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This memorial website was created in the memory of our cherished friend and colleague, Kennell Jackson who was born March 19, 1941 and passed away on November 21, 2005 at the age of 64. We will remember him forever.
To read his obituary from Stanford University News Service, click here. To read his obituary from The San Jose Mercury News, click here.
Kennell's Memorial Service and reception were held Tuesday, January 17, 2006 at Memorial Church on the Stanford Campus.
In addition, Kennell left specific instructions as to the distribution of his vast collection of art, books, memorabilia and mementos. Kennell's idea was that his friends would be able to obtain an item of their own choosing from his collection and contribute to a scholarship fund in his honor. Kennell's directive: "sell it on eBay!." Imad Kharbush has already begun listing items and will continue listing new items in the days and weeks ahead. There are over 1,000 to be listed! Items including books, art, memorabilia, a leather jacket from Spike Lee, an Ansel Adams print, comic books, toys, glasses, as well as personal items like ties and t-shirts, will all be listed and sold to the highest bidder. You can search for items using this link. You can also go directly to www.ebay.com and search for "kennell jackson" with the with the 'search title and description' box checked.
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 Tributes and Condolences |
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Professor of African American Studies & Theatre, Northwestern University / Sandra Richards (colleague)
Always curious about the seemingly ordinary, quick to find meaning therein, and delivering his insights through often hilarious, captivating stories. A gentleman and scholar who “fought the good fight” for AAAS. These are some of my fond ...
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Hampton Scholar / Kitola Pleasants-Henderson (Hampton Classmate )
Outspoken and articulate, well-read and thus knowledgable, witty with a sense of humor, tremendous insight; this was Kennell Jackson as a freshman at Hampton when we first became friends. Kennell was the person you wanted to critique ...
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I miss Kennell. / Chuck Despres (Swim Buddy )
Kennell could start with the day's NY Times story that most interested him, tie it into a social critique of deep passion, and buttress the critique with a biblical story that bore relevance; because he lived the notion of what we used to call "...
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Hello Dearheart / Ken Farbstein (Serra 1976-77 )
The face of Stanford was you.
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Prof. Jackson helped me grow from a child to a man / James Keipp (Advisee 1987-1990 )
It is with great sadness that I write this...Prof. Jackson, as my Afro-Am & History advisor, made me to begin to contemplate the world as a man, no longer as a chils trying to get by. He actually encouraged me to write a senior thesis on "Black Hair....
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Great mentor and friend / Christy Boscardin (Research Assistant '94-'95 ) Read >> |
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A great teacher who resparked my interest in black history / Marin Heiskell (former student ) Read >> |
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Solid as a rock / Nancy NEAHER Maas (Ph.D. student, 1968-76 ) Read >> |
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Life with Kennell / Eric Jackson (Branner RA ('87-'88) and Friend ) Read >> |
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If you would like to make a donation / Casey Ward (Student) Read >> |
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A great man, truly missed / Casey Ward (student) Read >> |
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dslingerland@ypiusa.-org / Dixon Slingerland (student) Read >> |
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A selfless individual and mentor / Sean Kennedy (Former student ) Read >> |
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The Amy Biehl Foundation / Devin Tanner (student) Read >> |
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One of the LAst Black Men who Worked to keep Black History RELEVANT to our times.... / Otelia Marshall (mentee) Read >> |
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| His legacy |
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10 Keys to Mentoring: The Undergraduate Scholars Program Experience
10 Keys to Mentoring:
The Undergraduate Scholars Program Experience
by
Professor Kennell Jackson, History
Director, Undergraduate Scholars Program
Stanford University
From the very first time I entered his office, I felt that a veil had been lifted. Finally, was going to see a professor as a person...
USP Student, 1987
I did not do all that .1 was supposed to do in my project. I got caught many afternoons reading too far into my subject. was caught up in my subject.
USP Student Letter, 1989
There were moments in my USP experience that reminded me of my undergraduate years. But most of all, I tried to do for her what had not been done or me—be a gentle guide through our academic landscape.
