In Memory | continued
NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF WABASH MEN BOARD OF DIRECTORS Jim Hawksworth ’95 President
Tony Unfried ’03 Vice President
Ken Farris ’12 Recorder
Rudy Altergott ’13 Chris Carpenter ’96 Class Agent Representatives
Kip Chase ’03 Past President
BOARD MEMBERS Term Expires May 2024 Rudy Altergott ’13 Jake German ’11 Garrard McClendon ’88 Neil Patel ’94 Brian Shelbourne ’12 Todd Vogel ’04
Term Expires May 2025 Taz Ahmed ’07 Mike Berry ’92 Wayne Hentrup ’84 Byron Lamm ’79 Rick Strasser ’02 Milton Turner ’05
TERM EXPIRES MAY 2026 Kyle Bender ’12 Jared Lange ’08 Kevin Meyer ’06 Harsh Singh ’01 Dave Zimmerman ’93
Faculty Representative Bobby Horton
Student Representative Luis Rivera ’25
Regional Representative Dustin DeNeal ’04
NEW TO AN AREA? Find the Wabash alumni association nearest to you at: wabash.edu/alumni/regional_groups
WANT TO REFER A STUDENT? wabash.edu/alumni/student/refer
CHANGING CAREERS OR ON A JOB SEARCH? wabash.edu/careers/alumni/services
WANT TO CONNECT WITH WABASH ALUMNI AFFAIRS? wabash.edu/alumni/
90 W A B A S H M A G A Z I N E
Finley (continued)
Our first task working together in the summer of 1969 was an ad hoc faculty committee charged with considering adding more Black courses and deciding whether to recommend a major in Black studies. Also on the committee were two highly trusted faculty members, Joe O’Rourke H’65 in speech and Ed McLain H’03, a conservative political scientist. We actually worked well, recommending that professors integrate more Black content into existing courses rather than developing new ones, and a minor rather than major in Black studies. My blurry memories of Finley that summer are that he was charmingly brilliant and was often late for our meetings because he was so busy speaking on behalf of Black Panther educational programs and as Peace and Freedom Party candidate for governor of Indiana. In 1971, when President Thad Seymour refused to appoint Finley to another year of teaching, angry students filled the Chapel to demand he stay. In explaining his reasons, Thad unfortunately used the phrase “either Finley goes, or I go,” which enraged students further. To resolve a worsening situation, Ron Clark and I beseeched Thad to go back to the chapel pulpit, retract his either/ or ultimatum, and say that he was open to compromise. He did that, and the crisis was settled with Finley having a final year as faculty fellow in the new MXI, Horace Turner’s first year as director. When Finley left Wabash a year later to develop Black studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, I moved my family into his college-owned, ugly yellow stucco rental house on Crawford Street that was torn down later to build the Robert Knowling Fieldhouse. Finley and I exchanged furniture, ideas, and lofty aspirations that year. In subsequent years, usually at MXI reunions, Finley and I would give each other huge hugs, share social activist and academic Black studies “war” stories, and endlessly quote Black leaders like DuBois, King, Malcolm X, and Angela Davis. We always enjoyed witty repartee with lots of laughter. When I retired in 2004, MXI students organized my retirement dinner. Finley called me the night before with regrets because he was committed to a Chicago May Day parade for progressive labor and the Midwest branch of the International Committee Against Racism (InCAR), which he founded. I told him this was a better use of his time and wished him well in the struggle against racism. We had both often quoted Frederick Douglass, “Power never gave up anything without a demand. It never did and never will.”
We met again in 2011 at the 40th anniversary of the MXIBS. We hung out that weekend with more hugs, stories, laughter, and other reunion joys. The highlight of the weekend for me was going to the Homecoming football game with Finley. Watching football with him is to listen to a nonstop, ironic, hysterically funny analysis of the game and festivities, especially with a halftime parade of young men dressed in drag. My stomach literally ached from laughter. Then came a long absence. So I was delighted in April this year when Sabrina invited Finley and me to join her class to answer student questions about the early days of the MXI and to help students think through updating the MXI mission statement to better reflect the founders’ goals. In our phone conversation, it became clear to me that Finley’s mind and heart wanted an opportunity to describe the humiliating process of how he left in 1971. Also, loving an audience as he did, I worried that he would launch into a lecture as “the spokesperson for the Unitarian Universalist Multiracial Unity Action Caucus” and we’d miss interacting with students. Which is exactly what happened! Please understand, I love Finley and admire his off-the-cuff, mischievous brilliance as a speaker. Once started, though, trying to stop him is like stepping in front of a speeding freight train. But something else, a sacred moment, happened that day in Sabrina’s class. I had somehow thought Finley’s spirit and energy could never be extinguished, but I was slowly sensing that his days on earth were nearing an end. So with Black students present—at Wabash where he began—this beautiful man, our friend Finley, was putting an exclamation point on his legacy of a career devoted to “making necessary trouble” (to quote John Lewis) and as “a drum major for justice” (quoting Dr. King). We miss you, dear Finley, and we know you’re up there now troubling God and her angels as both Christian preacher and scholarly professor. -Peter Frederick H’92
