Julius Lester and the Gift of Failure

When I began my last semester of senior year in college, I got ambitious and decided to do an independent study supervised by the artist, writer and teacher Julius Lester.

In the throes of young love (I met the mother of my child that year) and the general exuberance of the-end-of-college, I badly neglected my study with professor Lester. Seeing that I was just two credits away from graduation, I needed to at least pass the independent study and so Lester took pity on me and gave me, as he put it, “the gift of a D-, because you really deserve an F.”

I admit that I was too self involved at the time to care about his gift and only much later, when I’d had a few years of the ups and downs of life did I write to thank him. I wrote him an email from my small porch in our little, sunny granny flat in San José, California. I mentioned to him that I’d been too embarrassed to properly thank him all those years ago and wanted to do so now. I suspect that I also wrote because I secretly needed guidance. He wrote back and reassured me that he remembered me and accepted my thanks but also said that the study experience turned out in a way that neither of us wanted. He graciously gave me some words of wisdom that I now cringe at a bit, not because he gave them, but from being so lost as to need them in the first place. But what I treasure most are his closing words, he said “whenever you decide to speak, I’ll make the time to listen.” We began an email correspondence that I now wish had been more frequent.

Julius Lester passed away two days ago at the age of 78. He was the type of teacher that expected the highest rigor in the things that are usually given short shrift, like expressing your own thoughts and living out your passions. A beautiful writer and photographer, he would not let any instance slide in which he felt you were cheating your heart’s potential.

I remember sitting enraptured in his History of the 1960’s class as he brought the time alive for us — through live singing in call and response, and multiple choice exams that consisted solely in questions about the names of deceased figures in the movement because “the least we can do is remember their names.” He also had a way of gently leading students to the right answer without giving anything away, “you should have a question now.”

But one of the things I most admired about him is that he didn’t romanticize his involvement in the civil rights movement. He was critical of highly visible figure heads of the movement that became ensnared in the tangles of fame. He wasn’t a pacifist and spoke glowingly of Vietnam and Cuba, the former for its ingenuity, the latter for prioritizing access to education, and of Fidel himself, who he met, and praised as a model teacher.

For me, as for many of his students, professor Lester was the model teacher. But above all, to this young philosopher who in his words “labored under the burden of great potential,” he symbolized a path. He made me realize that the path wouldn’t get walked unless it was started where it began. As I’ve been discovering, the true gift he game me was encouragement to get on the healing path, and the courage to start again there slowly, lovingly attending to the heart’s dictates.