USP Professor Mentor, 1990
When I started the Undergraduate Scholars Program (USP) at Stanford University in 1985, the word "mentoring" was not that much in use. In fact, when I applied to the Stanford Provost's Innovation Fund for start-up support, I was surprised that the letter announcing their help listed my project as "a mentoring experience."
To be honest, had to go to the dictionary to see exactly what was meant. There, found a mentor to be a wise and faithful counselor. Actually, the word comes from ancient Greek stories: Mentor, a friend of Ulysses, accompanied Telemachus in search of his father.
The Rise of "Mentoring" as a Word
Today, the word "mentor" is a commonplace in universities. To be "mentored" is a sign of status. During commencement days, students talk of professors they regard as their "mentors." We talk today about "mentoring" as if it stood for a process that is accepted and well-understood. The word has
@ Kennell Jackson. Not for reproduction or dissemination without author's permission.
also made something of an impact in the world beyond the university. Precisely why it has come to be so popular is a mystery.
But, use of the word "mentor" seemingly increased as people felt a need for close relations between a teacher or counselor and a young person, usually a student. Somewhere in the 1980s, the idea of general teaching—of teaching people in groups—was challenged. Something was missing from group encounters. Closer, one-on-one linkages, teaching connections that embodied friendship and caring began to be preferred. What we considered the optimal education changed in the 1980s. The rise of mentor as an idea was a reflection of that shift.
I now understand why it was that an administrator in the Provost's office applied "mentoring experience" to the LISP proposal. (Subsequently, beginning in 1988, the Undergraduate Scholars Program received full support from the new Irvine Foundation Minority Student Grant at Stanford University as a research mentoring program.)
I was designing a project in which Black studies topics and Black professors would be offered to individual students for independent research. I was matching professors, research topics, and students. These matches were to be like tutorials. Having been at Cambridge University in England in the 19 0s, 1 adopted the idea of tutorials from my years of post-graduate work there. saw the USP offering a kind of intellectual partnership between Black students and Black professors. In the first year, all of the USPers were Black undergraduates. It was not long before student participation covered all groups, but its minority component—particularly its Black student segment—continued to dominate.
In the mid-1980s, it was my opinion that these two groups had a lot to offer one another, but they had very limited contact with one another. In my estimation, this could be a good environment for "mentoring" to take root and grow. It could be also a positive environment in which to help these minority students—opening them up to the advantages of contact with professors.
Encountering Mentoring Diversity
After a year or so, made my peace with the concept of mentor and mentoring. When people asked me about the USP, answered readily that it was a "mentoring" project. This worked within Stanford.
But, as traveled the country, I realized the USP was a particular type of mentoring. My project was geared to research. Out there beyond the Stanford Quad was a bewildering array of entities calling themselves mentoring projects.
At a 1991 conference on mentoring minority students sponsored by the NEA, I realized that many university mentoring projects were more friendship and support than intellectual in nature. These projects had sprung up as universities took in students far below their traditional standards.
In these projects at other universities, troubled first-year students were being helped by providing them with a staff or faculty friend. In listening to speaker after speaker tell of their projects, realized that these projects specialized in stabilizing students in strange, stressful conditions. They provided periodic meetings where the mentor and student had time to discuss what was happening in the student's life. The goal of these projects was student survival and retention. In many cases, these projects—judging from their results—were excellent. They were an effective bridge between new students and the university.
The USP Tradition of Mentoring: Academic Friendships
When I returned from the NEA conference, I decided that it would be a good idea to write down the basic principles of mentoring that I and the other professors assisting the project subscribed to. Each year, I had several meetings with professor-mentors and students in the course of the project. From these meetings, I had extracted a number of basic mentoring principles.
Interestingly, I did not see such a great gap between my peers' work at other universities and our own. We were not as different from them as day and night. There was more of a continuum rather than a polarity.
Even with this, the USP was definitely more of an academic and intellectual experience. My goal was to enhance the students' familiarity with the academic culture of the university. I felt this was deeply needed by minority students, who had less of a history of acquaintance with the university values. I was not fixated on making the USPers into professors. But, the project worked hard to provide students with an excellent intellectual setting to make such decisions about their futures.
