African American Criminological Thought

8. Darnell Felix Hawkins

129 EIGHT DARNELL FELIX HAWKINS (1946– ) INTRODUCTION Darnell Felix Hawkins represents an individual whose scholarship, like that of others in this volume, has been devoted to the study of African Americans and the criminal justice system. Much of his work has specifically focused on analyses of issues such as violence (particularly black-on-black homicide), theoretical criminology, the overrepresentation of African Americans in the criminal justice system, and ethnicity and crime. Hawkins has also sought to assist in the creation of appropriate solutions to criminal justice–related problems facing the African American community. He is one of the most productive and respected African American criminologists of the contemporary era. BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION Darnell Felix Hawkins was born on 24 November 1946 in Sherrill, Arkansas. He is the last of eleven children born to Busby H. Hawkins and Mary E. Johnson Hawkins. At the age of four, Hawkins moved to Pine Bluff, Arkansas, the fourth largest city in the state, which also maintained the second largest African American population in the state. Hawkins has fond memories of Pine Bluff, where many black students came to attend the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff. Of this early period, Hawkins recalls: “The presence of the college in the town, as well as the sizeable African American population, provided for an environment that was very protective, encouraging , and supportive” (Hawkins, 1997). In 1952 Hawkins attended the recently built Townsend Park Elementary School. He remembers the school being built due to legal and political pressures put on the school board to provide better educational facilities for African Americans. For grades eight through 12, Hawkins attended Townsend Park High School, which was one of four junior/high schools in the area for African Americans. Hawkins graduated from Towsend Park High School in 1964. In the fall of 1964, Hawkins began his higher educational experience at Kansas State University in Manhattan, Kansas. Although he could have easily attended a college in his home state, he chose instead to venture to Kansas in an attempt to 130 Contemporary Scholars “explore the world.” Hawkins was also unwilling to follow the prevailing policy that mandated blacks who were accepted to Arkansas schools to live off campus. At Kansas State University, Hawkins majored in French. He selected this major because during his years at Towsend Park High School, he developed a close intellectual and personal relationship with his French teacher, Lois Faucette. In addition to his major in French, Hawkins began to develop an interest in the social sciences and minored in general social sciences. According to Hawkins, he, like many other persons living in the sixties and early seventies, was influenced by the social activities of this period. The civil rights movement and the Vietnam War in particular changed Hawkins’s perspective on American society and life in general. This change in perspective also swayed his intellectual interests from the humanities to the social sciences. Even though he had secured several appealing postgraduation opportunities, including: graduate school in French, a position in the Peace Corps, and teaching French in a high school in France, because of his change in interest, he declined them all. Instead, following his graduation from Kansas State University in 1968, Hawkins joined the Teachers Corps, a federally funded program to train teachers to work in schools with economically disadvantaged students. He participated in the program primarily for two reasons. First, like many other African Americans of the period, he became more politically and socially conscious. This increased consciousness led many African Americans and persons of other races to participate in various programs aimed at improving the general welfare of African American youth principally in inner-city areas. Second, like many other individuals of the period who became politically and socially conscious, he was not enthusiastic about being drafted into the armed forces to fight in the Vietnam War. Participation in the Teacher Corps program made Hawkins ineligible for the draft. The program, which was associated with Wayne State University, allowed Hawkins to have a primary school teaching experience while also working toward a master’s of arts in teaching (M.A.T.) degree. From 1970 through 1972, after completing both the teacher training and the degree requirements, Hawkins taught third- and fourth-grade students in the Detroit Public School System. After teaching two years in the Detroit Public School System, Hawkins became disillusioned with public school teaching due to several factors, including the lack of administrative flexibility, unresponsiveness of schools to innovative teaching methods, and...