REGGIE LOCKETT: Message from Al Young Read by Javier Chapa at the San José City College Memorial, 20th May 2008 — and, in an augmented version, read by Ishmael Reed at the 22nd May Church Memorial

 

Reginald Lockett was indeed a rare treasure: a teacher who cared about his country and its citizens, a poet whose passions and concerns encompassed more than himself and career advancement. Reggie spoke often to me of his students at San José City College and how crucial it was for them to grasp and master what he worked so hard to teach them. It was reading and his love of literature that enabled him to see clearly his own immediate community and the problems it faced and understand that his little corner of Oakland, California was not unique. When Reggie spoke of the gifts that many of his Asian-born students bestowed on him at semester’s end to thank him for teaching them, I could see in his eyes the emotion this stirred.

 

Anyone who finds Reginald Lockett mysterious need only read his poems about growing up Texas, Hawaii and California. In primary school he was placed not in “special ed” but in “the dumb class.” The poem he composed about this experience cites the school nurse who discovered through testing that Reggie actually needed eyeglasses to read properly. Such is the nature of poetry that it enables us to explore the vastness of of what we like to think of as our personal selves. What we are really exploring when we read stories and poetry is our one big self. Strictly speaking, there is no such thing as the other.

 

Reginald Lockett and I agreed that if the spirit of democracy is to be preserved in this republic for which we stand, the United States, it will persevere not on the so-called ivy league campuses — the Stanfords, the Harvards, the Yales — but, rather, on community college campuses, whose students are usually immigrants or first-in-the-family college students. For every Reginald Lockett we lose, we lose a a whole universe of knowledge and experience. We lose not just a song, but an entire album; a symphony.

– Al Young

California Poet Laureate