SPEECH TRANSCRIPT

Following are remarks, entitled "Teach About the South," delivered Oct. 12 at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill by Dr. William R. Ferris, professor of history and senior associate director of the university’s Center for the Study of the American South. Ferris, who joined the faculty July 1, is widely recognized as a leader in Southern studies, African-American music and folklore. He is the former chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Ferris was the featured speaker at Carolina’s University Day convocation, which commemorates the laying of the cornerstone of Old East, the nation’s first state university building.

"It is a special honor to speak to you on University Day, a day that reminds us how the University of North Carolina was founded on October 12, 1793, when the cornerstone was laid for a brick building on the hill where we meet today amid dogwood, oak, and tulip poplar trees. University Day honors both the founding of the University and the faculty who have distinguished themselves and the school since that time.

I want to speak to you today about teaching, a subject close to my heart. Education has been an important part of my family for several centuries. My ancestors taught in Ireland, Virginia, Alabama, and Mississippi, and I am privileged to continue that tradition here at the University of North Carolina.

I grew up on a farm 15 miles southeast of Vicksburg, Mississippi, and attended a small elementary school in Warren County, where each teacher taught two grades. I was the only student in the school whose parents had graduated from college. Toward the end of my sixth grade our teacher, Gladys Barfield, asked the class, "Which of you students are going to college?"

No one raised a hand. Mrs. Barfield pointed at me and said, "Billy Ferris, you will go to college. Your parents will make you go to college."

I replied, "I ain’t going to no college. I ain’t going to no college."

I did not want to abandon my friends whom I knew would probably not go to college. But I also knew that Mrs. Barfield was right.

My brother Grey is fond of saying that "When you see a turtle sitting on a fence post, you know that he had help getting there." Each of us in this room occupies a privileged seat, a seat that we would not hold without the help of committed teachers who changed our lives for the better.

Teachers in America’s public universities shape education for our nation in special ways. They are beacons for our future, just as the public universities in which they teach are the institutions that shape America’s future. They are the sails that power our ship of state. Thomas Jefferson understood their importance when he wrote his friend Charles Yancey in 1816 "If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."

Democracy cannot exist without an educated citizenry, and we cannot sustain our democratic institutions as a nation if we do not nurture outstanding teachers within universities like UNC. Public universities and their teachers are the backbone of our nation’s educational infrastructure.

As America’s oldest public university, UNC and her faculty have both a special responsibility and a place of honor within this history.

I have always believed that Chapel Hill and the University of North Carolina are national treasures. As I look back on my life, I am struck by how many of my teachers, my academic colleagues, and my students were trained at UNC.

As an undergraduate at Davidson College in the early ‘60s, William Goodykoontz taught me English and inspired me to pursue a teaching career. Dr. G, as he was known by his students, received his Ph.D. in English at UNC and often spoke of Frank Graham and his courageous stands as an educator.

While teaching at Yale University, I was privileged to know C. Vann Woodward, the great southern historian who did his Ph.D at UNC. Two of my finest graduate students at Yale, Allen Tullos and Candace Waid, came from UNC to pursue their PhDs in American Studies. Today Allen teaches at Emory University and is Editor of Southern Changes, and Candace teaches at the University of California at Santa Barbara.

In 1978 I left Yale to direct the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi. I was hired by Chancellor Porter Fortune who did his Ph.D in history at UNC and was an old friend of George Tindall. Chancellor Fortune was well aware of UNC’s pioneering work in studying the American South, and he believed that similar work should be done at the University of Mississippi.

At the University of Mississippi, many of my colleagues on the faculty had UNC degrees, including Jim Webb, Chairman of the English Department, David Holman, Lisa Howorth, Charles Eagles, and Bob Brinkmeyer. One of our finest Southern Studies students, David Nelson, was a UNC graduate who edited Living Blues for a number of years.

While serving as Chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, I was especially proud that NEH gave its highest honor, the presidentially bestowed National Humanities medal, to Bill Friday and to Jacquelyn Hall. The Chair of NEH’s National Council on the Humanities was UNC Associate Dean Darryl Gless. While at NEH, I hired the agency’s first black Congressional Liaison, Mike Bagley, a UNC graduate from Oxford, North Carolina. Mike is now Director of Public Policy in the Southwest for Verizon Wireless. And I named Wilsonia Cherry, a UNC Ph.D. in English, Deputy Director of the agency’s Education Division.

