2 Black Men of our Time
By John Blake
Last week I had to be in Boston for the celebration of the 25th anniversary of Wilmot Max Ramsay Week which turned out to be quite a milestone as an energized Max Ramsay, on his recent return from his native Jamaica, from that nation's 15th national elections, and which his Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) won, in a tight contest, against the People's National Party (PNP), after some 18 years in opposition.
The last time the JLP was in Government was back in 1989 when Harvard alumnus Edward P. G. Seaga was prime minister. Bruce Golding was Minister of Construction. Ironically, Jamaica's Wilmot Max Ramsay entered the University of Massachusetts at Boston, the fall of that year, as a Chancellorian Scholar. It would take an equally lengthy period of time for the studious former Councillor Wilmot Max Ramsay to receive his "well earned" diploma which became a political football game.
It would take 16 years for Ramsay to graduate, in 2005. Ramsay became the sacrificial lamb or ram in a drama that saw him cleared from the thicket at UMass/Boston where he served, from all accounts, as the able and capable secretary of that institution's Honors Program; and being "the first person of color to be admitted" to the Honors Program at the University of Massachusetts at Boston. Max Ramsay also served as editor-in-chief of the "exclusive" The UMass Times newspaper which he founded with his batch-mate, friend and associate editor, Daniel C. Bracken. This compendium of the times was to serve as chronicle of events of what would later be known as "The Honors Program War" at UMass Boston.
In the spring of 1990, Ramsay was charged with plagiarism by Professor Fiora A. Bassanese, a faculty member at the University of Massachusetts at Boston, who headed the Italian Department. She later "apologized" for her errata after much advances from the administration. Two other key characters would be Professor James F. Brennan, the Honors Program Director, and Professor Robert H. Spaethling, the Deputy Provost of UMass/Boston who was also an acquaintance of Ramsay. Currently, Bassanese still teaches at UMass Boston, Brennan is the Provost at Catholic University of America, CUA, and Spaethling has retired as professor emeritus from UMass.
Spaethling, I will argue, is a "player" to the core of this portent and "potent" story. The games professors play can, at times, be childlike and deadly. It was overheard, at the Ramsay Week get-together, that the best academic description of this affair is the depiction of Thomas Mann's acclaimed "Death in Venice" with its Italian, German and Jamaican or Polish themes. Ramsay, from his talk to us over last Week, seems ready for court action, and why not? I think that he deserves his day in court to describe his anguish and to look his detractors in the eye.
The matter of race, which Ramsay touched upon, and "other selfish" involvements, without a doubt, are at the core of this conspiracy to defraud Secretary Ramsay.
While mingling with the throng of invitees to the Max Ramsay event, and speaking with two of Ramsay's classmates, they also wondered about a possible "'Death' at UMass/Boston" as they thought that there was no possible way Max Ramsay would have been able to escape the arrows that were coming from all angels in the Honors Program War.
Now, enters Chairman Stephen P. Tocco of the Board of Trustees of UMass. From what I could gather at last Week's celebration, Tocco is yet to reply directly to Ramsay, which would be, on his part, a gesture of good relations since, from the beginning, the issue has been tainted by race.
The truth of the matter is that Councillor Max Ramsay could have gone to Harvard University but because of Professor Robert Spaethling, he, Ramsay, opted for the University of Massachusetts at Boston. It was in Spaethling's interest to land Max Ramsay at UMass/Boston where he was Deputy Provost and UMass Boston Assistant Dean Rosanne Donahue's "well earned" remark of Max Ramsay's diploma plays in concert with other assessments of the case.
Unfortunately, the two Ramsay classmates I spoke with did not have the courage to speak their minds back then as they did not want to be labeled as "nigger lovers." In 1990 when the Honors Program War broke, Ramsay was the sole "person of color." Here, in the United States of America, such an arrangement is special and especially dealing with the brightest and best that the University of Massachusetts at Boston had to offer. The question, therefore, is, is not Ramsay justified in his reflective "An Alternate Commencement Address" given in Phyllis Wheatley Hall, at UMass Boston, for Commencement 2005 when he said that his "tenure" there as an undergraduate was one of "bitter-sweet"?