Once, at the Stanford Trustee presentation. on the USP, where we showed our recruitment video, a trustee asked me to predict how many future academics would come from the USP. I declined the chance to be a prophet. I simply indicated that we were doing all we could to make budding professors possible.
Yet, from my own experience as director of USP and from what professors and students have told me of their experiences, I realized that we did a lot with the issue of friendship. In fact, friendship and scholarship were the two values the USP brought together. In my estimation, they were essential to one another in the mentoring process. In this way, we were like "helping" mentoring projects at other universities.
When professors and students came together in the USP project, they had to create a "medium" through which they could communicate. It was not enough to establish a schedule of meetings over a subject, Giving the student a bibliography and sending them on their way was not sufficient.
To get the most out of the experience, the two people—the professor and the student—had to generate a bond that allowed them to explore ideas. It was "the togetherness" of the intellectual experience that strengthened it. At one point in the project's history, I sent a list of suggestions to both professors and students on how to build an intellectual friendship. Each person, in my estimation, was responsible for "the atmosphere" of the relationship. This was how went about defining the mentoring relationship of the USP.
The Ten Keys to Mentoring
From my seven years as director of this project, some themes have constantly came up in the discussions of mentoring. Over time, I have narrowed them to "the top ten" ideas. I would like to state them here.
However, there are two matters that need to be kept in mind while reading them. First , they derive from a project dealing mostly with minority students encountering minority professors. But, they could apply to any situation where an attempt to get undergraduates socialized to academia was being made. Second, most of these "keys" are expressed as advice to professors. As stated above, 1 sent each year to professors a statement of "guidelines to mentoring" and held discussions with the project's mentors. From these, I accumulated a few core ideas.
Below, I have divided the keys to mentoring in two groups of five principles. Actually, these two groups represent the two phases in mentoring. The US? mentoring process covers a quarter, an 9-10 week period. The first guidelines cover the initial days of the project. They are aimed at "setting the stage." The second set of "keys" cover "finishing the task." Here, they are:
Setting the Stage in Mentoring
Key #1: Telling Your Own Story: The idea of meeting and working with a professor is why most students choose to participate in mentoring projects, But, they often do not know who professors are—where they come from, why they were motivated to be professors in the first place, what their specialties are, and what relations they have with their profession.
Furthermore, most students are probably not very skilled at getting this information from professors. From my talks with students, often feel that they think this information will be passed on through some osmotic process. Merely being in the presence of a professor will do the trick.
Therefore, it is often necessary for professors engaged in mentoring to take the first step in explaining themselves. This is what I call "telling your own story." A professor might not want to do this all in one session, but certainly by the end of the experience, the professor should have made himself or herself known to the student.
Simple as this information-sharing is, it can be very important to students, particularly students from minority backgrounds. With this information, a student can compare backgrounds. They can see how their backgrounds measure up. Usually, students tell me this spells relief, because often they had an exalted idea of where their professors come from, what type of education they had, and what advantages they had.
This telling of the professor's story can have a leveling effect. It need not be just a narrative of how the professor came to be, but a statement including current tastes (movies, books, travels) and current relations (family, memberships, volunteer work). More than this, all of this information humanizes the professors, bringing them down from the pedestal, and rendering them real people with real struggles and ambitions.
Key #2: Discovering the Student: The other side of this process is coming to know the student. Students share enormous amounts of information about themselves with their peers, but considerably less with people in the generations above them.
Just as professors seldom have the opportunity to narrate their life-history as an intellectual, students have little chance to talk about themselves to professors. To a degree, students probably do not feel that faculty want to know the details of their lives, and since the mentoring professor is often a towering figure in the eyes of students, students probably wonder how their lives and ideas could matter to such professors.
