Newsletter Volume 7 Issue 16 April 14, 2021 |
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We have Jan Pratt to thank for her article on Kristin Mann’s work on the West Africa/Brazil slave trade and her success in uncovering the lives of some of the enslaved.
We welcome new member Milton Brown and we also note the death of member Charles Hatcher and his major role in building Emory Healthcare to its current prominence.
I am very grateful to Gretchen Schulz, Ann Hartle, and Marge Crouse for help with editing and proofing.
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Sheth Lecture - Monday, April 26
Robert Franklin
"Moral Leadership in Turbulent Times"
Please scroll to read more below
Report - Lunch Colloquium - Monday, March 29
Bradd Shore
"The Body Politic, The Body Poetic: Julius Caesar and the Legacy of 'The King's Two Bodies'"
Please scroll to read more below
Report - Lunch Colloquium - Monday, April 5
Kristin Mann
“Transatlantic Lives: Slavery and Freedom in West Africa and Brazil”
Please scroll to read more below
New Members
Milton Brown
Please scroll to read more below
In Memoriam
Charles Hatcher
Please scroll to read more below
Walking the Campus with Dianne
Please scroll to read more below
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Sheth Lecture - Monday, April 26, 2021 |
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"Moral Leadership in Turbulent Times"
Robert Franklin
James T. and Berta R. Laney Professor in Moral Leadership
Candler School of Theology
Sheth Lecture - Zoom Meeting
11:30 am - 1:00 pm
This year's Sheth Distinguished Lecture will be given by Dr. Robert Michael Franklin, Jr., who is the James T. and Berta R. Laney Professor of Moral Leadership at Emory University. Now in his second term at Emory, Franklin is a former Presidential Distinguished Professor of Social Ethics and a senior fellow at the Center for the Study of Law and Religion, both at Emory, and was also the founding director of Candler’s Black Church Studies program from 1989 to 1995.
In addition to his role at Candler, which he began in 2014, Franklin is a senior advisor to the Emory University president, as well as an advisor for Community and Diversity at Emory. He was director of the religion department at The Chautauqua Institution from 2014-2017, president of Morehouse College from 2007-2012, and president of the Interdenominational Theological Center in Atlanta from 1997-2002. In 2016, Franklin was named to the Human Rights Campaign’s project council on expanding LGBTQ equality and inclusion efforts at Historically Black Colleges and Universities. He is on the board of Demos and on the Council of Past HBCU Presidents, and a member of several professional organizations, including the American Academy of Religion and the Society of Christian Ethics.
Dr. Franklin earned the master of divinity degree in Christian social ethics and pastoral care in 1978 at the Harvard Divinity School, where he also served as assistant director of Ministry Education. He continued his education at the University of Chicago, earning a doctorate in ethics and society and religion and the social sciences in 1985. He also undertook international study at the University of Durham, UK, as a 1973 English Speaking Union Scholar. His major fields of study include social ethics, psychology, and African American religion. An insightful educator, Dr. Franklin has served on the faculties of the University of Chicago, Harvard Divinity School, and Colgate-Rochester Divinity School as well as at Emory University's Candler School of Theology. He has received honorary degrees from Bates College, Swarthmore College, Bethune-Cookman University, Centre College, the University of New England, and Hampden-Sydney College.
The Sheth Lecture is made possible by a generous donation from Dr. Jagdish and Mrs. Madhu Sheth.
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Required Emory Password Changes Re-enabled |
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Those of you who use your Emory login, for email or other purposes, may have noticed that we have not had to change our password since the COVID shutdown took place. Although I have not yet received a notice, my understanding is that the requirement to change our Emory password is being reestablished. I certainly hope that we will get a notice before our current password is expired! Do be alert to any such notice to change your password and don't ignore that email! |
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Report - Lunch Colloquium - Monday March 29, 2021 |
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"The Body Politic, The Body Poetic: Julius Caesar and the Legacy of 'The King's Two Bodies'"
Bradd Shore
Goodrich C. White Professor of Anthropology Emeritus
Bradd Shore presented William Shakespeare in a new light to an engaged Emeritus College Lunch Colloquium audience on Monday, March 29th. Focusing on Julius Caesar, the subject of a chapter from his forthcoming book Shakespeare and Social Theory: The Play of Great Ideas, Bradd sketched a picture of the great playwright as a subtle social thinker. In doing so, Bradd said he was realizing a goal formed as a Berkeley undergraduate, eager to bring together Shakespeare's insights and those of major social thinkers he was reading at the same time in courses in political theory: "I thought then I'd like to try to bring these two fields together. It's taken me about 55 years to do it." For Bradd's audience, it was well worth the wait.
