libraries | Leslye Joy Allen

“Self Portrait” by Copyright © 2015 Leslye Joy Allen. All Rights Reserved.

I am writing this tribute now, because I have to mentally recalibrate, take a brief break over the holidays and get back to work on writing my dissertation. Dr. Kuhn would not want anything less than that. Dr. Clifford Matthew Kuhn, Associate Professor of History at Georgia State University and the first Executive Director of the Oral History Association joined the ancestors the second week of November. He was 63-years-old…he was also my Dissertation Advisor…

He was…there is that word: was. You would think that as a historian I would be accustomed to the past tense. Yet, referring to him as anything other than vibrantly and intellectually alive is difficult. Preparing for the Georgia State University Memorial for Dr. Clifford Matthew Kuhn on December 13, 2015 is harder than I ever could imagine. I first met him when he was preparing the centennial of the 1906 Atlanta Race Riot back in early 2006…

Dr. Glenn T. Eskew introduced us because he recalled my telling him that my late maternal grandmother, born in 1886, was a 20-year-old student at then Clark Normal School (later Clark College, now Clark Atlanta University) when the campuses of Atlanta’s Historically Black Colleges became the refuge for so many of the Black victims of the Atlanta Race Riot. Dr. Kuhn was delighted to find a graduate student such as myself that had a personal story that I could tell about this particularly painful moment in Atlanta’s history. Dr. Clarissa Myrick Harris, who partnered with Dr. Kuhn, interviewed me while filmmaker Ms. Bailey Barash filmed it for posterity. I was proud and humbled to contribute my grandmother’s story.

Nearly everything I know about Oral History, I learned from Dr. Kuhn: how to get people to talk about their lives; how to make sure they know that they are not obligated to tell their stories; how to make sure that I, the historian and interviewer, did not and will not ever exploit their memories; how to truly listen. I remember everything he taught me.

One of the last things he said to me was that he was so proud of a brief and recent assignment I had in the Georgia State University Library’s Digital Collections where I conducted four interviews for the Planning Atlanta Project. He recommended me for that position and I was glad that I did well and did not let him down…

As I prepare myself, as best I can, to attend Georgia State University’s Memorial Celebration for Dr. Kuhn, I fondly recall a conversation where we discovered that both of us loved Jazz. Not long after that conversation, there were a few times when we were supposed to be doing something academic, but we drifted into a deep discussion about everyone from Duke Ellington to Nina Simone to Wayne Shorter to Ahmad Jamal. Yet, that is natural for us historians. WE have to be aware of everything, so we often look at and listen to everything. Our conversations were often mixtures of him talking lovingly about his wife Kathie Klein and his two sons Josh and Gabe Klein-Kuhn and History and Jazz. I will miss that…

So, below is one for the late, great historian and scholar Dr. Clifford Matthew Kuhn: a video of the great Jazz pianist Ahmad Jamal playing the classic “Poinciana.” When the percussionists in Jamal’s quartet go into full swing around the time 4:53, I found myself ferociously patting my foot to the infectious rhythms and crying at the same time. Àṣé.

This Blog was written by Leslye Joy Allen and is protected by U. S. Copyright Law and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. Any partial or total reference to this blog or any total or partial excerpt of this blog must contain a direct reference to this hyperlink: http://leslyejoyallen.com with Leslye Joy Allen clearly and visibly stated as the author. All Rights Reserved.

by Leslye Joy Allen

Some folk will read the title of this blog and think that this blog is about race relations or racism. This blog is not about that, at all…

This blog is not about the Black boy who got arrested or killed by police. It is not about some Black boy who is a genius and who has defied the odds and created some great new invention. It is not about some White boy that got away with something that would probably get the Black boy killed. And it is also not about some White boy, who, like that Black boy, invented some new technology or has an unusually high IQ. This blog is about two typical American boys…

I met the Black boy a few years ago when I went to observe a music class at the Atlanta Music Project. He was proudly and boldly blowing his clarinet. A few months later I attended his recital with the rest of the music students in this program. He remembered me and promptly took me to meet his music instructor. I chatted amicably with his mother, and like most native Atlantans, she and I discovered we knew a lot of the same people. Since then, I have discovered that this Black boy has added the bassoon to his growing number of instruments. He also won some position in student government at his elementary school. Thoughtful, talented, intelligent and kind, he gives me a big hug, every time I run into him with his mother at the supermarket. His mother told me that instead of watching TV every night, that television viewing is limited in their household. Instead, they have full conversations and they tell stories…

Now I met the White boy last week on a ride on the MARTA train heading home. Five-years-old and seated with his young mother, he proceeded to read everything on the signs in the train. “You read very well,” I said. He quickly extended his hand to shake mine. His mother and I chatted about school, education, and how well her son reads. She told me that she lives within walking distance of a public library where they have these great storytelling sessions for children. As I approached my stop, I said, “So nice talking to you. Now young man, you keep reading! I get off here.” She replied, “This is my stop, too! Take my business card,” she said, “I know a lot of historians. Maybe we can all get together some time.” I thanked her and watched she and her five-year-old son walk home in what is and remains nearly a 100 percent Black neighborhood. And I am also quite familiar with the library that she told me about. The Black women who conduct those storytelling sessions there at the library have engaged this little White boy. He not only could read—his pronunciation was perfect…

It should be obvious to anyone reading this that the Black boy and the White boy have parents who spend time with them. These parents have found programs and activities that are beneficial to their children. Now, I’m not making any major pronouncements here about parenting or race relations. I am simply writing about typical, well-raised children. I am, deliberately avoiding the noise—at least momentarily—from the media that often dominates the narrative. Not all the news about children and what happens to children is bad news. And the future is not all gloom and doom. And, for now, I’m going to bet the future on my Black boy and my White boy. Àṣé.

(My previous blog is Frank Wittow’s Legacy…Nevaina’s Dream)

Leslye Joy Allen

Social Commentary, History, Theatre, Jazz, and the Environment

Category Archives: libraries