Yet, it is essential in mentoring to know the student. It is psychologically satisfying to them to have this interest expressed. It is also practical in at least one crucial way: students often have experiences that are formative in what they choose for research interests. So many times, found students wanted to study certain topics because they had some burning need to know about the area. This was based on some past experience. Mentoring experiences suggest to students that they will be pursuing subjects perhaps slightly different from classroom work. Thus, their personal interests usually play a greater role in their choice of research possibilities.
The conventional wisdom is that students are shy in expressing themselves. Perhaps, this is true initially. But, my experience has been that students of the USP caliber were actually just waiting for the opportunity to talk about themselves, particularly because they were usually still working out their relationship to the university and to academic life. Thus, they had thought a lot about themselves and how their pasts relate to the present.
Key #3: Introduce the Student to Your Workshop: Most American occupations have a setting in which they work—bankers behind the desks of banks; mechanics in their repair shops; doctors in their offices and hospitals; even rock musicians in their recording studios and stages.
Where do professors work and how do they work? These are the questions that really intrigue students. You can tell this from the occasions in which students visit professors' offices. If there is a lull in the conversation—a telephone call, a pause while the professor reads—students' eyes roam actively, trying to take in the book titles, the professor's artifacts, the professor's writing set-up. This sneak look is a reflection of how much students are inquisitive about what goes into the professor's work.
It does not take long to do, but an informal "tour" of where one works and some explanation about schedules, writing techniques, use of facilities outside one's office are really helpful to students. Little things that we take for granted—a series of photos from an African village of a professor's fieldwork, an extensive research record collection, a signed copy of a famous author's book—form permanent memories for students in the mentoring process. These are the little signs of professors' belonging to a world of inquiry and ideas, which involves other people. Obviously, a professor who works in laboratories, such as astronomy labs, have more to show than a professor who work in an office only surrounded by his books and computer. Still, this is an important place to discuss with one's student. When professors connected with the USP gave this "tour," they often found that they learned as much as the student about their work habits and traditions.
Key #4: The Professor Shrinks the Proposal: Most of the proposals students present for their mentoring experiences are too big to do in the space of a quarter. Often, they were too big even for a year, or even a dissertation.
Students have a penchant for wanting to achieve the most in the least amount of time. At some point, the professor will find that unless discipline and restraint are imposed on the student's proposal, the rest of the experience will be a disappointing one.
Professors report that students welcome the chance to think about their proposal in more systematic ways. But, students are not experienced with making the proposal smaller. This is a delicate point in the relationship between a mentor and student. Shrinking a proposal should not come off as a severe criticism of their first ideas. Rather, it should be pursued as a learning process—how this kind of shrinking is done in academic work and how small subjects are really not small at all, but large areas of work.
Once the student realizes that they are not losing their hard-won idea but gaining a better version of the same idea, they are often pleased and ready to move forward.
But, this is a crucial step that must be made, and it is up to the professor to find a way to do this.
Key # 5: Assigning the First Task: One of the early responsibilities for the professor-mentor is getting the student to the first step of research.
Sometimes, students know what is necessary after their topic has been made more manageable. Sometimes, they do not. However, this cannot be left to chance. In getting the student to start on the road to research, there must be a first step that relates to the overall success of the project. In many respects, this step is an extension of paring-down the project proposal.
One of the best first steps is getting the student to do a limited bibliography of works in the field. The mentor can be very helpful with this task because he probably knows exactly which books and articles are crucial to the project. From these leads, the student can get an introduction to the area. Another first step is getting the student to read thoroughly a leading text in the field; and to schedule a meeting to discuss just that text. Yet another tactic is to get the student to draw up an outline of the subject he has proposed studying.
If the student is not proposing his own topic, the professor can begin by giving the student a topic within his own on-going research. About a third of the professors involved in the UST) have done this. They are interested in using the mentoring relationship as a continuation of their work.
The advantage of shrinking the topic and getting the student to a specific first step of research is that they get the student down from the clouds in the mentoring process. If done smoothly and with care, these two steps will build the foundation for the second phase. At the end of this phase, the student and professor should have done some of the important work for future mentoring.