Almost from the time of Shakespeare's death, he has been lauded for his characters, especially his renderings of their often complex motivations. This version of Shakespeare as the unsurpassed dramatist of individual psychology is what Samuel Johnson pointed to a century and a half after Shakespeare's death when he praised his portrayal of "human nature" operating in "real" situations. So keen is Shakespeare's psychological realism, Johnson concludes grandly,
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that his drama is the mirror of life; that he who has mazed his imagination, in following the phantoms which other writers raise up before him, may here be cured of his delirious ecstasies, by reading human sentiments in human language; by scenes from which a hermit may estimate the transactions of the world, and a confessor predict the progress of the passions. |
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But in Bradd's complementary view, Shakespeare is as remarkable a student of social thought and behavior as he is of the motives and actions of individuals.
Although Julius Caesar is widely familiar (often the first of Shakespeare's plays that high school students encounter), Bradd noted that it remains deeply confusing. The fact that it's possible to ask whether it contains a hero at all makes it hard to pin down as a conventional tragedy, and the absence of a clear point of view on the assassination makes it difficult to see Brutus's motives as decidedly noble or simply selfish. As the title character, Caesar would seem an obvious candidate for the role of hero; but Bradd pointed out that he is dispatched less than halfway through the play, having spoken a mere 43 lines. Brutus, on the other hand, speaks a great deal, but many of his lofty Stoic protestations have more to do with his self-image and reputation than about the good of Rome. Attracted more to "honor than to people," Brutus's cool detachment clearly wounds his wife, Portia, a character Shakespeare presents very sympathetically.
The play's "equivocation" regarding one of the world's most famous political assassinations ultimately reflects a society--Rome but also Elizabethan England--"at war with itself." In the case of the latter, Bradd argued, it is also a society losing the extra-legal "glue" that Emile Durkheim theorized as "social solidarity." "While usually regarded as a tragedy of flawed character, Julius Caesar can also be seen as social theory parading as civil unrest." Older understandings of communal, reciprocal obligations were undergoing a "profound historical shift" in Shakespeare’s time toward more "contractual," individualistic, "atomistic" views that anticipate modern libertarian and market-based conceptions of social relations.
Briefly alluding to rather than focusing on the relevance of the play to our immediate political moment, Bradd pointed in his conclusion toward how the play's "paradoxical vision of the state as both a sacred body politic and a secular federation of self-interested individuals" may illuminate current tensions over the meaning of "freedom." Looking beyond Julius Caesar and toward Shakespeare and Social Theory: The Play of Great Ideas (Routledge, 2021), Bradd concluded that "the time is ripe for a widening of our vision" of Shakespeare to recognize his "status as a social theorist of the highest order."
--John Sitter
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Report - Lunch Colloquium - Monday, April 5, 2021 |
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“Transatlantic Lives: Slavery and Freedom in West Africa and Brazil”
Kristin Mann
Professor Emerita, Department of History,
Heilbrun Distinguished Emeritus Fellow, 2019-20
At the Lunch Colloquium on Monday, April 5, Professor Emerita of History Kristin Mann treated members of the Emeritus College to a fascinating look into the 19th century slave trade in and between West Africa and Brazil. The historical context of her research was the collapse of the Oyo Empire in the 1820s and 30s. This Empire in what is now Nigeria and Benin was made up of several small kingdoms. All these kingdoms were Yoruba speaking. It was forbidden to sell Yoruba-speaking people as slaves though Oyo leaders began to earn money by engaging in the trading of Africans from the north. As the Empire declined, fighting broke out among the small kingdoms and victors often sold captives. By the time the Empire completely collapsed in the 1830s, a half million people had been sold into slavery, some of them enslaved within Africa and others sent across the Atlantic.
The British had abolished the slave trade in 1807 and afterwards sought to prevent transportation of slaves from the ports on the Bight of Benin by stationing naval vessels to intercept traders. In this way, thousands of Yoruba-speaking slaves were taken from ocean-going ships to Sierra Leone and settled in Freetown. Despite the efforts of the British and an 1826 treaty between Britain, Portugal, Spain and Brazil banning the slave trade, the Portuguese and Spanish continued to transport slaves to Cuba and Brazil into the 1850s.
