2024 Year in Review

As the year’s end approaches, I’m pausing to appreciate some of what I did with the blessing called 2024.

Just days into January, I attended the annual convention of the MLA (Modern Language Association), but that didn’t keep me from publishing in MSNBC about how unceremoniously Claudine Gay’s Harvard presidency ended. The second week of January, I gave myself the gift of attending Karen Hunter’s Healthy, Wealthy, Wise Retreat! Besides meeting Karen IRL for the first time, I met Dr. Robin Smith and countless others who radiated nothing but good energy.

By the end of January, I had lost my voice. Fortunately, I regained it in time to give Ohio Wesleyan University’s endowed Carpenter lecture in early February. OWU is my undergraduate alma mater, so I have attended that lecture many times over the years. In fact, the last time I attended was while I was a professor at OSU, and Ta-Nehisi Coates  delivered it after publishing Between the World and Me.

March was all about celebrating Harriet Jacobs! She is one of several abolitionists featured in the U.S. Postal Service’s Underground Railroad stamp series. The Harriet Jacobs Legacy Committee hosted an unveiling ceremony in early March. As I prepared to attend it, I pitched a piece about the importance of Jacobs being included in the stamp series. The very morning that we gathered at the site of one of Jacobs’s Cambridge boarding houses, my MSNBC piece went live. That same month, I made my second trip to her birthplace (Edenton, NC). This time, I got to experience it with dozens of Black women artists and scholars, brought together by Johnica Rivers and Michelle Lanier. March was also my first time appearing on KBLA Talk Radio from their Los Angeles studios! Harriet Jacobs was the main topic discussed. A few days later, I did an Incidents book event at Octavia’s Bookshelf in Pasadena. There, I got to experience beautiful energy from #Knubians, Mary (a fabulous woman I met in 2018 at #TBGWT Live), and so many other great people!

In April, I was inducted into the American Antiquarian Society.

In May, I was featured as a Public Thinker, thanks to my extraordinary colleague Harvey Young. On May 15th, “White Mediocrity Empowers White Villainy: A Conversation with Koritha Mitchell” was published in Public Books.

In June, I maximized a trip to NYC by seeing both Lurie Daniel Favors and Karen Hunter! I was in studio for The Lurie Daniel Favors Show and then had the honor and pleasure of hanging out with Karen Hunter. As we walked through Sirius XM, we ran into all kinds of people! Then, I guest co-hosted with Karen in studio for the first time!!!

On July 1^st, my tenured position at BU began, and it was also President Melissa Gilliam’s first official day.

July was also when Joe Biden endorsed Kamala Harris to become the Democratic Party’s nominee for president. #WinWithBlackWomen was poised to mobilize in unprecedented ways, and their example immediately inspired many other groups. To affirm those efforts, I wrote “Identity Groups Are Mobilizing for Kamala Harris. That Shows Progress” for Time magazine. The ugliness since then has been all about beating back the victory of people truly seeing each other and coming together for each other’s benefit. Please don’t miss that! It is SUCCESS that is inspiring the vitriol!

Especially given the vitriol, it is beautiful to remember that my Time piece led to the opportunity to speak with Jotaka Eaddy, the organizer of #WinWithBlackWomen’s historic Zoom call for Kamala Harris! How did that happen? I was invited to appear live with her on September 3rd on Areva Martin in Real Time. (Areva Martin’s work extends far beyond her great radio show, so look her up if you don’t know!) It was an honor to speak with them both!

Throughout the Fall 2024 semester, I took a journey by teaching Black Women & Life Writing. I felt good about what I had designed, but it proved to be even more powerful than I anticipated. I’m teaching it again this coming semester! I can’t wait to see what another group of students will help me appreciate! Fall 2024 is also when I attended my first editorial board meetings for Johns Hopkins University Press and for the legendary scholarly journal Signs. Also, a few weeks before the election, I hosted Clay Cane at BU. I wanted to expose my Boston community to him and to the ideas in his NYT bestseller The Grift: The Downward Spiral of Black Republicans from the Party of Lincoln to the Cult of Trump. He did not disappoint!

Throughout 2024, there were a couple of mainstays:

1. I served as president of the Society of Senior Ford Fellows (SSFF). It proved to be painful in so many ways, but I stayed with it—doing everything I could. As worthwhile as I know it all is, it may simply never be enough because so much is arrayed against every effort toward decency. So many people claim the American Way involves fairness, but American culture is designed to destroy anything that resembles actual fairness.
2. Once per month, I was a guest co-host on the Karen Hunter Show on Sirius XM Channel 126. I’ve done that for more than 2 years. It’s always an honor and pleasure, but I never assume I’ll always get to do it, so only time will tell.

Overall, 2024 was like all of life: good and bad were never far from each other. I kept deliberately noticing the good so that I could feel its impact. The bad will make itself felt, no matter what. Always, there are blessings to count.

And, in the midst of it all, there are always gifts that only I can give myself. I vow to remember that so that I can be generous.