ABIGAIL LAURENSON: I really appreciate you doing this. I am really excited to hear your story. This is such a cool project that I get to work on.
DAVID MILLER: Sounds like it.
AL: I am in an oral history class right now and we are documenting the formation of the Gay Student Union at the University of Alabama. This interview will be transcribed and will be included in an oral histories project which is the invisible histories Project.
DM: I’m sure you’ve already accessed some of the materials available through the library at Alabama.
AL: The library has been giving us a little bit of a hard time in regard to accessing materials.
DM: I wonder why. It was endowed by Adel Stevens and me. Are you aware of the student documentary that was made a few years ago?
AL: No, I am not. Do you know the name of it?
DM: I can send you a link to it. It’s an excellent documentary. It does contain one minor error. Are you familiar with the name Steve Palmer? Steve was one of the first presidents of the Gay Student Union. He was the first student to come out as president of the group, which took some courage on his part. There is one place in the video where they show a picture of him and identify it as me. Easy mistake they could make after all those decades.
AL: Thank you. Do you have any contact information that I could reach him at?
DM: You can try through the alumni office I believe. He actually did a televised interview with someone in Montgomery. I don’t know if there is archival footage of it or not, but he was so well spoken. I really admired the job he did.
AL: Were you the advisor when he was president?
DM: Yes.
AL: What was it like being an advisor at that time?
DM: It was pretty crazy. I was young. I was 32 when all this developed.
AL: Okay I have a list of questions that I would like to ask you and I want to know about your time as an advisor but first I want to ask you a couple questions about your background.
DM: You’re the interviewer. Tell me what you what to hear!
AL: Where are you from?
DM: I grew up in Southern California. Right near San Diego.
AL: So, you’re not southern at all. What brought you to Alabama and the south?
DM: I got out of grad school and got my PhD in the late 1970s and the academic job market had just seriously tanked for the first time. It has been terrible ever since. But this was the first and I considered myself very lucky to have the offer of the position of instructor at the University of Alabama after I did my interviews. The teaching load was heavy, and the salary was light, but I was employed.
AL: Did you experience any culture shock coming down to Alabama?
DM: Oh yeah! Especially back in those days. I was young and single and had really no experience with southern culture so for about the first 6 weeks that I was in Tuscaloosa I thought I had turned into the most charming southern gentleman that anyone has ever met. Until I realized that welcoming southern culture didn’t have anything to do with my charisma. That was definitely a culture shock. The culture that I was most immersed in was that of the English Department. I wasn’t out and about in country clubs and native Alabamians except in the university. And the culture of the English department at that time was really one of alcoholism, partying, and multiple affairs with graduate and undergraduate students. So that was a culture shock to me. I had never seen anything like that. And haven’t again. That culture died a slow but ugly death in the 80s after issues of sexual harassment became more prominent. People got their consciousness raised about that kind of stuff.
AL: Yeah, the culture shock at Alabama is intense. I am from DC and one of the main questions I get asked down here is “what church do you go to?” And that was a question I would never get asked growing up.
DM: Well when I was there, they used to say Go Greek or go home. And the fraternity and sorority structure were very elaborately structured around where you were from and who your family was.
AL: I actually want to ask another question about the English department. Was there a certain moment they started to crack down on that kind of crazy behavior?
DM: I think it happened over time. There were certain moments when it began to happen and there was a real, the politics of the English department got ugly. We had a female chair who was beginning to try and impose some restraints and talk about sexual harassment and there was an old guard of boys on the faculty that really vilified her for that.
AL: What was your relationship like with your fellow colleagues?
DM: Well, I formed some friendships that are still with me among junior faculty. My relationship with senior faculty, because the department politics were so ugly, there were factions and in fighting and bitterness. It was a real unhappy and dysfunctional family. So yeah, there were a lot of people that I fought tooth and nail against in that department. Probably in the end I wish I hadn’t been so aggressive in my combat with some of those people.
AL: Being the advisor of the GSU, I’m sure that didn’t help with the department politics.
