BLACK HARVARD, BLACK YALE (BHBY), Published, June 10, 2011
At AACC
BHBY is a book patterned after MY OXFORD, MY CAMBRIDGE, Ann Thwaite and Ronald Hayman, Eds, Taplinger, 1979, and MY HARVARD, MY YALE, Diane Dubois, ed., Random House, 1982. It is a collection of 30, approximately 10 page long, autobiographical essays written by black alumni of these schools. I hope to have entries covering 1910s through 2000s classes. In that way BHBY goes well beyond a millennium memoir of America's progress in race and education.
I am seeking a broad variety of candid recollections and appraisals of what, for many, were the first time away from home. I hope that African American men and women of all persuasions will contribute. Some may have disliked their college stay others may have loved it. Some left without graduating. Whatever the experience, I hope you will share it.
I was in the Yale Summer High School and the Yale Transitional Year Program in 1968, received my MA in African American Studies there in 1983 and the Ph.D. in Ethnic Studies at Berkeley. My first book, BLACK FILM/WHITE MONEY, was published in 1996.
BHBY is focused, personal, and yet multifaceted. It is not only informative and educational, but also a "good read" whether taken as a whole or in easy‑to‑digest chapters. At the Afro-American Cultural Center's 40th anniversary in October 2009, Yale kids performed dramatic interpretations of parts of the Yale Memoirs I've collected and that really brought them to life.
