Visiting the Past

By: aromaproductions on 2:00 PM

Share it Please

Tweet

Every Thursday, I have the privilege of taking care of my granddaughter.  She is fourteen months old and one of  her favorite pastime is pulling books off shelves, scattering and emptying files of their content.

Today an old brochure featuring the staff of the Institute for African American Affairs, Center of Pan-African Culture, Kent State University, Ohio, fell out of a folder.  This brochure is very special to me. I am among the staff.  It represents the begin of my journey into university academic life which begin in 1972 and ended in 1991 when I fled my post as Assistant Professor of English, in the Department of English, at the University of Liberia, ahead of rebels forces which would soon sack the city of Monrovia.

This brochure has travelled with me to the Virgin Islands, to Liberia, to London and finally to Switzerland where it remains among my top treasures. Below are members of the staff  with whom I began my journey into the world of acadameic.



 

Dr. Edward Cosby, Director of IAAA

  Tribute to Dr. Edward Crosby

Althea Romeo-Mark

In a leap of faith, Dr. Crosby, as Director of the Institute of African American Affairs (IAAA), later The Department of Pan-African Affairs, took two young Virgin Islanders under his wings in the early 1970s. Hulda Smith, from Tortola, British Virgin Islands, had started teaching one year before I arrived from St. Thomas, US Virgin Islands. Under his enthusiastic counsel, we began as teaching novices in the IAAA at Kent State University.

Dr. Crosby’s leadership was a very supportive one.  We bore a heavy title, Communication Skills Specialist, and were given the responsibility of teaching young people just a few years younger than ourselves. These youths, from black, underprivileged communities, were lacking in writing skills. We imparted our knowledge to them so that they could better their lives.

Not only did Dr. Crosby focus on improving the skills and widening the opportunities of deprived students, he also encouraged the further education of his staff. He motivated the budding poet that I was and assigned me a creative writing course.  This gave me the opportunity to stimulate creative minds and nurture writers like myself. The end product of this course was a poetry collection entitled, Shu Shu Moko Jumbi: The Silent Dancing Spirit. This anthology, published by the Department of Pan African Affairs, is still listed in my publication history to this day.

The IAAA became my family outside the Virgin Islands.  I grew, inspired by the intellectually fertile environment. I was particularly impacted by the African Cosmology seminars. My knowledge of African history and religion expanded.

Thanks to Dr. Crosby, and his staff including Wiley Smith, Willie Robinson, Anne Graves, Saundra Sheffey, Gladys Bozeman, Halim El Dabh, Charles Eberhardt, Peya Jones, Timothy More, Lauren Gallagher, Audrey Wilson-Robinson among others, my world became a larger, vibrant place.

My gained knowledge led me to Liberia, London, and Switzerland where I now live.  I continue to teach and write in the hope of enlightening others as I was enlightened under Dr. Crosby’s guidance.

A Poem for Mentors

You point the way,
allow us to uncover the secrets
within and around us.

You help us to form
new understandings that
break the perimeters
of our perception.

You teach without preaching,
oversee the birthing
of who we are.


(c) Althea Romeo-Mark