DM: Actually, it didn’t hurt at all because that was something that went across most of the boundaries across the divisions of the department. In the English department, there was never going to be a place where there were super socially conservative people. Because the guys who were the reactionaries were also the guys who were in favor of drinking and partying. So, they weren’t church goers. They considered themselves bad goers.
AL: What was the controversy surrounding the English department?
DM: It’s so complicated. There were certainly privileges at stake. Salary, administrative positions. A lot of it was different ideas on teaching. Some of it had to do with, this was during a period when the English department was becoming more scholarly and gaining an academic reputation. Because of that, there was a shift. I don’t know if you know much about faculty teaching loads but a normal teaching load now at a major state research institution for a faculty member in the English department would be two courses at a time, four courses over two semesters. When I came to Alabama, I was teaching twice that much. Most of the faculty, including me once I got promoted to assistant professor, would be teaching three and three. And at one point the department chair cut it to two and two. But there were a lot of faculty that thought that was wrong. Actually, believe it or not, that and the sexual politics surrounding having people come in to talk about sexual harassment were the two probable most pressing issues.
AL: Did you play a hand in those conversations being the advisor of the GSU?
DM: I was deeply involved in those conversations. It was me who told the department chair that they were never going to get administrative approval to get the teaching load to two and two.
AL: How long were you at UA before you became the advisor?
DM: Not long. It was in my sixth year.
AL: Can you tell me about your decision to be the group advisor? Can you walk me through the timeline of the beginning stages?
DM: I was following the stories in the CW [UA’s school newspaper] and saw a story about a group of students who had gotten sick of getting thrown out of bars because of complaints from frat boys and sorority girls. And that happened, they were harassed at the bars. And they got sick of it, so they decided to do this by standing up and fighting back. And they decided to do this by forming the GSU. And the CW was running articles about this. So, I was reading about this and then I read one article about them having trouble finding an advisor because in those days there were certainly gay and lesbian faculty, and no one wanted to risk anything, and I don’t blame them. It was much easier for me actually to do this. There was an English graduate student that I knew who knew the kids that were doing this and was basically joining them in their efforts. She had put her name down as one of them. And I talked to her and I said, tell them if they can’t find a faculty advisor anywhere else then, what the hell I’ll do it. I got nothing to lose here. And she did and they approached me. They came down and talked to me first. And we sort of discussed what my role would be and what it wouldn’t be and then we shook on it. I had never met these students before.
AL: What drew you to these kids?
DM: I believed in what they were trying to do. There were two other factors that influenced me. One was that I had just recently met with a dear friend of mine at a professional conference. And I knew that he had been miserably unhappy for years and had no kind of relationships in his life. And we were talking, and I said to him, well you know maybe you’re gay. And he looked at me and said, “yeah I am that and I’m trying, and you’re one of the first people I’ve told.” And this was his process of coming out in the early 1980s and I was deeply moved and affected by that because I loved the guy. He was someone who had been a mentor to me and directed a play that I was in in community theater. I just had known him for years in professional and social relationships and I thought the world of him. I still do think the world of him. He is a world-renowned scholar today. That was part of it. The other thing that influenced this was the sort of the atmosphere of the university generally. In my first year, my first or second year at the university, the faculty rose up and demanded the resignation of the university president. His name was David Mathews. And he was eventually replaced, I think there was an interim of some sort and then he was replaced by Joab Thomas. But I was thrilled to see a faculty that would assert themselves in that way. That would attend the meeting of the board of trustees on mass and stand up and demand action and they did get the president dismissed. And that was a heavy time. you don’t see university faculty doing that anymore.
AL: Why did the faculty want the president removed?
DM: Oh corruption. The university was being run into the ground. I don’t think he was a bad guy, but I don’t think he was qualified for the job either. So that created a sense of faculty empowerment. I wasn’t afraid of the university president. Joab Thomas was the president when this all started, and I was like "You want a piece of me? Come down to my office."
AL: You said that you thought you had nothing to lose from being the advisor do you think that was completely true? Do you think that could have prevented you from getting tenure or cut you off from different opportunities?
