"The Nellie Tree," or, disbanding the Wheatley Court.

We must disband the Wheatley court so that African American literature can become a full member of the company of world literatures, open to all who wish to participate in its bounty. (366)

To my graduate students, in all their diversity, past and present: the generations who give meaning to our struggle. (368)

We take our epigraphs from the now infamous Guest Column in the May 1998 issue of PMLA, Naming the Problem That Led to the Question 'Who Shall Teach African American Literature?'; or, Are We Ready to Disband the Wheatley Court?" In it, Nellie Y. McKay calls for a serious investigation of "three critical problems that help to keep the Wheatley court in session and hold African American literature hostage: the insufficiency of the black PhD pipeline, the efforts to discourage white graduate students from exploring black literature, and untrained white scholars' undertaking of scholarship in black literature" (363). (1) Before its publication, McKay provided early and final drafts to her graduate students for comment and critique. We talked about everything from the mechanics to the politics of writing such an article. As always, she managed to really teach and mentor while treating us as valuable colleagues doing important work.

Thus, beyond the national and international dimensions of her cause, which she pursued with undiminished vigor and success day after day for more than 30 years, many persons have had the privilege of working with her and benefiting from her dedication and immense knowledge of the field. No doubt, as many can attest (albeit but imperfectly, given the scope of her influence), she laid down broad and deep roots, the fruit of which will nourish and bear again for many years.

Not long after Nellie fell ill in 2003, in an attempt to communicate effectively with Nellie's very large community and to coordinate the ever-growing list of volunteers, her UW colleagues created the e-mail equivalent of the "phone trees" used in women's studies programs during the 1960s and 70s. Appropriating this concept and affectionately dubbing us the "Nellie Tree," Susan Friedman coined a lasting phrase that, she recalled, "originated in the conversational spaces between Nellie and me, and then me and Susan Bernstein. Nellie immediately 'got' the idea of the metaphor.... And she loved it. Me, too. But I also like that the idea for it originates in the kind of political tactic we used in 'the old days' as we tried to organize and unite people around a particular political action." (2) Instituting their own form of hospice, Nellie's colleagues were able to tap the many "branches" and "roots" she helped create through her dedication, to provide critical support as she battled the illness to which she ultimately succumbed.

The metaphor of the "Nellie Tree" is particularly apt, for it enables us to turn loss and struggle into rebirth and possibility, just as Nellie did throughout her career. Indeed, through her unstinting and indefatigable devotion, she helped turn around our thoughts on the cultural production of Black women and men.

We, a few of those branches and her former charges, wish to celebrate Nellie's life by considering the manner in which she brought us beneath her immense canopy and fertile ground. The following remembrances pay tribute to a phenomenal scholar, but they also respond to her call. We form, in effect, a large cross-section of those who do and who will teach African American literature: we will disband, we are disbanding the Wheatley court. The passing of Nellie Y. McKay marks a passing of a very heavy and very hot torch. We are honored to take up that torch as a deeply personal and political action. The following reflections represent the fond reminisces of just a handful of us who have inherited the responsibility of keeping fertile and vital the soil of the Nellie Tree.

Notes

(1.) Please see Works Cited on page 66.

(2.) See Friedman.

Kimberly Blockett and Gregory Rutledge, Special Guest Editors

Talking Trees

Like many who remember Nellie, I find the "Nellie Tree" apposite to diverse contexts. The trope of the tree is powerfully literary, but the talking tree, well that's something else....

In the final semester before I went on the job market at the MLA convention, I lectured in one of Nellie's undergraduate courses. To prepare, I sat in on the class as Nellie herself taught it. Watching her read from Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God, I felt the enthusiasm of a love-struck adolescent. I felt how Janie

   was stretched on her back beneath the pear tree soaking in the alto
   chant of the visiting bees, the gold of the sun and the panting
   breath of the breeze when the inaudible voice of it all came to her.
   She saw a dust-bearing bee sink into the sanctum of a bloom; the
   thousand sister-calyxes arch to meet the love embrace and the
   ecstatic shiver of the tree from root to tiniest branch creaming in
   every blossom and frothing with delight. So this was a marriage! She
   had been summoned to behold a revelation. Then Janie felt a pain
   remorseless sweet that left her limp and languid. (10)

Although the bees sing their "alto chant," the sound reminds me of the talking trees, not J. R. R. Tolkien's Ents, but Hurston's signifying, broadcasting trees in Dust Tracks on a Road--and Nellie's reading voice that day in a UW classroom.

My first memory of Nellie came as I buzzed about Atlanta in the summer of 1997, already accepted into the Afro-American Studies program at Wisconsin, but thickly entwined in the law practice and community service that I was working to leave. I cannot remember precisely where I was, likely jetting down I-75/ 85, or else, but it was mid-afternoon and I was listening to WABE, National Public Radio, when I first heard Nellie. She and Henry Louis Gates, Jr., were being interviewed about the recent publication of the Norton Anthology of African American Literature. Naturally, as much as I could while driving in the rush-rush flotsam of post-Olympics Atlanta, I listened... Did the interviewer say the University of Wisconsin-Madison? Yes, she did! I thought it more than coincidence that Fate had summoned me to one of its broadcast-moments.

So my mind's ear guides me in this reflection. While Nellie had long-ago sunk the roots that created the Norton, she was already broadcasting a message to me and others, her own form of an alto-chant of dedication. And, indeed, this big woman had a voice that, small as it was and almost isolated by comparison to the presto-gusto with which Gates pounced on the interview, did buzz in that broadcast. Proof-positive that some trees do talk. Their voices may be small, maybe not much more than a whisper, as Nellie's sometimes was for me from 1997 to 2005, while I was her graduate student, but the significance of those voices is worthy of broadcast far and wide.

Gregory Rutledge

Assistant Professor of English and the Institute for Ethnic Studies

University of Nebraska-Lincoln

Rootedness

As the first person in my very large family tree to pursue a PhD (and only the second to attend college), I, like many other scholars of color, was academically rootless. I was in new territory taking very tentative steps on a long journey. Coming from Detroit, Michigan, I felt utterly foreign amid the local cultures of Madison, Wisconsin. I may as well have been in Tibet.

Three weeks into my first semester, I answered my phone on a Sunday afternoon, and it was the famous person I'd been told about. Professor Nellie McKay was calling me at home to ask if I could come by her office some time that day. We hadn't met, but she knew that the second African American student had entered the English Department, and she needed to "lay eyes on me." For the next six years those eyes, whether peering over her glasses, squinting at my work, or rolling hard towards the ceiling, were my guide. I enjoyed and thoroughly took advantage of Sunday afternoons in Nellie's office. I didn't go every Sunday, and often months might go by when I'd only pass her office during the work week and say something smart--just to see her frown. But when I did go, I always left wondering how she did what she did.

Recently, in an e-mail discussion, my friend and former grad school colleague, Alicia Kent reminded of a line in Hurston's Their Eyes when Nanny tells Janie, "You know, honey, us colored folks is branches without roots" (16). Alicia pointed out that "it seems that Nellie has defied Nanny (as Janie does) by putting down truly extensive roots through all of her students around the country and around the world." At the time, I was experiencing my first loss as an adult. I felt very alone--orphaned, really, for Nellie had been my academic mother, my guide through the stormy weathers of being a black feminist scholar. As much as I was grieving, I was also comforted. My path, as it has always been since Nellie "laid eyes on me" that Sunday in September 1999, is clear and purposeful. My teacher, mentor, colleague, and, now, ancestor has left me feeling intensely and urgently rooted, not just in my individual work but within a scholarly community that will nurture me for the rest of my career.

Kimberly Blockett

Assistant Professor of English

Pennsylvania State University-Delaware Co.

"2 Diff Kinds of Fruit"

I first met Professor McKay in 1994 when I enrolled in her mixed undergraduate/graduate course on multicultural women's autobiographies. When we came to Native American women's writing, she frankly discussed the limits of her knowledge and challenged the class to teach her more. Inspired, I began work on Native American literatures that continues to invigorate my research and teaching. In retrospect, I realize that Professor McKay had subtly yet knowingly planted the seeds of an intellectual passion I have for immersing myself in areas of research that are new to me. More significantly, from her own marginalized identities, she gave me one of the most important survival skills that any white scholar of multicultural literatures can possess. She modeled for me that a gap in expertise is not a void but an opening--one that, as she demonstrated, can serve as a pulpit from which to inspire others to take up a facet of the larger project.

As a graduate student at UW-Madison in the 1990s, I best remember Professor McKay, as many of us do, sitting at her office desk, the door always open. In her patient, lyrical tone, she would share what she was working on, often in more detail than I thought I had time for. It wasn't until later in my career when I realized that her lengthy commentaries were highly intentional exhortations, meant to professionalize and inform me in vivid detail what life in academia involved.

Perhaps more imperatively, she taught me that it was not time I needed but patience. She taught me a skill that transcends time; she taught me how to listen.

