Quaker Higher Education QHE a Publication of the Friends Association for Higher Education

Quaker Higher Education QHE A Publication of the Friends Association for Higher Education

Volume 12: Issue 1 April 2018

What connections and overlaps are many Friends, in Deconstructing White authentic, Spirit-led, Light-filled, and which Fragility: Nurturing Resilient Anti-Racist are forced, imposed, even violent and Practice in Our Daily Life. He reports on a erasing? This query emerges for us from the FAHE workshop that grappled with Robin five essays and poems gathered for this DiAngelo’s often stark text about the Spring 2018 issue of Quaker Higher arrogance and entitlement of white fragility Education. This will be Don Smith’s last issue as co-editor, and I (Abigail) want to Minette Coleman “drops some knowledge hold up his work and legacy of seven years. on us” about Connections – on Sharing Black and Quaker History, reveling in the Roger Reynolds, Humanities & Technology stories, histories, and realities she has Director at Olney Friends School, opens this unearthed as Historian of the Black Alumni issue with Monster Girls: Nimona and of Guilford College. You can follow Empathic Reading—and great illustrations! Minnette @MinnetteColeman and her novel Roger shows how exploring this action-hero online. graphic novel can encourage students and teachers to risk transgressive, empowering, In Envisioning a Future: FAHE in the Days and truly empathic interactions within the Ahead, C. Wess Daniels and Deborah Shaw classroom and with the text. of Guilford College help us understand some of the work ahead for our organization. Paul Moke, political scientist at Wilmington College, draws us into another imagined We close with two poems by Hugh Ogden, world: the subsistence homesteads (March 11, 1937-December 31, 2006), communities developed for underemployed Professor of English at Trinity College, mining families during the Depression, in Haverford College, ’59. Trinity College Quaker Responses to Poverty. The hosts a poet-in-residence and reading during homesteading, training and support this month, March, his birthday month. programs in Pennsylvania and West Enjoy more of his poems online. Virginia, connected Clarence Pickett of the AFSC, the nostalgic back-to-the-land Submissions: QHE is published twice a movement, and Roosevelt’s New Dealers— year, in the spring and the fall. Articles and also attempted racial integration and submitted for possible publication should be justice, before Pickett moved the self-help sent as Word documents to programs to inner cities. [email protected] or to [email protected]. If you would like to Walter Sullivan, Haverford College’s discuss an article idea, you can call: 336- Director of Quaker Affairs, picks up on the 316-2162 (DS) and 860-832-2616 (AEA). hard anti-racism work left undone by too

FAHE ANNUAL CONFERENCE June 14-17, 2018

Hoping to see all of you June 14-17, 2018! FAHE will meet at Wilmington College in Wilmington, OH, to consider the theme of “Keeping Faithful in a Time of Rapid Change.” The call for papers with queries and conference registration is available at the FAHE web site and at this site.

Monster Girls: Nimona and Empathic Reading Roger Reynolds Olney Friends School

Classrooms can be deeply oppositional around the circle, and especially one girl, places. There's a good reason for that: so who was from Hanoi, and who had been often teaching is about transformation, completely silent during the whole session. I willing or otherwise; our students come to knew that this teacher's aggressive us a certain way, and the teacher's job is to questioning about the war, from a strictly make them something else, to affect some American point of view, had to be deeply change, whether wanted or not. However, troubling to her. There was a moment when this essay presents a complementary the teacher asked this girl where she was approach: teaching a graphic novel as text from, and when she said “Vietnam,” he can encourage transgressive, oppositional, actually rubbed his hands together and said empowering, and truly empathic interactions something like, “This is going to be good.” within the classroom and with the text. In He started recounting facts about the war, particular, I present here an illustration of trying to get her to comment on their how Noelle Stevenson’s graphic novel significance, ending with the assertion that adaptation of her web comic Nimona can be more munitions had been used by the US in used to foster engaged and empathic reading Vietnam than in all of World War II. Then in the classroom. he put her on the spot, and demanded a response. She was silent for a moment, and Oppositional Teaching as Bullying then said, in her distinctive, tiny voice, “I know about that. But I don't want to think Many times the nature of the classroom about that.” interaction follows the Socratic model. As teachers, we bring to the classroom a There was a small gasp. And I admit, I felt a particular truth, or right answer; our job is to sudden surge of admiration for this student, tease this answer out of students by asking for this small act of contrariness, for them probing questions. By doing so we asserting the value of her truth in the face of hope to teach them the kinds of thinking that the teacher's relentless rhetoric. Everyone will enable them to find other right answers. else in that class (myself included) had been However, this confrontational approach can cowed by this teacher's aggressive style. cross over into bullying. Now, when I remember that day, I realize that the reason it stands out is because she I remember sitting in on a particularly was speaking truth to power: she was distressing sample lesson taught by a man affirming that learning is a shared who was a very experienced teacher. For the experience that we all should participate in lesson, he gathered a dozen or so students equally. Her opposition was the real lesson together and began quizzing them on the of that class—and it was a missed Vietnam War, asking questions of the “I opportunity. Instead of asking her to explain know the right answer let's see if you can herself, the teacher saw this as a chance to guess it” kind. This sort of closed-off argue. discussion was deeply agitating for me; I had the benefit of knowing every student

Reading, empathy, and pedagogy

There is plenty of opposition in teaching literature, and I want to suggest that this opposition is often the real source of learning. Teaching anyone, but particularly high school seniors, how to read literary texts is a complex and daunting task. Getting students to crack a book, even an engaging and fun one, can be a challenge. This is a problem I'm sure we all have faced: the student who “doesn't care” or who seems impassive or disengaged. Their disengagement is not so much an academic problem as a loss of potential or opportunity—opportunity for self-discovery, of course, but also the lost chance at contributing to the collective understanding of the class through their reading. Positing a different relationship between reader and text might help. What I call “empathic reading” offers, among other things, an understanding of reading as a dialog Figure 1: Nimona and Blackheart play a board game (p. 84). between reader and text, based on © 2015 Stevenson/HarperCollins questioning and active exploration rather than passive reading and answering exam Stevenson has called “monk punk.” The questions. town is nominally ruled by a king, but the real power is a shadowy secret intelligence Nimona bureau called the Institution. Part of Nimona's story is about Blackheart's quest Nimona is a web comic about the for revenge against his one-time lover relationship between a older arch-villain Goldenloin, who Blackheart thinks cheated named Blackheart and his young, him out of a chance to be a hero. shapeshifting, sidekick, Nimona. It is a great text to use for engaging teaching, since But Nimona is really about genre. And by on the surface it is appears to be a fun genre, I don't mean that it is about being a graphic novel/web comic, while in fact it comic, but rather that it is about what genres discusses themes connected to identity and are: how they are defined, who gets to self-knowledge that parallel the work define them, how texts either adhere to or readers do in understanding the text. violate those conventions. I mean genre in the largest sense; ultimately it is about what It’s set in a quasi-medieval town that is a we are as people, biological and sexual and bizarre mash up of medieval and science emotional genres. fiction elements: there are sword fights and armor and dragons, but also ray guns and Another way of thinking about genre is as a telescreens and bionic arms, an aesthetic game. Bernard Suits' definition of a game (from his book The Grasshopper) is

“voluntarily agreeing to overcome unnecessary obstacles using inefficient means to have a specific experience” (Suits 34). Suits' example, one of them, is the game of golf; one could hardly come up with a more inefficient method for putting small balls into holes in the ground than by hitting them from hundreds of yards away with sticks, but the point of the game is the (absurd) challenge. Similarly, the point of genres is to establish a set of conventions or rules that will guarantee the consumer of the text a certain experience. If we understand Nimona as a game in this sense, then we have to ask what experience we are after by reading the comic -- where the fun of it is.