DM: I had tenure. That was critical. If I didn’t, I might have thought twice about it. As a matter of fact, I had just received tenure. And it’s very hard these days, and then, to persecute someone on university faculty for their political views. I’m not saying it doesn’t happen or it can’t happen, but it’s not easy and it sure wouldn’t have been easy in that situation. And I wasn’t worried about it shutting down. I was very probably cocky, arrogant about my talents and where they were going to take me. I wasn’t worried at all about my academic career suffering.
AL: Do you think growing up in Southern California made it easier for your friend to come out to you and for you to be more accepting towards these students than your peers? Do you think where you are from influenced your openness and acceptance?
DM: Maybe not as much as people would assume. It’s been said “Oh he’s from California, no wonder he thought that way,” but actually I grew up with a lot of prejudice against homosexuality. Not a deep-seated hatred but a discomfort and I had experiences of guys coming on to me. One place where I worked, I got sexually harassed by a gay coworker so I wasn’t really and I can remember conversations that I had during high school and immediately after high school and I wasn’t fully conscious or elevated at all on those issues and I’m not sure what it was that finally brought me around. Probably it was just growing up and having a good friend come out to me.
AL: Did you grow up religious at all?
DM: No. I grew up not religious. My parents were like no.
AL: Where do you think your discomfort with homosexuality came from?
DM: I think it was just in the air. It’s hard to imagine how different the world was in the 1960s, how different the world was. It’s like night and day. So, I wasn’t even sure. In those years growing up you’re not sure about anything having to do with sex. You are nothing but insecure and I had no firsthand experience with it. I did eventually realize there was a clique of guys in my high school that were gay. I was on really good terms with them. But they weren’t out gay it was just sort of common knowledge. These experiences might have helped me loosen up my tight ass attitude.
AL: On the timeline of you becoming a professor when did your friend come out to you?
DM: oh, it was right before. It was still fresh in my mind when I decided to be the advisor.
AL: Can you walk me through the process of getting the club off the ground, like getting it registered and everything?
DM: The students had already submitted an application to become a university recognized group and the university was reluctant to do it. But they had to find the right reasons to not do it. So, they made the issue of you have to have a faculty advisor. That’s why the university’s administration was really stressed when I said “Oh, no problem,” because then they had no legitimate grounds and it became a hot button issue because there was this conservative group. I forget what they were called, but some very very conservative political group on campus who demanded that the university not recognize this group. Then local news started to pick it up then I started to, I was starting to bait them. Oh, for sure. Because I was the only person who was being quoted from our side because none of the students were out and they didn’t think it was safe for them to come out so I was taking all the flack but also really enjoying myself to be honest with you. Enjoying the attention, but that’s what made it a tricky situation for the university, but the university didn’t really have much of a choice. We had the support of the local American Civil Liberties Union. They put the university on notice that there would be a court case if they didn’t act properly. So, the president of the university said in recognizing, in announcing the group would receive recognition. He said the fourth amendment is alive and well on the campus and university of Alabama.
AL: How did y’all get the support of the local ACLU?
DM: I’m not sure how that happened. I think it was already in place when I joined up, but I knew the law school faculty who were involved. And these were the channels of communication that had been laid down during the effort to oust the previous president. There had been a lot of school faculty involved in that. So, there was a law school professor named Wythe Holt and he was a liberal and he was down for this and I knew him well. And the campus, it was a small town in some ways.
AL: What was it like being the advisor to a club with the majority of members still in the closet?
DM: I already admitted to you how much I enjoyed the attention. But then there were times I would get phone calls late at night that were threatening. Really ugly stuff that people would say over the phone and that stuff scared me a little bit. I loved the kids. I got to know, as you can imagine you get to know people in a very special way when you go through something like this together. And I just I really felt close to them. In fact, I was engaged when all this stuff happened, and they came to my wedding and brought us a nice wedding present and were really sweet about it.
AL: How many students were in the club when it was first founded?