This story was vividly brought to life by Professor Mann’s focus on three related young people – Ajifoluke, Ayebomi, and Shetolu. As Dr. Mann explained, the British took over Lagos (on the coast in the south of this region) and later more of the surrounding territory, and by the latter half of the 19th century had established a colony with courts in Lagos. These courts have proven to be rich repositories of information about slaves and slavery, and by searching the records of these courts, Professor Mann has been able to establish some fascinating facts about the lives of these three enslaved people (and the lives of many others caught up in the Yoruba diaspora that she’s studying, as well).
Ajifoluke and Ayebomi were sisters. Ayebomi was 13 or 14 when she was enslaved, falling prey to the high demand for young female slaves to do domestic work. However, Ayebomi’s mother, Ayiku, had escaped enslavement, and she went to Lagos where she worked to raise the money to buy her daughter’s freedom. Once she had done that, the pair spent time in Lagos and later settled in Abeokubu, a story Ayebomi, as a very old woman, told in testimony to the British court in 1887.
The older sister, Ajifoluke, was also enslaved, but she was sent to the coast and transported to Bahia in Brazil. Shetolu, a cousin of the girls, was likewise transported to Brazil. He was renamed Francisco Gomes de Adroge by his master. Dr. Mann’s research into shipping records has showed that he was back in West Africa briefly in 1827 and again in 1834. In 1827, he met Ayiku there and was able to tell her that he had seen her older daughter, Ajifoluke, in Brazil. It is most likely that Shetolu’s master was a sea captain engaged in the slave trade and using him to facilitate that trade. (Professor Mann has identified three likely candidates.) It was not unusual for traders to use African slaves as seamen. Captains liked to have them aboard hoping their knowledge of the slaves’ language and culture might help with the safe passage of the human cargo on the return trip across the Atlantic. In answer to a question about why the enslaved seamen did not just disappear into Lagos when they had a chance rather than returning to their ships, Professor Mann noted several factors. For one thing, West Africa at that time was very dangerous so there was a good chance of such an escaped slave being killed or enslaved again. Moreover, enslaved seamen were able to carry small amounts of goods back and forth across the Atlantic to do some trading themselves. From the money thus earned, they could buy their freedom. And in fact, it appears to Professor Mann that Shetolu/ Francisco Gomes had earned enough to free himself by 1844. He returned to Lagos where he lived until the 1880s, founding a community of returned Brazilian and Cuban slaves.
Dr. Mann shared more of Aijfoluke’s story, too. She was baptized Luisa by her masters in Brazil. Interestingly, she did not become a Christian like her masters but converted to Islam and took the Muslim name Ayatu. The name changes made it difficult to trace Aijfoluke, but records suggest she became part of the substantial Yoruba community in Rio de Janeiro. Dr. Mann pointed out that slaves in Brazil, except those working on sugar plantations inland, were often allowed to work on their own behalf and sell their produce in the city markets, earning money that they could then use to buy their freedom. Yoruba women dominated the produce markets in Rio. And many achieved freedom. In fact, many more slaves thus achieved freedom in Brazil and Cuba than in the Southern U.S.A., where the conditions of slavery were much harsher and slaves couldn’t earn enough (if anything) to buy themselves out of bondage.
Several freed slaves named Luisa returned from Bahia to West Africa in the 1850s. Dr. Mann has identified two she considers most likely to be Ayatu. Upon returning to Lagos, Ayatu/ Luisa/Aijfoluke contacted her mother and younger sister, and 30 years after they had been separated, they reestablished the family relationship. She later bought a house and as she had no children, she took in a boy, Momo, to live with her. Eventually the two fell out and she ejected him from the house. However, together with an accomplice, he returned and murdered her. Friends of Ayatu refused to let the murder go unpunished and eventually directed colonial authorities to the accomplice, who identified Momo as the culprit. After Ayatu’ s death, the British colonial authorities had taken her property, but her younger sister, Ayebomi, protested and sued, arguing that she was her sister’s heir. She lost initially, but refused to give in and years later, filed a second suit. This time she won, but the judge proposed to give her the property in increments. She refused that offer, returned to her own home, and eventually died there. For years afterwards, people came forward claiming to be her heirs. The case finally settled in 1896.
A last slide showed Dr. Mann in Lagos in 2019 together with a big group of descendants of Shetolu/Francisco Gomes. What a remarkable story. Our thanks to Professor Mann for helping us understand something of the effects of the slave trade on West African families through her enthralling presentation of the results of her research into just a few of the many individuals whose histories she recounts in her new book on the Yoruba diaspora, Transatlantic Lives: Slavery and Freedom in West Africa and Brazil.
--Jan Pratt
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New members are the lifeblood of any organization.
