During a Feb. 6 reception honoring his appointment as the Merle Kling Professor of Modern Letters in the Department of English in Arts and Sciences, Gerald Early, Ph.D., delivered a heartfelt speech. Early, who also is professor and director of the African and Afro-American Studies Program in Arts and Sciences, succeeds the late Stanley Elkin as the Kling professor, a chair that was created to honor Kling on his retirement in 1983 as provost. The following are excerpts from the speech Early gave in the packed Women's Building Formal Lounge:
I have been asked to make a brief address to you in which I should discuss my work and its meaning or, perhaps put another way, that should discuss how I came to this position today of receiving this chair. ...
Of course, a writer needs a creed, and I got one, luckily enough, at an early age and realized instantly that it was the creed for me. I slipped a copy of a book my sister was reading called "Notes Of a Native Son," written by a very earnest-looking black man named James Baldwin. ... I read this book with great relish, little understanding, and not a great deal of profit except in two particulars: namely, the getting of a creed and the getting of a source of inspiration, or a model, as it were. ...
I spoke of a creed, and Baldwin supplied one for me. It was this, the last line of his "Autobiographical Notes," the essay that begins the volume: "I want to be an honest man and a good writer." There it was, and it seemed easy enough to do. Scrawled on a sheet, it was hammered upon my doorjamb, as much to me a law as Emerson's whim. But not so easy, I discovered, to be a good writer. What work and work! What toil and labor! What endless series of embarrassments and botches! Even harder still was trying to be an honest man. ...
My teacher in the fifth and sixth grades was Mr. Lloyd Richard King, a big, light-skinned black man with a loud voice and a dedication to his profession that was something to behold. I am sure he wanted to be something other than a schoolteacher, but, having wound up in that line of work, he gave it everything he had. He was the only schoolteacher I got to know well. For years after leaving elementary school, I would go see him, talk with him, get advice, tell him my ambition. He thought, poor man, that I would do great things. Not because I was the brightest boy he ever had as a student, although I was surely bright enough for notice. But because I knew what greatness was, in some vague way, and wanted it as if it were bread. I told him with an innocence that rescued this from sheer arrogant idiocy: "When I walk down the street, I want people to say: 'There goes Gerald Early, the greatest writer America ever produced.'" He knew, if nothing else from this statement, that I loved baseball and thought highly of Ted Williams, although I had never seen him hit. But I did not want this merely for myself. I wanted it for him, for others, who believed so strongly in me.
My first undergraduate college experience was Antioch College, which lasted about three weeks. I ran away one early morning, went to San Francisco to live with my sister for a year. I was ashamed to have failed. The teachers at Antioch told me I couldn't write at all, that I needed remedial help. I cried. I was homesick and very afraid. I practiced writing for a year in San Francisco. I worked at the Presidio in the day and wrote all night, and hung around some guys from the Nation of Islam on the weekends because they had the best jazz records of anyone I knew out there. When I took my freshman composition class at the University of Pennsylvania, my teacher told me I was the best writer he ever had. "I'll be a lot better than this," I told him.
I had been seeing Mr. King nearly every week or two since the year I left his class. I did not see him, after my Antioch debacle, for nearly two-and-one-half years, not until I was a sophomore at the University of Pennsylvania and knew that I would make it through. "Why haven't you come to see me?" he asked when I finally appeared. I held my head down. "I never want you to see me fail," I said, with an earnestness that, I think, moved him deeply.
I dedicated my last book to him -- "One Nation Under a Groove: Motown and American Culture." It was, for me, a small gesture. It did not mean much. He was old. He had been sick in recent years. He was having problems with his family, a wayward son, daughters whose marriages had not turned out well. He was a sick, retired teacher living on a paltry pension. I thought the dedication might cheer him up, amuse him. We had not seen each other in years. His son was involved in a drug deal gone bad, and Mr. King's house was firebombed in retaliation. My mother told me about it. I sent him some money. It was the least I could do.
My mother kept insisting that I talk to him. He wanted to talk to me about the book I had dedicated to him, and I held off calling him for a very long time. It seemed so long ago that he was the teacher and I was the pupil. I was now at least as old as he was when he taught me. But one morning, I did finally call him, to get my mother off my back. The conversation was not very long. He was very surprised to hear from me. Then he began to talk about the book I sent him, the book that I dedicated to him. It was a strange and trying moment, for he began to cry as he spoke. He cried and cried, like a child, very much the way I did when I was in his class and I was overwhelmed or wounded or disappointed. He couldn't speak. He was happy and sad all at once. It was something awful, and I wanted to hang up the phone. What could I say? The dedication was a nice tribute to a good teacher. "You remembered me," he kept saying, "you remembered me." Then, he said, "A book dedicated to me from one of my students? I didn't think it was possible. But I knew you could do it, Gerald. I always knew you would do it. I always knew you would be a great man." I hardly felt like a good man, talking to him on the phone, let alone a great man. Good Lord, that people should believe in each other, that we should cast our hopes on such puny, disappointing, wayward, disobedient, treacherous vessels as ourselves. I wouldn't have expected a kid like me to do anything much in life if I had been him.
Suddenly, it occurred to me that Mr. King was crying, not because he was surprised, but because his great hope and dream had been fulfilled. He trusted me that I would deliver this before he died. You shouldn't expect people to do anything but disappoint you in the end. It was terrible for me to know that he believed without ceasing that a tribute was coming to make all his anonymous years worth the agony and frustration. We talked a little while longer, awkwardly. I hadn't spoken to him in eight years. I told him I had to go, but before I hung up the phone, he said that my education at my poor, all-black elementary school must not have been so bad after all. After all, I did go to some fancy dan schools, and I work at a pretty highfalutin place, so my days at my poor old grade school must have put me in good stead. I told him it was the best education I ever had and that he had been the best teacher.
"You taught me," I said with an earnestness that echoed some other earnestness of an earlier time, "even before I found the words; even though I have not always lived up to it, you taught me how to be an honest man and a good writer. I hope I have tried to live up to it because, you know, I never want you to see me fail."
I said and I meant it. I hope he was pleased.
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