How, for example, are we to understand the page displayed in Figure 1? In the context of the story, this panel happens during a lull: Blackheart and Nimona have pulled off a daring bank heist, during which Nimona was injured, so the two are laying low at Figure 2: Nimona shares a backstory (p. 26). Blackhearts' secret lair, watching movies © 2015 Stevenson/HarperCollins and playing board games. We can infer a lot about these characters from this exchange, turning it into a book, the reader’s and in fact much of the “fun” of Nimona experience of the story is changed. One of the pleasures of web comics is watching comes from the way the characters interact. 1 But there is also a kind of absurdity to this them unfold, page by page, over time. page—it's absurd that they are taking a break from Blackheart's evil plans to play a Empathic reading board game, and it's absurd that the game is a medieval-themed version of Monopoly. At its heart, Nimona is a kind of game, but a But the father-daughter dynamic between game where the rules are loosely defined by the two rings true, and, more importantly, genre but mostly are changing or morphing in unexpected ways throughout the text. In Nimona's rewriting of the rules of the game fact, I think the text challenges us to while they are playing it is not too far from deconstruct or reconfigure the rules of the what Stevenson is doing in her comic. It's a story on the fly, much as Nimona is move Stevenson uses again and again: as the characters redefine their relationship to each 1 Another is understanding the reading community these other in new and surprising ways, we as stories attract; in the case of Nimona, there was a devoted (and vocal) fan base that recorded their thoughts about the readers must redefine our understanding of story in real time via the comments section of Stevenson’s the text. The text I use for Nimona is the gingerhaze.com website. Most of those comments have print version published by Harper Collins, been removed from the live version of site, but you can still see them via the Internet Archive (internet.org) by but a good argument can be made that, by searching for gingerhaze.com/nimona and using one of the snapshots before 2015.

redefining the rules of the game in this page. “secret code,” which is a hidden language The primary tool we have for this is what I inside the text that points to the second part, call “empathic reading.” the “missing thing,” the meaning or theme that is suggested by the shape of the My use of the word “empathic” is different narrative, articulated as a kind of negative than what other scholars have meant when space. These meanings are hidden, or covert, discussing empathy and reading. Often because they are dangerous in some fashion, people think it means “character either because they counteract the “official” identification,” for example, or “feeling meaning of the text, or because they along” with a character. But most people undermine the rules by which we read who have written about empathy and things, or because they articulate something narrative employ a slightly different we'd rather not think about. And they are not concept, the idea of mistaken empathy or necessarily subject to authorial intention, negative empathy. Suzanne Keen, for either. They inhabit a creative space that example, talks about “empathic inaccuracy,” author and reader participate in, yet neither which, essentially, is when the reader truly owns, a place poet Dorothea Lasky has connects empathically with a character but called “the shared imagination” (Lasky). at “cross purposes” with the author's intent The “missing thing” in the text is made (Keen 214). Sianne Ngai in her book Ugly visible by a corresponding space in the Feelings talks about the idea of “against,” reader. the tendency of texts to resist empathic connections, or the tendency of feelings like The impetus to encode these meanings, or envy or irritation to form the strongest for the reader to obstinately persist in empathic bonds (Nagai 11). seeking out such meanings, is what I call the “transgressive spirit,” which is a fancy way Nimona invites the reader to identify with to talk about resistance, either to the rules of these characters, but this is a kind of the text, or the ideological forces misdirection or ploy. The comic actually is (institutional, social, personal) that seek to making a much more difficult demand on suppress such meanings. The text resists the reader—specifically, that the kinds of such interpretations; the reader must empathic connections we are encouraged to overcome the temptation to give in to the make with these characters might be wrong, resistance of the text, or to the idea that his or even irrelevant. To read empathically understanding of the secret thing could be means understanding the text in a deep and mistaken, or the fear of what his reading dangerous way—it means understanding might reveal about himself. This element of that your reading might be wrong, or that it resistance, of opposition, is what I hope to might lead you to some unexpected places in show at work in Nimona. your own psyche. Like most adventures, there is some risk involved. marginality and “negative theology” and Jameson’s In my formulation of this, there are three “political unconscious,” but also Adorno’s “negative parts to “empathic reading:” (and I am sure I dialectic” and the notion, described in Maurice Blanchot’s The Space of Literature, that literary meaning is negotiated am cribbing these things from other by reader and author in a shared “space” neither owns or 2 scholars; forgive me ) The first two are the dominates. I find connections to the pedagogies described by Parker Palmer (The Courage to Teach) and bell hooks, (Teaching to Transgress). One recent articulation of how 2 I apologize for my imprecision here. Of course these “bad feelings” can express positive political change can be ideas come out of my exposure to concepts of Derridean found in Audrey Wollen’s “sad girl theory.”

central problem of the text, presumably, is finding out what Nimona is. This is a problem that transcends the “genre game” of the text. Suddenly we find that a lot more is at stake in playing the game.

The secret code

Hints that Nimona might not be what she Figure 3: Nimona as anger monster (p. 157). seems—a girl who is also a shape shifter— © 2015 Stevenson/HarperCollins crop up early in the comic, notably when Blackheart asks her where she comes from. This negative aesthetic is, in my view, Nimona reluctantly agrees to “do the vitally important in any reading practice you backstory thing.” The story she tells, might want to share with a class. They need displayed in Figure 2, about being to know what is at stake in their reading: transformed by a witch into a dragon so she The idea that texts might mean more than could rescue the witch from a deep hole, and what they say, or that a critical reading gradually learning to adapt the spell to practice might transform their understanding change into different things, is suspect at of a text, or that the practice of connecting best. with a text might transform their understanding of themselves. Blackheart is skeptical, but takes Nimona’s story at face value. But the telling part in One of the surprises that comes with reading this sequence is Stevenson’s remarkable Nimona is how the story transforms from drawing, especially the framing of Nimona revenge story to a story concerned with and Blackheart after she has finished her identity. We can see this in the shifting story and he is evaluating it. Nimona’s relationship of Blackheart and Goldenloin -- casual tossing of the soda can into the waste are they lovers or enemies, heroes or basket suggests more than anything else that villains? But this is most effectively shown she knows she is getting away with a lie. But in the character of Nimona herself. The the lie is not the real issue here – the real

issue is why she is lying. That’s the question Stevenson’s drawing invites us to ask. It’s a question that makes us think about what her real story might be, or, perhaps, why her story is important in the first place.

