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Bio Overview
of Rudolph
Lewis
Editor and Founder of ChickenBones: A Journal
Rudolph Lewis (born
1948 in Baltimore, Maryland) was raised by his grandparents
William and Ella Lewis
of Jarratt, Virginia—in the Village of Jerusalem. He attended
Creath, No. 5 and later graduated from Central High (Sussex). In
1965. He left Jarratt 1965to attend Morgan State College
(Baltimore). After hearing Stokely Carmichael, Walter Lively,
and Bob Moore speak on black responsibility in Fall 1967, he
left Morgan State “to join the Revolution” by working closely
with Bob Moore and Walter Lively from 1968 to about 1972.
He spent several years as
an organizer for Local 1199, married in 1972 Evelyn Duncan,
which was of a short duration (divorced 1976). Resigning from
1199 in 1974, he worked a number of temporary jobs, including
that of a porter and pot-washer at Maryland General Hospital.
Under the encouragement and
guidance of Dr. Max Wilson, he
registered for Morgan State University’s University Without
Walls and then the University of Maryland (College Park), from
which he graduated with a B.A (1978) and M.A. (1981) degrees in
English. After graduation, he taught writing and literature on
an adjunct basis at University of the District of Columbia and
the University of Maryland. In 1982, he spent ten weeks with the
Peace Corps in Zaire.
Returning to College Park,
he was encouraged by Drs. Lewis Lawson and Donna Hamilton to
take a teaching position in Louisiana. He taught for a year a
Northeast Louisiana University (NLU, 1983) and then the
University of New Orleans (UNO, 1984-1986). At a presentation at
UNO, Lewis made the acquaintance of
Lee Meitzen Grue and
Yusef Komunyakaa.
Yusef and Rudy became fast friends, with Yusef serving as a
mentor in the writing of poetry. Komunyakaa and Lewis, along
with Ahmose Zu-Bolton, created and built the cultural center
Copacetic on Piety Street, which lasted tragically only six
months.
Under Yusef’s
encouragement, Lewis joined in 1984 the New Orleans Poetry
Forum, headed by Lee Grue. In this milieu he gained many valuable
friends and experiences. Gaining some poetic skills, Lewis wrote
poems that were published by
The New Laurel Review (NLR),
edited by Lee Meitzen Grue. He also began his own rag,
Crickets: Poems & Other Jazz, which lasted several issues.
As editor of Cricket, Lewis published poems of some of
his UNO colleagues, Yusef, and of the late Marcus Bruce
Christian. As a contributing editor of the NLR, Lewis accepted
several writing assignments, including pieces on the
socially-conscious Jessie Covington Dent and the poet
Yvegeny
Yevtushenko.
After leaving UNO, Lewis spent a year in an
English doctoral program at Louisiana State University. He
returned to his Village of Jerusalem for six months (the longest
extent since leaving in 1965) continuing to write and research.
During this period he wrote and corresponded with friends in
Louisiana and Baltimore. In 1987, he returned to Baltimore and
worked a couple of years for Local 1199 as editor and organizer.
From 1991-1997, Lewis taught writing and
other subjects in several
adult education programs. During this
period he spent a year in Morgan State’s doctoral program in
education (1991-1992), and completed from 1994-1997 a masters
program in library science. From 1997-1999, he worked as a
librarian for Enoch Pratt Free Library. After the publication of
his edited volume of I Am New Orleans & Other Poems By
Marcus Bruce Christian, Lewis again returned to the Village of
Jerusalem where he collected the letters and stories of his
grandmother Ella Lewis.
During this sojourn in Jerusalem, Lewis
also continued his research on the region, including the
development of Negro schools in Sussex and the history of the
Nathaniel Turner Rebellion. After six months, he again returned
to Baltimore and began work as a part-time librarian at St.
Mary’s Seminary, where he continues to work. In November 2001,
along with Kinya Kionygozi, he founded the website
ChickenBones: A Journal ,
which he continues to edit and which has become one of the most
popular African-American websites on the internet, enjoying over
a half-million visitors in 2003.
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Curriculum
Vitae
Rudolph
Lewis
rudolphlewis@hotmail.com
EDITORIAL WORK
Editor
(& Founder) ChickenBones:
A Journal (www.nathanielturner.com), an online educational web
site, 2001 to present.
Editor
I Am New Orleans & Other
Poems By Marcus Bruce Christian. New Orleans:
Xavier Review Press, 1999.
Editorial
Assistant Labor’s
Heritage, Spring 1997.
