Public Employee Press

February is Black History Month
Remembering Bill Mackey

Author, professor, engineer, photographer, DC 37 teacher

By SUSAN BAILEY
DC 37 Education Fund

Most of us remember him bounding through the halls on the second floor of the union building, carting shopping bags filled with rare books, vinyl record albums, videos or cassettes, eager to share the wisdom and enthusiasm he always carried with him. Eminent historian, writer, photographer, a wellspring of knowledge and inspiration, he was our professor, our griot, our friend: William Mackey Jr., June 9, 1920 – Oct. 2, 2004.

For 22 years, he taught Black History and Culture to DC 37 retirees — and all others who found the door of his classroom ajar and inviting — in two-hour weekly lectures where he discussed current events, digressed to the past and cleverly connected the two. Whether the afternoon’s theme was the trans-atlantic slave trade beginning in the 1440’s, or the Chinese emperor’s war on opium in 1838, his presentation was not complete until he examined their effects on present-day society.

William Mackey Jr. lived through most of the 20th century. He grew up in rural Georgia as a wave of lynchings swept the country. Often he spoke of the nine young black men charged with raping two white women on an Alabama freight train in the 1930s. Even after one of the women admitted that they had lied, the “Scottsboro Boys” were found guilty.

Life and Death
The observant young Mackey later wrote: “All black southerners must develop a sense of apprehension if they hope to survive in their homeland…. a sense that must be acquired early in life and sharpened to the point where it reacts like an extra reflex muscle. Its presence can often spell the difference between life and death.” When he left the South, he vowed never to return.

Drafted into the Army in World War II, Mackey served as an interpreter of French and Italian, then an almost unheard of position for an African American man. After the war, he moved to New York City, earned a degree in structural engineering and helped design school and office buildings statewide.

During his student years, he became friends with Shirley Graham and W.E.B. DuBois, a founder of the NAACP. They encouraged his studies and invited him to Sunday evening gatherings at their home.

Professor Mackey spoke of the awe he felt when he first viewed the couple’s collection of books, a library of black history, some published in the 19th century. Beneath the title of each book was the signature of W.E.B. Dubois.

Mackey’s keen and observant eyes led him to photography. In the 1960s, he worked as a freelance photojournalist for magazines including “Time,” “Life,” and “The Liberator.”

By 1961, Mackey had an East Village coffeehouse, Les Deux Megots, where poetry readings and political discussions featured artists and intellects such as LeRoi Jones (Amiri Baraka), Allen Ginsberg, Carol Berge, Paul Krassner and William F. Buckley. He valued his friendships with Richard Wright, Paul Robeson, John Oliver Killens and Maya Angelou.

Mackey also had deep respect for the folks who made the most of the little they could garner from the racist society of southeast Georgia. His grandmother, Harriet Weston, spent her first eight years in slavery, tilled the soil in Scarlett, Ga., confronted the KKK, and at 94 sat down to learn to read from the Bible with the help of her grandson. In lectures, he often brought forth her down-to-earth wit and wisdom to clarify a complex issue.

In the early 1970s, he became a professor of history in the Black Studies Dept. at City College. From 1978 until his illness in July 2003, Mackey taught history and labor studies at Empire State Labor College. On Thursday nights, he rushed from Empire to the community room of his apartment building on St. Marks Place in Brooklyn, where he led a study group on history, art, literature and jazz.

Challenging students
He filled lectures with laughter, information and his analytical nature. He demanded that his students learn to be critical thinkers. Irene Jenkins, a member of his class at DC 37, recalls how Professor Mackey challenged students to “never take anything we read at face value, but to research, think out and examine the facts and language used beyond what was presented.”

Many of us who worked for the Education Fund looked forward to seeing Mackey with his shopping bags. We cherished our conversations with him. Education Fund Librarian Ken Nash remembers Mackey as “a real scholar, always teaching and learning and never too busy to share his wisdom. His know-ledge was truly encyclopedic. You could start talking with him about the current election and end up discussing the historical exclusion of African Americans from labor unions.”

And Mackey loved teaching — so much that his preparation for it, his research, reading and positive experiences in the classroom eventually displaced much of the disappointment and anger he had lived with since he was a young man in the Jim Crow South.

We look forward this year to the publication of “Down Home: A Return to the Georgia Backwoods,” a book of his photos and stories of his return home to a rural community undergoing modernization, his beloved Scarlett, Ga. He now rests in the local cemetery there at the foot of Harriet Weston’s grave.