The Second Phase: Completing the Task
Key #6: Conducting Your First Real Research Meeting: It is usually some time before the first research meeting occurs. The first meetings in the mentoring process are commonly devoted to the issues of meeting and exchanging basic information about the participants. The research meeting is the first one devoted to the tough aspects of the project.
So, the research meeting—which we in the USP see as a different, specific event—is an important session. At this point, the student and the professor have adjusted themselves to their relationship and both have done some preliminary work on the subject.
There should be much to talk about. The student, from our experience, will be excited because he/She has broken through a barrier, and has entered into the world where people investigate subjects as an occupation. Plus, the materials themselves will have raised interesting questions. This also might be the chance for the professor to steer the student in the direction of a library tour—most libraries have them—about how to research topics. At Stanford, the library has been very much an ally of the UP, every year coming forth with a special short course (2 meetings) designed to help students with quarter-long research projects.
This first research meeting should be structured. A. beginning devoted to what the student found out, a middle focusing on what issues and questions were raised, and an end with conclusions and further pointers—this is what the research meeting has to accomplish. It is important for the professor to think about what should occur in the first research meeting. Furthermore, it is important for the professor to think about what should have happened once the meeting is over—what does he want the student to know.
Key #7: The Mentor weeds to Read and Think Too: Many professors count on their reserves of knowledge and skills at on-the-spot thinking to take them through the mentoring process.
When have briefed professor-mentors, always have urged them to think about doing some reading in the field of research that they and their students decide upon. If the student is working in a professor's current research interest, then there is no problem. But, if the student has stepped out into a different area, professors should make sure they are prepared for the job of mentoring.
They need to read and think about the student's project. Some professors in the USP were so supportive of students' projects that they asked students to provide them with short reading lists as the students pursued their topics. It is important for professors to take some time to be fresh, to be up to date on the student's interest, to have remarks ready as comments in their sessions.
Key #8: What to Do About Other Meetings: Long before the research meeting, the professor and his student have to talk about the schedule of meetings. The USP recommended that the mentoring pairs meet once a week, or at least every two weeks. Any schedule less rigorous is not doing the job of mentoring. It is that simple. This is intensive work. It requires a time commitment from the professor and student.
Getting this commitment is harder than one might imagine. Professors are generally overworked, and tend to overschedule themselves. Students also take on more obligations than they should, and thus over-commit. Both parties in the mentoring process go into it thinking that it will require less time than it actually does. They think their schedules will miraculously open-up for such work. This is an illusion.
So, after the first research meeting, professors and student should revisit the issue of scheduling and meetings. They should declare once again what their schedule will be, and do everything possible to stick to it. I used to call the students to find out how many times they had already met with their professors. Generally, most professors did the right thing, but a few had let their responsibilities lapse. The same was true for students. To go forward in the mentoring project, the professor and student must settle again on a schedule of meetings.
Key #9: When Energy Flags: One of the inevitable problems mentoring faces is a decrease in the energy of the mentoring relationship. From my informal appraisals of the USP projects, it seems that two-thirds of the way through the project, energy took a downturn.
Nothing seems to be going right. For the student, the initial excitement of meeting a professor has worn-off. The momentum of starting the project is some distance in the past. The topic of research is more cumbersome or complex than anyone, including the professor, anticipated. The student has missed a meeting. The professor finds that the relationship with an undergraduate has more complications than expected. There are things that undergraduates can not do as researchers.
All of this erodes the resolve of the professor and the student. Then, the discussion between the student and the professor becomes listless; or it repeats the work of a couple of weeks ago. The project seems to have reached an impasse.
The advice have given professors and students at this point is: Don't worry. This is inevitable, Mentor and student must sort this set of problems out. Only a very few of these problems are important.
Probably the most significant problem is trying to reassure the student that the project is still viable. This is where the trust and friendship come in handy. By this point in the quarter, the professor and student are quite compatible with one another—that is, if they have built a relationship of personalized exchange and sharing of information at the early stages of the project. It is important to try to get the project back on track. A pep talk will do some of the work. But the mentor and the student together must figure out a way to salvage the great work they have already done. Usually, these difficulties are superficial rather than structural—that is, if a proper structure of inquiry has already been built.