DM: There were nine who risked putting their name on the list that was given to the student affairs office but there were easily 30 or 40 at the meetings, which were off campus.
AL: Where did y’all meet?
DM: Well, initially the meetings were taking place in the houses, the rental houses for students off campus so people would be crowded into the living room, standing room only and spilling out onto the porch.
AL: How often did y’all meet?
DM: I don’t remember. Because at that point it was kind of informal, you know. Eventually when they formalized things and started meeting in university classrooms and things became more routine, I’m not actually sure how often they met. I didn’t always go to the meetings. Once they were secure in their recognition I kind of said, "Okay, you don’t really need me much anymore. If you I’ll be right here."
AL: Were the meetings more centered around issues or was it just like a safe place to go to?
DM: Well, it wasn’t a safe space to go to. It was more of kind of a thrill because you knew that that this meeting was something that a lot of people would disapprove of. There were ways in which you could imagine getting in trouble for coming to a meeting like this. I think the substance of the meetings was mostly about strategy. "What’s our next step, how do we do it? How do we go about it?" It was at one of those meetings that the ACLU showed up and said “Look you know we got your back on this, you’re within your rights.”
AL: What were the main objectives of the club when it was first founded?
DM: Um, that’s interesting. I wonder what answer you would get from some of the original students. My perception is that, first of all, they were just tired of taking shit, you know. They were tired of being abused and discriminated against and they wanted something like a safe place where they can come get together to talk to each other about their grievances, but they also wanted a public presence. They wanted the community in the form of the university to say “Okay you’re here and you’re part of the community." One of the most, one of the conversations I had with a reporter, I think he was maybe from one of the radio stations, but it was a real crucial, defining moment for me. When he said, “Um, so you don’t, you think these students deserve this group to be recognized but what about community standards?” And I said, “well who is the community? That’s what this is all about. Who has the right to say I’m the community and you’re not?” And he said “Wow”. I thought "YES! Who is this about? Who is the community? "
AL: What do you think the club’s biggest accomplishment was when you were the advisor?
DM: Oh, I think that individually students felt so much pride and confidence for, because they stood up for themselves. I think it’s, it was also the beginning of a long process of educating that other part of the community. They would have student speakers go to classrooms by invitation and talk to other students. To try to talk to some eyes and some ears and of course it worked. That’s a very gradual thing, it’s not like you know four quarters and somebody won. But they started doing that hard work and I’ve seen how its paid off. I’ve been back to the university since and I’ve seen the kind of progress that started with those students.
AL: How vocal would you say the club was? Were the student speakers the extent of it or did they do other events?
DM: [Sigh] No, they were quiet. They didn’t want to attract adverse attention and in fact, they did have t-shirts. There was a picture of an empty closet with an opened door and it says, out and proud. They did that and they were planning on running a big ad in the CW on the occasion of their first anniversary, celebrating. And the officers of the organization and I got a phone call asking us to come to the administration building for a meeting at 9 o’clock in the evening, when no one else was around, obviously. And one of Joab Thomas’ lieutenants conveyed to us his request that we not do that. For this and that reason, and sensitive things, and the budget, all the reasons you could fill in the blank. And I wouldn’t have done it. You know, I said a student organization like this has to be visible in order to sustain continuity over time. You got students coming and going and graduating and other people coming in and you’re asking a lot, but the officers said okay, we’ll do this, and they were okay with it. It was their decision.
AL: What was the community’s reaction like? For example, did y’all have a get on board day booth, was that a thing back then?
DM: Oh, it was, and the first, well, before the Gay Student Union ever had a booth, this other student group that I had talked about, whose name I’m clearly suppressing from deep disapproval, they had a booth, Young Americans for Freedom, that’s what they were, the YAF. Are they still there on campus?
AL: I don’t think so, I hope not.
DM: They would have a booth on get on board day and they put up a sign that said “how does YAF spell relief? A-I-D-S”. That, it was based off an old Rolaids commercial, if you ever heard of Rolaids, it was an antacid. The commercial was “how do you spell relief? R-O-L-A-I-D-S”, so uh they adapted it.
