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Spotlights! Syd Nathans

Syd Nathans taught at Duke for 40 years, wrote two books--one on Daniel Webster, the other on the social history of North Carolina--before focusing on the African American family, where he has used oral and archival history to trace the history of a rural black community conceived in slavery times, taking the story from 1844 to the Civil Rights era.  He won Rockefeller and Guggenheim Fellowships to pursue that story, to which he will return to this summer.  He retired to Denver in 2006, where he completed his 2012 Harvard Press book "To Free a Family: The Journey of Mary Walker".

A long-time friend of Colorado Humanities, he has volunteered for us and with Vincent Harding's Veterans of Hope Project at the Iliff School.  In 2009, with Wendell Pryor, he co-chaired the Colorado Lincoln Bicentennial Commission.

He is currently "Volunteer Host and Organizer Extraordinaire" for our humanities dinner series, D.I.N.E. (Dinner, Ideas 'N Exchange).

Spotlights!

Syd Nathans

Syd: Years ago, when I was a Duke history professor and a sometime Washington panelist judging Humanities proposals, I balked when I came to those re-enactor/Chautauqua proposals from Colorado and the West.  Mind you, I wasn't a hide-bound historian--just a provincial one.  I'd edited books on the social history of North Carolina organized around historic sites of the state--books meant for visitors or readers alike.  I'd taught wonderful week-long institutes for North Carolina schoolteachers, where they taught and inspired me far more than I, them.  I'd shifted in my own work from nineteenth century political history to study of the African-American family.  But RE-ENACTMENT?

It took moving to Colorado and seeing its work here--re-enactors and so much more--to open my eyes and demonstrate that wonderful way to bring the past to the present.

Mark Twain, Joe Louis, Eleanor Roosevelt, W.E.B. DuBois, Walt Whitman--for me as for thousands, they've come alive in Colorado.  In new ways, I've come alive too, as Humanities volunteer allowed to work with terrific people on Colorado's Commission for the commemoration of Lincoln's Bicentennial in 2009, and more recently, as an organizer for D.I.N.E., where we gather for a meal, conversation, and illumination with Colorado's poets, mystery writers, Iraq MASH-unit veterans--and yes, re-enactors.   Not incidentally, the state's 300 days of sunshine, stunning beauty, and expansive horizon provided the setting and solitude for me to finish the book project I brought with me:  "To Free a Family:  The Journey of Mary Walker."

The book is about a woman who escaped slavery in 1848, left her children behind, and spent years trying to rescue or ransom them from bondage, with the help of many white and black friends.  Though an eastern story, I think it reflects my six years in the West, and what I have learned in Colorado about ways to bring the past to the present.

Syd, the author of To Free A Family: The Journey of Mary Walker (2012, Harvard Press) and a long-time advocate for humanities education in Colorado, is the "Volunteer Host and Organizer Extraordinaire" for our humanities dinner series, D.I.N.E. (Dinner, Ideas 'N Exchange).