I'd like to begin with a disclosure: I was not an official student of David Montgomery. By “official,” I mean to signal the parochial ways in which institutions recognize and quantify mentorship. I came to Yale University too late to have the opportunity to work with him in any formal way; I entered the combined doctoral program in African American studies and American studies there in the fall of 2002, long after David had retired. While this fact presented a major obstacle to those of my graduate colleagues who hoped to work with him, it was only a minor disadvantage for me because David and I were already connected through a genealogy of mentoring; my college mentor was Peter Rachleff, one of David's Pitt students, and he made sure that each of us knew of the other upon my arrival in New Haven. What I didn't know of David—and there was a lot—I would soon learn through my numerous engagements with him and his work.
Our first in-person meeting was at the home that he shared with his other half of more than fifty years, Mrs. Martel Montgomery, a woman who has been equally influential in my life. They invited me to one of their famous dinners, in which I would be nourished from the very top of my head to the bottoms of my feet. The knowledge, wit, and good humor around that table sustained me over the following six years but were supremely necessary on that evening during my first semester at Yale. The culture shock and isolation that I was experiencing as a black working-class woman from the Midwest all but melted away when I was received and seen—truly seen—by the Montgomerys and their guests, a warm and brilliant couple from UMass, historians Joye Bowman and John Higginson, who I now count as colleagues. I left the Montgomery home that evening with a sense of renewal and purpose, a rededication to getting what I came for and making the spaces around me differently better in the process.
David and Marty were centrally configured in both of those endeavors. First came the work of being a graduate student. As a first-generation college graduate, I was less than prepared for what I would find at the graduate level. The supreme individualism and performance of the classroom was unlike anything that I had experienced as a liberal arts student and was, and remains, antithetical to my investment in education. These dynamics began to sour my experience and affect my ability to see beyond my own frustration. My writing was generative but not enjoyable, relatively well received but not helping me to build lasting relationships. I was working on race—the conditions and experiences that ground my scholarship—but the other elements that had become so important to my politico-intellectual development in college—internationalism, class, labor—were largely absent. In a word, my early writing was uninspired. Enter David. During my third year at Yale, he hired me to be his research assistant for a project that was, at the time, in its early public stages. He was asked to deliver the fall 2006 Ashley Fellowship Lectures at Trent University in Ontario, Canada, and the three lectures that he would deliver would be on worker anti-imperialism in the late nineteenth century. With titles “Labor's Monroe Doctrine” and “The Revolt Against Colonialism,” these lectures were the result of David's long engagement with myriad formations of worker resistance and the diversity of their thought and practice on a global scale. Although not of my period (I am solidly twentieth century), this research was the push that I needed, both analytically and methodologically. Until this project with David, I had not yet visited my first archive nor had I begun to imagine how those materials might be used in relation to a project that I knew, on some level, would deal with music. This is one of the many opportunities offered to me by David; he saw something in me that not only encouraged him to trust my skills as a researcher, but also led him to understand that there was something in this project for me, something that I needed. The consummate teacher, he was already mentoring and guiding me toward the moment when I would find my legs as a scholar and my voice as a citizen.
It was in that same year that David publicly validated my intellectual promise. The third year is the year of candidacy in the graduate school at Yale: oral exams and the prospectus defense. Within African American studies, we are also required to offer a public presentation on our proposed dissertation project. Mine was scheduled near my birthday in April and feeling, as I was, embattled due to my union participation and my desire to always go above and beyond expectation, I recruited as many of my colleagues and comrades to attend as possible. The Gordon Parks room in the former African American studies department building on College Street was filled with union organizers and friends, faculty advisors, and members of my cohort. As I was preparing my notes and sound materials I heard a cacophony of hushed whispers. I looked up to find David and Marty entering the room and taking two seats near the window. This rare appearance on campus caused a stir and added a level of intrigue to my project. By simply being present, David made that space more rigorous and more attentive to the stakes of my proposed dissertation, which investigated the political and activist dimensions of black music. His presence made my colleagues and committee look at me differently, but his was the attention that I was most proud to receive. The intellectual and political energy that he carried within his person radiated within every space he entered, and I was the special beneficiary on that day.
That was not the only moment in which David appeared for my benefit or even the most important of them. He was a constant figure in the efforts of the workers in New Haven to grow their unions, whether that was in contract negotiation or through recognition. My union of graduate student-teachers, Graduate Employees and Students Organization (GESO), fell into the latter category. The two-decades-long struggle engaged by graduate employees at Yale is the stuff of myth, inclusive of a number of fantastic victories and some humbling defeats. Shortly after joining the union, I was charged with organizing African American studies. When I entered Yale, the department was not organized; a majority of the students were members of the union, but they were not involved, and others, including union members, were openly hostile. Slowly but surely I built a committee of like-minded colleagues, the grand majority of whom were black women, and we developed a critical (in all senses) mass that would go on to develop the Equal Rights and Access Committee and its program on diversity issues, launch a prison divestment campaign, and take prominent leadership roles within the two graduate teacher strikes that occurred between 2002 and 2008. David loomed large in all of these efforts. Early in my tenure at Yale he published, along with his Pitt student Horace Huntley, Black Workers' Struggle for Equality in Birmingham, a text that spoke to the unique positionalities of black workers within their industries and their unions. This book not only provided valuable context but also spoke to some of the considerations and reservations that my colleagues and I had with regard to the academy, our chosen industry. His work at Yale and elsewhere in the 1980s on divestment from South Africa productively haunted our 2006 efforts to demand the university's divestment from the private prison company, Corrections Corporation of America. David also made himself available to as much of our union activity as possible. He spoke at rallies and in-services, advised us in our relationships with the administration and the faculty, and always encouraged us to hold on “one day longer.” Politically, we could always expect more from David in retirement than we could from the grand majority of our full-time faculty. He wouldn't go away, wouldn't be silent, and that educated commitment and consistency provided the hope that we all needed to go on with our union.
David Montgomery at a GESO rally, 2005. Photo by author.
No, I was not David's official student, but I would not change anything about the way that he came into my life. I had the rare opportunity to learn from him, free from the restrictions of academic calendars or time to degree. He did the work of a committee member—reading and commenting on drafts (in which, after a page and half of single-spaced comments, he wrote, “In short, looks good. Go to it.”), coming to my presentations, and advising me on jobs—but he also mentored me politically and modeled the courage and integrity that I aspire toward every day. This brings so much more to my life than the minutia that too often structures relationships within universities. The university cannot contain David's impact, although I am thankful that he occupied its towers; while it did not define our relationship, the university helped to make it possible. He and Marty made me a part of their family long before they knew I existed by taking care of the person who later took care of me as a college student. This legacy, in but not entirely of the academy, will forever shape my engagement with students, “official” and otherwise.
