Tribute: Barbara T. Christian (1943-2000)

This fall, for the first time since 1971, Barbara T. Christian was absent from the Berkeley campus. Scores of students and colleagues at Berkeley and around the country (and indeed throughout the world) felt a great emptiness in their own lives when Barbara died, on 25 June 2000, after being diagnosed with lung cancer six months before. The absence of Barbara's vitality and beauty, energy and brilliance, have left us all feeling bereft. Remarkably, three celebrations of her life have taken place in the past few months, as though we cannot adjust ourselves to this loss.

Barbara was present to receive Berkeley's highest honor, the Berkeley Citation, on 19 April 2000, in the wood paneled, book-lined Morrison Room of Doe Library. The comfortable room was packed; people told stories. One young black man had called Barbara after reading one of her essays at a local community college. Barbara said to him, "Why don't you come on over?" A former graduate student, now a professor, responded, "That was my story."

On 30 June, a memorial service was attended by Barbara's friends and members of her family. The service reflected her love of flowers, music, and language. Several students read from her writing. In September, with the beginning of classes, the African American Studies Department sponsored an event, Celebrating the Life of Barbara T. Christian. Fourteen students, colleagues, and writers spoke. Chancellor Robert Berdahl wryly noted that he had become acquainted with Barbara's political skills during the strike of Ethnic Studies students in May, 1999. (The strikers succeeded in gaining several new faculty positions and a research center). He also said we should not underestimate how hard it was for her to start a whole new field.

In fact, Barbara is famous for her discovery of the tradition of black women's literature. Her scholarship was prolific and wide-ranging. Black Women Novelists: The Development of a Tradition, 1872-1976 came out in 1980 and Black Feminist Criticism in 1985. According to the memorial in April, these books and scores of essays and reviews "stimulated as never before the embryonic field of African American feminist literary criticism. Black Women Novelists offered virtually the first comprehensive analysis of its subject, as well as a source of inspiration to younger scholars in approaching what eventually became a major area of American literary study."

Barbara's was a life of firsts: in 1978, she became the first African American woman to win tenure at Berkeley and the first to be promoted to full professor in 1986. Barbara brought her own set of values to the research university. A devoted teacher, she received the Distinguished Teaching Award. She helped build the African American Studies Department brick by brick, serving as its chair for five years; later she was chair of the Ethnic Studies doctoral program and helped found the African American Studies Ph.D. Barbara did not split her life into parts: for her teaching, administration, activism, and scholarship were all of a piece. She was a founding member and teacher of the University Without Walls, which in the early seventies provided an alternative college in Berkeley for people of color. She helped write an inclusive, high school curriculum. Late at night she wrote invitations in her perfect hand for fundraising parties for victims of Central American wars. Barbara's doors were always wide open. The department announcement for the campus memorial included this tribute:

A generous host and never having learned to drive a car, Ms. Christian always kept what often seemed like open house at her residence on Benvenue Avenue in Berkeley. A wide array of visiting colleagues, admirers, and friends, many of whom shared a commitment to progressive politics, found her a patient and sympathetic listener. She received them in a comfortable home casually decorated with paintings, lithographs, sculptures, and wood carvings, especially of African or African American origin. Music of all kinds was also an important part of her life. And on...