Stevenson is very astute at making Nimona’s external state reflect her internal state. In a later sequence, after Nimona is recuperating from an encounter with a mysterious machine that saps her shapeshifting powers, her appearance changes, and Blackheart notices:

The hair change is an expression of vulnerability (as is the sudden wearing of pants, as one astute reader of the comic online pointed out in the comments). The sequence naturally invites the reader to connect with these characters, but Nimona’s Figure 5: How did Nimona survive? A question of vulnerability is not what this particular identity (p. 168). © 2015 Stevenson/HarperCollins secret code is alluding to. If anything, it is a advice to Nimona: “you can’t just go around red herring, another case where the text murdering people, there are rules.” (p 4). demands that we reevaluate the “rules of the Yet for all his efforts, Blackheart can’t save game.” Nimona, who apparently is killed.

The missing thing Except, she doesn’t die.

The crisis in the story comes when Nimona transforms into something truly Blackheart, who has been apprehended by terrible, a beast that can only be called a Goldenloin, is rescued by Nimona. During a monster derived from deep anger (shown in fierce battle in which Nimona becomes, Figure 3). In this guise, Nimona is easily among other things, a triceratops and a fox, able to defeat her opponents and rescue the Blackheart watches as Nimona, who has unconscious Blackheart. The contrast shape shifted into a terrible dragon, is between Nimona the anger monster, and decapitated. Nimona the caretaker, depicted in Figure 4, could not be greater. What kind of story is This sequence illustrates the problem of this? The question comes into even clearer genre. The tone swings from comic to tragic focus when we realize that Nimona’s very quickly; Blackheart’s banter with decapitation, or the larger struggle with the Goldenloin has a tongue-in-cheek quality institution, is not what the comic has been that belies the serious nature of their fight, about at all. The true climax of story comes which is underlined by Blackheart’s killing when Blackheart confronts Nimona about of the guard to save Nimona. Blackheart, how she managed to survive, shown in the hero/villain, is notably averse to killing Figure 5. anyone, and this panel recalls his earlier

Blackheart’s question to Nimona, “What are Blackheart, I find myself wanting to believe you?” is to me the central question of the in Nimona’s intentions, but also resist the whole comic. The missing thing, the shape temptation to invest too much in her the larger story of the comic has been emotional attachment. The text deeply describing, is Nimona’s identity. The truth problematizes Nimona’s nature. On the one is, we find, there are no rules that govern hand, the rules of the genre game the text Nimona's identity, or she has not figured appears to be playing seem to invite us to them out yet. In that sense, she exists outside “believe” in Nimona as human, but on the of genre. She is truly alone. other our empathic connection to these characters seems to require a resistance to The transgressive spirit such belief – whatever Nimona may be, our ability to understand her true nature can only It's easy to see how Nimona is a story about come about by resisting the urge to assign an adolescence, gender, and the mysterious identity to her. things our bodies can do. Stevenson herself, in an interview with Vanity Fair, explained This poses some interesting problems, not that Nimona is about “identity and if who simply for the plot, but for our practice of you are is defined by what you look like” reading. There is a parallel structure in the (Robinson). What is perhaps less expected is relationship of Blackheart and Nimona and the way that Blackheart's insistence on rules the relationship of reader and text; I mean precludes any real understanding of Nimona. something more than just my personal That is, his imperative, as a surrogate parent, predilection for understanding the story is to keep Nimona safe, which he cannot do from Blackheart's point of view and sharing if he can't know for sure what she is, but this his concern for Nimona. Even though she is condition is exactly the one Nimona herself the subject of the comic, she is, essentially, cannot meet. The self-knowledge Blackheart unavailable. Nimona herself is the “missing requires of her is not simply not available thing” in the text. What is missing is the within the rules of the game. truth of her existence, what she really is; this in turn problematizes the reading of the At this point, the transgressive nature of the comic, since, like Blackheart, the reader is narrative, and the transgression required of left with a Nimona-sized hole in his heart. us, as readers, to fully enter into the This emotional response to the text points to emotional landscape of these characters, a lack, not just in the story, but in the idea of becomes apparent. Blackheart is changed by story itself. It is a betrayal, one that operates his need to care for Nimona, but this change at several different registers—Nimona is in opposition to the role he plays in the betrays Blackheart, because she cannot be story. His decision to stop fighting the what he thinks she is; Blackheart, in his turn, Institution subverts or converts the genre of betrays Nimona, in that he requires from her the story – the rules of the game are something she can’t give in exchange for his changing – but at the same time his love and protection; and the story betrays connection to Nimona as surrogate parent is the reader, in that it is (apparently) tenuous at best. Nimona does appear to promising something it cannot deliver—the genuinely care for him. Yet we readers, truth about Nimona, or an emotionally along with Blackheart, have become satisfying conclusion to her adventure. This fundamentally skeptical about her last betrayal is not necessarily specific to motivations and true nature. With these characters, or to this comic, but rather

part of a larger betrayal of narrative and our In a way, the comic calls into question the access to the truth about ourselves. ability of plot and genre to say anything about identity or truth. This is at bottom the Nimona’s transformation into an anger idea that its self-referentiality and “monk- monster, her embrace of the identity punk” aesthetic point to: of course it doesn't assigned to her by the Institution as a make any sense, because there is no sense to “monster,” and Blackheart’s refusal to think be made. The thing we want from a story of her as a monster point to a way out of this like Nimona can't—by definition—be found. trap. Blackheart’s “reading” of Nimona’s Our reading of the comic is at once a kind of mental state after she turns into the anger fond looking-for: we do connect with her as monster is the same sort of reading required a teen–and a kind of knowing expression of of us. Like Blackheart, who believes in the expected disappointment. We read it connection he has with Nimona even though anyway, our pleasure in the story happening she is clearly not what he thought she was, in spite of our knowledge that the game is we readers are required to have faith in the rigged. story, even though we know that it is unable to capture the “truth” about Nimona. The Works Cited “truth” is in the act of reading. Keen, Suzanne. “A Theory of Narrative The End Empathy.” Narrative 14.3 (2006): 207–236. Web. 3 Nov. 2015. To return to the beginning, I think the thing I was reacting so strongly against in that Lasky, Dorothea. “A Belief in Ghosts: sample class was, in Nimona terms, a lack of Poetry and the Shared Imagination.” JSTOR faith. The true lesson a book like Nimona Daily. N.p., 4–4 Oct. 2016. Web. 19 June can teach is that certainty, even about who 2017. we are, is elusive. Understanding, or belief, is a struggle, and point of any pedagogy is to Ngai, Sianne. Ugly Feelings. Cambridge, try to teach that struggle. There is, of course, MA: Harvard UP, 2007. a direct relationship between texts like Nimona, and the practice of reading, and the Robinson, Johanna. “How Noelle Stevenson mysterious things that happen when we Broke All the Rules to Conquer the Comic interact with each other, and our yearning Book World.” Vanity Fair 15 July 2015. for meaning, either individually or Web collectively in Worship. Parker Palmer likes to talk about “the great thing” that is the true Stevenson, Noelle/ Stevenson Noelle (ILT). subject of study, and I agree with him that, Nimona. N.p.: Harpercollins Childrens, while facts are important, they are not what 2015. we are trying to teach. I’m less interested in how many bombs we dropped than in Suits, Bernard, Thomas Hurka, and Frank knowing how that student from Vietnam and Newfeld. The Grasshopper: Games, Life, her family were affected. and Utopia. Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview, 2014.