I was reading today's (Monday, October 8, 2007) edition of The Boston Herald with the Opinion article entitled: "Justice Thomas, rest your case[;] Let time heal wounds of 1991" by Dan K. Thomasson, "former editor of the Scripps Howard News Service." The article, like the Ramsay case, a year earlier, deals with the lynching of a black man. In the case of Ramsay, there was no way a black man was to be able to write in such a great manner. The Ramsay Honors paper in question being: "A LOOK AT DANTE AND PETRARCA'S STYLES." When I heard the reading of the well written piece at the Max Ramsay function last week Wednesday (October 3) I smiled because that is what people of scholarship are supposed to do.
And, now, with Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Yes, that was indeed an injustice and that too was a high class lynching. Although Thomas was confirmed by the US Senate, after a grueling and public examination of his person, for some of us it is very hard to understand how a Justice Thomas would not harbor bitterness. Thomasson correctly states that Anita Hill, who currently lectures at Brandeis University, owes her law professor career to the very man she vilified.
Like Thomas, Ramsay has been criticized for his conservative views. On further examination, I have found another common thread between the two men who are the main subjects of this article. Justice Thomas was appointed by President George H. W. Bush, the very same President Bush Councillor Max Ramsay along with Mayor Shalman Scott of Montego Bay, Jamaica, and other members of the St. James Parish Council welcomed to Jamaica in October of 1983.
I do not want to say that Ramsay erred terribly by going and graduating from UMass Boston because, with his caliber, whether UMass knows it or not, Councillor Ramsay has been an asset to the institution. Then, there are those of us who still feel that Ramsay as a "conservative" had no chance in a den of wolves as UMass Boston with its liberal agenda. Quite the contrary, Max Ramsay told me, as he said that "because of my conservative orientation, I still remain, to a certain degree, a conservative. This subject is very sensitive and therefore I cannot, at this time, delve further into it. All I can say, is that, politically, I am conservative and socially, liberal, due to certain encounters I have had. Yes, UMass Boston is at the meat of the matter."
I decided to run the above Ramsay remark probably because I noticed that he was not drinking alcoholic beverage like other members of the celebratory gathering in his honor. I want to believe that he was of a clear head and therefore, void of being impaired.
For then Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney to have come to Councillor Max Ramsay's defense was indeed noble. Mitt Romney by virtue of being governor and the University of Massachusetts being a State run institution, Romney functioned as ex-officio member. The orders were given to UMass and Ramsay's "well earned" diploma was released.
I admire Councillor Max Ramsay for his recent remark. The public and the private man can co-exist. It will be of interest to see if Governor Deval L. Patrick, on the invitation of Ramsay (in his address to mark his honorary Week), will take a similar route as his predecessor "for a settlement." I want to believe that it would be in the interest of UMass to "settle." The legendary Wilmot Max "Little David" Ramsay was not expected to win "The Honors Program War" at the University of Massachusetts and, therefore, when he did, with the assistance of others, his alma mater -- UMass Boston -- became embarrassed!
Are there contradictions? Of course. Life is full of them. Ramsay, who is chairman/president and executive director of Global Youth Trust, Inc., no doubt was moved on the similarity of being in "opposition" at UMass Boston for 16 years and his Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) which was in Opposition for 18 years that he decided to award his organization's CANTABRIGIA for 2007 to the JLP. Despite coming to the United States, Max Ramsay never gave up membership and association to the JLP. Cutting ties would not have been the right thing to do.
My congratulations to Prime Minister Bruce Golding and the Government of Jamaica who, it is learned, are off to a spectacular start.
(Copyright @ HERITAGE RESERVES, Tuesday, October 9, 2007)
