Edward W Crosby

Background and education

Born and raised in the heart of Cleveland, he was the fourth child born to Frederick Douglass and Marion (Naylor) Crosby. He attended Our Lady of the Blessed Sacrament and St. Edward's, Catholic parochial elementary and middle schools. As a young altar boy Edward aspired to be a priest, at that time. He was a straight "A" student, as well. However, he veered from the straight and narrow path he started out on when he transferred out of St. Edward's in the eighth grade, unbeknownst to his parents.

This change brought an abrupt end to his priestly aspirations, in 1948. His entry into Cleveland's public schools paralleled his involvement in a number of delinquent activities. He became an inveterate truant and his academics suffered tremendously. He continued to show glimmers of hope, that he might in time become a serious student and actually make something of himself. This was later borne out when he became a university professor and school administrator. His parents, especially his mother, never lost patience, nor did they allow themselves to forget the promise their son had showed early on.

He earned his BA and MA from Kent State in 1957 and 1959 in German and Spanish and went on to earn a PhD from the University of Kansas in 1965. Oddly enough, his area of specialization was Medieval German Languages and Literature and Medieval History. In 1957 he began teaching at Kent State University and has since taught at a number of major and minor institutions around the country, including Hiram College, Tuskegee Institute, Southern Illinois University and the University of Washington.

Career

Dr. Crosby founded and served as the director of the Institute for African American Affairs for seven years, from 1969 to 1976. In 1976, the Institute petitioned the university for departmental status which gave birth to the Department of Pan-African Studies (DPAS); thus Dr. Crosby served for 18 years as the Department's first chair. The IAAA still exists, as a community development and research institute. The Department offers a multifaceted and holistic Africana Studies curriculum with a full-service educational world view, in Oscar W. Ritchie Hall, home of The Center of Pan-African Culture, which consists of The Henry Dumas Library, Mbari Mbayo Theatre and the Garrett Morgan Computer Lab, as well as a number of classrooms.

The Institute for African American Affairs (IAAA), now known as the Department of Pan-African Studies (1976), used a holistic curriculum model based on the earlier work of Dr. Crosby at Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville (SIUE). The curriculum he developed for the Experiment in Higher Education was similar to another program that was being developed at that time, known as Upward Bound, in that the students were from urban areas with low high school graduation rates. Both programs were designed to help these students enter institutions of higher learning and graduate successfully. Upward Bound students typically showed promise. However, EHE students' test scores were not even on the border line. Dr. Crosby and his team developed a program that took that fact into account and developed another set of aptitude indicators to pick the 200 students that would be included in their program. Each of their teachers were also given training as counselors and therefore developed personal relationships with each and every one of their students. They also utilized a method of instruction that incorporated a methodology known as Each One Teach One, where the students instructed each other. Last, but not least, they validated the culture of the students they were working with by using examples, situations and language that the students were already familiar with to teach them subject matter they would encounter at any university.

Creation of The East St. Louis Black Studies Model

His work in the realm of Black Education really began in East St. Louis, IL, even though he had previously spent a little more than a year at Tuskegee Institute, AL and a brief stint working with the Community Action Council in Akron, OH. As the director of education for the Experiment in Higher Education (EHE) Dr. Crosby and his team of fellow Kent State alumni developed a unique curriculum that taught them what they needed for college without denying the culture of their respective communities. The program developed in East St. Louis under the direction of Crosby, Hyman Frankel and Don Henderson has been cited as the first African Centered collegiate curriculum in the U.S. Black Studies programs, departments and institutes were developed at the behest of Black communities across the nation. East St. Louis, with its Black community of 70,000 was no exception. EHE's influence on the development of Black Studies in universities across the nation was due in part to the amount of resources, time and brain power they had at hand to forge a pedagogy that put the student at the center of their learning. This Black Studies consortium did not confine their efforts to East St. Louis, they offered consulting services to universities from California to New York.