Quaker Responses to Poverty: Subsistence Homesteads in Appalachia during the Great Depression

Paul Moke Wilmington College

During the depths of the Great Depression, economic dislocation and social conflict by the American Friends Service Committee expanding the educational and cultural worked extensively in Appalachia to relieve horizons of children so they could prepare the suffering of stranded miners and their for better lives outside company coal towns. families. Acting at the invitation of In the current essay, I examine how and why President Herbert Hoover, AFSC used a AFSC launched experimental self-help combination of federal and private resources housing projects and subsistence to organize a child-feeding program in five homesteading communities in southwestern states. In several parts of West Virginia it Pennsylvania during the Depression. also offered innovative gardening programs and instruction in traditional crafts, weaving, AFSC’s approach to the problem of chronic and woodworking. Its success in these unemployment and poverty in the endeavors led to a close collaboration Appalachian coalfields stressed group self- between AFSC executive secretary Clarence help housing. Networking with federal and Pickett and Eleanor Roosevelt, spawning private-sector agencies, it provided financial expanded AFSC involvement in subsistence resources, technical expertise, and homestead communities during the 1930s administrative assistance in order to help and 40s. These experimental programs families build their own low-cost housing relocated chronically unemployed workers and establish new sources of food and to newly-designed rural communities where employment. Their model grew out of the they built modest homes, received small work of British Friends in the coal mining plots of land for horticulture and animal regions of Wales as well as reforms production, and gained access to cooperative undertaken by industrialists in Würzburg, entrepreneurial activities. Germany during the 1920s. In endorsing the development of subsistence homesteads, In a previous article, I explored the religious AFSC embraced the ideas of the back-to- roots of AFSC’s economic justice the-land movement that arose in the United programs—such as those it undertook in States during the early twentieth century.2 Appalachia—in the social gospel of the These ideas, which stressed the need for Progressive era.1 I find that AFSC officials government programs to relocate surplus sought to mediate the relationship between industrial and migrant farm workers, squared with Quaker values of individual 1 Paul Moke, “Quakers in the Coalfields: Economic dignity and cooperative community. Justice and the American Friends Service Committee,” in David R. Ross & Michael Snarr (Eds.), Quakers, Politics, and Economics: Quakers 2 For further reading about the ideas, methods, and in the Disciplines, Vol. 5, (Philadelphia, PA: Friends leaders of the back-to-the-land movement and their Association for Higher Education, 2018) influence upon Franklin Roosevelt, see Paul K. (forthcoming). Conkin, Tomorrow a New World (Ithaca, NY: Cornell Univ. Press, 1959).

Federal support for subsistence homesteads and four-acre plots suitable for horticulture, began in 1933 when Congress included resident construction of dwellings and funding for experimental homesteads as part outbuildings, and an infusion of outside of the National Industrial Recovery Act. capital that enabled homesteaders to rent or The Department of the Interior created a purchase their homes at below market rates. Division of Subsistence Homesteads (DSH), Residents worked under the supervision of and Clarence Pickett and Homer Morris took experienced carpenters, masons, and part-time leaves of absence from their electricians. The plan called for them to live positions in AFSC to assume management off of their individual and cooperative roles in the DSH. They supervised the farming activities until new industries could development of four subsistence be attracted to the area. homesteading programs for stranded miners in Appalachia, two in West Virginia The vision of self-help as a means of (Arthurdale and Tygart Valley), one in alleviating chronic poverty and substandard Tennessee (Cumberland Homesteads), and housing entailed both the involvement of the one in Pennsylvania (Westmoreland federal government as a source of funds as Highlands, aka “Norvelt”).3 well as a cultural shift in the identities and lifestyles of participants. Psychologically, In western Pennsylvania, efforts to develop residents had to reorient themselves away subsistence homesteads arose because of the from the competitive individualism and dire economic conditions in coal mining hierarchical environment of the mines districts in the region. The Connellsville toward a new spirit of cooperation and Coal Vein in this area once was one of the community control of commercial activities. best coal fields in the country for making of These dimensions of the experiment posed metallurgical coke, a blend of bituminous significant political and administrative coal widely used in the production of steel. challenges. Coke manufacturers such as the H.C. Frick Company used widely-dispersed “beehive Throughout much of American history, the ovens” immediately adjacent to coal mines federal government simply sold public in rural counties. In the 1920s, however, resources such as land or timber at steep steel corporations built “by-product ovens” discounts to private interests. There was beside their urban mills, and the preparation little precedent within Congress or of coke in rural Westmoreland, Fayette, and administrative agencies for the management Green counties declined. Physical isolation of public housing or community property. and rugged topography made it difficult to As a result, those individuals who lacked the attract new industries into the area, and resources to purchase private homes widespread poverty in “patch” company struggled as best they could on their own. In towns ensued. the 1920s over half of all homes in America were not owned by their occupants.4 When In 1934, Clarence Pickett hired David W. conditions deteriorated following the stock Day and Errol D. Peckham, two veterans of market crash, the absence of decent housing AFSC’s child-feeding program, to manage for migrant workers, sharecroppers, and the Norvelt project. Norvelt featured two- stranded laborers became a matter of public

3 The name changed in 1937 when Eleanor Roosevelt 4 Data from the U.S. Census Bureau indicates that the visited the project. “Norvelt” combines portions of homeownership rate in the United States in 1920 was her first and last names. 45.6%.

concern. Even as Franklin Roosevelt’s New corporation to borrow money, construct Deal reformers developed programs to buildings, and grant contracts to address adverse housing conditions, homesteaders quickly, without the need for powerful interest groups in the real estate, burdensome bureaucratic delays. Under the banking, and agriculture industries sought to ownership and control of the FSHC, the prevent federal interference in the local corporations collected payments from marketplace. Such groups perceived the the homeowners, granted them stock in new federal programs as utopian, or worse, exchange for equity in their homes, and as radical experiments in “planned arranged for the eventual sale of property to economies” and socialism. Seeing a threat them. to their economic and political standing, they organized a comprehensive attack on The Quaker administrators also devised a the very idea of homestead communities, “credit-hour” system whereby homesteaders sponsoring critical editorials in conservative were compensated for their construction newspapers, lobbying members of Congress, work partially in cash and partially in credits and persuading sympathetic administrative that could be applied toward rental expenses agencies, such as the U.S. Department of or the purchase price of their homes. At Agriculture, to restrict and later abandon Norvelt, for example, twenty-five percent of federal homesteading projects. the residents’ labor was paid for in cash and seventy-five percent was paid for under the Clarence Pickett countered these moves credit system, up to a limit of 1,200 clock through the adoption of novel methods to hours. Although the credit system provided streamline administration and enhance a form of “sweat equity” that eventually community consciousness among residents would reduce the cost of housing, it also led of the experimental projects. Although his to controversy. Homesteaders who lacked reforms raised legal objections and outside employment often exceeded their occasional resistance from the homesteaders 1,200 hour limit, and they complained that themselves, in other ways his approaches they were working without full offered a cost-effective and expeditious way compensation. Manager David W. Day to improve the lives of the poor. attempted compromise by compensating them in cash for half of their weekly hours, Perhaps the most important of Pickett’s with the balance being paid as credits. But many innovations concerned the structure of the protestors rejected this offer and took the federal homesteading program and the their complaints to Washington. Among nature of the compensation system for the other demands, they sought Day’s dismissal. construction of self-help housing. Working Eventually, the Comptroller General of the with his immediate supervisors, Milburn United States, John R. McCarl, issued a (“M.L.”)Wilson and Secretary of the Interior ruling rejecting the credit compensation Harold Ickes, Pickett sought the assistance system on the grounds that it was of Attorney General Homer S. Cummings in unauthorized by federal law and the development of a quasi-corporate compromised the integrity of nationwide organization, the Federal Subsistence wage standards.5 Ironically, the net effect of Homesteads Corporation (FHSC), as well as a set of subsidiary local corporations for 5 At the time he made this ruling, McCarl was in his each of the homestead projects. This final year of a 15-year term of office. He was unprecedented structure enabled the local appointed by Congress during the administration of Warren G. Harding.