In one memorable but not atypical e-mail, she offered a lesson that required me to synthesize my newly gained survival skills. First politely inquiring about her summer in order to get to my real question, I asked her for recommended readings on African American history in the Reconstruction period. What I got back was a wonderfully detailed, multi-paragraph account of her summer activities and her daily "rituals" (as she put it), including a breakfast menu of "real cereal (none of that dry stuff for me!) with 2 diff kinds of fruit," kitchen cleaning, newspaper reading, and walking to campus, all before 7 a.m.

Her recommendations on scholarly sources? One item.

Of course, this remembrance doesn't end with two kinds of fruit. Four days later, I received another e-mail from Professor McKay with the subject line of "Readings!" It opened with "After I sent the message last week I remembered" and contained a list of a variety of sources that wouldn't have come up in my conventional searches. The closing line of this e-mail read, "I'll send you others as they come to me or I stumble on them," something I believe she continues to do, perhaps no longer via e-mail but by way of her enduring inspiration, training, and teachings.

Nellie, I am listening, as you so profoundly taught me to do. I may have to listen even more closely now, but I hear you in the wide-ranging voices of your colleagues, students, and friends, the rich intellectual community of your academic descendants. We will continue to speak out loudly for all to come and hear.

Alicia Kent

Assistant Professor of English

University of Michigan-Flint

"I Can Tell You're One of Nellie McKay's Students"

A recent conversation with a colleague revealed the degree to which Nellie McKay left her imprint upon me. During this exchange, my colleague remarked, "I can tell you're one of Nellie McKay's students," likening my behavior as new junior faculty to the philosophy of collegiality and professionalism that Nellie had voiced in venues such as PMLA and The Chronicle of Higher Education. This comment gave me pause, for I had recognized how my work with Nellie had affected my scholarship and teaching, but I had not thought about the impact that Nellie had on me as a colleague. On further thought, I realized that although Nellie never sat me down to discuss professional deportment, her example as a scholar, teacher, and active participant in university and community endeavors taught me that conviction, compassion, and diplomacy produce more fruitful conversations than modes of inquiry or behavior based on divisive criticism and posturing. A humanist to her core, Nellie sought ways that she could best enlighten and enliven those about her such that they, too, were committed to serving the common good. To this end, Nellie's door was always open--both literally and metaphorically. As a scholar, Nellie requested your company in a conversation. As a teacher, she beckoned you to join her in an intellectually stimulating and sustaining space. As a colleague, Nellie offered you a listening ear and a reasoned response. In all, Nellie invited connection, collaboration, and community. After reflecting upon the affect that learning with and from Nellie has had on me, my colleague's comment seems less an observation than an injunction to be a student of Nellie Y. McKay's--her life, her work, and her service.

Kristin L. Matthews

Assistant Professor of English

Brigham Young University

Thoroughly Modern Nellie: A Personal Reflection of a Great Woman

In 2002 a tiny Black woman held my gaze for nearly 10 feet. We were in the University of Wisconsin's White Hall. Happy for the contact, which felt like an embrace, I smiled and tilted my head forward. I watched her diminutive frame until she disappeared, entranced. I later discovered this captivating woman was Dr. Nellie McKay.

One of my most solid memories of Nellie came in the summer of 2004, once again in White Hall. She entered a bathroom with a vase of pink carnations. "Those are great," I said, then blew my nose, prepared to complain about my summer cold. She looked on the flowers as if they were human, and said, "We've had these carnations for over three weeks. If you care for flowers, give them fresh water and a little food, they survive longer than people think they should. Some people think I should have thrown these flowers out a long time ago, but they're still alive, they're still fresh." (I write from memory but believe that the gist is right on.) I held on to that encounter because it epitomized, for me, a woman I found mysterious and engaging, hardworking, beautiful, frail, and strong. Yes, like those everyday carnations.

Another time, I saw Nellie perk up, lighting her crowded office with the gleam in her eyes, while discussing my thesis proposal. She implored me to work, think, and listen. "This is important work," she said, "I've been talking to another student about this very thing." We were talking about, as Nellie expressed it, the "qualitative" or "tentative" freedom of Black people as discussed in literature by Black writers. I left her office buzzed, and I remain buzzed by her enthusiasm, her support and encouragement, her sheer ability to be a forward thinker and to encourage her students to be forward thinkers as well.

Lydia Melvin

PhD candidate

SUNY-Binghamton

Of Mentorship, Ancestorship, and Nellie Y. McKay

Nellie Y. McKay will be remembered fondly for many things, but her position as intellectual mother and mentor to me and the many students with whom she worked over the years is a true testament to her greatness and legacy. Dr. McKay placed true value on the voices of her students. She knew each of us in a way that was remarkable, and insisted that by virtue of being who we were, we each had something important to say that was special because only we could say it. When we didn't know what it was she was digging for, what it was she believed we had to offer, she was always there to pull the best of who we are out of us and demand that it be shared for the uses of the collective engagement of the community building project which she had engineered. In that way, she drafted many scholar-warriors into the academy during her years at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

I often share a story about how quiet I was in the early days of my graduate career. In that time I hardly ever dared to say anything in class, feeling that I didn't have much to offer; or even if I had something to say, fearing that no one would get it. Well, if no one else ever "got it," Nellie always did, and she dared me to be as fearless as she, my intellectual mother, and to realize that my voice was as essential to the community as anyone else's.

Beyond asserting the power of my voice, Nellie taught me to listen. Not just to hear, but truly listen rhetorically to what others had to say. Whenever any of her students faced difficulties and ran, upset, through "the open door" of her office, she would caution us to listen closely to her, to ourselves, and to whoever else was involved in the matter. In our listening, we could be sure to hear a story of the challenges that she experienced when studying at Harvard, a story of how listening to what others had to say allowed her to handle the difficulties of being a Black woman studying Black folks, in a way that was smart, graceful, and filled with the diplomacy that we knew her for. For Nellie, listening was especially important to community building across and within the intersection of our individual and collective identities. She believed that we might miss the opportunities for growth that are made possible through truly listening to one another. That we heeded her worry and so listened attests to the transformative powers of Nellie McKay's mentorship.

In the days following Nellie's transition into ancestorship, many of her other students and I struggled greatly, not just with the news of her passing, but in other personal and academic areas as well; we faced without Nellie things that usually brought us to "the open door," where Nellie would either tell us how to fix it or be candid about what couldn't be fixed, but always with a dose of much needed motherlove. I realize now that what she had been teaching us all along would be most appropriate for us to now help her and ourselves in her transition. For, if we are as fearless in our lives as Nellie was in hers, then we can invoke the power mother gave us. Likewise, if we would only listen now as attentively as we did on the days we talked with her in the past, we would hear the voice of Ancestor Nellie McKay, as loving and supporting, as fearless and beautiful as it was in days past. Nellie McKay's work with her students has been dubbed "the art of mentoring." How apt that her work now achieves "the art of ancestorship."

Eric Darnell Pritchard

PhD candidate

University of Wisconsin-Madison

Nellie McKay and the Art of Individual Mentoring

"Oh! We were so worried about you! We missed you." This was Nellie McKay--THE Nellie McKay!--worried about me. I had been out of class for two class meetings, in bed with a serious flu. I recall worrying in my narcissistic way about the amount of class I had missed, not only because I feared that my revered professor might judge me as uncommitted, but also because I so thoroughly enjoyed the discussion in that graduate seminar on Ellison, Morrison, and Baldwin. Somewhat stunned, I stammered out my apologies for having missed two classes. But Nellie did not really care about the classes I had missed. And she certainly did not judge the level of my commitment to African American literature. In her ever-gracious way, Nellie had turned the tables on me, as she did with so many of the students she mentored. She actually cared about me. She hugged me warmly, and we began class.

This moment demonstrates what so many of us who worked with Nellie echo: her sense of caring. Even her choice of the pronoun "we"--"we missed you"--suggests the extent to which she was always building a community. And her humility humbled me; never would she consider herself in the kind of superstar way that I had seen her. She was simply caring for the people in her world. In my respect for her, at times I could not believe that someone so renowned in our academic realm would pay attention to me and my individual needs. Yet truly this sense of treating each of us with deep personal care was the hallmark of her teaching and the grounding of her scholarship. Taking a class with Nellie McKay meant that your voice would be heard; your voice would be drawn out. And reading her scholarship meant an attention to detail that allowed you to encounter a new figure in a new way. I should have known that she would be concerned.

Her hug that day reveals another key element of her mentoring abilities: her sensitivity to our needs. I needed a hug that day more than I realized. Never before had I been this sick in my adult life. And if I am honest, I felt lonely being sick while living alone in a small, one-bedroom apartment. Now poignantly in retrospect, I realize, of course, these feelings were nothing compared to what Nellie must have endured in her last year. But her sensitivity went beyond emotional acknowledgement to intellectual mentoring. Knowing that white students were interested in African American literature and might want to teach it, Nellie publicly attested to our ability to do so--with the proper training and a real openness. As a white student in Nellie's classes, I became aware of many of my own assumptions and limitations, yet at the same time I felt authorized to teach and write on African American literature and culture. Nellie helped train me in the ways I needed training. The students in my Harlem Renaissance course this semester can thank her for that.