Contributing
Editor The New Laurel
Review, Spring/Fall 1984; Spring/Fall 1987
Editor
(& Founder) CRICKET: Poems and Other Jazz. New Orleans, 1985.
LIBRARY APPOINTMENTS
Librarian,
Baltimore City College High School, 2004 to
2005
Circulation/Reference
Librarian St. Mary’s Seminary & University, 2000--2004
Reference
Librarian Enoch Pratt Free Library, Baltimore, 1997-1999
Reference
Librarian Baltimore City Community College, Baltimore, 1997
Archival
Consultant George Meany Memorial Archives, Silver Spring,
1996-1997
EDUCATION
M.L.S.,
1997 University of Maryland, College Park
Archival
Internship
George Meany Memorial Archives, 1997.
Activities included reference, accessioning and processing and
preserving AFL-CIO, records (paper and audiovisual), writing
finding aids, records management
activities, editing Labor's Heritage
Reference Librarian Internship
Eisenhower Library, Johns Hopkins
University, 1996. Activities included working at Reference Desk,
and assisting in setting up archival web page; developed an
alternative design for Milton's Web, the library's web page.
MA
English, 1981, University of Maryland, College Park
Thesis
Director
Dr. Lewis A. Lawson, UM English, 1980-1981
Teaching
Assistant
University of Maryland, 1980-1981. Taught Freshman Composition,
under the supervision of Eugene Hammond, author of Teaching Writing
BA,
English, 1978 University of Maryland, College Park
Minors:
Math, Philosophy. Independent Study with Dr. Max Wilson, former
Chair,
Department of Philosophy, Howard University, 1974-1976
TEACHING APPOINTMENTS
GED
Instructor
Baltimore
City Community College, 1993-1997
Civic
Works, 1994-1995
Baltimore
Reads, LPNW, 1990-1993
English
and Literature Instructor
Coppin
State College, Fall 2000
University
of New Orleans, 1984-1986
Northeast
Louisiana University, 1983-1984
University
of District of Columbia, 1981-1983
ADMINISTRATIVE APPOINTMENTS
English
Skills Specialist, IED Program, University of
Maryland, 1983. Made assessments of incoming high school
graduates.
OTHER TECHNICAL SKILLS
Computer
skills (including Internet, bibliographic searches, Web and
HyperCard design); records management and preservation skills,
editing, writing, visual arts layout, research, adult literacy
consulting.
PUBLICATIONS & Other Writings
“African
Records and Technology: Issues in Increasing Access and
Preservation.” (1997). Unpublished essay.
“AFL-CIO
Department of Organization (1955-1973).” Finding Aid. The George
Meany Memorial Archives, Silver Spring, June 1997.
“The
Appraisal and Disposition of the Negro Federal Writer’s Project
Records.” Unpublished
essay.
“Conjuring
& Doctoring: A Modern Folk Tale.” The
New Laurel Review, Spring 2000.
“Enoch
Pratt Free Library and Adult Literacy Services.” Unpublished
essay.
“The
Ethnologic Image of Americans in Black and White: An Exploration
of the Ethnic Writings of Martin R. Delany (1812-1885). Master’s
Thesis, April 1981.
“Evtushenko
in New Orleans.” The New
Laurel Review, Spring/Fall 1987
“Extending
the Boundaries of Liberal Educational Discourse: A Review of C.A.
Bower’s Elements of a Post-Liberal Theory of Education.” 1990. Unpublished
essay.
I Am New Orleans & Other Poems By
Marcus Bruce Christian.
Edited by Rudolph Lewis and Amin Sharif. New Orleans: Xavier
Review Press, 1999.
“In
Search of Books, Scholars, and Libraries in Sixteenth-Century
Timbuktu.” 1996. Unpublished essay and HyperCard project.
“Instructional
Materials Used By Baltimore Literacy Programs: An Evaluative
Report.” 1997. Unpublished report.
“Interview
with Yusef Komunyakaa.” New Orleans: May 1985.
Introduction
I
Am New Orleans and Other
Poems by Marcus Bruce Christian. Edited by Rudolph Lewis and
Amin Sharif. New Orleans: Xavier Review Press, 1999.
“Jesse
Covington Dent: Concert Artist & Humanist.” The
New Laurel Review, Spring/Fall 1984.
Letters of an Abiding Faith—1976-1994: Legacy of a Slave’s
GrandDaughter to Her Son. Baltimore: Tinka Enterprises, Publisher, 2001.
“Life
Pieced Together: Ella Lewis, Quilt Maker, The
New Laurel Review, Spring/Fall 1984.
“Magpies,
Goddesses, & Black Male Identity in the Romantic Poetry of
Marcus Bruce Christian.” Paper presented at College Language
Association, April 2000, Baltimore, Maryland.
