Free Brother West by Cornel West Page A

the area of African American history. I was honored to help.
    And talking about serving in the name of Jesus, I also made sure to join the Pleasant Hill Baptist Church in Dorchester, a congregation that in some ways gave me the feeling of Shiloh. I got there through their pastor, my dear brother Reverend Boykin Sanders, a Ph.D. candidate who was in my Hebrew class.
    “Corn,” he said, “I was just appointed to lead this church, but I could sure use some help.”
    “You mean like teaching Sunday school?”
    “I mean like revamping the whole Sunday school program. I want you to be superintendent of our educational division.”
    “Man, I’m too young for something like that.”
    “Youth is what the church needs. You have sound biblical knowledge and you have a righteous Christian attitude. The kids will love you. What do you say?”
    What could I say? Boykin became my dear brother and Pleasant Hill became my church home away from home.
    W HEN I WENT HOME TO S ACRAMENTO that Christmas of my freshman year, I hooked up with Glenn Jordan, my close friend who had been president of Sac High the same year I served as president of Kennedy. Glenn had fought with me for Black Studies back when we were seniors, and then gone off to Stanford. Naturally, we compared notes about our first months in college.
    “Corn,” said Glenn, “there’s a man at Stanford who’s changed everything for me. He’s everything I want to be.”
    “Who is he?” I asked.
    “St. Clair Drake. He’s amazing. He’s inspired me like no one else. He’s a black intellectual conversant with any idea you can throw at him. At the same time, Corn, he’s filled with humility. His fundamental aim is to connect the life of the mind to the struggle for freedom. He’s grounded in the struggle for black freedom, but he’s also a universalist who embraces all people. He’s a professor. And that’s what I intend to be. A professor.”
    At that moment, something clicked. Something turned. Something changed. I had entered Harvard pre-law, mainly on Mom’s suggestion. But I really hadn’t given it much thought. I hadn’t really considered a major or, beyond that, a vocation. Until now. Now, in a moment that I can only call transformational, I was feeling the miraculous passion that professor St. Clair Drake had passed on to Glenn.
    A teacher. A professor. Connecting the life of the mind to the struggle for freedom. That was it. That would be my life. And just as on that day in the winter of 1961 when, with Brother Cliff, I committed to the gospel of Jesus Christ, on this winter day of 1970 I committed to the vocation of teaching. From that time forward, I have never veered from either commitment.
    T HERE WAS PHYSICAL AS WELL as intellectual growth during my early years at Harvard. I unexpectedly grew several inches taller. It was a strange feeling to shoot up so dramatically in such a short period of time.
    There were other forces at work. I’m thinking of two powerful forces in particular that opposed one another. I was drawn to both. There was the force of my fellow students—Paul Nichols, Leonard Wallace, and Clyde Dorsey, to name only three—and there was the force of my teachers. The truth is that I loved both groups, even as they found themselves in nasty conflict. Sometimes I felt caught in the middle, but mostly I felt fortunate to be exposed to such a wealth of ideas and an assortment of extraordinary people. I spent the majority of my time with students like myself—young men and women, many of whom were black, swept up by the emotions and politics of the time. We opposed the cruel and tragic war in Vietnam. We marched for civil rights. We protested Harvard’s investments in corporations who backed corrupt regimes. We demanded a voice in determining our curriculum. I maintained a strong solidarity with my brothers and sisters of all colors who, more than any generation in the history of American higher education, were skeptical of the system.