Ricky Jones: U of L Pan-African Studies titan Robert L. Douglas deserves to be remembered
A reporter reached out to me for comment when University of Louisville Department of Pan-African Studies professor emeritus and past chair Dr. Robert L. Douglas unexpectedly passed away. She said, “I’m having trouble finding information on him. There doesn’t seem to be much out there.”
Sadly, she was right and that pained me. Wrongfully, people mention me and Dr. J. Blaine Hudson more than Bob when PAS is discussed for various reasons. That’s highly problematic, for there would have been no Blaine Hudson, Ricky Jones, or PAS as we know it without Bob.
Pan-African Studies (one of the nation’s oldest Black Studies departments) will celebrate its 50th anniversary next school year. Be clear, despite their hypocritical protestations, the University of Louisville devalues PAS. That’s not surprising. Bob often smiled and smoothly asked, “Son, how can the University of Louisville value PAS and Black Studies when it doesn’t value Black people?”
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The truth is U of L allowed PAS’s founding in 1973 because the school was shamed into it. Administrators only yielded after a long series of fervent campus protests and Black community demands. Interestingly, a young Mensa-level undergraduate named J. Blaine Hudson was involved in that movement. What did the University of Louisville do in response to his participation in resistance fueled by righteous indignation over the university’s mistreatment of its paltry number of Black students and faculty? They kicked him out of school.
It took a group of older Black community members (including Bob Douglas) and lawyers banding together to push back against Blaine’s dismissal to force U of L to eventually readmit him. Years later, he returned to U of L as an employee and was promptly tucked away in a series of inconsequential jobs. He recounted to me that a sympathetic administrator once told him, “I don’t know why you want to be here. They’re never going to let you move up.”
Bob Douglas’ return to Louisville after completing his doctorate at the University of Iowa and his rise to the chairmanship of PAS is a fascinating story that we do not have space to cover here. Suffice it to say, he was the department’s leader when the University of Louisville decided to play in the 1991 Fiesta Bowl after a number of other more desirable schools declined to do so. Why did others decline? Because the game was played in Arizona, a state that refused to recognize the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday. U of L whitewashes the story now, but the reality is it chose profit over propriety and disgracefully marched its largely Black football team onto the field in Arizona.
This was just one in a long line of morally reprehensible decisions concerning Black folk made by U of L that continue to this day. Bob pounced. He used the Fiesta Bowl fiasco to publicly highlight U of L’s racial malfeasance and pushed the administration to accept his “PAS enhancement plan” to grow the department’s small faculty and almost non-existent resources.
Bob’s first move was fighting to hire Blaine Hudson as a professor and move him to PAS. The dean asked, “Why do you want him, Bob? He’s going nowhere. He’ll never even get tenure.” Bob responded, “Just give him to me and we’ll see.” Blaine not only earned tenure, he went on to become chair of PAS and the College of Arts & Sciences’ first African American dean.
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Why we must remember Bob Douglas
A half decade later, Bob met a young political science graduate student and set about selling him on coming to Louisville and joining PAS. He told Blaine Hudson, “I met this young brother from Atlanta. If we can convince him to come here and stay, the department will be all right for the next 20 years.” That grad student was me. I came here because of Bob, locked arms with him and Blaine in struggle, stayed and went on to become the longest serving chair of PAS. I’ve now lost them both, but the struggle to which we dedicated our lives continues.
We tend to remember some people and forget others. We remember DuBois but forget William Monroe Trotter. We remember Martin Luther King, Jr. but forget Vernon Johns and E.D. Nixon. We remember Thurgood Marshall but forget his teacher and mentor Charles Hamilton Houston. We can’t let that happen to Bob Douglas. He was a colleague, mentor and father to me. I loved him more than I can say and don’t want his story or impact to be forgotten or minimized.
Thurgood Marshall was once asked about the greatness of Charles Hamilton Houston. Marshall responded, “All we [the people around Houston] were worthy to do was carry his bags.” That’s the way I feel about Bob Douglas. We are all indebted to him and were only worthy to carry his bags.
And now a new era begins for Black people at U of L. Transformational troublemakers like Drs. Joseph McMillan, Blaine Hudson and Bob Douglas have all passed away. Longtime PAS professor Dr. Yvonne Jones is nearing retirement. As for me, I end my time as chair at the conclusion of this school year and am accepting another professional position that will remove me from the day-to-day of PAS and Arts & Sciences for the first time in 27 years. With that, the last of the old Black U of L revolutionaries will be gone or nearing their exit. Let’s hope the newer brothers and sisters don’t let the racial clock at U of L roll back any more than it already has.
Rest well, Bob. You deserve it. You did your job and more.
Dr. Ricky L. Jones is professor and chair of the Pan-African Studies department at the University of Louisville. His column appears bi-weekly in the Courier-Journal. Visit him at rickyljones.com.
This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: U of L Pan-African Studies leader Robert L Douglas must be remembered
