April 2011: Welcome address for the Paul Lyons Memorial Lecture Series
It is a great honor to welcome Robin Kelley, Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity at University of Southern California, to Stockton for our second Paul Lyons Memorial Lecture in American Studies. Robin Kelley is a most appropriate speaker for this series for so many reasons – so many reasons, in fact, that if I hadn’t been a historian in one of my incarnations before I became a Dean, I would say that it was inevitable that he would have been chosen as a speaker in this series. It was certainly over-determined, as historians like to say when they can’t avoid saying it was inevitable.
Why is this? Well, I will begin close to the end of my little saga of inevitability, sorry, over-determinedness. Last year, as we were getting ready to hear from our inaugural speaker, Eric Foner, I received an email from Professor Kelley in response to my request to come to Stockton. He wrote “Anything for Paul Lyons. We never met but his book on Philadelphia Communists had a huge impact on my first book.” That book, by the way, was Hammer and Hoe, focusing on Alabama Communists during the Great Depression (published back in 1990).
I had had no idea that he knew about Paul’s work or that he held him in high esteem. All I knew was that Paul held Robin Kelley in high regard. Paul and I ran through the Stockton woods on a number of occasions, until I decided that playing squash was less intellectually challenging, and so provided more of a release from the intellectual grind. That’s no offense to my squash partners, it was just that running with Paul was like being in a mobile seminar; he would ask you what you knew about a particular topic, a particular intellectual, or a particular book. He, of course, had read everything, though one book I don’t think he had ever read was the “Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner,” because he would never run quietly and let you deal with your stitch or your growing fatigue in peace.
One thing about Paul and running, it always seemed to me, was that his pace was often determined by how animated he was about what he was discussing, and whether he was pinning you to the ropes, metaphorically speaking, with his intellectual superiority. On one occasion as we ran by Lake Pam I thought I was on pretty safe ground as we were talking about African American radical theorists, talking about the Black Atlantic, and a host of other related matters. I was feeling fairly comfortable that day, thinking I might get through the run without too much difficulty, as we were ambling along at a fairly gentle pace. I then introduced what I thought was a great gambit, mentioning a book that Robin Kelley had given me, a work of C.L.R. James’s that he had edited, named A History of Pan-African Revolt. I was relieved that Paul didn’t know that particular volume, thinking I was almost home and dry, but then he launched into a discussion of all Kelley’s works, Hammer and Hoe, an article on the Montgomery Bus Boycott, published in the American Historical Review, Race Rebels, Yo’ Mama’s Dysfunktional, and other essays he had written. The pace quickened, especially when it became clear that while I knew much of this work, I didn’t know it quite as well as he did. By the end of the run I was sweating profusely and swearing to myself that I would never mention Kelley’s name again when running with Paul.
Paul loved and would have loved so many things about Robin Kelley and his approach to American Studies and American History – and some of these attributes Paul shared. Here are some things that come to mind:
Kelley’s unconventional radicalism – when one might expect him to fall back on culture and race, Kelley will turn to class – and vice versa. Often he will fuse all these elements together in ways that others would not have deemed possible.
Kelley’s awareness of the importance of gender – this often becomes the pivot for moving between race and class – and Kelley was ahead of almost everyone in the discussion of how these things interacted in African American history. For example, Kelley wrote in Race Rebels: “The terrain was often cultural, centering on identity, dignity, and fun. We tried to turn work into pleasure, to turn our bodies into instruments of pleasure. Generational and cultural specificity had a good deal to do with our unique forms of resistance, but a lot of our actions were linked directly to the labor process, gender conventions, and our class status.” These ideas were very much ahead of their time when he wrote them and Paul would have applauded such thoughts.
Kelley’s activism – Paul was an activist at heart and I am sure he found Kelley’s writings inspirational on this score. Paul would have loved this bit of writing from Kelley’s Freedom Dreams: “Progressive social movements do not simply produce statistics and narratives of oppression; rather, the best ones do what great poetry always does: transport us to another place, compel us to relive horrors, and, more important, enable us to imagine a new society. We must remember that the conditions and the very existence of social movements enable participants to imagine something different, to realize that things need not always be this way. It is that imagination, that effort to see the future in the present that I call ‘poetry’ or ‘poetic knowledge.’” Paul would have loved the idea of poetic knowledge.
Kelley’s appreciation of the transnational in history – I think anyone writing about Communism or music has to reach beyond the borders of one country, and both Paul and Robin Kelley certainly have done this – as we will learn in today’s talk [entitled “Africa Speaks, America Answers: Modern Jazz in Revolutionary Times.”].
Kelley’s love of music – Paul never had the opportunity to read the brilliant biography of Thelonious Monk, which I strongly urge you all to read, but he would have loved it. We all remember Paul as a great lover of music with very eclectic tastes – and I am sure he would have been pulling down Monk albums from his collection on reading that book.
Kelley’s reputation as a great teacher – I have never met anyone who knows Robin Kelley, undergraduate or graduate, who wasn’t inspired by him and I think this is something that he shares with Paul – another beloved teacher who knew how to reach students – as was evidenced by Paul’s last work, American Conservatism, Thinking it, Teaching it.
Kelley’s humanism and humanity – I am not sure what the barometer for this is exactly, but many people who have accomplished a great deal become aloof and distant. Robin Kelley is one of the nicest people you’ll ever meet and I could imagine the two of them shooting the breeze or, if Robin felt up to it, going on a run together. But I would have to say that Paul would not have been running quickly because he had put Kelley in a tight spot intellectually. I imagine an altogether different scenario. I imagine Kelley on the run saying something about the need to recover the poetry of social movements, particularly the poetry that dreams of a new world, of the need to find “free spaces” for articulating or even realizing our dreams.” I then envision Paul coming to a stop, turning to his companion, putting his hands on Robin Kelley’s shoulders and quoting Baudelaire “Mon semblable, mon frère.”
Of course, he would probably then run on chuckling – believing he was victorious!
So I know Paul would have loved today’s topic, about which Robin Kelley will be speaking: “Africa Speaks, America Answers: Modern Jazz in Revolutionary Times.“ It will no doubt combine all of the above-mentioned attributes, and will give us many more things to chew on besides.
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