Lamon
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(Editor’s note: Les Lamon presented the 19th annual Lundquist Faculty Fellowship Lecture last spring on the IU South Bend campus. His topic was "Dealing with the Fox: Race Relations and Civil Rights in South Bend."
IU Home Pagescaught up with Lester Lamon, director of the Civil Rights Heritage Center (CRHC) and history professor at IU South Bend, to discuss his third summer trip to civil rights historic sites in the South. Lamon, who is planning to retire in 2006, also talked about the trajectory of his three decades on the South Bend campus.
Q: In May, when many professors are looking forward
to taking a break from teaching, you led a group of students
on a two-week journey to civil rights sites in the South.
What was the inspiration for this trip?
A. Lamon: The idea is based partly on my concept
and familiarity with what it means to study abroad--I thought
it could be done in one's own country. During the 19 years
I had been a university administrator, I collected information
about civil rights leaders who were still alive and places
where significant civil rights events occurred with the idea
that I might teach again. When I returned to the classroom
in 1999, I decided to do something with this material. The
Freedom Summer 2000 trip represented the evolving context
of my life, having grown up in a segregated environment, attended
college in Nashville in the early 1960s, taught and coached
basketball in one of the first integrated school systems in
the South, and then taught African-American history for many
years. Although I thought the trip/course would be a one-time
thing, it exceeded every expectation my students and I had.
Q: And the Civil Rights Heritage Center at IU South
Bend is the result of that first trip’s success?
A. Lamon:: Yes, absolutely. A group of students wanted to give form
to what they learned on that first trip and have the center
embody the still important values of the civil rights movement
in their own community. The idea was that the center should
not duplicate efforts elsewhere and should operate through
community partnerships, focusing upon how a better understanding
of the civil rights movement can revitalize efforts for justice
and equality in the 21st century.
Q: What kind of activities does the CRHC pursue?
A. Lamon: The center initially received 18 months
of funding—from the African American Community Fund at the
Community Foundation of St. Joseph, the Bowsher-Booher Fund
and the Indiana Humanities Council—to launch the oral history
project, some traveling displays and several partnerships
directed at high school students in our community. The CRHC
has also received grants for individual programs, such as
the leadership academy for high school students, and the university
has built a couple of the programs into its on-going activities,
but we still lack permanent funding for the center. It depends
almost completely upon student volunteers (approximately 20
each semester), as it has since it began.
Q: You’re a Tennessee native who has spent your career
in South Bend. Which do you consider home?
A. Lamon:: South Bend is my home and the place where
I "belong" and where I’m heavily and integrally "connected."
My roots, however. still extend into Tennessee and the South.
Deep down, if you asked me where I come from, I will say Tennessee.
Q: Has your role as a transplanted Southerner helped
clarify the two different legacies of racism, that of the
"Wolf in the South" and the "Fox in the North" that you
discussed in your Lundquist lecture last spring?
A. Lamon: Certainly, I have witnessed both varieties. However, my discussion
of the Wolf and Fox was a riff on Malcolm X’s metaphor. He
considered racism in the South to be like a wolf—a snarling,
posing constant danger, poised to attack. In the North, it
is like a fox—you’re not aware of it until it steals your
chickens. Here in the North, racism is institutionalized and
much harder to confront. The civil rights movement of the
‘50s, ‘60s and ‘70s stopped short of really catching the fox.
That is the challenge of today.
Q: Will there be a Freedom Summer 2006?
A. Lamon:: There will, but since I’m retiring, I won’t
be leading the tour. Monica Tetzlaff, the new chair of history
at IU South Bend, has stepped up to the plate to take over.
She’s a superb civil rights historian and will do an excellent
job.
For more information on Freedom Summer 2004, visit the link
to the South Bend Tribune, which covered the trip day-by-day
this summer: http://www.southbendtribune.com/specialprojects/livinghistory051704/
To learn from about the Civil Rights Heritage Center, go to http://www.iusb.edu/~civilrts/HomePage.html
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