E’ry day this month, Philly’s 7th Ward, in partnership with the Center for Black Educator Development, will highlight a “Black Educator Hall of Famer.“ But, don’t forget, e’ry month is Black History Month. February is just the Blackest. Every day is an ongoing opportunity to learn and teach the colossal impact Black educators have had on society.
William Lamar Strickland
William Lamar Strickland was born on January 4, 1937, in Roxbury, MA. Sadly, he lost his father to combat in World War 2. However, with the help of several aunts and other relatives, he was raised by his mother, providing a foundation that would shape Strickland’s activism for years to come. He attended and graduated from Boston Latin School in 1954 and earned a degree in psychology from Harvard University. In between his college studies, Strickland served in the Marine Corps.
While his service in the Marines taught him about “dimensions of white America that I never would have learned otherwise,” his introduction to the works of Richard Wright and James Baldwin at Harvard helped awaken his political consciousness. Additionally, his undergraduate studies helped shape his activism. He took classes with Whitney Young, who later became the Urban League executive director, and with C. Eric Lincoln, the renowned Black scholar. He joined activist groups, including the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee equivalent in the North, the Northern Student Movement.
It was also at this time that Strickland reconnected with an old friend to engage in activism on behalf of Black people: El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, better known as Malcolm X. That connection led to Strickland’s appointment as a founding member of the Organization of Afro-American Unity (OAAU) in 1964. In addition to that activity, Strickland participated in the Mississippi Freedom Summer, boycotts, rent strikes, and fights against police brutality.
Strickland’s teaching career began at Columbia University in 1966. He joined the University of Massachusetts faculty in 1973 and taught there for 40 years. While teaching, Strickland co-founded the Institute of the Black World with Vincent Harding of Spelman and Stephen Henderson of Morehouse, which was a collective Black intellectual think tank. Members of the think tank included intellectuals such as Lerone Bennett, John Henrik Clark, and C.L.R. James.
Strickland’s teaching and research focused on the history and politics of the African American experience, and he was known for his insightful analysis of the Civil Rights Movement and its leaders. He was a strong advocate for social justice and used his academic platform to educate and inspire future generations about the importance of civil rights and equality. Strickland wrote:
“Black America does not exist in a vacuum. Analyzing the condition of Black people in America, therefore, cannot be separated from the task of analyzing America itself. And the American condition… is one of brooding apocalypse… The cities teeter on the edge of bankruptcy; the hospitals maim and kill rather than heal and cure; the schools no longer even pretend to teach; and the economy feeds, like some Bela Lugosi vampire, on the ever-shrinking income of the citizenry. Politically, the so-called ‘two-party system’ reveals itself to be little more than a second-rate Abbott and Costello comedy, while administrations past and present surface daily as skin-tight accomplices of the Mafia, the CIA, or both.”
Happy Black History Month and make sure to read up on William Lamar Strickland, a member of the Black Educator Hall of Fame.