Deirdre Egan

Assistant Professor of English and Director of American Studies

Saint Norbert College

Reflections on an Icon, Mentor, and Friend

I am a black male feminist. That is to say I am deeply invested in expediting the goals of black feminism to end patriarchy and empower black women. I was certainly not a black male feminist when I entered the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1998. Prior to arriving at UW and meeting Nellie McKay, I viewed feminism as most blacks continue to view feminism: as the political domain of rich, white, highly educated, anti-male women. My knowledge of black feminism was even more pathetically limited. What I did know was that I was intellectually and emotionally drawn to black women's writing; that my notions of masculine strength and power derived largely from my outspoken and fearless mother and not my domineering and manipulative father; that I married a fiercely independent black woman who constantly challenged me to be a better man. In my experiences away from home, in the academy, Nellie not only provided me with the intellectual foundation to understand black feminism, but she also opened herself up personally and helped me to appreciate the larger ramifications of African American scholarship and pedagogy.

To underscore the challenges of teaching and writing about African American literature in general and black women writers in particular, she told me stories about how difficult it was in the late 1970s and 1980s even to find copies of out-of-print novels like Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God, let alone teach them in institutions that expressed open skepticism and, at times, hostility towards the discourse. She also shared with me the challenges she faced within the larger profession. On one such occasion at the MLA conference, she recounted that a middle-aged white professor supposedly mistook her for a prostitute and solicited her for sex. "Never mind I was dressed in a conservative red business suit with my identification tag clearly visible on my chest," I remember her fuming. "I was a black woman in the lobby of an upscale hotel during a major international conference. I guess he never imagined that I could actually be participating in the conference."

Nellie brought her experiences--painful and rewarding--as a black woman scholar to life for her students and, in doing so, radically shaped the trajectory of our careers as scholars and teachers. In fact, I often share the story of Nellie at the MLA convention and other Nellie stories with my students to remind them of the sacrifices that scholars, like Nellie, made to allow them the opportunity to study African American writers.

Those of us who were close to Nellie know that she preferred to stay out of the limelight; that hers was a career driven by a genuine desire to produce useful scholarship and to nurture future scholars. Suffice it to say that she accomplished both goals brilliantly and with impeccable dignity and grace. I loved her deeply and miss her terribly.

David Ikard

Assistant Professor of English

University of Tennessee-Knoxville

Beyond a Border: Walking and Talking with Nellie

Walking together to the Helen C. White building, Nellie told me not to read the letter of recommendation she had just placed in my hands. I pressed her--how about 10 years from now? Quickly laughing, she partially conceded, well, maybe then, but not now. I asked Nellie McKay for many favors when I was a PhD candidate in English at the University of Wisconsin--Madison, where she supported and taught many students. She was stretched to the limit--everyone knew this; she was often exhausted--everyone saw this, but I never heard her rebuff anyone, and she constantly supported the unacknowledged work of the academy--from advising to letter writing to entertaining her graduate students in her home. When I first met Nellie in 1986, her Black Women Writers class was bursting at the seams. Everyone wanted in. We graduate students were enthralled by Nellie's commitment to stretch the perimeters of this emerging field in her choice of writers, including lesser-known books by famous Black authors and new voices from the Caribbean. Unafraid of difference, Nellie complicated the unobserved voices of women who pushed against barriers of race, class, gender, and sexual orientation. And she let her students participate in constructing the meanings emerging from the variegated voices of Black women who wrote vigorously from the margins.

When I decided to write a dissertation on Italian American women writers (a field barely a blip on the literary radar screen), Nellie encouraged my trail blazing and agreed to serve on my committee. From close personal observations of Nellie's teaching style to careful reading of her work on Black writers, I learned to embrace the thrilling excitement of the reprinted book, the new anthology, the shifting canon, and redefinitions of genre itself. Unassuming, thoughtful, an avid student herself, Nellie taught me to continue to challenge myself as a teacher--especially not to be afraid to introduce works not yet furnished by the house of academe. Nellie paved a creative path for thinking about Black writers; she encouraged me to do the same for Italian American authors. She knew that books were made by talking about them--and, yes, writing, reprinting, introducing, reassessing, theorizing all comprised the package of honoring the work itself.

When I moved cross-country in 1999 to take a job in a newly created program in Italian American Studies at SUNY-Stony Brook, Nellie again supported me. And perhaps the most telling aspect of her beautiful influence occurred when I developed a course with six undergraduates on Italian American and African American women writers, an analysis of the literary contributions of these two (often socially conflicting) groups. Crossing cultural borders in the classroom was something Nellie McKay did with poise and that wonderful lack of self-congratulation so reflective of the way she was in the world. I am honored to have walked and talked with Nellie McKay. I continue to learn from her brave example as a consummate teacher and scholar.

Mary Jo Bona

Associate Professor of Italian American

Studies and English

SUNY-Stony Brook

Her Encouragement, My Freedom

I am an African American man who works on William Shakespeare and Edmund Spenser, and I greatly owe the freedom to do the work that I love to Nellie McKay. I first became acquainted with Dr. McKay by accident. I was working as an office assistant at my undergraduate institution, still unsure whether or not I wanted to purse a PhD in English. On one particular July day, I picked up the most recent edition of The Chronicle of Higher Education, flipping through its pages until one article caught my attention: "What does genuine respect for African-American literature mean?," a short adaptation of the 1998 PMLA article, "Naming the Problem That Led to the Question 'Who Shall Teach African American Literature?'; or, Are We Ready to Disband the Wheatley Court?" I read the article, and I had a crisis. I wanted to study the English Renaissance, and I began to fear that I somehow might be contributing to the problem. Was I, too, somehow participating in the Wheatley Court in my decision to study the English Renaissance; was my choice to study this literature implicitly further devaluing the rich African American literary tradition for which I did and still do have so much respect and admiration? While statements in Nellie's essay such as "we must encourage all our graduate students to pursue the work that inspires them" (McKay, Chronicle) put me at some ease, the nagging question remained as some people implied that my choice of study was an act of betrayal.

I eventually decided to attend the University of Wisconsin-Madison for its Renaissance faculty and because Dr. McKay had welcomed me so warmly into the rich community of African American scholars emerging under her mentorship. Because of my area of interest, I expected disappointment on her part; instead, I found encouragement. One particular interaction we had makes the point. I cannot remember the specifics of what drove me to her office that day, but I know that it was part of my ongoing insecurity about my choice of study. I told her all about my worry, and ultimately I was looking for her to tell me to study African American literature (and had she told me to do so, I would have done so). However, she did no such thing; instead she told me something I will never forget--that she did the work that she was doing to allow me to do the work that I am passionate about doing, whatever that work might be. I left her office freed in so many ways, for if Nellie McKay said it was okay for this African American man to study Shakespeare and Spenser, no one would be able to tell me otherwise.

Dennis Britton

PhD Candidate

University of Wisconsin-Madison

The Best Tribute to Her Memory

When I first met Nellie Y. McKay at an MLA conference in 1988, I recall feeling honored to meet her. Her own scholarship on Jean Toomer had already helped me teach the Harlem Renaissance, so it was an honor to be welcomed into the community of black women scholars by one of her stature. By the time I planned one of the first full-day symposia on the work of Toni Morrison back in 1994 at George Mason University, I chose Nellie McKay, the editor of Critical Essays on Toni Morrison, for keynote speaker.

Over the years, Nellie and I would call on one another periodically for various projects. When she asked me to contribute to Approaches to Teaching Toni Morrison, the MLA volume that she and Kathryn Earle were compiling, I was honored to receive an invitation. Her pivotal role as one of the general editors of the Norton Anthology of African American Literature had already won her tremendous critical acclaim. Indeed, all of us, whether Morrison scholars united in the Toni Morrison Society or scholars of the literature of the African diaspora, owe a tremendous debt to the intellectual work and academic leadership of Nellie McKay. Her work enabled us to do ours.

On a personal note, I have three particular memories of Nellie. I remember how passionately she lamented that some scholars outside of African American Studies had so little regard for the intellectual rigor required to do justice to the rich legacy of black literary and cultural research. Her more extensive commentary to this effect became the subject of a brave PMLA essay. Second, at the memorial service for Claudia Tate, I recall warmly squeezing Nellie's hand several times, aware that at one point she had referred to herself and Claudia as a "sorority of two," describing their graduate school years of difficult isolation as black women at Harvard. Most of all, I remember her confessing a few years ago that she was not likely to write another book, but would devote her efforts to establishing a center for Lorraine Hansberry, something she adamantly believed was way past due. When I hold the books that bear her name in my hands, including the Toni Morrison's Beloved: A Casebook, I sing a quiet praisesong in tribute to the productivity she achieved, in the midst of mentoring, serving on committees, and being available for so many so often.

On the first day of class in my Toni Morrison course this semester, I began by telling my students that scholars around the country were acknowledging the debt we all owe to Nellie McKay for her intellectual labor, profound commitment, and unwavering support. I know her fearless intellect and courageous spirit will be with us always. I count it a blessing to have known her. The best tribute we can pay to her is to inspire our students and the next generation of scholars to do their best work and not get weary because our beloved sister scholar Nellie McKay is counting on us to treasure the work and pass it on.