Please make a special effort to welcome them to EUEC!
Milton Ray Brown, PhD, MS, Assistant Professor Emeritus of Pediatrics
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I joined Emory's Department of Pediatrics in 1989 as a lab scientist in the Endocrinology Division. Our research focused on the genetic causes of extreme short stature and clinical studies of new treatments to prevent Type 1 diabetes. As grant funding changed, I worked with the Pediatric Rheumatology Division where the research concerned genetic factors related to arthritis in young children. For the past 10 years, I was associated with the Pediatric Division of Pulmonology, Allergy, Cystic Fibrosis and Sleep. In that division, I participated in research projects related to the genetics and management of asthma in children and most recently, the role of the immune system in the genetic disease of cystic fibrosis. In my 31 years at Emory, I have had many opportunities to work with wonderfully talented investigators, physician scientists, trainees and staff on a variety of research topics related to diseases affecting children. The projects were rewarding and productive and the friendships are many. I look forward to retaining connections to Emory through the Emeritus College.
Many members will be interested in knowing that John Bugge was Milton's retirement mentor.
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I received the above flyer from Julia Bartol, jbartol@emory.edu, a Clinical Research Interviewer at the Emory Vaccine Clinic who asked that I send it to our members. The age range needed does not fall into our demographic, but it is possible that some of you may have relatives or neighbors who would fall into the required age range. I include request this because it also illustrates a tremendous problem in COVID-19 vaccine research. The requirement is for people who have not been vaccinated. It is difficult to imagine many people who would turn down the opportunity to be vaccinated with a proven vaccine in order to participate in such a study, unless the study offers only different types of vaccine and no placebos.
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Charles R. Hatcher, Jr., MD, Professor Emeritus of Surgery
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Cardiothoracic surgeon Charles R. Hatcher, Jr., former Emory vice president for health affairs and director of the Woodruff Health Sciences Center, passed away peacefully at Emory University Hospital on March 27, 2021, at the age of 90. He was the founding chair and CEO of the Emory University System of Healthcare.
He was preceded in death by his parents Charles Ross Hatcher, Sr. and Vivian Miller Hatcher. He is survived by his wife, Phyllis Gregory Hatcher; daughter, Marian Hatcher Thorpe (George); son Charles Ross Hatcher III (Leslie); and grandchildren Charles Ross Hatcher IV, Caroline Hatcher and Catherine Hatcher. He was “Extra Dad” to Andrea Phyllis Slappey, Thomas Henry Slappey (Kari), Holly Pompe van Meerdervoort (Hjalmar), grandchildren Michael and Ella Slappey, and Amalia and Olivia Pompe van Meerdervoort.
Hatcher was born June 28, 1930, in Bainbridge, Georgia, and grew up in nearby Attapulgus, a small shade-tobacco town five miles above the Georgia-Florida line. An only child, for whom perfect grades came easily, he set a course for a career in medicine at an early age.
After graduating in 1954 from the University of Georgia School of Medicine, later renamed the Medical College of Georgia, he chose a career in surgery and accepted an internship and residency at Johns Hopkins. Two years into his residency, during which he served as the Halsted Chief Resident in Cardiac Surgery, he was drafted into the Army and served as a captain in the Medical Corps at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research.
Upon completion of his tour of duty and his residency, he was offered a surgical position on the faculty of Johns Hopkins, but declined the offer. He told his mentor that as an only child, he needed to be near his parents as they grew older, and he wanted to stay in Georgia or a nearby state. “Then you should be at Emory” was his mentor’s sage advice.
Hatcher joined Emory in 1962 as an instructor in surgery in the Emory University School of Medicine and a surgeon in the Emory Clinic. During his residency at Hopkins and then the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston, he trained under the two most talented surgeons of the era — Dr. Alfred Blalock at Hopkins and Dr. Francis Moore at Brigham.
Hatcher brought all he had learned and more back to Georgia. On his second day on the job at Emory he performed Georgia’s first successful “blue baby” operation, ushering in a new era of open-heart surgery for Georgia. He performed the state’s first double-, then triple-valve replacements and, in 1970, the state’s first coronary bypass, all at Emory University Hospital.
By 1971, Hatcher, then 41 years old, was named chief of cardiothoracic surgery. Emory quickly became one of the country’s largest centers for open-heart surgery. In 1976, The Emory Clinic members unanimously elected him director and chief executive officer.
