One of a Kind: An Interview with Professor Salisbury
Tracey Salisbury is a Visiting Owen Duston Assistant Professor of History. She is an African-American woman, a lover of rap music and hip-hop culture, and a provocative teacher whose use of unorthodox materials such as graphic novels in the classroom has drawn the ire of some conservative critics. She also happens to be a big fan of Stonewall Jackson.
Before she was a professor, Salisbury worked for the National Park Service guiding tours of Civil War battlefields. She gave interpretations of, among other things, Stonewall Jackson and the Battle of Chancellorsville. She likes to tell the story of one particular tour where she was confronted with the task of detailing the battle to a particularly southern-looking gentleman, who arrived in a van with the Confederate flag in “every available space.” When the bearded old man got out of the van with his three children, Salisbury’s companions laughed at the fact that an African-American woman was about to lecture to an obvious southern “redneck” about the Civil War. Salisbury was nervous throughout the whole talk, as the old man stared intently at her the entire time. When the time came for the question and answer session, the old southerner was the first to raise his hand. Salisbury reluctantly called on him, certain that he was indignant about a black woman claiming any kind of authority on the Confederacy.
“Ma’am,” he said, “I just wanted to say that was the best darn interpretation of Stonewall Jackson I ever heard, and it would be a pleasure for me to shake your hand.” After shaking her hand, he recommended that she become a teacher, introduced her to his children, then stepped back and said, “And just as a final gesture, I would love to salute you.” He clicked together his heels, and gave her a hearty Confederate salute.
That old man would not be the last to be pleasantly surprised by Salisbury’s rendition of history. When I first registered for History 240 last semester, I didn’t know who the professor would be. Dr. Pitts was no longer teaching the class, and the course description did not provide the name of the professor who would replace her. When I found out at the end of the semester that the class would be taught by Professor Salisbury, my initial reaction was to roll my eyes. I had attended a lecture she had given earlier that year. It was about Hip Hop “culture.” Since my knowledge of music doesn’t extend too far beyond Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, and a handful of old hymns, I was very lost. But I was able to take away what I saw as a few of the main themes: 1.) Hip Hop is cool, 2.) You, therefore, are not cool because you do not understand Hip Hop, and 3.) Capitalism destroys good music. From this I concluded that she was a brilliant but somewhat misguided liberal (a nice fit, I thought, for the history department) who would lecture me in class about the evils of America’s founding ideals; she would likely offer constant and unnecessary critiques of Wabash College, and of Wabash men. My assumptions were wrong.
My point in writing this piece is not to prove that Professor Salisbury is a conservative. She is obviously not. Neither is my point to chastise her for being a liberal. She is not that either. Against the backdrop of a faculty survey that often portrays Wabash students in a negative light, I merely intend to tell a positive story of a new professor whose initial impressions of the College have not been so downbeat, and whose view of history may surprise those who, like me, may be a bit too quick to jump to conclusions about people.
Salisbury is from Los Angeles, California. She attended Beverly Hills High School, not because of her financial standing but because of her academic and athletic ability. She hoped to one day get into the sports business. After majoring in political science at Holy Cross College in Massachusetts, she received her masters in Sports Administration at Central Michigan University. She is not intimidated by Wabash’s all-male atmosphere. “I teach sports,” she told me in a recent interview, “Sports are my expertise. So I’ve had all-male classrooms before.”
She claims that Wabash’s all-male status wasn’t even a factor in her decision to take a job here. “I hadn’t even considered it,” she says. She learned a lesson from her experience with the old southerner at Civil War battlefield: that the “extra” factors about herself, the fact that she is a black woman, don’t matter so much as long as she shows passion for the subject. “My greatest fear, when I was doing those talks, was the public,” she says. “But the public saw my passion and my excitement for the subject. So all the extras that I thought mattered didn’t, and we connected though that. Because that’s what they’re ultimately there for someone [who] cares about the park and cares about the story.” She is able to apply that lesson as a female teacher at a college for men. “When I came here, this place being all-male, I was like, If you’re a good teacher and you respect the guys, you’ll go here. And so far that’s been the case for me.” She doesn’t have a problem with the all-male environment. “It wasn’t in the ‘problem’ column,” she says. “It was in the ‘unique’ column.”
It was, in fact, Wabash’s unique environment which led her to take a visiting professor position. When she entered the job market last year, she was offered four positions at different colleges. Three of them were tenure-track. The other was Wabash. “I wanted to be around top notch students,” she says. Her main desire was “to be around a positive environment where people were really passionate about learning. And out of my choices, I felt that was Wabash.” So she decided to “roll the dice,” as she puts it, “and see what happened.” Thus far, she has not been disappointed with her decision.
She has also enjoyed Wabash traditions, describing them as “great,” “awesome,” and “pretty cool.” “The traditions here at Wabash—you have to take responsibility for each other,” she says. “I think you guys take care of each other, and I admire that.” She does claim that traditions take some time to learn. “Some things are traditional in a sense, like what you see on other campuses, and some things are unique to Wabash, and it takes time to learn those things,” she explains. You have to ask questions in order to figure things out. “To me, being a woman doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re an outsider. It just means that maybe you might have to ask a few more questions to find out what you want to know … I don’t feel I’ve been left out of the traditions here.”
In the classroom, Salisbury takes a balanced approach to history. When it comes to teaching about the founding fathers, often demonized by modern historians for their flaws, she describes them as “complex” as opposed to “bad.” On the trend of attacking such historical figures, she says, “I think we have to go beyond that or people can’t learn.” You have to see historical figures for what they are: complex people in circumstances that are very foreign to us. “You take people out of their time and place, then say ‘They were evil, they were bad,’” she says, but “you have to put people in their time and place and see them as a human being.” This trend goes in two directions, she believes. While some Americans demonize historical figures like the founding fathers, others idolize them, and make them out to be flawless. Historians have to be willing to examine every aspect of a person, exposing all the virtues and all the vices. “The key to being a historian is you have to not be afraid to pull the sheet back.”
She does not see it as her job in the classroom to push her particular view of history on students. “You have to put the information out there and let the students decide,” she says. She claims that her fairness to the founding fathers comes, in a way, from the Golden Rule. She treats them fairly, because she would like others to do the same for her. “For me, as a professor, I’m in the complexity when I’m standing up there, baby-faced looking, black and a woman, and I teach history, and I get up there and wax some poetic about the Civil War. Sometimes I don’t know what my students are thinking,” she says. “I want you to give me the same opportunity. Maybe that’s why I treat characters that way.”
As for her motivations for teaching, she says, “I teach because it’s fun. The minute it stops being fun, I’m out.” So far, we can then assume, her time at Wabash has been enjoyable. She describes her experience with Wabash students as “extremely positive.” “At the end of the day, whether I’m here next year or not, this was the best choice for me, because I’ve become better already,” she explains, “I made an excellent choice. I know I did. I made an excellent choice in coming here.”
She is not a conservative, but she appreciates Wabash’s students, and its unique environment. It is not too early to salute her for that.ca
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