AL: And the university was fine with that?
DM: No. I went as soon as I saw it, I went and found the director of student services and brought him over there. He chewed them out. But that’s pretty ugly. But there’s a lot of students who were okay with that. They thought it was funny.
AL: How often did the GSU and the YAF club clash. Was the YAF super vocal about their disapproval of the GSU?
DM: They were very vocal. They were out for publicity. The group itself didn’t clash with them much, I did. I certainly took a role in that. But there was a young guy named Rusty something or another, red head obviously, in the local republican sort of party establishment. He was a leader of this group and clearly had political ambitions of his own. And that’s why I think they took such a strong stance. They had the backing of a very prominent faculty member. Probably the most famous historian in the history of faculty. I can remember the head of the student services guy, I don’t remember his name now, but he was okay. He was a good guy and he was always trying to moderate me of course and restrain me a little bit but I remember him calling me up and saying, “David, don’t get into a pissing contest with Forest, whatever his name was, McDonald”. And I said, “why don’t you call him and tell him not to get into a pissing contest with me.” [Laughing] That was exactly the type of young man I was.
AL: Well you had a cause, and a pretty good one. Can you tell me about the students of the GSU and the role they played in your life?
DM: They played a really big role for me as well. There were like sorority girls who were there who were not out to their sororities and couldn’t. Um [long pause] There was just kind of an intense mutual respect that I felt for them and they felt for me. I don’t know if the personal relationships had a lasting effect. The guy I was closest to, the very first president, his name was Elliot something, he died of AIDS a few years later in Birmingham. I remember some of those kids vividly, but we all went our separate ways eventually.
AL: Were any of these kids in your classes?
DM: No, they were not in my classes. I saw them, there were some social occasions, I don’t really remember them but there had to have been, but mostly it was all about the business of the group. We started meeting off campus in private houses. It wasn’t like official university business at that point, but it became that pretty quickly.
AL: When you look back on this time, how would you classify it? How does it make you feel?
DM: Oh, I’m tremendously proud of it. I was ready in 1983 for some of the things we’ve seen happening in the past few years. And I knew, I just felt like I knew the day would come. And so, I feel a strong sense of historical continuity between that moment and my past and the way in which finally, you know, it has become more or less acceptable common sense to the majority of Americans that this is obviously the way things ought to be.
AL: Why do you think it took so long?
DM: I think there are two reasons. One is Evangelical Christianity. I don’t just, I don’t, I don’t you know dismiss it or am hostile towards it across board. Um I am married to a former Evangelical Christian who is still a devout Christian although she’s the black sheep of the family because she came to mainline Christianity. But I think that especially in the south and somewhat across the United States, if you go, if you look from an international perspective, the role of Evangelical Christianity in American policies is really unusual. It’s just not like this in other countries. And I’m sure it’s part of our historical heritage dating all the way back to the reformation which is sort of what our country came from. And that’s part of it. And then I think in matters concerning sexuality people are not very rational about the majority of the time. Both people’s fears and desires are very hard for them to understand and control. I think, I don’t know if it’s just males my age, but I think a lot of people, when they get to later in life and they look back, you think to yourself, “What are the things in my life I most regret?" They tend to be moments of not managing that part of my life that in retrospect wish I had. So, I think those are very volatile emotional issues for a lot of people, even if you’re what they now call cisgender. That’s not, that is not a position that is exempt from perils.
AL: I want to touch on the religious thing again because our class is attempting to draw connections between people’s queer identity, religious identity and southern identity and discuss how those identities contradict but are also a reality for so many people. And the role religion plays in someone’s life when they are trying to come out or accept themselves. Do you think if you were religious or southern you would have different opinions?
DM: There’s probably no way that I could know the answer to that question. The only way that I could imagine myself is as the family rebel. Maybe that’s not what would have actually happened. There’s no way I could have known.
AL: Are you religious now?
DM: No.
AL: What does the queer community mean to you? And those kids from the GSU?