Key #10: Getting ready to write: One of the paradoxes of mentoring of the type done in the USP program was just at the moment when the spirits of the student and mentor were at a low, they were required to gear for the final research report.
However, this was often a blessing in disguise. The student and mentor had to return to the work at hand. The task ahead put things in perspective.
For academic mentoring, a final written report is essential. Without it, the student does not face the challenges that professors confront in their work. Exposing the student to the challenges of the university culture requires that they be trained to deal with the demands of that culture. It is also important for students to sum-up their work, to get a sense of closure on what they have done for a quarter.
The writing of a final report is a tremendous experience. It will require a watchful eye from the professor and a willingness to talk with the student on an informal, unscheduled basis. During the writing period, found that students want to check-in with the professor. They want to know what he thinks about their ideas as they develop. Often, my students would bring by portions of their writing for checking.
Since this is a very crucial moment for learning, the professor should expect it and exploit it. So, mentors should save some resources for these final days of writing. Students need special help and encouragement and information during the stress of writing. Yet, this is perhaps also one of the most exciting episodes in mentoring, because what one usually finds is that the student has made some spectacular progress that no one single step in the process revealed. The work is beginning to pay off. The student has been stretched and animated. This is a case of the sum being greater than the parts.
The End of the Process
When the mentor and student have come to the end of a mentoring process, they have been on a journey together.
At some point in the closing days of the project, the student will hand the mentor a paper reporting on their discussions and research together. That will be the tangible evidence that mentoring took place.
But, the invisible evidence will be the experiences—the discussions, laughs, the tour of the professor's workplace, the discovery of library research methods—of the process, episodes that will go largely unrecorded. What will also go unrecorded is the discipline and rigor the professor has introduced into the student's academic life. This might be one of the greatest gifts that mentoring can offer a student. For if we are to have minority professors in the future, we must make them not only familiar with the academic culture, but resilient enough to survive the complexities of life as an academic.
The professor, at the end of the project, should probably think about a pleasant interlude to commemorate the conclusion. A professor and I once took our students to have ice cream cones at the student union. It was a hot spring day. The papers were in. We were sharing anecdotes and ideas about our projects, while stuffing ourselves with rocky road ice cream. It does not get any better than that! |
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Kennell Jackson looks at his childhood in Virginia
From Stanford University News Service, March 19, 1997:
On the June morning in 1962 when he graduated from Hampton Institute, Kennell Jackson looked back and smiled.
"At age 20, I had already had what I considered to be one of the most interesting, one of the most alluring, one of the most generous and one of the happiest growing-up periods ever," Jackson says. "I couldn't imagine anyone having anything better in this country."
The associate professor of history spoke about the lasting influences of his early years in the American South at the March 12 session of the bi-monthly "What Matters to Me and Why" series in Memorial Church.
Born into a "striving family" in Farmville, a tobacco-growing and banking hub in southern Virginia, Jackson said he recalled a community of 2,500 African Americans who included small business people, professionals and intellectuals, as well as low-lifes and eccentrics.
"Rural people came to town on Friday and Saturday nights, and the town lit up," he said. "It wasn't Manhattan, but it felt like it."
The community and surrounding towns in Prince Edward County had been home to well-known black educators and the local public schools bore the names of African American historians. Sally Hemmings, consort to President Thomas Jefferson, was born down the road from Jackson's Aunt Christine.
Jackson said he looked forward to the morning routine at his home, where his father, an independent contractor, would gather brick masons, electricians and carpenters to form the working crews who teased and joked with Jackson and his brother before going off to build houses.
But for all the idyllic mornings, there was a dark undercurrent in the region, as well.
"It was fabulous, growing up in this diverse little black community, but it coexisted with a very determined form of segregation," Jackson recalled. "You knew there was a critical mass of black people and a critical mass of white people looking at one another across pretty big racial divides."
