Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by this author are their own and do not represent the official position of the Barbados TODAY.
by Vincent “Boo” Nurse
Fifty years ago, Barbadian Professor Emeritus Calvin Beresford Holder entered the hallowed halls of Harvard, the oldest (1636) university in the USA.
The university was then and is now reputed to be one of the leading schools of learning across the entire globe and is currently listed third in the world university rankings.
Harvard did not have a reputation for engaging Black students and at the time of the Professor’s entry there were perhaps 30 Black students among possibly 5,000 at the University’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.
Professor Holder was born in 1946, the son of Clifford Beresford Holder and Beryl Smith-Holder of Sweet Bottom, St George and received his early education at Combermere between 1957 and 1962.
He emigrated to the USA in 1962 and graduated at high school before entering one of the senior colleges of the City University of New York to study history and political science.
The success of the St George man had only just begun, and Holder obtained a Magna Cum Laude (Upper Second Honours Degree). He was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, the oldest and one of the most prestigious academic honour societies and consequently was awarded the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship (Woodrow Wilson,
President, USA 1913-1921).
Holder’s path to these achievements was not an easy one. He recalls that due to his family’s financial position he was required to work more than twenty hours per week to cover his student fees as well as other living expenses.
He reflects: “It was not an easy time and there was not a cushion to support me.”
Buoyed by his initial success and a burning ambition to be the best he could be, the Professor saw a route towards his goal of obtaining his doctorate. He applied to five of the top US universities and was accepted by all. And so, with an enviable choice before him he opted to move to Harvard University.
And I queried: why Harvard? Were there not other universities where he would feel culturally safe? After all Harvard was not known to be a place where Black and poor people studied. The Professor explained that in the late 1960s the Ford Foundation began a programme to support Black students who were pursuing doctoral studies.
It sought to select outstanding Black students and created the Black Pride Fellowship to provide funding for tuition fees as well as living expenses. The urbane and learned Professor was an awardee.
As we moved to life at Harvard, I asked Professor Holder to give a glimpse of his experiences there.
Was he ever overawed by the history of the place or was he in anyway ever mindful of the fact that many of his colleagues were from a completely rich and different backgrounds?
The Professor was not at all concerned about such matters as he charted his course almost inevitably to success.
He said: “It was an extraordinary experience and I soon recognised that I was being educated at an institution that consciously sought to engage the best brains across the globe and consequently provided a preeminence of international privilege and power.”
And its impact? The Professor continued: “I never felt or wanted to be a Harvardian in the traditional manner. I did not live on campus. I found comfort in the community in Massachusetts and I became immersed in the daily lives of Black and local citizens. I never wanted to be defined as the man from Harvard.”
Holder’s stand struck me as unusual in that I was led to believe that a graduate of Harvard University would be instilled with a sense of elitism, but I was gladly mistaken. The Professor said simply: “It is not a matter of being diffident but one of the realities of my persona.”
After leaving Harvard with his Doctorate Holder assumed duties at the College of Staten Island, City University New York where he taught History of the US and African American Studies from 1975. He attained full Professorship status in the early 1990s and retained that position until his retirement in 2018.
And the highlights of his career, I asked? He said: “I paid tribute to my mentor Professor Randolph Braham, a Hungarian Jew who escaped the Holocaust during the Second World War, and played an integral part in my success, such as it was.
“Great satisfaction has been had through my interest in teaching students from a working-class background and I am doubly happy to have mentored a young Mexican-American student who completed his doctorate at the Department of History, Harvard University and is now a Professor at a major university in the United States.”
The Professor recently emigrated to the UK and said that he was grateful to be at the epi-centre of a mature and great civilization where he could enjoy the pleasures of a new and different environment.
Professor Emeritus Holder is held in great esteem at his university and on retirement a Scholarship was founded in his name and honour.
He has now settled into the Barbados diaspora in the UK and states that he is happy to have made new friends and acquaintances from ‘The Rock’. We in the UK are proud to have one of such eminence amongst us.
Vincent “Boo” Nurse is a Barbadian living in London who is a retired land Revenue Manager, Pensions and Investment Adviser. He is passionate about the development of his island home and disapora.