Marilyn Sanders Mobley Associate Provost for Educational Programs and Associate Professor of English and African American Studies George Mason University

Remembering a Mentor

My most vivid impressions of Professor McKay remain her attachment to her office--she could be found there on any day of the week, at any time of day--and a fierce commitment to something called Black Women's Writing and Criticism, the contours of which I was only beginning to be aware of when I arrived at the University of Wisconsin to begin the MA in Afro-American Studies in Fall 1986. It was not that I had never studied black women writers before: my teachers at the University of the West Indies in Jamaica--David Williams, Carolyn Cooper, Evelyn O'Callaghan, Maureen Warner-Lewis, Mervyn Morris and a Fulbright Scholar named Gloria Akasha Hull--had introduced me to Zora Neale Hurston, Gwendolyn Brooks, Ama Ata Aidoo, Louise Bennett, Toni Morrison and Erna Brodber, in courses on African American Literature, Caribbean Literature, and African Literature. But it was at Madison, being introduced to Audre Lorde and studying Gwendolyn Brooks again with Craig Werner, becoming aware of the political and diasporic implications of Black Women's theorizing as a field of knowledge with Cheryl Johnson Odim, as well as with a group of women who were studying here at the time, Fabu Mogaka, Judylyn Ryan, Hazel Hadari Symonette, Naana Banyiwa Horne, but in particular in Nellie McKay's classroom, that I began to think about Black women's writing in terms of a tradition. Later, I would figure out that traditions and canons are highly contested and as deeply invested in borders and passports and passing as they are in recovery and inclusion and affirmation.

But what a thing it was to sit in her class and discover Harriet Jacobs! And Frances Harper, Ann Petry, Louise Meriwether, Paule Marhsall, Michelle Cliff, Gloria Naylor, Alice Walker, Zilpha Elaw and Jarena Lee. And to hear her tell us what I have made a point of telling my students ever since: that the shiny new Beacon Press and Feminist Press editions we were reading were not in evidence when she was beginning to teach these writers years before. Rather, she and a network of scholars across the country copied and circulated and taught what were essentially "lost" and newly-excavated texts, as the intersection of Black Studies and Women's Studies brought into view, though didn't exactly account for, a body of writing that turns out to have been as long-standing and taken-for-granted and treasured, as it was dismissed and reviled.

And as I moved on to other institutions and other rooms, after completing a Wisconsin thesis on the representation of the Caribbean in Tar Baby and Praisesong for the Widow, as I eagerly joined the litany of unpacking and deploying and always-alreadying and there's a way in which-ing, I often forgot that questioning traditions and calling for their demise has always to be put in the context of what we can take for granted about their existence and constitution in the first place, about their conditions of possibility. About the battles fought and won-whose name to display and whose to cover over with et al in the Norton Anthology, for instance. And the many, many times then and since when I found her name on yet another book chapter or critical edition or acknowledgements page, are testament to these battles and victories.

Which, I suppose, brings me back to the memory I haven't yet lingered over--that attachment to her office. For how else would it have been possible to institutionalize and anthologize and demystify while teaching while supervising dissertations and Directed Readings, while doing university and professional service, if one didn't go in to the office on Sundays? And yet at what cost? Twenty years after my UW days, some of the writers and critics I discovered there are no longer with us in the flesh. In that two-year period alone we lost May Balisidya and Thomas Wing Schick. Surely, in part because of the enormous stress of fighting the good fight in academia, but also perhaps of fighting it at Wisconsin in particular.

For how was it possible to be at Wisconsin for so a long time, I often wondered. Where people apologized that the snow drifts weren't as dramatic as in previous years. Or asked what I had come to study and, after learning what it was, cheerfully informed me that there wasn't much there there. Or reminded me repeatedly how liberal Madison was.

To walk down State Street and have women look nervously over their shoulders and pull their children closer to them when they saw you behind them, or to look up and find yourself being sketched in a cafe. And to be unsure whether that wasn't worse than the Martin Luther Coon party by one fraternity on Martin Luther King Day one year.

I never spoke to Nellie about such things. Perhaps I should have. But I suspect she would have pragmatically pointed out other things. That the often slick, blase know-all-the-correct-position-ing of the East coast could be just as tiresome and racist. That mortgages in the Midwest were less onerous. That sitting in an office in a Department of African American Studies, with tenure-track lines, on the fourth floor, with committed colleagues was not to be taken lightly.

Yet when all is said and done, I am struck by something her obituaries quote her as saying: that in retrospect she wished she had spent more time in her garden. If I take courage from her determination to leave academia a better place for all of us than she found it, and to honor the yearning and challenge of Pilate Dead's words, uttered in her own leave-taking--"If I'd-a known more, I'd-a loved more"--then I am also surely bound to seek out the rejuvenation of spirit and body by spending more time in my own garden. Now.

Faith Smith Associate Professor of English & American Literature and Chair of African & Afro-American Studies Brandeis University

Reflections

What I remember: Hershey's Kisses and hard candy, bananas and Buraka, eyebrows and afros, purple t-shirts and eye drops, the hands, the glasses, "I'm Nellie McKay!," the Humanities Building, laughter in the hallways, Tim Tyson and Craig Werner, "It was my favorite chapter," feeling loved, Nellie's Norton, Charlie Rose & Skip Gates, champagne and Michael Harper, Wanda Coleman and all that "trash," Barbara Christian on the porch, Nellie in the kitchen, Kim and Keisha in the den, Lynn on the way, Debbie talking sal-mon, get your A & get out, "it's your funeral," HBCs, campus walks and taxi rides, "don't call her at home, you know where she is," 4th floor Helen C., going to "work," feeling wanted, Nina Simone, "To Be Young, Gifted, and Black," trips to Menards, learning to live with my head in the lion's mouth, "make sure she finishes," Aunt Nancy, proud of Praisesong, "it's your life," going home, the interview (who knew?), "down, but not out--and still fighting," missing MELUS, The Nellie Tree, the daughters, nellieandcraig, Hospice, sending my love, fading away, her bright and shining stars shining on, shining on, shining on....

Shanna Greene Benjamin

Assistant Professor of English

Jonathan C. Smith University

It would have been enough had Nellie McKay merely introduced me to Toni Morrison's novels, a life-changing encounter that began when Nellie assigned Beloved in a grad seminar during the spring of 1999. That course, my first with Nellie at UW-Madison, led to more classes with her, a decision to specialize in African American literature, and an utter awe of this compact woman who upended my vision of American literature and the trajectory of my scholarly career.

Nellie neither courted nor cultivated this awe, but nonetheless I never quite overcame it--not when, in her tiny, neat script, she praised my essay on Paradise, not when she volunteered to chair my prelim committee and, eventually, my dissertation. What a heady feeling: Nellie McKay--Nellie McKay!--saw something in my work, in me, that she wanted to be part of.

As I worked with her, I learned that Nellie inspired these feelings in most folks. Her sharp insight, her fierce love of students and literature, her ready availability won her a bevy of fans. And that endearing chortle: I can hardly think of Nellie without hearing her laugh, such as when, on the first day of a black women's writing course, after wrapping up the course introduction, she asked whether we had any questions. One student wondered what Nellie did on the weekends, a query that so tickled Nellie that she could hardly answer through her laughter. (Sunday mornings? Nellie cleaned the bathroom.)

Nellie took such pleasure in working with students, nowhere more evident than in her desire to shape her grad students into scholars who loved and respected literature. We were, she said, the only thing that kept her from retiring. She would miss us too much. More, she wanted us to do her proud as human beings committed to improving the world around us. We were, and will be, hard-pressed to match her giving spirit. She gave so much of herself, her time, that I felt blessed when I could offer some small gesture in response: a summer squash grown in my garden during prelim summer; an orange picked in my parents' backyard; shells plucked from Montego Bay at her special request.

In return, I received a mentor, a model of thoughtful and engaged scholarship, and an inspiring teacher. And I heard her stories, like the time in 2005 when she pulled Gretchen Michlitsch and me aside because we needed to understand black women s hair. Nellie was letting her hair go gray, a decision that put her in mind of an earlier momentous "hair decision." During graduate school, Nellie told us, she had let her hair go natural, a decision so revolutionary that her father, outraged by her trenchant refusal to straighten her hair any longer, declined to be seen in public with Nellie ever again, unless she straightened her hair. She never did.

In such ways, big and small, Nellie let us share her life and her life's work. Her impact on American literature and on us was, to quote Beloved, like "the sound that broke the back of words." We emerge from our relationship with her, transformed.

Laura J. Veltman

Assistant Professor of English

California Baptist University

I only called her Nellie when outside of her earshot, thinking it impertinent to be that familiar with so wise and accomplished an elder, and a Jamaican one at that. (She never disabused me of this notion either.) I had been indoctrinated by eight years in a small, primarily Caribbean, fundamentalist school in Brooklyn to "always call people respectfully and by their proper name," a refrain I heard repeatedly from Mrs. Richards, one of the more dominant teachers at said school, and a trace of which I carried the first day I approached Professor McKay's usually open office door. Professor McKay reminded me of so many of the Caribbean women, and this like group would include the daughters of West Indian immigrants of which she was representative, with whom I had grown up in New York City. Mrs. Richards. Mrs. Nurse. Mrs. Pilliner. Mrs. Vaz. All educators, and like Professor McKay, unceasingly hard working and thoroughly committed to the race, education, and general human betterment.

