Homeslice: Words in Praise of Hanes Walton.

homeslice: Another term for homie, but more personal and often used amongst friends of the highest value. (Urban Dictionary)

When I left Prairie View A&M University for the University of Michigan, my professors—Dr. Jewel Prestage and Drs. Barbara and Mack Jones–told me to find Hanes Walton.  They all went way back in the way that so many of the intellectual craftspeople who molded me do.  They said I should meet Hanes Walton and that he would help me, but the other black professor in the department at that time, I should “avoid at all costs”.  Like the obedient child that I am, I sought him out and he did what they said.  He helped me. 

Others will discuss Hanes Walton’s monumental intellect and his amazing contribution to the fields of political science, black politics and African American Studies.  But I will say a few words about how inspiring it is to see your professor in the library more than the department.  In the first few years I was at Michigan this was often the case with Hanes.  In navigating the maze that is the Graduate Library, I would often run into Hanes—on the weekends, in the early mornings, on a random afternoon.  There he was with his signature baseball cap, long black overcoat worn in the too long winters of Michigan for anyone born is the sea salt air of Georgia or Texas.  I would jokingly ask, “ Do you live here?” He would laugh in a way that became a regular and ready communication that he appreciated a joke and that he appreciated you.

That laugh, for me, also became a communication of recognition.  The transition to Michigan from Prairie View was extremely difficult, not because I had a degree in physics and found myself in a top tier political science program. It was difficult because the warm, loving, supportive incubator of blackness that I had known was gone and I found myself in the cold winter white world of the University of Michigan.  I was a black girl from a working class family one generation out of the cotton fields and from under the hood of a car in Southeast Texas who found herself in an elite educational environment where even my understanding of the place from whence I came seemed open for challenge. No one understood this transition better than Hanes having received his education in similar institutions and then taught in them until he was called to, what was considered by some, “the big leagues,” but what was for me, and I think for him, an alternative space to gain resources and access to answer questions of concern for our communities and ourselves.  Because of this big transition I had made…we had made…we would discuss the differences and he would help me see how to better navigate my new space and the space I would occupy as a faculty member.  In our common recollections of the black institutions that had nurtured us he helped to ease me into and then out of what was, at least socially and, in terms of mentoring, a radically different learning environment. In a passing conversation on a frigid midwestern day, he could be the band at halftime, a step show on the yard, Dr. Prestage’s admonition of “dear, I think we can do better.”

Overtime, I would teach under his guidance and then he would work with me on my dissertation.  And when I came to him nearly in tears after a problematic committee member who for two days looked at 6 months of writing, 2 years worth of research, and 8 years of post-undergraduate education and tried to tear down my work and my spirit, Hanes said, “You are the expert now. You have done the work. Do not let anyone challenge you on what you know to be the truth.” With that, I walked to the graduate school officially told that guy to kick rocks and defended my dissertation one month later. 

Hanes Walton was the homeplace.  He too was Southern. And to borrow the language of Chicago minister, he was unapologetically black.  He was fully himself and encouraged you to be your full intellectual and personal self.  He celebrated your accomplishments as if they were his own and, in part, they were.  Whether you called to say you had been awarded tenure or your first book contract or given birth to your first baby, you could hear his sincere joy through the phone…can we all just laugh and say one more time on the phone…as he would say, “ya done good, kiddo!”  He did not judge your choices, but he would advise and help you figure out the best way and, in difficult moments, the best way out. 

When I saw him this past September at the Association for the Study of African American Life and History in Pittsburgh at a panel honoring the Life and Work of our colleague Ron Walters…a meeting I had never attended before…a meeting I did not know Hanes attended…a meeting where like those days in Ann Arbor, I happened upon Hanes in a place where I was seeking to learn something new and find a new intellectual community. I told him all my good news and he smiled and congratulated me saying, “good job, kiddo!” He asked after my child and told him that I hoped they could meet. Maybe on a trip to Michigan in the summer? A summer that now will not come.

What I learned from Hanes was that a ready smile in difficult circumstances can be a shield.  What I have learned from Hanes is that home is where the heart is.  What I learned from Hanes is that my job as a professor is to guide my students to the level of competency to answer the questions that they have. What I learned from Hanes is that my professional rise was bereft of joy unless I could celebrate the achievements of those who were in community with me.  What I learned from Hanes Walton was the deep, rigorous, empirical study of black people could be an intellectual act, but also an act of love