Atlanta’s first “health czar”
As chief of cardiothoracic surgery, Hatcher had been the driving force behind Emory’s rise in prominence as one of the nation’s largest and most respected heart surgery programs. In 1984, after a year as interim director, he took the reins as leader of Emory’s Robert W. Woodruff Health Sciences Center, named for the legendary leader of The Coca-Cola Company.
At the time, the center consisted of three schools — Medicine, Dentistry (since closed) and Nursing — a primate research center, and two hospitals. He would quickly transform the center and its components, setting it on the path to become a leading research institution with the state’s largest, most comprehensive health care system designed to meet the needs of the state and region.
Often referred to as Atlanta’s first “health czar,” in 1994, Hatcher was the founding chairman and CEO of the Emory University System of Healthcare.
Among his most impactful achievements, of which he declared himself most proud, were the creation of the Rollins School of Public Health, Georgia’s first; expansion of the Yerkes National Primate Research Center; establishment of a 30-year contract between Emory’s School of Medicine and Grady Memorial Hospital; assistance in the formation and accreditation of the Morehouse School of Medicine; establishment of the Carlyle Fraser Heart Center at Emory University Hospital Midtown; and establishment of Emory Healthcare, of which he would be CEO.
Activities and honors
Hatcher’s storied career as a cardiac surgeon also includes an impressive roster of activity within his chosen field. He served as president of the Georgia Heart Association, the Southern Thoracic Surgical Association, the Society of Thoracic Surgeons and, for seven years, as finance committee chair for the American Board of Thoracic Surgery.
He received countless honors during his life, including the Robert W. Woodruff Medal, establishment of the Charles Ross Hatcher, Jr. Distinguished Professorship of Surgery, and the Charles Hatcher, Jr. Award for Excellence in Public Health, presented annually by the Rollins School of Public Health to a faculty member in recognition of a lifetime of achievement in public health.
He also received the Distinguished Service Award from Emory University School of Medicine, the Distinguished Service Award from Emory University School of Dentistry, and the Distinguished Leadership Award from the Morehouse School of Medicine.
In June 1996, on his 66th birthday, Hatcher stepped down as vice president for health affairs, director of the Robert W. Woodruff Health Sciences Center, and CEO of Emory Healthcare. He remained for many years at Emory as director emeritus of the WHSC and senior adviser to the university president and board of trustees, who would not give up access to his wit and astute judgment.
Ronnie Jowers, former vice president under Hatcher, called him a “true Renaissance man who could do it all. A visionary who knew how to lead, he understood, respected and valued everyone, business leaders and staff alike." And, Jowers added, "his Methodist upbringing, southern-gentleman charm, and his ability to tell a great story were always present.”
A few months before his passing, Hatcher told long-time WHSC vice president Gary Teal that he would simply like to be remembered as someone who loved Emory University, the Woodruff Health Sciences Center and his home state of Georgia.
In lieu of flowers, please consider a donation in Hatcher’s honor to Peachtree Road United Methodist Church, 3180 Peachtree Road NE, Atlanta, GA 30305, or to the Emory University Executive Vice President for Health Affairs Office, 1440 Clifton Road, NE, Suite 410, Atlanta, GA 30322, ATTN: Gary Teal.
A memorial service will be held in Atlanta at a future date.
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Walking the Campus with Dianne |
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The beautiful wooden structure seen on our previous walk can be found in the Claudia Nance Rollins building. The wood slat wall is the outer exterior to the large Rollins Auditorium. The auditorium is hard to miss, especially if the LED information windows are functioning (see photos below).
The Auditorium is the largest on the Rollins campus, seating 250. It is equipped with state-of-the-art video conferencing/taping equipment and makes it easy for students to keep laptops and cell phones charged with outlets at every seat.
It's a beautiful and impressive facility on our campus. I recommend you take a look whenever we are allowed to move around more freely on campus again.
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No guessing for our next walk...let's just stay in the same general area of campus and take a look at a new building under construction. This one is located along Clifton Road in the Rollins Research complex. Upon completion it will be nestled (squeezed?) into the only available spot among the
O. Wayne Rollins Research Center, Claudia Nance Rollins building, Grace Crum Rollins building, and 1462 Building (old Dental School).
It will be named the R. Randall Rollins building, a 10-story facility that will significantly expand Emory’s Rollins School of Public Health complex, providing new space for state-of-the-art learning, training, and conference opportunities for faculty, researchers and students.
Please click here and here for detailed information on the facility.
I've provided photos of some of the construction phases, as well as a conceptual rendition of the finished product.
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Emory University Emeritus College
The Luce Center
825 Houston Mill Road NE #206
Atlanta, GA 30329
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