But Nellie McKay was an exceptional woman, even among this extraordinary group, a woman "Who t[ook] Today and jerk it out of joint / have made new underpinnings and a Head," to borrow the rich and allusive phrasing of Gwendolyn Brooks (11.2-3). She struggled within and against the literary establishment by using her myriad skills as writer, researcher, and institution builder. And ultimately, she provided new underpinnings or foundations (both intellectual and physical, intangible and tangible) upon which future scholars of African American literature could launch their investigations. In her classes she often acknowledged this intellectual work as "the continual and fearless sifting and winnowing by which alone the truth can be found," an idea taken from a bronze plaque on Bascom Hall, the power center of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and an assertion, I believe, of her professional credo. Her intellectual work was also her most profound gift to me. She encouraged me to take academic work seriously, to separate the strong ideas from the weak, to write, read, research, and examine carefully and fearlessly. Winnowing, she reminded me, is also an act of dispersal, not only a call to separate the grain from the chaff, but an obligation to share the siftings of African American scholarship.

Keisha Watson Bowman

PhD Candidate

University of Wisconsin-Madison

I remember one particular day when Nellie McKay called me into her office. I had already defended my master's thesis and been accepted into a PhD program. She presented me with three 4 x 6 index cards; a list, really, written in her small, neat, and curling script, of 10 autobiographies by southern black women teachers. At the time, I did not understand why. True, I had written a thesis on Septima Clark and the Citizenship Schools and planned to extend the work into a dissertation. But where I believed I had arrived at an ending, particularly since I was moving from literature into history, Nellie saw that I had reached another beginning.

Some three years later, I finally began looking for the books on Nellie's list. Fortunately, our library had five of them. Each provided me with a more expanded vision of the activist educational and organizational culture of black women teachers in the Jim Crow South, the world in which Septima Clark moved for her entire adult life. And I came to the realization that here was an organizing tradition that had been virtually overlooked in the historiography of the civil rights movement.

My favorite pithy quote from all of these works belongs to Rose Butler Browne, a teacher in rural Virginia. Browne writes, "A good teacher meets her learners where they are." It is a deceptively simple sentence, concealing as it does long hours spent engaged in what can only be described as a labor of love. Indeed, Browne titled her text Love My Children. First, "a good teacher" must determine exactly where her students "are," and then she must discern the most useful and concrete strategies to move them to where they need to be. That, in itself, requires imagining horizons that they cannot yet see, not to mention holding a good bit of faith.

Until I attended Nellie's memorial celebration in April 2006, I mostly credited these autobiographies for rounding out my vision of Septima Clark's educational world. As I listened to her colleagues' and students' testimonies, however, I recognized that Nellie herself had all along provided me with a living model. Despite the fact that she had never been a teacher in the segregated South, Nellie embraced these women's same sense of missionary purpose, the same expectation of excellence, the same emphasis on community building, and the same dedication to the community's survival. Yet Nellie's love for us--expressed in a thousand ways, some extraordinary and others as mundane as three index cards--made all the difference.

Katherine Mellen Charron

Assistant Professor of History

Iowa State University

During the summer of 2000, I served as Nellie's research assistant for the Norton Critical Edition of Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. Each morning, Nellie and I would meet and share with each other our dreams about "Harriet"--how Harriet was guiding my searches for her newspaper articles, watching over our shoulders as we edited her text, silently passing judgment on the selection of the critical readings included, and always wondering if we would really meet the deadline. (Thank goodness we did!) That summer I learned one of the joys of research-the camaraderie of collaborative work. But I think the most important lesson I learned from Nellie was to value professional integrity.

Lynn Jennings

PhD Candidate

University of Wisconsin-Madison

Nellie McKay--a name I associated with someone who had done so much for African American literature. Someone on my list of people to meet when I went to the US on a Fulbright to Yale University to work on African American autobiography more than 15 years ago. When I called her up to say I'd like to come to Madison, I was touched by her warmth. I was excited at the prospect of meeting her. That was the year Toni Morrison visited University of Wisconsin, too. I landed as Morrison walked past me to take a flight out. Nellie had told me she didn't drive and so had asked a student of hers to pick me up. I wondered how an American could get by without driving, and that was indeed unusual--yes, she was not just unusual, she was special.

As I spent a couple of days with her, I felt as if I had always known her--that's how comfortable she made me feel. She took me with her to meet the UW Women's Studies faculty, those working in African American literature and in the English department. She never for a moment made me feel that I was an outsider, and we conversed on intellectual, cultural, and other subjects with ease. She wondered why and how a person could change once she becomes a celebrity--she was talking about Morrison. She said that she had always known her, but now she could interact with her only through her personal secretary. She spoke a lot about her association with Morrison, but this remembrance is not a piece about the novelist. I quote this conversation only to say how unassuming Nellie was.

I still remember the many restaurants that Nellie took me to in the street she told me was famous for its ethnic varieties and where I enjoyed both the diverse foods and the stimulating conversations. I took back with me to India the many sided Nellie--the intellectual, the warm person, the wonderful host, and much more.

When I met Susan [Friedman] recently, she told me Nellie was very sick, and I felt bad that I was not in active touch with her--yes, I was in touch with her almost every day using the Norton Anthology of African American Literature that she and [Henry Louis] Gates, Jr., had edited. My letter to Nellie must have reached the US too late. Susan wrote to me that she was no more. I will always cherish my memories of Nellie.

Alladi Uma

Professor and Chair of English

University of Hyderabad (Hyderabad, India)

Nellie McKay's impact on American literary studies has been widely felt and acknowledged. But for me, and so many other students lucky enough to have worked with her, Nellie's legacy goes far beyond the printed record. To us, Nellie was a great teacher and nurturer, especially to many new black graduate students, who found in her a needed friend and ally in a largely white Midwestern university town. But I was an odd fit. Not because I am white--there are plenty of us at Madison!--but because I was the first white student to gain admission to Wisconsin's English PhD program after getting my MA in Afro-American Studies. I was a "firster" of sorts.

And while Nellie appreciated the irony, she took great pride in me for my hard-to-explain-accomplishment. It meant, for one thing, that no matter which English department I ended up teaching at one day, I could not see American literature through a prism of black history, culture, and politics. And no matter how small, or symbolic, or counterintuitive this act of integration was in reality, Nellie made the feat seem grand and dignified and important: a victory for the department and the field, one that would lay the groundwork for future relations between the departments and for properly training white scholars. Or, so she made it seem.

For me, that episode recalls a scene from one of her favorite essays, Ralph Ellison's "The Little Man at Chehaw Station." In that opening exchange between the young Ellison and his teacher, we discover through an anecdote that there is always someone important paying attention, even if that audience seems to be no more than an anonymous little man hiding behind a stove. Like so many great leaders, healers, and teachers, Nellie taught without always teaching, but by being there to help us bear witness to ourselves and our involvement in something grand and dignified and important.

Dave Junker

Adjunct Professor

Concordia University (Austin, TXT)

Before I came to know Nellie McKay as a friend, colleague, and mentor in the English department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, I met her through her work. In writing about Jean Toomer's prose-poem "Karintha," which Nellie describes as "a photograph in words," she discerns the visual elements that Toomer uses to create a stunning portrait that conflates the senses. She writes: "In this yoking of color, beauty, the perfection of nature ... Toomer breaks with the usual tradition of female beauty--even much of Afro-American literature--and establishes the dusky-skinned woman as naturally beautiful" (Jean Toomer, Artist 96). Her insightful criticism helped me to shape my own black feminist critique of Cane in my dissertation, which I would later develop into a chapter of my book. Hence, it was a truly rewarding surprise when "Professor McKay" called me before my MLA interview to tell me how excited she was at the prospect of having a black, female, junior colleague, who in her words (without having met me) would be "younger, smarter and better-looking than she was." I'm not certain I lived up to her high expectations, but this pronouncement is just one example of Nellie's humor and generosity. From the moment I began my appointment as an assistant professor, Nellie made time to do those things for which the profession does not reward us: she read article drafts, alleviated teaching concerns, and helped me navigate the perils of departmental politics. It was Nellie who said no when I felt I couldn't. And it was Nellie who always said yes when I needed a favor, a letter of support, or simply a sympathetic ear. Nellie was very much committed to the University of Wisconsin, but more importantly, she wanted to see black women bloom in African American and Women's Studies, the fields she so carefully tended.

Cherene Sherrard-Johnson

Assistant Professor of English

University of Wisconsin-Madison

Nellie was one of the hardest working people I have ever met in my life, and yet her classroom was always full of passion and joy. She could effortlessly rejuvenate the spirit of a weary graduate student with her warm smile and encouragement. She was a mentor. She was a dear friend. She was wisdom, kindness, generosity, brilliance, and so much more. She is dearly missed, and she is loved.