his decision was to increase the purchase movement to so develop the educational, price of the homesteaders’ homes. Federal social, and economic facilities that interest guidelines required that the valuation of will be centered not primarily in income or their property at the time of its sale had to in securing enough wealth or education to include the “costs of construction.” Initially, get away from the community, but in DSH officials maintained confidence in Day discovering the resources, joys, and and authorized the eviction of the protest satisfactions within the community itself.”6 leaders from Norvelt. But several months Staff members helped the residents develop later in the face of mounting press criticism, classes in carpentry, weaving, home the officials decided to dismiss Day. economics, health care, and the arts. They also sponsored clubs to oversee scouting, Day’s dismissal occurred in the context of a theater, and music programs for children. number of other political and administrative During the summers, the Quakers organized changes that deeply disturbed Pickett and volunteer programs for college students who the AFSC leadership. These included the came to Norvelt and Penn-Craft to work on abolition of FHSC corporations, the infrastructure and develop library services suspension of the credit system for and child care programs. compensating homestead workers, M.L. Wilson’s resignation as director of the DSH, Pickett’s vision of community included a and criticism from conservative commitment to racial justice. In his early Congressmen who thought cooperative work on the Arthurdale project in West enterprises on the subsistence homesteads Virginia, he encountered resistance in his were “un-American.” President Roosevelt efforts to integrate the new community. decided to transfer administration of the White homesteaders opposed racial subsistence homesteads program from the integration and successfully argued that Department of the Interior to the Department West Virginia’s school segregation laws, of Agriculture. The net effect of these which required separate public schools for changes was to stress program efficiency black children, would increase financial and cost controls over other goals such as deficits. Unlike West Virginia, preparing stranded miners and their families Pennsylvania did not practice de jure school for new careers. At the end of 1936, Pickett segregation,7 making it feasible to integrate and his other AFSC colleagues resigned both Norvelt and Penn-Craft without from their positions in the federal burdening local schools. One African government and established a smaller, American family successfully appealed to privately-run homesteading community President Roosevelt in order to join the known as Penn-Craft in nearby Fayette Norvelt experiment. Quaker officials and County. There the Friends continued their focus on adult education, self-improvement, 6 and community consciousness free from the Clarence E. Pickett, “The Social Significance of the Subsistence Homestead Movement,” The Journal of constraints of the federal government. Home Economics, Vol. 26, no. 8, October 1934, pp. 478-9. Throughout his involvement with the 7 In the early 1880s, a successful legal challenge subsistence homesteads movement, Pickett against school segregation in Meadville led the emphasized the building of community ties. Pennsylvania General Assembly to “abolish the distinction between race or color in the public As he phrased it, “(I)t is one of the basic schools.” See “Desegregation of Pennsylvania aspirations of the subsistence homesteads Schools,” Pennsylvania Heritage, Vol. XXXVI, no. 2, Spring 2010

Eleanor Roosevelt probably worked behind others entered military service or used their the scenes on their behalf. Likewise, five newly-acquired construction skills to accept African American families were accepted at full-time positions in other states, Penn-Craft. temporarily leaving their families behind.8

A central aspect of community life For Friends, the subsistence programs of the concerned the economic foundation of the New Deal era represented both a means of subsistence homesteads. The remoteness of avoiding violence in the coalfields and an Arthurdale from the Morgantown experiment in self-help cooperative commercial district made it difficult to communities for people in need. To the attract new sources of employment for its extent that the projects depended on the residents. Conversely, the favorable resources and administrative structures of location of the Pennsylvania communities the public sector, the partnership between near Greensburg and Uniontown led to the AFSC and the federal government better outcomes. At Norvelt, the Klee proved problematic. Ideologically, Oppenheimer Co. moved into a community- conservative politicians attacked the very owned facility and made men’s trousers for idea of federal involvement in planned the U.S. Army. At Penn-Craft, Louis Gallet, communities, as well as the cooperative a Jewish refugee from Austria, owned and nature of the experiments. Administratively, operated the Redstone Knitting Mill, which the troubled journey of the Division of made sweaters. Both corporations ran Subsistence Homesteads from the successfully for the next several decades, Department of the Interior in 1933 through employing many residents from the original its final years within the Farm Security homesteading communities. On a broader Administration of the Department of level, however, the community-owned Agriculture in 1948 reflects the uncertainty agricultural enterprises, health care of its fit within the parameters of American associations, and cooperative stores at liberal democracy. By the end of World Norvelt and Penn-Craft proved largely War II, when federal officials sold the unsuccessful. Homesteaders remained subsistence homesteads and their lukewarm to cooperative ideals, and once cooperative enterprises, the conservative, they completed collective work on the construction of homes, they often focused 8 more on their own family gardens than on A full review of the literature on subsistence homesteads cooperative enterprises. Many residents is beyond the scope of this essay. Interested readers might purchased groceries and personal items at consult Gwendolyn Wright, Building the Dream: A Social History of Housing in America (New York: Pantheon privately-run stores outside their cooperative Books, 1981); Sidney Baldwin, Poverty and Politics: The communities, and a majority did not join the Rise and Decline of the Farm Security Administration health care cooperatives. In part, this (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1968); Alison K. Hoagland and Margaret M. Mulrooney, reluctance may have occurred because of “Norvelt and Penn-Craft, Pennsylvania: Subsistence- their socialization in coal towns, where Homestead Communities of the 1930s” (Washington, D.C.: individualism and family priorities U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service, 1991); Timothy Kelly, Margaret Power, and Michael Cary, predominated. The continuing strain of a Hope in Hard Times: Norvelt and the Struggle for bad economy and limited income also may Community During the Great Depression (University Park, have contributed to their indifference. With PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2016); and Paul K. Conkin, Tomorrow a New World (Ithaca, NY: the coming of World War II, many Cornell Univ. Press, 1959). breadwinners returned to the mines, while .

anti-New Deal posture of federal housing and anti-poverty policy seemed ascendant.

