Speaking Truth to Power (13 page)

During my first year at Oral Roberts, Charles Kothe became a professional
consultant to Thomas. Ko the had been working on employment issues for the Reagan administration and had a warm admiration for Thomas. He had even written a biographical story about Thomas as a model of “bootstrap success.” Thomas seemed to think that Kothe could help him make contacts with “old line” Republicans. That they worked together meant that my escape from Thomas could not have been complete. Kothe expected that I would be gracious and work with Thomas as well, and Thomas expected that I would help him to maintain the relationship with Kothe.

At Oral Roberts University, working on some equal employment research projects, I called Thomas’ office on occasion. His records suggest that I called him eleven times from 1983 to 1991. I do not recall talking to him eleven times because the calls were of little personal importance to me. They had a purpose—to further my work. My sense of professionalism, which some may describe as opportunism, allowed me to divorce my personal feelings from my work interests. That, in retrospect, was a mistake. But the reality was that Thomas was a part of my work history no matter how I might handle it. Though I had dealt with the situation as I best knew how and had chosen not to rely on him in future employment endeavors, I had performed well as his assistant, and I refused to let his bad behavior cheat me of every benefit of my good work. The balance was difficult, maybe even impossible, to maintain, but I tried.

Teaching was at first a little intimidating, but later became fun. I had to overcome a basic shyness and reserve about speaking in front of groups of people. Once in law school, I’d been chosen to present a gift to one of our first-year teachers, Guido Calabresi. I managed to get up in front of the class and make the presentation but I spoke so softly that not even he heard the remarks I made. The courses I was now teaching, employment law and commercial law, were never so much the issue as my reticence about standing in front of the room.

At Oral Roberts O. W. Coburn School of Law, I was the only female as well as the only African American faculty member. I had the support of most of my colleagues on the very small faculty, but it became evident
that I did not have the support of all of the students. The ideological and conceptual problem I posed for some of them was acute. I am certain that, as a black woman, I challenged their notion of authority. In response they challenged me. For a handful of them, any statement I made in class, no matter how basic, was open to challenge. One particular student vacillated between refusing to respond in class when asked to do so and responding sullenly. A group of male students protested my assignment to teach commercial law on the basis that I was unqualified to do so. They were supported by one of the other faculty members, Roger Tuttle, who also questioned my qualifications and hiring. The school was relatively small—the largest class had approximately sixty students. Because of its size, rumors and accounts of incidents traveled fast among the student body.

The school attracted some good students, but others would have been deemed marginal by most admission standards. I believe that many resented my background and the fact that I had a degree from Yale Law School, often regarded as the best law school in the country. The conservative racial and gender politics and even prejudices of many in the student body went a long way to convince them that I did not belong in front of the class in the role of their instructor. They supported their personal biases with much of the popular rhetoric of the day that decried affirmative action and hinted that blacks who had made it into schools and professional positions during the 1970s and 1980s did not deserve to be there. Some expressed their resentment overtly. Others were cordial and respectful. A few were downright vicious and spread obscene rumors about me, perhaps unhappy with the grades they received in my course. Yet to say that my time at Oral Roberts University was consumed by hostility would be to exaggerate the impact of a few. I had many friends among the staff, students, and faculty at Oral Roberts. And many there remain friends and supporters today.

I left Oklahoma in 1977 as a student. Returning in 1983, I was an adult. I bought a Tudor-style house on a half-acre lot on a quiet street in the hills of North Tulsa. Its large country kitchen and living room made it the perfect place for the family to gather on my first Christmas home.
My brother Albert and sister Elreatha lived only a short distance away, and JoAnn and Alfred just a little farther. By now she was JoAnn Fennell, married to Jerry, with three children. Eric, her oldest, whom I’d adored as a five-year-old when I left Oklahoma, was now an adorable eleven-year-old. Jonna, her daughter, was a six-year-old armful of energy, and Jerry, Jr., the youngest, was a round ball of joy and affection. We did everything together—birthdays for the kids, weekend trips to our parents’ house, shopping for Thanksgiving turkeys and Christmas trees. We even belonged to the same church, the Antioch Baptist Church, which was a stone’s throw from my house. As in our childhood, the church was a center of our social activity. My cousins Sandra and Ruth attended Antioch as well, and we all belonged to the same mission group. Under the influence of my nieces and nephews, I became “Auntie Faye” to the children (and some of the adults) in the church. Personally, I was still pining for the man I’d left in Washington, and I returned to see him on two occasions. I started seeing other men and eventually got into a steady relationship.

For three years my relationship with my parents and siblings, nieces, nephews, and cousins flourished. I became a member of the community, active in professional and charitable organizations. I became a member of the committee on minority involvement of the Oklahoma Bar Association, an officer in the Tulsa Black Lawyers association, and a member of the Tulsa Women Lawyers group. I applied to serve as a Big Sister in the local Big Brothers/Big Sisters program, but due to a larger number of Big Sisters than Little Sisters I was not matched. Still, because of my interest in the program, the board of directors asked me to serve as a board member, which I did.

After three years, my time at the O. W. Coburn School of Law came to an unexpected end. The university administration decided to sell the law school to Pat Robertson and CBN University in Virginia. Each faculty member was advised that he or she would be considered for a position at CBN but I declined to be considered, choosing rather to stay in Oklahoma.

In the fall of 1985 I interviewed for a position with the law school at
the University of Oklahoma. The school offered me a position there for the fall of 1986. The school is in Norman in central Oklahoma, and though relocating there was not ideal, I would still be able to reach my parents or the rest of my family and friends in Tulsa within two hours.