Bahareh Lampert

Graduate Student

University of Wisconsin-Madison

Nellie once said to me, "David, in order to earn a doctorate, you have to be able to tolerate a lot." Her statement was literally true, as any PhD knows. But for me, it also touches on an idea that Emily Dickinson once communicated: "the Sailor cannot see the North--but knows the Needle can" (qtd. in Higginson). As a mentor and a friend, Nellie had that same triangulating way. She would agree with Dickinson's suggestion that in the often abstract process of reaching a goal--say, making the teaching of African American literature a part of making a better world--one can only know the goal most clearly if one has company in the process. If one were to re-write Dickinson's sentence grammatically, the first thing to attract the correcting red pen could be the implied subject in the "but" clause: "but [he] knows the needle can." But that elision is as it should sometimes be. Leaving the sailor unsaid, Dickinson relies on a grammar that works from trust and humility before it works from logic. Sailor and Needle, teacher and student, text and reader, past and present--only in the relationship between two things can one know a third. This interdependence is both necessity and good fortune, for it reminds us that knowledge, coalition, and solidarity are only ever achieved mutually. Over the time in which I was her student, Nellie taught me these lessons in a wealth of ways: in the unspoken thought communicated by a look; by the grace of practice and thought with which she taught; and, of course, with her humor, never far away from any of it. This triangulating way should, ideally, result in our understanding more clearly those things about our current world that remain intolerable; it should result in our acting with others to change them.

David LaCroix

Assistant Professor of English

Wake Forest University

Though Nellie McKay surely knew how much she meant to the fields of English and African American Studies, to the University of Wisconsin, and to academia worldwide, what she talked about was her students. Amid all the accomplishments and accolades of her life's work, these relationships were at the core of her career.

In Fall 2003--one of Nellie's last Fall semesters--Valerie Smith came to Madison to lecture. The lecture was to take place late in the day during a hectic, wintry month in a room overlooking an icy Wisconsin lake. Nellie's job was to introduce someone she'd witnessed make the transition from graduate student to professor. Before beginning her remarks about our guest speaker, Nellie took a moment to look out at the audience, packed with graduate students; she remarked, with a smirk, that we all looked incredibly tired. She assured us, however, that with all the hard work we'd face in our careers, eventually we'd have days like these when we'd have the pleasure of introducing a former student who'd accomplished so much. This moment encapsulates a great deal about Nellie: her humor, her warmth, her investment in everyone she worked with, and her ability to take the long view at the end of a cold afternoon.

The day Nellie became my dissertation advisor, she smiled at me and said, "It looks as though you and I are going to have a relationship." As I reflect on my graduate career and look to the future, I recognize that at the core of my own career will be the premature end to this relationship.

Rebecca Entel

PhD Candidate

University of Wisconsin-Madison

I came to graduate school with a sense that literature could make a difference, but Nellie McKay (and later Craig Werner) shored me up and strengthened my hope. I know what I received from her was for me, but it was also an investment in the hope that I would pass on the lessons, the listening, and the fight.

As a teenager struggling with anxiety, depression, and an eating disorder, a helplessly addictive behavior, I read I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. It reduced the size of my problems and opened my eyes. But I had experienced despair, and if the despair one felt stemmed from factors additional to psychology--problems that were societal, as Angelou's protagonist's were--a citizen couldn't do nothing and ignore reality. As a professor of Chicano literature would later ask me, "Are you just going to drive through a neighborhood, roll up the windows and lock the doors?"

I think the first class I took with Nellie was Black Women's Autobiography. Here, as opposed to the rest of graduate school, Nellie enabled students to feel like legitimate thinkers. Women of diverse ages, straight and lesbian, were deeply inspired by Pauli Murray, Mamie Garvin Fields, and Zora Neale Hurston. But as I thought about teaching, I got stuck. Conscious of the historical condescension of white people--"How does it feel to be a problem?"--and Emerson's charge about do-gooders' projecting their own problems--knowing how damaging white "innocence" could be--how to step out of the role of learner into that of teacher? There was no way not to make mistakes. I kept thinking about the medical code, "First, do no harm." But there was no going back either: one couldn't teach American lit and not teach African American lit. I wanted to know more in the world. How not to disserve a complex literary tradition by teaching it badly?

I went in to talk to Nellie. She was at her desk, heaped with papers and stacks of black women's books; behind her, the green of the plants in her office. I remember her great dignity and her attention. I was nervous. I admired her, but didn't know her well. I don't know that I could even fully explain myself. I remember a choked sensation; I was split between a yearning to do something good and the painful, shameful sense that one is an enemy to justice, too. There was a pause. Then, thoughtfully, Nellie simply told me to keep learning, and there opened up a glimpse of a space with room for genuine response.

The conversation was so intense for me that I found myself in the bathroom after our conversation, sobbing. Then the door opened. Someone came in. A few seconds passed, and then the person left. Was it Nellie? Did she know it was me? I imagine the answer to both questions is yes.

Trudi Witonsky

Lecturer

University of Wisconsin-Whitewater

Nellie was my advisor in Afro-American Studies in graduate school, and I know how fortunate I was: each meeting with Nellie was a pedagogic and humanitarian experience. She piqued my knowledge of Afro-American literature and opened many doors for me--from accepting a review I wrote about Zora Neale Hurston's recent biographies to inviting me to join a group of students writing a letter to June Jordan. She guided my research project involving W. E. B. Du Bois's use of photographs as a visual expression of his philosophy and occasionally quipped (to paraphrase her words) "that I was moving into new territory." I'm certain that her critique meant that she, too, wanted to know more about Du Bois's link to early 20th-century modernist thought via the photographic medium. She would casually mention that she had read about a German photographer whom Du Bois hired for one of his studies, and I would do likewise, telling her what I learned. The idea that Du Bois was an influential figure in the formation of American modernism and Black Modernism was key to our discussions, in fact, she told me she'd had a telephone conversation with Edward Pavlic, author of Crossroads Modernism: Descent and Emergence in African American Literary Culture, (2002), about our Du Bois talks. Needless to say, I was thrilled when she approved my proposal to create an exhibit of photos selected from those Du Bois collected for the 1900 Paris Exposition Universelle to display at the 2003 W. E. B. Du Bois The Souls of Black Folk Centennial Symposium. As busy as she was planning the symposium, she sat with me, and we viewed hundreds of Du Bois's photos available online: Georgia African Americans in his collection. Then Nellie honored me again when she had the display installed in the Afro-American Studies Department.

Catherine Louis

Independent Scholar

I owe so much to Nellie that it can't be captured in a single memory. I took my first course in African American Studies from Nellie and Craig Werner when I was a graduate student at UW-Madison, and that course set the direction of my work. But it was in the many conversations with Nellie outside of the class and over the next 20 years that helped me to understand what my work could mean. Nellie showed me the problems and limitations of my position as a white woman teaching African American Studies, but she also showed me a trust and openness that gave me the confidence and clarity to take on the challenge. Nellie taught me by example, through her challenges and trust, what a good teacher can do.

Linda Krumholz

Associate Professor of English and Black Studies

Denison University

In Fall 1987, I was one of the many lucky students to be enrolled in Nellie McKay's Black Women Writers course at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and in October of that semester, Stanley Crouch's infamous and caustic review of Toni Morrison's novel Beloved was published, leading to a teachable moment that has shaped my own scholarship in profound ways. Nellie came to class with copies of Crouch's review for all of us, a review in which he dismisses Beloved as "a blackface holocaust novel," and our assigned reading for that day was quickly shunted aside to make way for a galvanizing discussion of the politics of reviewing black feminist literature. Nellie's eyes blazed, her voice cut through the room, as she chose her words carefully and fiercely, identifying passages of unsubstantiated claims, belittling diction, barbed commentary, and misogynist assumptions. I will never forget that day: I can still hear clearly Nellie describing the sense of outrage the review provoked in her, and almost 20 years later, I still have all my notes from Nellie's class and my annotated copy of Crouch's review in a well-thumbed file.

Nellie was a commanding and generous presence on my dissertation committee, and though I did not write on Morrison then, I have gone on to study Morrison's work deeply and passionately, inspired by Nellie's work on and commitment to black women's writing. Recalling not so distant years when she had to teach some of the novels of our course by circulating xeroxed copies of them because they were out of print, Nellie never let us forget what a privilege it is to be able to read and study books by black women writers, and she reminded us through her words and her example of our own obligations to be well-informed and responsible scholars of this incredibly rich body of literature.

Nancy J. Peterson

Associate Professor of English and American Studies

Purdue University

I never really had a hero or a role model before I met Nellie. She was so modest, though, it wouldn't feel right to have told her that. Instead, I have to show her, to try to live up to the standards she set.

Dr. McKay's presence was one of the reasons I was attracted to the University of Wisconsin, but I never thought I'd be an important enough graduate student to actually work with her. Nellie turned out to be one of those rare people whose presence exceeds her reputation, and I feel extremely honored to have been among her students. Her comments, her smile and her laughter, and her example throughout the years taught me much and will remain with me.

Among several treasured moments of the last months of 2005 was a Tuesday evening phone conversation. Nellie wished she had spent more time with friends and that she had appreciated good food more when she had been able to eat it. Taking that as advice but wanting to cheer her up, I asked what some of her favorite things had been so far. For some reason I was surprised by her answer: her students.