But the story did not end there. During the 1950s, the AFSC took its proceeds from the mortgages at Penn-Craft and launched self- help housing projects in inner-city neighborhoods in Indianapolis and Philadelphia. In the 1960s, federal officials undertook similar programs for migrant farmers and Native Americans as part of the War on Poverty. In Canada, as in the developing world, self-help cooperative communities for displaced workers and the poor continue to thrive. As many scholars have argued, the norm of privately-owned single family houses is not suitable for everyone, and the search continues for low- cost, environmentally-friendly alternatives. The “self-help” model that Clarence Pickett and his colleagues at AFSC devised during the Depression remains a viable and creative way to meet the housing needs of the poor.

Deconstructing White Fragility: Nurturing Resilient Anti-Racist Practice in Our Daily Life

Walter Sullivan Haverford College

The following is a report on a workshop based on the work expectations for racial comfort while at the same of Dr. Robin DiAngelo, PhD, Lecturer at the University of time lowering the ability to tolerate racial stress, Washington. leading to what I refer to as White Fragility. A small, diverse, and energetic group White Fragility is a state in which even a gathered during the first workshop session minimum amount of racial stress becomes of the 2017 FAHE annual conference to intolerable, triggering a range of defensive explore the nature and impact of white moves. These moves include the outward display of emotions such as anger, fear, and guilt, and fragility, as defined in the many papers and behaviors such as argumentation, silence, and lectures of Professor Robin DiAngelo, PhD. leaving the stress-inducing situation. These behaviors, in turn, function to reinstate white Before diving into definitions and other racial equilibrium. content, we reflected personally on what the phrase “resilient anti-racist practice” might Friends explored this core text using the guiding questions developed in a Friendly mean to us, the nature of our commitment to 2 working on un-doing racism in our lives and Bible Study by Joanne and Larry Spears. institutions, and why we had chosen this 1. MAIN POINT: What is the author's main point workshop. Friends came to this work from in this passage? different life experiences and understandings 2. NEW LIGHT: What new light do I find in this of the issue, but most could appreciate the particular reading of this passage of the text? need to develop more effective strategies 3. TRUTH: Is this passage true to my and practices to bring to our shared struggle. experience? One important guideline for our time 4. IMPLICATIONS: What are the implications together was to be very mindful in the use of of this passage for my life? the word “we,” thinking carefully about 5. PROBLEMS: What problems do I have with exactly who was being referenced by the this passage? “we.” Was it really everyone in the room? After 20 minutes of personal journaling on Was it all Quakers? Was it just a specific these questions, a lively discussion ensued. subset of white Quakers? Whose experience Friends were able to share both our might be being marginalized or erased by appreciation for Professor DiAngelo’s the unskillful use of the word? framework and our continuing resistance to In her seminal article “White Fragility,” her message for our lives. One Friend Professor DiAngelo defines the situation:1 struggled with the stark absoluteness of DiAngelo’s description of the situation, White people in North America live in a social environment that protects and insulates them wishing that there was more emphasis on from race-based stress. This insulated strategies for nurturing allyship between environment of racial protection builds white members of different groups across diverse identities. Many of us white Friends though

1 International Journal of Critical Pedagogy, Vol 3 (3) (2011) pp 54-70. 2 The Friendly Bible Study Pamphlet

could acknowledge having feelings of anger, nuanced understanding is at play. Workshop fear, and guilt in the face of honest participants were encouraged though to look conversation about race and racism and that at the list carefully, to test by experience if we often do respond by disputing certain in the lives of even the most aware white facts, shutting down, or even walking away. people these dynamics still show up. In Next we turned to examine six specific addition, these patterns are at once patterns of structural behavior in white individual, manifesting in our personal culture that tend to reinforce the dominance behavior, and structural, showing up both of white fragility in our social environment consciously and unconsciously in group and (please note the titles in bold are the work of organizational patterns. One person of color Dr. DiAngelo, but the short descriptions are in the group attested that these patterns still those of the author of this article and he is ring deeply true to our American culture responsible for any error or even today, in their experience. misrepresentation of Dr. DiAngelo’s work): Friends, especially white Friends who wish  Segregation: White people mostly living in all- to see themselves as allies in this work, were white, mostly white, or white-defined spaces. invited to deeply examine which of these  Universalism & Individualism: The white patterns have particular resonance in their experience stands in for the universal human personal lives, in their Monthly Meetings, in experience (we are all the same humans with their academic institutions, and in other of white cultural patterns as the norm), yet all white people are individuals (not acknowledged as part their affiliated organizations. If we hope to of a racially socialized group “Whites”). show up in solidarity with each other in this work of resilient anti-racism, courageous  Entitlement to Racial Comfort: Dominant social narratives remain within white comfort self-reflection and clear self-awareness is zones. called for.  Racial Arrogance: Mostly good whites. Mostly Friends left this brief workshop with an bad/damaged people of color. appreciation for Dr. DiAngelo’s White  Racial Belonging: Everywhere whites look, Fragility framework and for the honesty and whites see multiple versions of their own racial vulnerability that we had shared together. If image reflected back. we had had more time, we would have  Psychic Freedom: Racial issues only operate explored ways that we could support each where/when people of color are present, so white other in our on-going work. people always have the opportunity to step away.

Again, some of the white Friends in the group struggled with the sharp, severe portrait of white culture painted by Dr. DiAngelo, arguing that many individual white people today have a greater consciousness about racial dynamics and that there are many spaces where a more

Connections – on Sharing Black and Quaker History

Minette Coleman Guilford College Alumna and Author

When I was growing up whether they had Let me drop some knowledge here. time or not, the elders in my community would pull youngsters aside and say: “let me Before he became a hero of the Civil Rights drop some knowledge on you.” This Movement, Bayard Rustin spent time as a unexpected gift cultivated our young minds performer. In 1939 he had a small role in a with everything from obscure history they Broadway musical with the legendary Paul thought we needed to know to pedantic Robeson.1 The play, ‘John Henry’, (Robeson prophecy they just had to share. Therefore played the lead) closed after a few days, but when I became Historian for the Black besides talent these men had other Alumni of Guilford College Advisory Board connections they may have never discussed. (BAGC), I knew the History Committee Rustin was raised by his Quaker needed to scour more than the Hege Library grandparents and followed that tradition. to trace the history of Blacks at Guilford. By Robeson was a descendant of Humphrey 2015 we had contacted alums in Africa, Morrey, a Quaker who was the first mayor interviewed former professors and students, of Philadelphia appointed by William Penn and took to social media as part of our in 1691. 2 research. We proudly produced the first Black History Timeline of Guilford College Their Quaker commonality was probably http://library.guilford.edu/integration. not fodder for after theatre conversations for these two ‘race men’ (as Civil Rights A plethora of new knowledge was activists were called back in the day), but it ‘dropped’. BAGC was sharing the connected is still a connection to the history of two history of Blacks, Slavery, Quakers, and cultures beyond slavery and the Guilford’s famous 300 year tulip poplar Underground Railroad. Underground Railroad Tree to those who followed the timeline. Some of this Ah, but there’s more. ‘knowledge’ went into my novel “The Tree: A Journey to Freedom”, a tale of an Josh White, another activist in the musical, enslaved young woman’s run to freedom formed a singing group and asked Rustin, a and the Blacks, Quakers and Tree that well-known tenor, to join. They often guided her. performed at The Café Society in New York. The Café Society opened in 1938 at But I learned more that needed to be shared. One Sheridan Square as the nation’s first One outlet was a workshop I conducted in racially integrated nightclub. The name was June 2017 for the Friends Association of a play on words, since it also functioned as a Higher Education Conference, illustrating a multitude of connections between Black and 1 Quaker History. After the conference I Daniel Levine, Bayard Rustin and the Civil Rights Movement, Rutgers University Press (1999) concluded these connections could be useful 2 FGC Quaker Resource Papers pedagogically. 19