The academic atmosphere at the University of Oklahoma was certainly superior to that at Oral Roberts. There was a strong sense of collegiality as well. Faculty members frequently socialized together. In Tulsa my friends were drawn from my neighborhood and community activities, but in Norman my social world was filled with other faculty. It was a comfortable arrangement. I had once again moved to a place where I had an established social base. My colleagues on the faculty of the law school had a reputation for being friendly and encouraging social interaction. I soon began the task of establishing my teaching and research, the latter of which had been somewhat neglected at Oral Roberts, which did not offer tenure and hired teachers on a year-to-year basis. Research was rarely emphasized or rewarded.

In 1988 I was promoted from assistant to full professor. I also served on various committees and boards, including the faculty administration committee, Committee A. The faculty voted to give me tenure in October 1989, and in 1990 the campus tenure committee and the Board of Regents confirmed the vote.

My career progress at the university was rapid but not always easy. When I first arrived, there was considerable student unrest over faculty hiring. One matter in particular seemed to stir student resentment. The faculty had refused to hire a very popular white male professor in 1988, not too long after the period when I was hired. He and I did not teach the same subjects and were at considerably different levels of experience. In short, we were neither comparable nor in competition for the same job. Nevertheless, some students insisted on comparing us and argued that I had been unfairly hired over him.

Once again I was the only African American faculty member, only the third in the history of the school, and the first African American woman to teach there. And once again I was the youngest faculty member. I did not socialize with the students in general, though I was the
faculty sponsor for the Black Law Student Association and went to some of the meetings of the Christian Legal Society. The common complaint was that I’d been hired simply because of affirmative action. In the intensity of the law school environment, any perceived error in my teaching or attitude toward the students was viewed as evidence of my incompetence. Rumors about student reactions to my calling on them in the classroom included comments such as “You don’t have to answer a nigger,” or “That nigger doesn’t know anything.” One administrator told me that he relied on “hall talk” from the students in evaluating my first year of teaching.

Yet despite some of the same resistance I had encountered at Oral Roberts University, the University of Oklahoma was a place where I could be productive and make a contribution. I felt more a part of the national academic community at Oklahoma, shedding some of the isolation I’d experienced because of the religious ideology rightly or wrongly associated with Oral Roberts University and its provisional accreditation. Some academics had shunned me because of my association with the school, assuming that it was established for the purpose of promoting an indefensible, conservative political agenda. Their somewhat misguided ideological view of the school was a product of the politics of the times.

My involvement with other law teachers, particularly minority law teachers, was a great help to me. When I moved into my office at the law center, waiting for me on my desk were notes and newsletters alerting me to the experiences of other African American faculty who had faced hostility from students. These stories, many from seasoned teachers and experienced scholars, helped me to understand my experience at Oral Roberts and to prepare for what I was to experience at Oklahoma. They also showed me that I would have to overcome the experiences without much assistance from my white colleagues. But by the end of the spring semester of 1988, in my second year teaching at Oklahoma, the students began to accept me as a faculty member. I did not change significantly, but I learned to meet some of their expectations without compromising mine. I took on a tougher and more detached demeanor and a more rigorous approach to classroom exchanges. What I had exhibited as concern
had been interpreted by the students as weakness. To some extent, I had to stop showing that I cared about the students. Out of this new approach, I developed a reputation for being demanding. Yet one class of students who admitted that they’d started the year hating me gave me a box of candy on Valentine’s Day. Once again, I’d had to detach myself from the hurtful offenses I suffered. But in this case, a certain level of detachment paid off.

I kept developing my teaching and research, now focusing on contract and commercial law. In the spring of 1989 I taught my courses on an accelerated schedule and went to Europe to do research in German commercial law and practices. I was also able to attend the meetings of the international law body UNIDROIT, which was in the process of drafting international principles of contract law. The assembled international experts looked twice when I first appeared at their sessions, but the United States delegate, Alan Farnsworth, and the organization’s director, Michael Bonnel, were quite encouraging. I was gradually accepted into the group, one of a few women and the only black woman present. These meetings enabled me to follow the development of the body of law from near its beginning to its end in 1994. That same year I taught a commercial law course in the University of Oklahoma’s summer program at Oxford University. Though I occasionally taught a seminar or course in civil rights law, my intellectual and professional life was headed in another direction. Still, I continued to sponsor the black student organization and helped with the formation of the Coalition of Minority Students, an umbrella group that included Asian, Hispanic, Native American, and African American student organizations.

I was so immersed in my experiences at the University of Oklahoma and my interest in commercial and international law that by 1991 I had successfully overcome my experience with Thomas to the point of disregarding it. I had for all I knew put it behind me for all time. As painful and unfair as it was, the Thomas episodes, like the racist hostility at Oral Roberts and later at Oklahoma, were something in my life that I’d had to rise above in order to move forward. I refused to wallow in these experiences or punish myself because of them. I rarely talked about them.
Perhaps wrongly, I wouldn’t even try to make those responsible for the behavior accountable in any way. In that sense, I share some of the responsibility for its perpetuation. For my own benefit, however, I only wanted to move beyond it. It was not that I ever forgot what had happened, or even that I work very hard to forget; I had simply convinced myself that what mattered was my right to not cling too tightly to the hurt, and to move on with my life.

N
orman, Oklahoma, and Washington, D.C., have one thing in common: dreadfully hot summers. In Washington the humidity hangs in the air like a thick clear fog, routinely threatening thunderstorms. The result is a lush green environment that is mildly oppressive by August, the hottest month. In Oklahoma, however, summer begins in May. The humidity hovers, only rarely turning into rain. And by summer’s end in Oklahoma, grass and shrubs are parched and withered.