The divide would open wide in the struggles over public education that gripped the county in the early 1950s. As the population boomed, black parents appealed for new schools, but their requests were turned down by an all-white school board. Lawsuits were filed and lawyers eventually included the petitions of black families in the historic Brown v. Board of Education. When the Supreme Court handed down its decision in 1954, Jackson didn't know what to expect.
"I remember thinking that our school system would disappear," he said. "It was a frightening prospect because I adored the school system and my teachers."
Rather than integrate its public schools, the county eventually shut them down, from 1959 until 1964. White families sent their children to private academies and black children went wherever their parents could find work.
Jackson was in college by then, and his first encounter with a black academic was memorable. Dressed in dapper suits and pointed shoes, the professor spoke fluent German and French and traveled frequently to Europe.
"I was astonished," Jackson recalls. "He linked us up and made us understand that our experiences as African Americans were not like a subset of the whole human condition, but were the human condition. Because of his travels, he could tell us how black writers and black thinkers fit into all the latest movements."
After graduating from Hampton Institute, Jackson would follow in his mentor's footsteps, doing field research in Kenya, Dahomey and Ghana, and spending a year at Cambridge University as a Fulbright Fellow. Jackson went on to earn a doctorate at the University of California-Los Angeles and came to Stanford in 1969 to teach African history.
Looking back at his childhood in the South, Jackson said he gradually has come to terms with the forces that have had a lasting impact on his professional and personal life.
"I try to do service to the glory days of growing up, and to the segregated world that was quite vicious in many respects," he said. "I've come slowly to be able to balance these two radically different histories occurring in the same place."
But today, he said, he continues to be concerned about widespread unfairness.
"The assumption in 1990 is sometimes that unfairness is a natural system, a part of the natural world, and that there is hardly anything you can do about it," Jackson said. "But when I hear people say, 'Let's be realistic,' it makes me cringe because I know that they're saying, 'Let's be realistic so that we can accept unfairness.'
"I think that today, because I teach at Stanford, my greatest concern is how class and unfairness interact."
At the same time, Jackson said, he feels that as an individual he has been treated fairly overall.
"In the larger sense, I've had a lot of opportunities, done some unusual things, been to great places and educational institutions have been very good to me, by and large.
"You get a lot of little nicks and scratches and over time they become burdensome," he added. "But some of it can be very amusing, too, because sometimes people are really struggling to get to the right place."
By Diane Manuel |
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Kennell Jackson, historian of Africa and longtime resident fellow, dead at 64
From Stanford University News Service, November 23, 2005:
By Lisa Trei
Kennell A. Jackson Jr., a professor of African history who served as Branner Hall's resident fellow for a quarter century and as director of the African and African American Studies Program for close to a decade, died Nov. 21 of pulmonary fibrosis at Stanford Hospital. He was 64.
A service celebrating Jackson's life will be held in Memorial Church in January. A date and time will be announced later in Stanford Report.
The son of a schoolteacher and a building contractor, Jackson attended segregated schools in Farmville, Va. He earned a bachelor's degree from Hampton Institute, now Hampton University, in 1962 and went on to win fellowships to study at the University of California-Los Angeles, the University of Ghana and Cambridge University, before earning his doctorate from UCLA. He joined Stanford's faculty as an assistant professor in 1969.
History Professor Richard Roberts called Jackson a "pioneer" in the history of East Africa. "He was always interested in the local meanings of changes in popular culture, particularly among the Kamba, [an ethnic group in central Kenya]," Roberts said, adding, "He was especially interested in the interpretation of the first generation of African nationalist leaders," especially Kwame Nkrumah, the first prime minister of Ghana, and Julius Nyerere, the first president of Tanzania. Roberts said that Jackson's work in African history provided a foundation for numerous scholars who followed him: "He taught many generations of both Stanford graduate students and undergraduate students." Roberts said some of his graduate students are currently organizing a memorial fund in his honor to support undergraduate and graduate research in Africa.
Jackson is known for his 1996 book America is Me: The Most Asked and Least Understood Questions About Black American History. Another book, Black Cultural Traffic: Crossroads in Global Performance and Popular Culture, which he co-edited with drama Professor Harry J. Elam Jr., will be published this month by the University of Michigan Press.
