Download a high resolution photograph of Frank Dobson.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. – Frank Dobson Jr. slyly smiles when asked if
activities at the Bishop Joseph Johnson Black Cultural Center at
Vanderbilt University might kick up some controversy under his tenure.
"I hope so," he says. "I hope so."
Dobson, a writer and poet, has been named the new director of the
Bishop Joseph Johnson Black Cultural Center, coinciding with the fall
opening of its expanded and refurbished campus home. Dobson leaves a
position as director of the Bolinga Black Cultural Resources Center at
Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio.
"Frank Dobson’s experience and vision will allow the Vanderbilt
community and Nashville to realize the true value and meaning of
learning and discovering in a diverse community," said Nicholas Zeppos,
provost and vice chancellor for academic affairs. "We are very pleased
that he will be joining us."
Dobson said the key to a successful black cultural center is "creation of community."
"A black cultural center needs to be a place where people can feel
at home, and I don’t mean just black people. It needs to be a base for
whites as well as blacks. If I don’t accomplish that, then I won’t
fulfill what I need to fulfill."
The Bishop Joseph Johnson Black Cultural Center will be a center for
student interaction and support and a source of cultural programming
and community outreach, Dobson said.
"As a working-class kid from Buffalo who went into academia, I’m
sensitive to how foreign a college campus can seem to people of certain
backgrounds," he said. "I would like to do a program here that I did at
Lafayette College, where we brought African American kids from the
community-maybe 5- to 10-years-old-on campus for educational
activities. The point is to get it across to them that they can belong
here. This is not foreign territory. They can aspire to this."
Dobson’s father worked in steel mills in Buffalo for 40 years, and
his mother held a variety of jobs including work as a domestic. He
graduated from State University of New York at Buffalo and earned a
doctoral degree in English from Bowling Green State University. He
worked as a graduate assistant to writer James Baldwin while in Ohio,
and the first chapter of his dissertation was about that writer.
"I know the doubts that can get in the way of achievement," Dobson said. "’Do I belong here? Am I as good as they are?"
"Those kinds of feelings of inadequacy were assuaged for me by
support systems that I had at home and in the community, as much as
support that I had on campus. Here, we have a black cultural center
that can help a student who may have those feelings of inadequacy."
Programming at the Bishop Joseph Johnson Black Cultural Center will
span the interests and concerns of African Americans, and Dobson says
he will not shrink away from touchy subjects. Among his wish list is
discussion of genocide in the Sudan and why there is not more outrage
in the United States about it.
"I think a black cultural center at a major university in the South
has the potential to do things that aren’t possible elsewhere," he
said, "because of the history of the South, the history of the Civil
Rights Movement starting in the South, and the history of blacks and
whites interacting sometimes in a volatile manner," Dobson said.
"Because of that, a black cultural center at a Vanderbilt has the
opportunity not only to educate, but if there are some wounds that are
still open, to help salve the wounds."
Media contact: Jim Patterson, (615) 322-NEWS
Jim.patterson@vanderbilt.edu