AC_1965_Web

58 AN T I OC H CO L L E G E C L A S S O F 19 6 5 5 0 t h A N N I V E R S A R Y B O O K A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z G O O D S O N cyon days in 45387:Where were the faculty members that looked like me? Why did the leading black fac- ulty member (one of two) not speak to me or acknowledge me once in five years? Why were my co-op placements so problematic and why did people keep asking me if I knew Eleanor? (I didn’t.) Why did Antioch make it hard for me to do AEA in East Africa? Was I really as mediocre a student as my grades reflected? How many black students who en- tered between 1956 and 1960 had left, and what was done to help them not to leave? Why did I stay? With a half-century of hindsight under my belt, I returned to Yellow Springs thinking of the earlier won- derful days of strolling to class, sit- ting on the grass around campus, sitting in the Caf or C Shop killing time, thinking about the time that I was verbally attacked for not march- ing at Gegner’s. In Yellow Springs, I thought about the current Antioch students (who were remarkably not interested in my residency sessions, but “townies” and students from nearby colleges were!) and what current students were and were not learning.The list of things that I did not learn about at Antioch is signifi- cant to me. Perhaps that’s because I am an historian. In my undergradu- ate days, I did not learn about: black people, segregation and racism in Yellow Springs when we were there; Palestinians; Native Americans; the nature of capitalism or existence of apartheid or the political status of Puerto Rico; James Baldwin; Adam Clayton Powell, Jr.; Harriet Tubman; W.E.B. DuBois; British colonialism in Africa; the transatlantic trade in Africans; or any African American history. There’s lots more I thought about since my 2012 sojourn, but I will stop here. Inasmuch as America is having serial conversations on race, I can hope to resume this con- versation with some of you when I see you in June.And you can remind me of the black folk I forgot. NB: Another thing: I don’t re- member any of our teachers going barefoot. On my latest visit, I saw a barefoot teacher moving through a campus building, followed by a slew of barefoot students. I stared with my mouth open, pushed my glasses up and wondered,WT....? AUGUST 9–11, 2012 ANTIOCH COLLEGE RESIDENCY Dr. Martia Goodson ‘65 is an histo- rian with special interests in American and African-American history. Trained as an oral historian, she has written about slave narratives and about collectors of slave narratives in Journal of the National Medical Association and Western Journal of Black Studies, among others. She authored Chronicles of Faith: The Autobiography of Frederick D. Patterson. Current projects are on the New York African Burial Ground Project and about black women and Harlem politics in the era of the Adam Clayton Powells. She taught in the Black Studies program at Baruch College-City University of New York for more than three decades.