On a snowy December evening, Drs. Lamont A. Flowers, Juan E. Gilbert, Jerlando F.L. Jackson, Chance W. Lewis and James L. Moore III were sipping tea at an Italian restaurant a few miles south of the U.S.’s capital, recalling the first time that they met.
For these five Black academicians, who burst onto the national scene with their scholarship focused on the myriad of issues that impact education, the frequent fraternal gatherings have undoubtedly helped to propel their rise.
“Tea time,” as they call it, first started off as an informal opportunity for these “brothers” to encourage each other as they navigated their way through graduate school and secured their first teaching jobs as assistant professors.
But now, as full professors with endowed chairs and all the benefits that come with such positions, they have yet to cease meeting several times a year to discuss the real challenges and issues facing the academy as they individually seek to find ways to collaborate and break new ground in the fields of educational research.
“It was our council,” says Jackson of these gatherings. He is the Vilas Distinguished Professor of Higher Education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and serves as director and senior research scientist at the Wisconsin Equity and Inclusion Laboratory (Wei LAB). “We came together as a council, we used that experience, and we continue to use the experience to talk about the challenges we’re having at our stage.”
At a time when Black males continue to remain virtually invisible at predominantly White college campuses — both as students and faculty members — the success that these five academics (all under the age of 45) have achieved in a relatively short period of time is out of the ordinary.
