To Render a Worthwhile Service

The notion of rendering service these days is one that most of us generally associate with business enterprises that promise lucrative monetary rewards, or influential political power in exchange for whatever service one might render. Unless affiliated with a religious institution of some kind, it’s rare that we consider service in the manner indicated when the great scholar and humanitarian W.E.B. Du Bois wrote the following: “In the civilized world each serves all, and the binding force is faith and skill, and the skill is bounded only by human possibility and genius, and the faith is faithful even to the untrue.”

During this month, September 2008, of the fifth anniversary of the publication of Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance, I find myself increasingly grateful for the service my co-author and I were able to provide by rising to the challenge of completing the ground-breaking encyclopedia. Initially, I thought only in terms of the personal honor that came from doing so. Since then, however, I’ve been humbled to watch year after year as scholars reference it in newly published works that continue to define, document, and extend the reality of the extraordinary Harlem Renaissance itself.

Among the latest of those works are: Teaching the Harlem Renaissance: Course Design and Classroom Strategies (African American Literature and Culture) by Michael Soto; and Richard Wright: A Biography (Literary Greats) by Debbie Levy. We can celebrate the first for the invaluable assistance it now provides teachers and students exploring the wonders of the Harlem Renaissance in the classroom. And we can applaud the second for the tribute it pays to a pioneering author’s exceptional life. I present them here not merely to pat myself on the back but to acknowledge the value of the principle expressed above by Du Bois. As we human beings attempt to balance our lives between the fury of natural disasters and the chaos of man-made wars and terror, such principles are worth deep and prolonged consideration.

By Author-Poet Aberjhani