"Kennell had a rich knowledge of African and African American history," Elam said. "He was incredibly well read. As a historian, he was always thinking about what influenced current trends, and how the past and present came together as culture. He felt that popular culture was something that should be taken seriously."
At times, Jackson's interest in the avant-garde attracted criticism from mainstream sources. In 1992, when he began teaching an upper-class seminar called Black Hair as Culture and History, The Wall Street Journal published a column about the course that was written by David Sacks, then editor of the conservative student-run newspaper Stanford Review.
"[Jackson] wasn't shackled by convention," said psychology Professor Ewart Thomas, a longtime colleague. "He was interested in black hair two years before it became de rigueur. He had a way of picking up interesting threads in popular culture and having a seminar about it."
Jackson's innovative educational programs had a lasting influence on campus life. In the 1970s, as resident fellow of Serra House in Stern Hall, Jackson started "Faculty Night," a program in which students invited faculty to dine with them in their eating halls. Later, the popular event expanded campus-wide. In 1986, Jackson established the "Undergraduate Scholars Program," one of the university's first faculty mentoring programs for students in a format that has since become a central part of undergraduate life. He also created "Branner Presents," a speaker's bureau that invited cutting-edge cultural and political figures to campus during the 1980s and 1990s. In addition, throughout Jackson's long tenure on campus, he was closely affiliated with the Program in African and African American Studies, which he directed from 1980 to 1989. In recognition of his university service, Jackson received the Lloyd W. Dinkelspiel Award for Service to Undergraduate Education in 1972. In 1990, he was awarded the Allan V. Cox Medal for excellence in fostering research among university undergraduates.
Jackson was a father figure, teacher and mentor to generations of undergraduate and graduate students. In 1971, he became resident fellow of Serra House and, in 1980, moved to Branner Hall, the university's largest all-freshman dorm with 160 students. Jackson remained its resident fellow until his death.
"He was a legend in Branner," said Arnold Rampersad, senior associate dean for the humanities. "All his life he was linked to young students. This kept him alive to trends and allowed him to teach very effectively and communicate with students. He knew their culture, but he approached it from a learned, scholarly perspective."
Freshman Dean Julie Lythcott-Haims was an undergraduate in Branner in 1985 and later became one of Jackson's resident assistants. "He had very high expectations about how we should behave," she recalled. "He was inspiring and eccentric. He had little patience for 18-year-olds talking about silly things. He wanted us to be interested in the topics of the day. As resident assistants, he wanted us to infuse a sense of intellectualism in the dorm."
Jody Nyberg, Branner Hall's resident student affairs specialist from 1989 to 1999, said Jackson would buck conventional norms if he thought something was important. "He was very true to what he felt was right," she said. "He was true to himself." As a result, Jackson developed a loyal cadre of students who returned to visit him long after they graduated. "He had a lasting impact on students' lives," Nyberg said.
Jackson was born in 1941, into what he described as a "striving family." He attended segregated schools in Prince Edward County, where petitions by black families for equal education would eventually be included in the historic Brown vs. Board of Education case before the U.S. Supreme Court in 1954. Rather than integrate its public schools, however, the county shut them down from 1959 to 1964. White families sent their children to private academies and black children went wherever their parents could find work. In 1962, Jackson had already graduated from college, but his younger brother, Otis, had to move away from home with their mother to attend school. Residence Dean Jamila Rufaro said the move had a profound effect on Jackson. "For Kennell, it symbolized the importance of education and the lengths you would go to get one," she said. "It shaped the importance he placed on education."
Jackson leaves behind an eclectic collection of art and books, which will be given to the Cantor Center for Visual Arts, Hampton University and to friends and colleagues. He is survived by his brother, Otis, of Chesapeake, Va. In lieu of flowers, donations in Jackson's memory may be sent to Doctors Without Borders (Africa Section), or to Cornerstone Baptist Church, 16 Horsepen Rd., Farmville, VA 23901. |
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| Kennell's Photo Album |
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