty member at Arizona State University. I have been crying all morning. It isn’t JUST that I accomplished this goal I set out for – because it’s not really done, in a way, there is more that I can do to fulfill that vision – but because I arrived in DC fifteen years ago with this objective. It’s such a long time.

I have taken my son to the office twice this week. And I told him much of this story above. But today, I dropped him off at school, smoked a bit, stopped in a parking lot to cry my eyes out. It is hard to feel proud of myself right now. I feel like… so ashamed of who I am. I don’t like who I am right now. And I am exactly where I always wanted to be. Like, the sacrifice, the loss, the pain, the struggle… was it worth it? “I would have so many friends if I didn’t have money, respect, and accomplishments.” I need new friends, to replace those I lost, on the way to what? A lecturer position?

I dropped kiddo off late. He woke up late. We left without eating breakfast and got food at McDonald’s. Why am I not super timely? Or organized? Or someone other that who I have become if who I have become is so flawed? But these flaws helped bring my vision to reality. These flaws made it so that, fifteen years later, I could fulfill my vision for myself – that I could be a professor at Arizona State. The same vision which kept me in school after having a kid. The same vision that bet on postdocs over the tenure-track(!). The same vision that loves vice, and sin, and is clouded by shame when others know that I see these things. Because, for better or worse – opaque or perspicacious – I see what is in my line of vision. It’s real to me.

At Barrett, the Honors College, we are “dedicated to the dedicated.” Whatever that means. But it does mean something – these honors kids, the ones who want 102% in bio, the ones developing drug habits to study, the ones who… in their precocity… often kill themselves trying to please others.

To them I say – you are already enough. Your habits that brought you will carry you forward – make sure they are habits that will sustain you. This race of life is so long that you would not want to win it all at the beginning.

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As a postdoc, one of my senior colleagues said, when it came to the job market, that “N=5.” At first, I didn’t understand what they meant, but basically, they were saying that you have five years after finishing your degree to land a tenure-track gig. Well, in some ways, the pandemic was actually a gift year, because on August 21, 2023, a little less than six years after earning my Ph. D., I accepted a tenure-track position as an Assistant Professor of African American Studies at Northern Arizona University. This amazing opportunity, too valuable to pass up, came with the bittersweet realization that my time at ASU had come to an end. This had been my dream institution for the past decade – my hometown university, where many of my family and friends had attended class, a place to bring my local interests before a local audience – but it no longer offered a position that accommodated my professional ambitions. And I’m okay with that. It was an honor and a privilege to work at Arizona State University.

But the sentimental optimism of my youth… where has it gone? Has it hardened and calcified like petrified wood? Or have I hidden it, even from myself, to protect that precocious teenager – the one who decided to become a scholar all those years ago – from the petty, vindictive hatefulness that saturates academia? All I know – I used to love tests, then I feared assessment, but now… I’m looking forward to future challenges.

I used to think that teen had proved his worth by getting a scholarship, and I couldn’t understand why things were so hard for him as an adult – I even saw him as a failure – after he had success as a kid. But he did prove his capability, not for anyone else, but for his own understanding, and I find peace knowing that each challenge is an opportunity for his brilliance to shine again and again and again and again and again and again and again…

ad infinitum