DM: I don’t have as much contact anymore. That was really one phase in my life, but I will say my relationship and my sort of feelings towards those students became one of the anchors for the way I came to feel about all my students, all of the students at the university. As I got older and my children became teenagers and became college age, I began to realize how young students really are and I began to feel kinder and more protective towards them and less apt to be offended by the silly things they do. I think for me it was more of a mellow middle part of my life but my feelings of kind of benevolence and protectiveness towards those students came to be the basis for the way I began to feel about all my students, including students who are, now they are out, but they may feel lonely and isolated. I mean I remember a few years ago, a student at South Carolina, who was clearly, you know on the butch side of lesbian, wasn’t trying to hide it. But she had come to Columbia from somewhere else and she was feeling like she was completely isolated here and I think it was maybe an email conversation I had with her and I just said “no hey there are no red states and blue states, they are all purple, you just got to look for the purple and there are rainbows here too, there are freaks and special people everywhere you just got to look”
AL: That’s kind of amazing. So how long were you the advisor?
DM: You know, it’s hard for me to pinpoint the exact number of years, I would say probably 5 maybe 7. Cause I had really, I had been away for a year, for a semester, I guess I taught at Chapel Hill for a semester, after about 6 years. When I came back, they told me there was a woman, I think she worked at the library, Annabel Stephens, to take over and be a little more involved than I had. And I said "God bless, full speed ahead.” And then there was a while when I thought that they had completely lost track of their own history and they had forgot that I ever played a role and I was sad about that and then they had a big bash on their tenth anniversary, a real big program and they asked me to speak and I came and said a few words about what I thought their experience had meant and I got a standing ovation from this crowd and I just tears started coming down my face. It meant everything to me that someone remembered what we had done.
AL: Well, it seems like you played a pretty important role in the formation of the club.
DM: It’s one of the things in my life I’m most proud of.
AL: How long were you a professor at UA?
DM: I was at Alabama for 16 years and from Alabama I went to the University of Kentucky. I was at Kentucky for 10 years. Then I came to South Carolina in 2004. So, I was at Alabama until 1994, then I had a year off because I won a fellowship, then I was at Kentucky from 1995 to 2004 and I’ve been at South Carolina since and I retired at the end of 2018.
AL: Would you classify yourself as southern?
DM: Well, I’ve lived in the south for all of my adult life. I don’t think that I have many of the traits most people associate with being southern. I think of myself; I don’t really think of myself in geographical terms at all as far as my identity. I think I’m a university professor and, in my experience, the university, wherever you are is different than the world outside the university so I would be more at home in any university campus anywhere than I would be outside of a university campus anywhere. That’s the culture I identify with. Does that make any sense?
AL: Yeah, is there a reason you stuck with SEC schools though?
DM: No, it was pure pragmatics. It is really hard to move at a senior level in academics especially with my field. I was maybe at the part where it was nearly impossible but each step that I took was a step up but starting at the University of Alabama, not to disparage the wonderful university, there were not a lot of other universities that said "Hey we went against prestige and hired somebody from Alabama." Most universities want to hire from higher up on the ladder of prestige. So, in a way to move up from a relatively low point of beginning, you’re swimming upstream. And I, in those terms I see myself as remarkably successful. You know I retired here as a distinguished professor, but I was never able to move outside of the SEC because I just didn’t get those jobs.
AL: I was wondering who you would classify as southern because you said you wouldn’t classify yourself even though you lived in the South your entire adult life?
DM: Well, for most people it is how you talk, how you sound when you talk. I think it also goes deeper and it has to do with a sense of being really rooted locally in your world. Family, for a lot of people it’s church and family. But no, those things are really important. The chair of the English department that hired me to come here to South Carolina is a native South Carolinian, he left but he came back, and he always wanted to be here because that’s what it meant to him. He grew up in Columbia. I never felt that way about the place I grew up and as an academic you can’t really afford to. You want to go where the job is even if it’s in Tuscaloosa, Alabama and you’re sitting on a beach in California going “I wonder what that’s like”.