political cabaret. It was nicknamed ‘the These are vital connections worth teaching wrong place for the Right people’, the our youth.5 capitalized R a poke at conservatives. Here young Rustin was exposed to the social, Unfortunately few connections between intellectual and gay scene in New York’s Blacks and Quakers in this country are famous Village.3 shared or taught to students. Telling young people we are all branches of the same tree By 1967 One Sheridan Square had become means nothing unless you can show how home to The Ridiculous Theatrical those branches connect. In high school we Company, an iconic counterculture theatre.4 learned Quakers were pacifists and against In the 1990’s I performed there in a slavery. Imagine the connection to my future ‘ridiculous’ version of “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. college had I been exposed to the story of Hyde” as Aquiline, the Lesbian owner of a Benjamin Benson, a free man kidnapped gay nightclub called the Fruitbowl, from his North Carolina home and sold into consequently connecting me to Rustin in slavery. He was the first Black able to use several ways. the legal system to gain freedom because Vestal Coffin and other local Quakers I am Black, I attended a Quaker College supported his case. In 1820, by court order where there is a Bayard Rustin Room, an from North Carolina, Benson was declared a Angelic Troublemaker Award (named after free man and left Georgia, where I grew up.6 the Rustin quote: “We need in every bay and Connections can enlighten students. community a group of angelic troublemakers”), and I performed in one of You can’t say ‘unless we know our history the same places he did for a gay Theatre we are doomed to repeat it’ unless you company. provide a complete history. As Blacks integrated institutions of higher learning, My link with Robeson is not as generous, assimilation was required, leaving Black but I am connected. Being Black, a singer, history unshared save word of mouth, if at an actor, a writer, I am also connected to all. Remember, the Civil Rights Movement Quakerism through my alma mater. didn’t remove the scars of retribution. Fear Roberson’s lineage bears mentioning here. silenced many who knew from experience Cyrus Bustill was born in 1732 to a New that truth didn’t always set you free. Jersey attorney and one of his slaves. Bustill was sold to a baker who liberated him in In these situations connections can hold up 1769. Bustill owned a baking business the light. during the Revolutionary War and afterwards. He married Elizabeth Morey (or How many educators or students know that Morrey), daughter of a Delaware Indian and Black History Month was originally Richard Morey, the son of Quaker established as Black History Week? Many Humphrey Morey. These are Robeson’s ancestors- Black, Quaker and indigenous. 5 Harold D. Weaver Jr., Paul Kriese, Steven W. Angell (Eds), Black Fire: African American Quakers 3 “Dana,” Greenwich Village Society for Historic on Spirituality and Human Rights, Quaker Press of Preservation blog Friends General Conference (2011). 4 Sarah Bean Apmann, Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation Blog 6 Guilford College Historical Collection 20

joke that it adds insult to injury that the through New Year’s Eve, 1862, for the shortest month in the year is devoted to this. freedom the next morning that Lincoln But let me “drop” the back story on you! In promised, weighed heavily on the minds of 1926 historian Carter G. Woodson picked those watching a Black man became the second week of February because of president of a nation that once bought and historical connections for the Black sold his ancestors. community. Abraham Lincoln’s birthday (February 12) and the birthday of Frederick From there it is easy to connect former Douglass (February 14) have been President Obama and Thomas Sidwell, the celebrated since the late 19th century by young man who in 1926 founded Sidwell Blacks. 7 Friends, a Quaker co-ed, urban day school where the Obama daughters matriculated Are connections between the great and graduated.11 Emancipator and the prolific orator ever taught? Frederick Douglass was introduced Students can begin to see the connected to the abolitionist movement in 1841 when history. William Coffin (last name ring a bell?) asked him to tell his story at the Take the Underground Railroad Tree.12 Massachusetts Antislavery Society (MAS) When now retired Dr. Adrienne Israel, convention. Impressed by his oration and Guilford’s first Black Academic Dean, was tale, William Garrison hired him as an agent a history professor she demanded students of the MAS, beginning Douglass’ work tramp through the Guilford Woods to find a freeing his people.8 certain large tree. Some got lost, perhaps as our ancestors did, but they eventually found Do students know that Douglass met with the huge tulip poplar that has been witness Lincoln in hopes of getting equal status and to the search for freedom and all those who equal pay for ‘colored’ soldiers in the Civil participated in such a worthwhile endeavor. War?9 Do they know the connection While many know that Levi Coffin, between the Emancipation Proclamation and considered father of the Underground the Watch Night Celebrations many Black Railroad, owned land in the area, they may churches observe? If they are lucky the have no idea that Quakers purchased and elders ‘connected’ them when they ‘dropped freed over 700 slaves only to be told those some knowledge’ about New Year’s Eve.10 freed could not live as such in the state of There is a more recent and historic North Carolina. 13 connection to Watch Night. Many Black churches used the Watch Night before At the time of the famous CORE led sit-in at Barack Obama was inaugurated to pray for Woolworth’s in Greensboro, there were four his safety and guidance for his Black students on Guilford’s campus. They administration, thus connecting Presidents were not asked to join the nine white Lincoln and Obama. Those Blacks waiting Guilfordians who united with students and

7 Daryl Michael Scott, The History of Black History 11 Sidwell Friends School Website Month, Blackpast.org 12 WFDD News Story 8 The Frederick Douglass Heritage Official Website 13 A Narrative of Some of the Proceedings of North 9 Mr. Lincoln and Freedom, The Lehman Institute Carolina Yearly Meeting on the Subject of Slavery 10 The African-American Civil War Museum Within Its Limits 21

