Doors: Reflections on an HBCU Career

"Doors: Reflections on an HBCU Career" provocatively combines the story of a long teaching career at a "historically black college or university" with relevant and insightful observations on how race affects what is taught, how it is taught, and who teaches. The book reveals how the author’s teaching of American culture as a subject was influenced by American culture itself. Lawson's memoir about being a minority within a minority thus offers insights about how society's ways and values impact American higher education--and how American higher education affects society's ways and values. No college or university is simply an ivory tower, isolated from the world at large, where scholars dispassionately pursue purely academic interests. Egos and vested interests are at play at any institution, educational or otherwise. Lawson relates how policies and procedures of the university often brought the revelation that race and what he calls “minoritiness” are not the same thing—that, in fact, being a minority but white taught memorable lessons about being black. He concludes that American discourse on race often confuses race per se with minority status and that his insights about African American literature came not only from his working environment and his studies, but also from being a minority. Lawson also dramatizes startling episodes in his career which were provoked by “outside” events: the publication of Alex Haley’s “Roots,” the perceived threat of merging with a nearby white college, the O. J. Simpson trials, and his lecturing in Europe. A memoir which brings together issues of higher education, race, minority status, and American literature is truly multifaceted.