The College of William and Mary’s year-long celebration of progress and inclusion continued with award-winning writer Brenda Marie Osbey. As a part of its 50th anniversary of African-Americans in residence, the college commissioned Osbey to write a poem, which she presented Thursday afternoon inside the Tucker Theater before a standing-room-only crowd.
“She’s fabulous. Just to have someone that’s of that caliber do this for us for our 50th anniversary is just really exciting,” said Jacquelyn McLendon, emerita professor of English and chairwoman of the committee planning the commemoration. “It’s a once-in-a-lifetime kind of thing.”
Osbey is a poet and author, whose book “History and Other Poems,” won the 2014 Langston Hughes Award. The New Orleans native was the first peer-selected Poet Laureate of Louisiana in 2005. A collection of her poems, “All Saints,” received the 1998 American Book Award.
She launched into the untitled poem she wrote specifically for the anniversary, 10 pages worth of text highlighting the real lives affected by segregation and the legislative decisions that once enabled it, and later helped fight back. The poem promoted standing strong in the face of adversity while decrying those who stand by and do nothing.
Osbey, decked out in a hat and sunglasses, spoke before an audience that was a sea of various races and ages.
“It was a good year to be young and alive and blacker than you knew,” Osbey concluded her poem, referencing 1967. That was the year Karen Ely, Lynn Briley and Janet Brown joined William and Mary’s Class of 1971 as the school’s first black female undergraduate students and the first black students allowed to live on campus.
In a symbol of this progress, the trio appeared at the college’s Aug. 30 convocation, where they led the promenade of new students through the Wren Building, greeted thunderously on the other side by students, faculty, staff and alumni. The tradition did not yet exist when they were students.
McLendon praised Taylor Reveley, the college’s president, for being a strong proponent of the anniversary commemoration and the messages behind it.
“One of the things that he’s been stressing is that when you come to William and Mary, you belong,” she said. “I think that’s important to understand.”
Yet for all the celebration of progress made, the anniversary also presents the opportunity to reflect on what might still be done.
“I want them to take this beyond this year,” McLendon said, emphasizing that the commemoration is more than just one year of celebrating and partying. It’s part of a much bigger picture.
Osbey read two other poems echoing those sentiments. Afterward, she fielded questions from the audience. She criticized some southerners for trying to escape history. She spoke of the importance of language, particularly in poetry, and what she set out to accomplish with her commemorative poem.
“I wanted there to be a sense of Virginia as a place,” she said, highlighting its central role in history and race relations. “There are people and lives at the heart of this story, and it isn’t just a story.”
That means being respectful, not exploitative, in celebrating progress and remembering roots.
For those eager to make a difference, she had a concise message: “Bear it.”
“Young people of all races, of all races, have to recognize the inheritance of this particular history,” Osbey said.
Birkenmeyer can be reached by phone at 757-790-3029.