When I last saw Nellie, I told her the date of my wedding this coming June. She smiled and said she'd be there. And I feel that way about my teaching, too--that she will be there. As I prepare each day to teach my classes--among them the Black Women Writers class that evolved from Nellie's version and in which I use her Norton edition of Harriet Jacobs--I feel strongly the need to teach for Nellie, to extend the legacy of that toward which she worked, and to follow her example. She will haunt us, and we will be happy that she is. Here's to you, Nellie. With love, Gretchen.

Gretchen Michlitsch

Assistant Professor

Winona State University

I first met Professor McKay when I was nine years old. When you're nine, you don't refer to adults by their first names, unless expressly invited to, so even now at the age of 26, when she probably wouldn't mind, I can't really bring myself to address her as Nellie, but rather as Professor McKay. Though many people have described her as motherly, I never got that vibe from her, though this is not to say that she wasn't very much a part of the troupe of other mothers and mentors my own mother assembled to help me through my development. I viewed her as formidable, one of those adults who didn't have children (little did I know), one who had grown accustomed to speaking only to adults and thus never altered her tone. I liked that kind of adult, a grown person who treated me as though I might have something intelligent to say, though admittedly Professor McKay made me nervous at times. I knew that she was important. I knew that hers was a name that was well known and that my mother had a great deal of respect for her. My mom had a habit of pointing people out to me that I should know, but it was only as I grew older that I began to understand and appreciate their importance.

It was the same with Professor McKay. I knew that she was a heavy hitter and that when her name was mentioned everyone would pay attention, but the weight of her scholarship didn't hit me until high school.

Professor McKay introduced me to Toni Morrison, both the woman and the literature. Though I was never one of her students, I was allowed to attend Professor McKay's class periodically, which for me was a great honor, and made me even more conscious of my words. I didn't want to waste her time with anything unimportant. In many ways she was my mentor through positive modeling. I became an English person, eventually received my BA in Creative Writing, and Professor McKay encouraged my interest by inviting me to the conference on the Norton Anthology of African American Literature. I remember getting to miss a half day of high school and meeting Skip Gates and the whole cast of editors who were also academic superstars. I even wrote an article about it for my journalism class, and my professor, recognizing the importance of the event I had attended, submitted it for publication in my school paper. At the end of the day, Professor McKay gave me copy of the anthology that had been autographed by every editor.

She was always giving me things. Throughout my junior high and high school years, every time Professor McKay traveled, usually to academic conferences, she would bring me a souvenir. Then when it was my turn to travel, I began to reciprocate. And in this way we continued our very special relationship. When I returned to Madison, I would always stop by her office on the way to find my mother. We would sit and chat. She always wanted to know what I was doing or writing, or who I was reading and what I thought about it. It is my only regret that I could never get her to talk more about herself. During the [memorial] symposium, when Rhea [Lathan] read Nellie's letter to the graduate students, I felt as though she spoke to me. I knew, just as every black woman knows, that Professor McKay had faced a great deal of adversity trying to "move from margin to center," but she and I never talked about that adversity. She was always focused on the work. I wish that she had talked to me about it. But I guess in teaching me to be about the work, she was also teaching me that adversities are small things that must never interfere with the work.

Though I always enjoyed our office chats, my favorite memories are of the few occasions when Professor McKay could be persuaded to leave the office and join my family for dinner. I love to cook and host dinner parties. Professor McKay always provided a special challenge in that she ate very healthily. She didn't eat salt or butter, so I would always have to invent a dish especially for her that met her dietary restrictions. For dessert as well, I had to limit what ingredients I might use, but in this way I felt like I could return to her some of the kindness she showed me over the years. As her illness progressed, her diet became even more stringent. She could no longer eat tomatoes or broccoli and certain spices. It took me longer to figure out what I could make that would be tasty, but still within the constraints. The dessert she loved the most was my rum cake, a James family secret recipe.

It's strange the things you think about people when they are no longer with you. I wish that I had learned to make flan. A few months before she died, Nellie asked me to prepare some for her, but I didn't have a recipe and then she began to lose her taste for food and it was too late. I used to wonder why Professor McKay worked so much. I used to think that it was sad that even on a Saturday or Sunday, one could predictably find her in the office, but I realize now that this is a life she chose, not just a life that chose her and that she was able to do more in her lifetime than several people put together. It is my hope that I will be able to honor her with the work I do. I strive to give as selflessly as she did, to learn to think even a fraction as brilliantly as she did, and to always be about the work, not at a detriment to myself, but enough so that any adversity will seem insignificant. As one of her de facto students, I must now rise to the challenge and be a part of that new generation of minds left in her wake. It is an honor to bear the burden of this awesome responsibility.

Reagan E. J. Jackson

Daughter of Stanlie James, former UW Chair of Afro-American Studies

Nellie McKay served as a Board Member of the Toni Morrison Society for 12 years. I can remember the phone conversation when I first invited her to be on the Board. I knew that she was busy and had many other obligations, and as I began to acknowledge as much during the conversation, Nellie stopped me and said, "If it has to do with Toni, I'll do it." And for 12 years whether she could make all of the meetings or not, she gave her time, her advice, and her financial support to the work of the Toni Morrison Society. I have found over the years that Nellie's commitment to the idea, the person, the cause, superseded any attention she might give to herself. I am grateful for her support and the standing that she gave the Society by lending her name to our work.

I would often think of her during early morning grading sessions in my office; she had often mentioned during informal conversations this task was part of her regular routine--in her office by 6 a.m., staying until late in the evenings writing letters of recommendation, grading, preparing for class--sometimes writing her own work, but mostly doing for others. It was that quiet diligence and iron commitment to her students, her colleagues, and her scholarship that I found so admirable in Nellie. Her life in the profession was a clear and admirable model of how Black women, so cognizant of our history and our need to give back, have to manage the academic life.

Nellie was also the first senior scholar to invite me to be included in her edited publications. It was such an honor to receive her letter many, many years ago, asking me to contribute to Critical Essays on Toni Morrison and later to Approaches to Teaching the Novels of Toni Morrison. I was so pleased that she had taken it upon herself to complete these volumes, and even more pleased to be a part of it. Her faith in me in the early years of my career inspires me still.

Nellie McKay was a giant in our field. I am grateful to have known and worked with her. And though she has left us physically, her spirit; her tireless commitment to her work; and her example as a dedicated teacher, scholar, mentor, and friend will enrich our lives forever.

Carolyn Denard

Founder and Board Chair of the Toni Morrison Society

Associate Dean of the College Brown University

April 21, 1997, was the date marked on the report I have in my hand: the "Final Reply from the Examiner's Report" on my doctoral dissertation entitled, "Women as seen by Women: A Study of African-American Women Writers," released to me after the viva voce examination. Signed by Professor Nellie McKay, the report finally passed my thesis after a careful scrutiny of the "reply" that I drafted in response to her initial dissatisfaction with certain conceptual formulations. For me, the "dissatisfaction" was crucial to my own growth as a researcher and as a teacher, and taught me to cherish not only the A grade on the thesis but, more importantly, the initial report stating dissatisfaction.

In her final report, Professor McKay generously observed, "I also appreciate Ms. Sethi's efforts to penetrate the subtleties of the multi-layered experiences that all black people, including black women have in the West. I believe that many people who read black women's fiction do not realize how complicated the works are or how sophisticated the writers are. To her credit, Ms. Sethi grasps these points." Here was the award of the degree for me a year before the actual convocation at Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, India, my alma mater.

What more did I want? Here was my examiner who had so authentically validated not only the intent underlying my choice of the area of specialization but also given credit to my vision as a human being to steer clear of one-dimensional stereotypes in my evolution as a physically challenged person. Her final report in a very crucial way added impetus to my fragile conviction in the mass of voices uncomfortable with the impracticability of being an African Americanist in India.

Before leaving for Cincinnati to participate in the Toni Morrison Society Conference in July, 2005, I called Professor McKay from Virginia. Professor Susan Friedman had informed me that Professor McKay was battling with cancer, and the excitement that had marked my initiative to take the telephone number was now tinged with anticipation.

In our conversation I mentioned to Professor McKay how the Norton Anthology of African American Literature, the first inkling of which we had when she mentioned in the final report to the Dean of Academic Affairs, I. I. T., Kanpur, that, "it covers more than 250 years of African-American writing in America," was now indeed a permanent presence in all the major libraries in the country and was at the core of any course module on African American literature.

Professor McKay touched my life in the most fundamental way ... her brilliant intellect illuminating the path of my own uncharted passage of self-realization. Thank you, Professor McKay.

Navneet Sethi Assistant Professor, Centre for English Studies, School of Languages, Literature & Culture Studies Jawaharlal Nehru University (New Delhi, India)

It is only now, years later, that I have begun to realize how much Nellie McKay meant to me, a white scholar of African and African diasporic literature. I was not one of her advisees, and not in her inner circle. We could not have talked more than a dozen times, a fact I now deeply regret. Yet each time I approached her (always a bit guiltily since she was so obviously busy, so visibly tired), she gave her time generously: when I asked her for advice on the composition of my preliminary doctoral exam reading list, when I asked her to serve on my dissertation committee, when she gave me feedback on my writing, when she offered me the name of an editor, when I asked her for letters of recommendation. I would always leave her presence feeling gratitude--for her generosity, for the way she put me at ease, for her time.

