Doctor of Humane Letters Coe College

Michael Steven Harper: Son of Katherine Johnson Harper, passed, and Walter Warren Harper; Brother of Jonathan Paul Harper, passed, and Katherine Winifred Harper; Husband of Shirley Ann Buffington; Father of Roland Warren Harper, Patrice Cuchulain Harper, and Rachel Maria Harper; and of Ruben Masai and Michael Steven, who have passed. Afro-American. American. Black. American. American Black. Poet. I. J. Kapstein Professor of English, Brown University. We recite your identities in this sequence, in recognition and celebration of your understanding of the relationship between blood and being, between biography and history, between kinship and accomplishment. Your poetry has been frequently published, bound now in eight volumes, and consistently highly praised. Your peers and professional critics have written of your writing: The finest poetry now being written . .. ., vigorous as well as brilliant . . . an unafraid strength . . . illumination, black-based and other. Because of your poetry you have been often honored: twice nominated for the National Book Award; selected by the Poetry Society of America as recipient of the Melville Cane Award; recognized by grants and awards from the National Institute of Arts and Letters, the Black Academy of Arts and Letters, the National Endowment of the Arts, the Guggenheim Foundation and the Library of Congress. Reflecting on your work, you have written: Let the doing be the exercise, not the exhibition. Today, Coe College honors your doing. Your poetry is of individuals, living and dead. You write of family and friends, of others unknown, well known, famous and infamous known to you personally or kin to you by virtue of your possession of history, of biography and autobiography, of music and sport. Most often, you have written of your people-Afro-Americans, Black Americans-whose traditions are of struggle, survival, and stoical sacrifice. In doing so, you have insisted, and illustrated with astonishing eloquence, that the heartbeat of one human being is related to that of all hearts; that the story of one is related to the story of all. Your work seeks unity among diversity, moves past demarcations to connections between black and white, old and young, powerful and powerless, between past, present and future

History · Latin American and Latino Studies · Philosophy · Race, History, and American Society