At every step along my journey as a student, teacher, and administrator, I have been privileged to work with colleagues who were trained at the University of North Carolina. But why am I here today. What drew me to this beautiful campus is what we celebrate today — excellence in teaching and the belief that great teachers make a difference in each of our lives. They certainly did in mine.

After working as an administrator for 22 years I decided to follow my heart and return to the classroom. Having studied the American South for over 40 years, I was well aware of UNC’s outstanding faculty and research archives with over 20 million collections on the region. It was an easy choice. What my wife Marcie and I did not know was the incredibly warm welcome we would find in Chapel Hill and at the University.

I am here today not as a visiting dignitary who will speak today and make my exit tomorrow, but as a partner, ready to roll up my sleeves and work with you to deepen UNC’s commitment to the study of the American South.

As a folklorist I love to quote an African proverb that says, "When an old man or woman dies, a library burns to the ground."

Many of my most memorable teachers were blues singers, quilt makers, and storytellers who received their education through "fireplace training."

Their voices linger in my ear. I can still hear blues singer James "Son" Thomas, singing, "You may be beautiful, but you got to die some day. I want a little bit of your love before you pass away."

I hear the voice of mule trader/storyteller Ray Lum, as he repeated his favorite phrase, "You live and learn, and then you die and forget it all."

And I can hear B.B. King hit bottom when he sings "Nobody loves me but my Momma, and she might be jiving too."

Southern musicians, storytellers, and writers all anchor their work in the places where they live. And each of us is deeply connected to what William Faulkner called his "little postage stamp of native soil."

We rarely think about these worlds until we leave them. Robert Penn Warren once told me that "A fish never thinks about water until he’s out of it."

Eudora Welty writes eloquently about the power of place. "Place absorbs our earliest notice…it bestows on us our original awareness…It perseveres in bringing us back to earth when we fly too high…One place comprehended can make us understand other places better. Sense of place gives equilibrium; extended, it is sense of direction too."

By studying the American South, UNC anchors itself and its students in powerful ways. The University of North Carolina has long been a fount of knowledge on the region. Blyden Jackson pioneered the study of black literature. Joel Williamson has explored the worlds of William Faulkner and Elvis Presley. Jacquelyn Dowd Hall has given us rich oral histories of Southerners. John Shelton Reed defined the sociology of the South. Harry Watson has built a core of research, teaching, and public programs on the region. Hugh Holman taught generations of students Southern literature, just as Dan Matthews has taught them about Southern religion. Trudier Harris, Dan Patterson and Terry Zug have helped us understand southern folklore, and Glenn Hinson and his fine students are developing impressive work for the field. These are but a few of the UNC teaching stars who have studied our "little postage stamp of native soil."

Each of us here today must make a pledge for ourselves and for future generations that we will do our part to make UNC the hearth, the crossroads where students and scholars from all corners of the globe will come to study the American South. This leadership role will increasingly position UNC to chart the future of both our region and our nation. There is a certain irony when we consider that Southerners are teaching the nation about inclusiveness and the importance of understanding the Koran and other cultures.

The Irish poet William Butler Yeats once remarked that, "If we dream a dream long enough, we create the reality." Together we can and will realize the dream that Chancellor Moeser and each of us share, the dream that UNC will become the leading public university in the nation.

As we "teach about the South," we encounter Southern voices like that of the blues artist who chronicled his rural world with the verse:

"I’m sitting here all alone in my one-room country shack.

My woman has left me and won’t be back."

These voices touch the heart and linger in our ear. One of my favorites from the Mississippi Delta is called "Baby, Please Don’t Go." Before I sing it, I want to tell you that I’ve had many requests this morning, and I’m going to sing anyway.

"Baby, please don’t go,

Baby, please don’t go,

Baby, please don’t go down to New Orleans.

You know I love you so.

Yes, I love you so.

They got me way down here,

They got me way down here,

They got me way down here on the Parchman Farm.

They treat me like a dog.

Turn your lamp down low,

Turn your lamp down low,

Turn your lamp down low, boogie all night long.

Baby, please don’t go."

Thank you very much.

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University Day Web link: http://www.unc.edu/u_day/

Contact: Mike McFarland, (919)962-8593