AL: Where do you think you draw your biggest sense of community?
DM: It has come professionally. To a certain extent it has been colleagues in my department. Beyond that it’s been colleagues that may be all over the world, but we share interests and communicate with one another. It’s a little bit boastful but I’ll tell you, that on the occasion of my retirement, a couple of my former students who are now out teaching at colleges organized a symposium to celebrate my career. Yeah that was, talk about special. But they invited my colleagues around the country and Canada and England to come and give papers, at their own expense I would add because the university was not paying for this, and there were like 20 people, former students and people I used to work with who came on their own nickel, they paid their own air fare, they paid for their own hotel rooms, and it was wonderful. It was amazing. That’s my sense of community. These people that I care so much about, that I’ve worked with even if it’s been long distance.
AL: What would you tell college students today who are trying to get involved in queer politics or just politics on campus?
DM: One, vote. Vote! Vote! Two, be in it for the long haul. Choose carefully what you get involved with and then it’s not an adventure where you get the adrenaline rush and then it’s all over with. Some of the 60s politics that I was involved with as a college student was more like that. We would have some huge demonstration and a million people would show up and then the next day there would just be litter on the ground, no follow through. Think about the follow through. Think about structural change and how best to achieve it. Think about what your talents are and how best to use them with the right organization. When my wife and I decided to get back into this we attended meetings for a number of organizations in town. There is a progressive party, there is a Black Lives Matter group, and we were interested in trying to join those efforts, but something didn’t feel right. It was just nothing was happening, everyone is just sitting here and talking about stuff. I wanted to see some action. So, it was actually the local democratic party that said "Yeah, we want to build something. We want you to canvas. We just raised enough money in the last couple of months, we want to hire a staff member", which makes a huge difference. So that felt, that’s where we settled. That’s what I would tell college students, look around, see what the opportunities are and when you make a decision be firm and understand that this isn’t just until the next election. This is something that requires long term commitment.
AL: What would you most like to be remembered by?
DM: Hm, I don’t know who’s doing the remembering here. The three things, obviously I would like to be remembered at Alabama for that work but also you know there is my professional work, teaching and public publishing. I am going to be remembered in my own field for stuff that I’ve published at least for the foreseeable future. It’s important work. And I like that. I’ve also made structural changes in the places where I’ve been. There’s an academic organization at Alabama called the Hudson Strode Program in the Age of Shakespeare in the Renaissance Age and I was the sort of architect of the program and that was a great opportunity and I’m happy that I think I’m remembered as creating that and here at South Carolina I created a research center that’s still going and I was its first director before I retired. This was a center for digital humanities because that’s a newer field of research. But I would like to be remembered as somebody who had a lot of energy and vision and was able to not only do my own work but create areas within a university where many people can come and do the work they wanted to do.
AL: Is there anyone else you recommend we reach out to?
DM: Steve Palmer, Hank Lazer. I don’t know if Hank is retired yet. At least the last thing I knew about it, he was working in the upper administration of the university. He has a good perspective on those days.
DM: One other thing and I don’t know how closely related it is but I mentioned that there was this sort of sense of not just in me but the university faculty that we were a power and could speak up and get things done. One of the things I did following my involvement with the GSU was to run for the faculty senate. And within the faculty senate I tried to pass a resolution that would in effect required the Greek organizations to integrate, racially integrate. I said that no university faculty member should be willing to serve as an advisor to a racially segregated group on campus. That was a big fight, a lot of publicity. In the end, it was defeated because the president of one of the black fraternities came before the senate and said, "We really don’t want to be integrated.” There were two sides, I guess.
AL: How time consuming was that?
DM: Oh yeah, it was totally time consuming. But I was getting a kick out of raising a ruckus. I was writing angry letters to the editor of the local Tuscaloosa paper. And I was writing letters to the CW. I was enjoying being a firebrand. And I just mention that because it is a part of the totality of that period of my life.
AL: Yeah, the political activist. It’s a pretty amazing story. It was cool to hear.
DM: Thank you, it’s been a pleasure talking to you.