Submitted December 16, 2006, 9:37 AM
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Besides Larry's great humanity and expansive sense of humor, what I recall most about Larry is his courage. Perhaps it is not the kind of courage that America often celebrates publicly. But it was crucial to the intellectual project of history in late 20th century America. I recall how fierce he could be, especially in defense of those whom he thought unfairly attacked. His book, The Opening of the American Mind, while not perhaps one of his books most often cited, was a courageous book that took on the conservative intellectual aesthetes and thugs alike. His address as the president of the OAH was just as fierce. And unlike so many other radicals who have become nicely nestled in academia, Larry went around and trumpeted his book and his views in the power centers, to force those who were in the midst of deciding the fates of generations of future students to keep their mind open about what had been achieved intellectually during the 1960s and 1970s. I recall as well my colleague Bobby Hill saying how much he respected Larry's book, Black Culture and Black Consciousness, for trying to capture the mentalite of the African American enslaved. Again, a courageous act that many a white radical shied away from in the 1970s when black nationalists were ready to skewer any white man who traversed what they considered to be their territory. And I remember, more personally, that at George Mason University, when I was engaged in email debates with the Cultural Studies faculty about the importance of history as a politically engaged practice, it was Larry, alone, who came to my defense and backed up what I was saying in one of his own emails. In some sense, deep in his soul, Larry was a man who had seen the little guy take a beating from all of the people with the megaphone in their hands, and he decided to answer back. We have not only lost a great human being, a great friend, a great conversationalist--we have also lost a great defender.
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