“Man
on a Mission: A Rhetorical Analysis of Frederick Douglass’
Oration on Abraham Lincoln.” 1980. Unpublished essay.
Marcus
Bruce Christian (1900-1976): A Compilation of Christian's
Bio-Bibliographical Material on a New Orleans Poet and Louisiana
Historian. Copyright 2000. Baltimore.
“Marcus Bruce Christian and a Theory of a
Black Aesthetic.” Paper presented at the Zora Neale Hurston
Society Conference held June 1999 at University of Maryland
Eastern Shore. Published in The
Zora Neale Hurston Journal, Spring 2000.
“My
Room Without You.” Poem. The
New Laurel Review, Spring/Fall 1987.
“A
Preservation Report and Five-Year Plan for the Guy-Blache Moving
Image and Sound Archive (GBMISA).” 1997. Unpublished.
“Setting
Priorities and Making Compromises: The Artful Management of
Materials in Electronic Formats.” 1996. Unpublished.
“Sons
& Daughters of Sussex: A Family Memoir of Five Generations.”
1999. Unpublished manuscript.
“Tragedy
of Real Estate.” Poem. Something
Good: An Anthology of Poetry, Rap, Memoirs, edited by Nancy
Travis. Newark, NJ: African American Word, Inc., 1987.
“Vanni
Buscemi Montana Collection, 1925-1987.” Finding Aid. The George
Meany Memorial Archives, Silver Spring, January 1996.
AWARDS
2000
Marcus B. Christian Community Service Award. University of New
Orleans. Dr. Mackie Blanton, Dean
1995
Business and Continuing Education Center, Baltimore City Community
College, Beverly Arah, Director of Literacy Programs
1991
The Learning Place Northwest, Baltimore Reads, the Mayor's Adult
Education Program
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Salvage the Bones
A Novel by Jesmyn Ward
On one level, Salvage the Bones is a simple story about a poor black family that’s about to be trashed by one of the most deadly hurricanes in U.S. history. What makes the novel so powerful, though, is the way Ward winds private passions with that menace gathering force out in the Gulf of Mexico. Without a hint of pretension, in the simple lives of these poor people living among chickens and abandoned cars, she evokes the tenacious love and desperation of classical tragedy. The force that pushes back against Katrina’s inexorable winds is the voice of Ward’s narrator, a 14-year-old girl named Esch, the only daughter among four siblings. Precocious, passionate and sensitive, she speaks almost entirely in phrases soaked in her family’s raw land. Everything here is gritty, loamy and alive, as though the very soil were animated. Her brother’s “blood smells like wet hot earth after summer rain. . . . His scalp looks like fresh turned dirt.” Her father’s hands “are like gravel,” while her own hand “slides through his grip like a wet fish,” and a handsome boy’s “muscles jabbered like chickens.” Admittedly, Ward can push so hard on this simile-obsessed style that her paragraphs risk sounding like a compost heap, but this isn’t usually just metaphor for metaphor’s sake. She conveys something fundamental about Esch’s fluid state of mind: her figurative sense of the world in which all things correspond and connect. She and her brothers live in a ramshackle house steeped in grief since their mother died giving birth to her last child. . . . What remains, what’s salvaged, is something indomitable in these tough siblings, the strength of their love, the permanence of their devotion.— WashingtonPost
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Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in
America
By Melissa V.
Harris-Perry
According to the
author, this society has historically exerted
considerable pressure on black females to fit into one
of a handful of stereotypes, primarily, the Mammy, the
Matriarch or the Jezebel. The selfless
Mammy’s behavior is marked by a slavish devotion to
white folks’ domestic concerns, often at the expense of
those of her own family’s needs. By contrast, the
relatively-hedonistic Jezebel is a sexually-insatiable
temptress. And the Matriarch is generally thought of as
an emasculating figure who denigrates black men, ala the
characters Sapphire and Aunt Esther on the television
shows Amos and Andy and Sanford and Son, respectively.
Professor Perry
points out how the propagation of these harmful myths
have served the mainstream culture well. For instance,
the Mammy suggests that it is almost second nature for
black females to feel a maternal instinct towards
Caucasian babies.
As for the source
of the Jezebel, black women had no control over their
own bodies during slavery given that they were being
auctioned off and bred to maximize profits. Nonetheless,
it was in the interest of plantation owners to propagate
the lie that sisters were sluts inclined to mate
indiscriminately.
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Ancient African Nations
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The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
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The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
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Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
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The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
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January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
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update 19 April 2010
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