faculty from North Carolina A&T, Bennett President Madison. It was immediately College, UNCG and Greensboro College in returned as Cuffee’s business was vital to protesting segregation.14 When asked why, the United States’ maritime economy. Long James McCorkle, the first full time Black before Marcus Garvey, this Black Quaker Guilford undergrad concluded perhaps the returned freed Blacks to Sierra Leone, a other Guilford students were trying to Quaker supported colony, at his own protect them from the more of the same expense. He and his brother fought the abuse that was forced on our ancestors.15 Massachusetts government and won the right to vote because, even though Black, This history shows a deeper connection of they were wealthy property owners. Quakers and Blacks. Connections that span centuries. We must enlighten each other Cuffee once offered to pay for the first with our conjoined past since it is the true public school in Westport, Massachusetts link to our combined future. but many of the villagers didn’t want their children sitting next to Blacks. So he built a My favorite of these ‘connections’ is the school on his property and paid for the first integrated school in America, founded teacher as well, inviting students of all races by a Black Quaker named Paul Cuffee, the and creeds to come, the first of its kind in a son of a manumitted enslaved Ghanaian and segregated nation. a Native American.16 Upon reaching adulthood, Paul dropped Slocum, the last This is just part of what students currently name of his former master, changing it to learn at Paul Cuffee School.17 But how Cuffee. This adaptation of Kofi (his father’s many others, outside the school know this first name) is Ashanti for “born on a important national history? How can you Friday”. Perhaps he was one of the first connect cultures when you don’t know what Blacks who refused to keep a ‘slave’ name, they share? something many of my generation did as we learned of our Black and Proud ancestors. It is irresponsible to think a student Cuffee grew wealthy establishing a ship receiving a Quaker education should put building business that matured into a aside his own history. Welcoming one into a mercantile empire, his crews consisting of group should mean sharing who they are. I Blacks and Native Americans. Much of felt quite deficient in Black and Quaker what he did was a precursor to important history when I entered Guilford. Had there pieces to Black History. But we have to been an orientation explaining ours was a teach that Black History IS United States connected history I would have felt I History. belonged. I would have felt a part of the world I was entering because of the Tree, He was the first Black to enter the White the Underground Railroad and ancestors, House by the front door when he went to Black and Quaker, who saved a place for me demand release of one of his vessels from at this table of knowledge.

14 Michele Norris, National Public Radio report Just a drop of knowledge makes waves, 15 Archived Interview at Guilford College that’s what so many feared in 1969. Today 16 Johanna Jonston, Paul Cuffee: America's first black captain, Dodd Mead (1970). 17 The Paul Cuffee School website 22

students are confident and demand the truth. National Archives: The Many Faces of Paul Connections can no longer be hidden since Roberson social media makes it possible for the inquisitive to discover what is missing. But Jeffrey Stewart (Ed.), Paul Robeson: Artist think how much richer the educational and Citizen, Rutgers University Press (1998) experience would be for all involved if Josephson and Trilling-Josephson, Cafe connections came from those already Society: The wrong place for the Right exposed to this knowledge. People (Music in American Life), University of Illinois Press (2016) You must learn it to teach it. Then you must teach it to share it. John D’Emilio, Lost Prophet: The Life and Times of Bayard Rustin, University of As my father would say: “There’s no harm Chicago Press (2004) in dropping a little knowledge on people now and then.”

I concur.

Knowledge dropped.

Other Resources:

Guilford College History and Quaker Roots

Envisioning a Future: FAHE in the Days Ahead

C. Wess Daniels & Deborah Shaw Guilford College

As incoming co-clerks of FAHE’s Executive Here were a few highlights from the Committee, we wanted to hear directly from the conversation: members present at the 2017 annual gathering about their visions for FAHE’s future. The goal  "Relationships" were significant in a variety of was part listening session, part visioning, part ways: testing of the Spirit to see what shape FAHE o Friendships are built across geography might be taking in this drastically shifting and discipline landscape of higher education. The underlying o Developing a community of collegiality and support question then, as well as now, is “to what o Opportunity to discuss how being a purpose does FAHE function and in what ways Quaker and/or working at Quaker might it adapt so that it can thrive as an institutions make a difference to one's organization?” work o Find that friendships cut across Quaker In an afternoon workshop 18-20 participants theological difference gathered to share and reflect on the following o Appreciation for connecting professional questions: life with spiritual life o Many feel that the space is rooted in a  In your opinion what is the core of F.A.H.E.? generosity of spirit – radical hospitality (what is non-negotiable for you?)  What brought you here and what keeps you  Annual Conference was noted as one of the coming back? places to share and develop with others what we are passionate about  What are your dreams for F.A.H.E.?

 What new initiatives would help those dreams  Publications were also a place for this type of come true? sharing and were seen as vehicles for the following: We rooted these questions in the methodology known as “appreciative inquiry,” because if we o Establishing intellectual foundation are going to build and adapt we want to do that o Supportive & encouraging of new based in what is most alive in the organization. scholarship As they say in appreciative inquiry circles, o Trust as a foundation for flexibility and organizations are heliotropic; they grow where risk-taking in various ways the energy is. As we think about growing and adapting FAHE we want to move it towards the We then moved on to dreams and initiatives! light, towards its strengths, rather the focusing in on the weaknesses. In no particular order these dreams were offered up for FAHE: After opening with a time of worship, workshop participants first looked at what elements of  Expand the membership—include younger FAHE are non-negotiable and at what we love scholars about FAHE.  Help create space in the membership for more diversity  Become financially sustainable and healthy so money is not the first thing on the agenda every year AND so that energy can be spent elsewhere 24

 Embrace the word ‘strategize’ for looking at myriad ways we now have of connecting beyond the finances of FAHE physical gatherings. A strong financial base is  Facilitate and foster relationships beyond the critical so that these things can be upheld and conference, perhaps through visiting new paths can be explored. scholars and/or regional gatherings  Explore remote participation through live It is clear that for those who participate in FAHE streaming events and other means there is a deep love, commitment, and energy for  Explore tangible ways in which to serve our continuing its work and a realization that we various communities cannot, and should not, just continue to As you read these statements what stands out to maintain. We have dreams and want to grow as you? And what are the responses you would an organization. We believe that there is desire have shared to these questions? to move forward in new ways, drawing in new people, strengthen Quaker learning, teaching and Some of the things that stand out to us are: research, and support and perhaps rethink the relationships, in all their beautiful and messy purpose of the organization to allow it to have a forms, was and continues to be important to fresh perspective. Are Friends ready for the those gathered as we look toward FAHE’s creativity, imaginative work of taking up some future. Spirit-led intellectual passion and ways to of these potent dreams shared among us? share about that with others was and also continues to be important. And not surprisingly there was openness and curiosity about how these cherished bits can be maintained even as they take on different forms as we look at the

Two Poems from Two Roads and This Spring

by Hugh Ogden Trinity College

Homeless

A man opens his hotel Canada to Alaska, his voice door and walks naked in smoked Irish in its almost front of me to the shower, tenor with water trickling all grizzled and gnarled over his shoulders like from years in the bush, a waterfall plunging down thin legged with uncut moss and crevassed diorite gray hair to his shoulders. in some Alaska fiord, a tune He's hung his towel on his transposing into the hoarse right fore-arm as if going rise of 'Danny Boy' which to a ballroom and the TV he falls into when he gets sounds through his open to the end of his days all door with low cut quiz- gnarled and beaten through, show voices, his bare to the residency he's given feet sponging the scarlet once a month in an hotel gold-trecked and mildewed where he keeps the TV on carpet before he goes in- all night and steps stately, to the bath and then he bone-thin naked, back to his is singing some tune out room four times a day after of the old days in Cork bathing in anonymous water. where he came from through

Lecture On The Tides

This is the point when the earth leaves are drawn out by the tide wobbles and the days lengthen and buds bleed through bark, and the years have to have days even you who are lost will always added. The point when the harness be here as long as the moon that pulls the sea pulls each circles into its line with sun of us into spring and makes us and the oceans respond, as long shudder again when the first as we are able to find the moment red appears, the bleeding when the winds make the globe that quicker than not becomes waver, as long as the earth green. You will always be here corrects itself, as long as as long as water cuts deeper pain takes faith in its bud into soil and the coursing and flowers. adds to what is left, as long as