And yet, belatedly, I have begun to see that she gave me even more. Her influence at Wisconsin extended far beyond those who knew her well in the African American Studies Department. Thus it should come as no surprise that I studied black women's literature. But her ability to acknowledge that I, too, had a place in the conversation was an unasked-for gift. I hardly knew what she had given to me. Now, however, I can see what I could not see then. Now that it is too late for me to thank her, the perspective is sharp and clear, as if a smudged and dirt-streaked window were wiped clean, providing me with the clarity of vision I once lacked.

Heather Hewett

Coordinator of the Women's Studies Program and Assistant Professor of English

SUNY-New Paltz

Nellie McKay was not one of my teachers in the Afro-American Studies program at the University of Wisconsin during the early 1990s. My concentration was in art history, and I worked with her esteemed colleague, the artist and art historian Frieda H.W. Tesfagiorgis. But I had been an English major in college, so I "knew" Nellie Y. McKay: one of the most respected names in African American literary criticism and history. In my first semester, the fall of 1991, Nellie and I had not spoken much, except to exchange polite salutations. One evening she stopped me in the department corridor.

"Jackie, I see you're here late," she said with an approving smile. "You're often here at night?"

"Umm, yes," I responded, flattered to the gills that she had noticed my intention to be a grind in grad school. "I can focus better here than at home." I did not add that every minute away from my light-filled but drafty Madison apartment was a minute that I did not have to pay to heat it. It was slightly warmer in the Afro-Am offices, then housed in a cold, cement monolith laughably named the Humanities Building.

"I work late, too," Nellie continued, "but I keep my door locked because I don't know who will come around. If we're both here, I'll feel safe enough to leave it open. So, let me know when you're around."

"Sure," I said, all pumped up. Nellie McKay and I, together burning the midnight oil, were going to save the world with our scholarship. I made it my business to be in the department at night, and once in a while, I futilely tried to beat her there in the morning. In my years at Wisconsin, I studied Nellie like she was a book. She lived the life of the mind that I had come to grad school to pursue and her integrity was an aura, one I hoped would envelop, inspire, and transform me. Of course, it did.

Jacqueline Francis

William Wilhartz Assistant Professor of Art History

University of Michigan

When I handed in my dissertation in 1992, my acknowledgements to the faculty comprising my committee included a three-four sentence paragraph of thanks to each of them, in turn. Except Nellie, about whom I wrote: "whose presence meant everything." I both hated and loved that succinct sentence. I hated it because, in some dumb sort of "who rates the most lines of thanks in your dissertation acknowledgements" sweepstakes, this brief sentence seemed little thanks at all. I loved it because it was true: without Nellie's real, every-day, constant presence, I knew the arguments in my dissertation would not have been worth much.

Across the years, that sentence has stayed with me. I could not quote today the comments I made in thanking the other committee members--love them and appreciate them as I still do--but I can quote that sentence because I have always known its inadequacy in the face of the mind-altering contribution that Nellie made to my intellectual development. The sentence both says that but does not say that at all. While I was perhaps aware on some basic level of what Nellie had done to my thinking, I was still unprepared at that time to fully articulate it. Finally, now, though, I feel compelled to spell it out, and I shall.

Nellie did two things for me as my mentor, and they worked in tandem--she accepted, without voicing questions or suspicions, my interest in doing research in African American literature, and she also corrected the hell out of me, again and again. In fact, thinking over as much of my experience with Nellie as possible in order to write these remarks, I am struck by how so much of our interaction was comprised of her calling me on my assumptions and forcing me to see anew. The reason this observation is salient now, as it was not then, is that Nellie's manner was always so level and direct that only from the vantage point of 15 years or so can I apprehend fully that she basically remade my brain. I recall exchange after exchange in which I was very certain in pursuing a line of argument, and Nellie would point out the one part that relied on what I will call now, for lack of a better term, "assumptions based on white middle class experience" (also known as ignorance). Every time, the argument then had to be reworked to dump the assumptions and incorporate a new understanding about the wide variety of black experience I had not known. It was like that parable of looking at the elephant: Nellie made me stop looking at the elephant from one direction and instead got me to look at it from multiple vantage points.

This redirection made my research worth publishing. My dissertation, which later became a book, and an early series of articles I published on Toni Morrison's novel Tar Baby, all bear the marks of Nellie's correction. "Beauty," an undifferentiated term in my first drafts, gave way to "white-defined beauty"; "aesthetics" became "Western aesthetics." These subtle changes are commonplace ideas now, of course, but back then there was no vocabulary in place. It had to be created, and Nellie's challenges to me forced me to rethink my ideas and to create the vocabulary to express them. Hers were not minor corrections--they were so substantive that they made the whole argument worth making.

The manner in which Nellie corrected me bears noting: direct, with a sense of urgency; firm, yet pleasant. Often, she made me rethink something simply by asking a question. She never told me what to think or say. Only if I could not understand the problem would she explain, filling in the background I was missing. And when the correcting was done in person, the way Nellie looked right at me was striking. In fact, just a few years ago, when I was having trouble getting a student of mine to go to Madison for the Bridge program, I remember a phone call with Nellie patiently explaining why my methods weren't working with the student, and I swear I could feel her looking at me through

the phone! Nellie's manner both MADE me listen as it also enabled my ability to HEAR what was wrong or missing. So often we battle over ideas with our students, pick at trivial details, or allow ourselves to get angry. Nellie was a model to me of patient, highly focused, essential intellectual correction, and her delivery was key. She treated me with acceptance and respect, an attitude far too rare in academia.

Nellie made a space for me in African American literary study. It was not a privileged or protected space; in fact, I understand it is a highly negotiated space. But she made it, and then remade me so I could stand and write and think in it and manage to make a creditable contribution to the field she loved and helped build. As we say at the end of yoga class to thank our teacher, "Namaste--"The light in me acknowledges the light in you." Namaste, Nellie.

Malin Pereira

Associate Professor of English

University of North Carolina-Charlotte

Afterword

Nellie McKay's door was always open.

Part of me wants to leave it there. The students whose voices grace the branches of this tree of words know what I mean. In an academic world all too often fixated on individual stardom, she devoted herself to community, to nurturing the next generation of African Americanists, the students she called her "children." Nellie often came to campus before the first ray lit the Wisconsin winter sky and stayed past sundown when she called Union Cab for her evening ride to her refuge on West Lawn Avenue. She helped students grapple with the complexities of Beloved and Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, figure out ways to teach Baldwin and Faulkner to students from the farm towns and suburbs as well as the invisible ghettoes of Madison and Milwaukee, and imagine ways of entering the profession without surrendering their sanity or integrity. If there was a path through the swamp, a way out of no way, Nellie would make sure her students found it.

Or, to phrase it in a way that reminds us that she was a part of the Civil Rights Movement, one of the courageous foot soldiers who marched into spaces where black people were most definitely not welcome, she made sure students kept their eyes on the prize. Nellie understood what she was doing as a response to the call of the elders and the ancestors, those who had come through the unimaginably dark and lonely and hopeless-seeming nights of Middle Passage and slavery and white supremacy in its myriad forms. She understood herself-and, crucially, her students--as part of the tradition forged by Phillis Wheatley and W. E. B. Du Bois and Anna Julia Cooper and James Baldwin and June Jordan. She kept faith with the ancestors, and now she has joined them. Their call to us is forever altered and enriched.

African American students had a special place in her heart, but her door was open to everyone who shared the vision of a better, more democratic world. She could be tough, demanding, even (as I've heard more than one student say) intimidating. She brooked no nonsense, accepted no evasions. She sympathized with students' struggles, but the point would come when she would say: "yes, but you have work to do." The work got done.

The real tribute to Nellie McKay lies precisely in the work that her students have done and will do. The books and essays are part of it. Their teaching--both inside and outside the walls of academia--is part of it. But the tribute that would have made her smile her wonderful smile will be the way her students, those whose words you've just read, are weaving the values she lived by into their everyday lives. Most of all, it will come when her children's children find themselves lost and despairing, and come to an open door.

Works Cited

Brooks, Gwendolyn. "Young Afrikans." Blacks. Chicago: Third World P, 1987.

Friedman, Susan Stanford. Email to editors. 4 March 2006.

Higginson, Thomas Wentworth. "Emily Dickinson's Letters." Atlantic Monthly 68.4 (October 1891): 444-56.

Hurston, Zora Neale. Their Eyes Were Watching God. New York: Harper & Row, 1990.

Kent, Alicia. Email to author. 2 March 2006.

McKay, Nellie Y. Jean Toomer, Artist: A Study of His Literary Life and Work, 1984-1936. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1987.

--."Naming the Problem That Led to the Question 'Who Shall Teach African American Literature?'; or, Are We Ready to Disband the Wheatley Court?" PMLA (1998): 363-68.

--. "What does genuine respect for African-American literature mean?" Chronicle of Higher Education. 17 July 1998.

Craig Werner

Chair, Afro-American Studies Department University of Wisconsin-Madison