Anthony Walton, on the campus of Bowdoin College in Brunswick. His book of essays “The End of Respectability” came out in October. Derek Davis/Staff Photographer

Anthony Walton remembers thinking hard about the experience of Black Americans over the years – including the progress, the roadblocks and the major backsteps – when his father died.

It was the early days of President Donald Trump’s first administration, and much of the progress made towards racial equality seemed to be eroding, fast.

“My father had done so much – leave Mississippi, join the Air Force, work the same brutal job for 42 years – to try and assimilate into the American mainstream. He was bewildered by Trump, by Charlottesville, and I think he wondered if he had somehow been deceived,” said Walton, 64. “This was a man who grew up in the teeth of Jim Crow, and he was witnessing a re-eruption of what he thought had been transcended. He, and I, and I think a lot of other people we knew began to wonder if we had grossly misjudged our nation and many of its inhabitants. ”

That moment helped inspire Walton, a poet and English professor at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, to put out a book of essays called “The End of Respectability: Notes of a Black American Reckoning with His Life and His Nation.”

The book came out Oct. 15, as Kamala Harris’ bid to become the first Black woman to serve as president was bringing new attention to issues of race. The book includes a dozen essays, including three new ones and several he’s written for magazines or other publications over the past 30 years or more.

Some of the essays focus or touch on moments or movements, including the national reaction to the killing of George Floyd, a Black man, by police in 2020 and the presidential campaign of George H.W. Bush in 1988 using the image and story of Willie Horton – a Black man serving a life sentence for murder who committed rape and other violent crimes while on furlough – to stoke fear among voters. His essays also touch on education, the treatment of other minority groups, the late conservative commentator William F. Buckley Jr., his parents and the aftermath of Barack Obama serving as the country’s first Black president.

COMPOSING HIS THOUGTHS

The publisher Godine first asked Walton to consider a book of essays three or four years ago, and he started thinking of a theme, collecting past writings and writing new essays. So the fact that the book was finished during the presidential campaign and after Harris had become the Democratic nominee was not something that had been planned, specifically. But the general topic of the book is certainly timely, said Celia Johnson, editor at Godine.

“We felt that Anthony is an important voice in the literary landscape and particularly appreciate his breadth of work, spanning decades,” Johnson said. “He’s unafraid of exploring and stating hard truths but also remains open to hope. That combination of qualities feels particularly necessary today.”

As a writer and teacher, Walton liked the idea of an essay book that could help him focus his own thoughts and observations over time, about race in this country.

“Composing and assembling the essays (in the book) became a way to examine my thoughts over time, to see that many of my ideas and thoughts had been engaging each other in a fugal and contrapuntal fashion over time,” said Walton. “To then lay it all out in a fashion that made sense to me, and that I hoped others might find interesting and/or useful, was very satisfying.”

Walton was born and raised in a suburban area around Chicago, where his parents were active in their church, clubs and local politics. His parents both were born during the Great Depression in Mississippi and came north in search of a better life. He was drawn to poetry and writing and got his undergraduate degree from the University of Notre Dame, then a master’s of fine arts in creative writing from Brown University in 1987. He wrote for magazines and other publications.

He began teaching at Bowdoin College nearly 30 years ago and has written several other books. His 1996 book “Mississippi: An American Journey” was an exploration of his parents’ home state, combining social history and memoir. With basketball hall of famer Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, he wrote “Brothers in Arms,” which came out in 2004 and focused on a tank battalion that became the first all-Black armored unit to see combat in World War II.

Anthony Walton, author and Bowdoin professor, walking on the campus in November. Derek Davis/Staff Photographer

DISRESPECT AND RAGE 

As well as being the title of the book and an essay in it, “end of respectability” is a theme or concept for the framework of the writings that Walton included. It comes from that time during the first Trump administration when the future became more uncertain for many older Black citizens, who had lived through segregation and seen so much change, seemingly for the better.

“It was based upon the idea that so many African Americans had worked hard to be a part of things in the United States, to fit in, to valiantly be good citizens – including serve, as my father did, in the Armed Forces – and whether or not that had been successful or useful became a question for me after the election of Donald Trump, and is even more so now,” said Walton. “There was and is a great deal of disrespect and rage directed at us by MAGA, and further, there were a number of white citizens who also didn’t seem to care if African Americans were mocked and disparaged, even if they themselves did not directly engage in that sort of activity. It made me wonder if the MLK ‘content of your character’ approach had been misguided, a mistake or had outlived its usefulness.”

Walton says the result of the latest presidential race, if anything, has confirmed that view for him. He feels it’s important for him to speak “more clearly and forcefully” about what’s important to him.

In the introductory chapter to the book, “Some of Us Are Driving a Stolen Car,” Walton writes about fairness and the treatment of other oppressed groups, including women and poor white people. He writes that American’s desire for social justice waxes and wanes. He compares white Americans living with the knowledge of how Blacks and others have been treated – and how that treatment has helped give them advantages over the years – to finding out a beloved car gifted from your grandfather was actually stolen.

“Do you give it back? Do you say, Well, that’s unfortunate but that was a very long time ago?” Walton writes in the book. “Do you stand on a street corner downtown and proclaim your innocence because you didn’t know the provenance of your cherished car?”

Though the subject matter is sobering, some of Walton’s essays contain optimism, said Guy Mark Foster, a colleague of Walton’s in the Bowdoin English department. He also thinks Walton’s background as a poet helps him to see the subjects he’s writing about differently than many of us would.

“Poets are trained to look at the world more closely than most of us do. They see between the cracks and do not settle for easy, superficial answers to complex questions and problems. Language, for poets, becomes one of the keys to understanding,” said Foster. “There’s a care and precision in each of the essays in this collection. Although in life Anthony speaks softly, in his writing he speaks loudly.”

While Walton is worried that Trump’s tone and words could “create a permission structure” for people to act out in ways in potentially dangerous ways, he’s also found things recently to be encouraged by.

“What I am encouraged by is that I see various groups and folks pursuing action and resolving to organize themselves and educate themselves and get ready to meet the challenges of the future,” said Walton. “I believe in the two-party system, first, because it is what we have evolved, but, second, because I think an exchange of ideas and approaches is healthy and useful. I don’t think I, or ‘my side,’ has all the answers.”