One of the lessons of East St. Louis was the importance of an interdisciplinary, holistic approach to Black Education. In East St. Louis EHE was partnered with Katherine Dunham’s Performing Arts Training Center (PATC). The symbiotic relationship between EHE and PATC attracted educators, as well as cultural icons from all over the U.S. and beyond to East St. Louis, which generated a lot of energy in the community and attracted community members from all walks of life. On arriving at Kent, knowing the value of this kind of symbiosis, Dr. Crosby took on the task of developing an academic program modeled after the one he had previously spearheaded in East St. Louis and also took on the task of creating a cultural center that could work in tandem with the newly formed Institute for African American Affairs (IAAA). For 23 years this dual institution functioned with one purpose in mind, which was to provide an environment that reaffirmed the value of African American culture while helping their students learn to use the academic skills necessary to graduate from a four-year institution in the study and promulgation of this culture. The implementation of this kind of Black pedagogy has led to the successful graduation of hundreds, if not thousands, of students, that wouldn't have made it otherwise, many of which have devoted their careers to working in Black communities all over the U.S. The Human Relations Center, which was founded in 1968, attempted to do this kind of work, however their perspective was that the students needed to assimilate. The Institute validated the students and their culture as worthy of emulation. The difference between the two could not be more clear cut.

Black History Month pioneer

Soon after arriving at Kent State he became one of the key organizers of the first celebration of Black History Month in the U.S., which occurred in February 1970. It was six years later, during the U.S. bicentennial, that the expansion of Negro History Week, as it had been called, was recognized nationally when then President Gerald R. Ford delivered to the nation regarding the observance of Black History Month.

Since that time regular observances of Black History Month have become common in elementary, secondary and high schools, as well as city, state and federal buildings across the country. In fact, the practice has spread to many countries overseas, particularly in Europe.

Significantly, the first celebration was a Pan-African affair which included the participation of cultural icons like Babatunde Olatunji and Pulitzer Prize winning poet Gwendolyn Brooks, as well as poets Eugene Redmond and Quincy Troupe. Dr. Donald Henderson, then director of the Experiment in Higher Education, lectured on the Black Aesthetic. That first celebration of Black History Month also included presentations by Jimmy Garrett and Chief Fela Sowande, both of whom were involved in the formation of new institutions that had a decidedly Black aesthetic and international impact. Jimmy Garrett was a key player in the formation of the first Black Student Union and subsequently the first Black studies department in the U.S., while Fela Sowande was a Nigerian philosopher and musician of note who wrote Nigeria's first national anthem. He spent the latter days of his career teaching Black Cosmology in the Department of Pan-African Studies at Kent State University.

Technology in the classroom

Due to the bare bones budgetary allocations for the Institute of African American Affairs by university officials and the need to implement an innovative curricular model, there was also a need to come up with a unique method for delivering lectures that would be extremely cost effective. During his tenure in East St. Louis Dr. Crosby had begun to use some innovative methods of curricular delivery, including, but not limited to videotaped lectures, the use of various types of films and a method of communal education dubbed "Each One Teach One." All three of these methods were used at Kent facilitating the development of courses that could be taught by graduate assistants, who in many cases were later hired as full-time professors. This is how he developed a cadre of professors dedicated to Pan-African Studies. University officials had not foreseen this type of development of Black professors. Their original model incorporated professors from all over the campus, whose were dedicated to the philosophies and ideals of their individual departments; they would also have been hired, fired and paid by those departments. Because of this division of loyalty it would have been difficult, if not impossible to mold a conglomerate of professors from multiplicitous departments into a staff with a cohesive set of ideals or philosophical imperatives.

Other technological innovations include the first use of desktop computers in the main office of the Department of Pan-African Studies and one of the first computer labs for student use in an academic area unrelated to science or business classes.

The Black Culture Center

Upon arriving at Kent there were a number of demands that students had placed on the table, including a Black Culture Center. This center was something university officials had never dreamed of, hence they have resisted the idea from the beginning and never gave any type of significant funding to the center to be able to promote Black culture on Kent's campus.

The center went through a number of phases and was located in a number of buildings before finally ending up in the Old Student Union, now Oscar Ritchie Hall. Dr. Crosby visualized the center and the Institute as institutions that should work in tandem with each other. The Center of Pan-African Culture was established in 1970, through the combined efforts of Dr. Crosby, his staff and the leaders of the Black United Students at Kent State, providing a home for students to engage in cultural activities and a home for IAAA.

Today, the Center of Pan-African Culture still exists in a newly renovated Oscar Ritchie Hall, but the level of activities has seriously diminished, with the demise of the Pan-African Festival, last celebrated in 2007, the loss of much of the artwork that had graced the walls for the over 20 years and the relocation of the center of campus, Oscar Ritchie Hall is beginning to look more and more like a typical classroom building on any university campus.

Published books

Published articles

1995.

May 4, 1991.