After All Data Are In: Some Notes on Methodology

AfterAllDataAreIn SomeNotesonMethodology

As did Their Highest Potential, this book has relied on historical ethnographic methods. This methodology seeks to delineate a historical period, event, and/or person with attention to time and place but also to infuse meaning into the events through a subaltern lens that elucidates the meaning the period or event held for the person or people involved.1 The combination of time and perspective is a central tenet of the methodology. The result is intended to be an account that captures the lived world of the participants while also tempering the account to provide context, explore contradictions, and determine the extent to which the story is one that unveils an understanding of a period in history.

Several points are important to convey about the interview data that form the foundation of Dr. Byas’s perspective in this text and the juxtaposing of his memories with the document collection. The first is the consistency of his memory over time and with different audiences. This work covers a period of more than ten years, yet his reports of some episodes as given in the first interview parallel, often word for word, his restatement of the events in subsequent interviews. The information given in private interviews likewise parallels that he provides in public lectures, two of which I attended. In each of these public settings, the audience of listeners could easily have contradicted his accounts had the memories been represented incorrectly. However, rather than contradicting his stories, the nods and other verbal affirmations of the audience added validity to the accounts as I originally received them. Moreover, in public meetings with other principals and in private interviews with Emory’s doctoral students, Dr. Byas’s reported behaviors during the period remain constant. This layering of text has added confidence that his construction of events represent the world as he perceived himself to have experienced it. Although he is more than eighty years old, his memory has remained sharp, and his interviews are almost uniformly internally consistent.

Second, his memories have been consistently confirmed by his documents and other document collections. Some small discrepancies are evident between the verbal report and the paper trail, but typically these dif-

ferences relate to his attribution of meaning about an event more than his report of the event itself. For example, Dr. Byas might report how much he valued the teachers’ meetings, but he does not provide detail on the conferences, except the ones in which he led sessions. A perusal of the documents themselves was necessary to make these linkages. In some cases, his documents and those of others are used to carve an understanding of a period, organization, or event for a reader that exceeds his description. Chapters 3 and 4 are examples of such text. His interviews ascribe importance to the organizations described, but much of the account is derived from documentation rather than his memory, especially since some of the events in the organizations’ histories are from periods prior to his participation.

Third, analysis was significantly enhanced by the identification of particular episodes that function as markers in Dr. Byas’s life. These markers are events that capture salient moments of influence or explain particular behaviors. In the data analysis, I created a cognitive map of influences on his life as he perceived them, then contrasted this map with a conceptual map of leadership I created using the interviews and documents. Having completed this exercise, I was surprised to discover I had overly emphasized Dr. Byas’s professional experiences in the story while minimizing his many descriptions of childhood and college. These analytic tools forced me to restructure the layers of influence and shape an account that did not diminish an aspect of his development that was actually central to his own view of the influences in his life. Chapter 2 is the direct result of the restructuring this exercise mandated.2

A central challenge in historical ethnographic work is subduing the temptation to become overly influenced by the lens of the informant. Reflecting upon our journey, I acknowledge Dr. Byas’s growth in stature in my eyes over the years of our collaboration. However, while his accounts inspire an understanding of the events and his perspective on the events, his documents provided the corroboration and stabilizing points that crafted the interpretation of the story. Indeed, several of the connections between influential life events in different periods are not ones that Dr. Byas articulated in interviews but are ones generated as a result of the triangulation of repeated talk and document review. The juxtaposition of his verbal account and his documentation is sometimes reflected in the story and other times is masked. Indeed, once the credibility of the account was established, I regularly employed Dr. Byas’s often colorful descriptions of events, as his language provides a useful way of introduc-

ing his personality and his world to readers who will never meet him in person.

Some boundaries are important to note. In constructing an account of his life as a professor, I have intentionally elevated the Gainesville story over the Douglasville story, despite the fact that he was a professor in both settings. This choice was made, in part, because the Gainesville story provided the most documentary detail. However, I also made the choice for organizational reasons. While stories of his interaction with teachers and with racism in the community in his earlier setting are compelling, the ideas typically recount the same perspectives that emerge full-blown in the Gainesville account. Where necessary, Douglasville events are used to provide the context for a Gainesville account, but I believe the ordering of the story is simplified by omitting a separate Douglasville analysis. Likewise, I have intentionally focused on Dr. Byas’s life as a professor while excluding his life as a family member except where it directly influences the school story. Like other black professors of the period, Dr. Byas intentionally separated the compartments of his life, arguing that his family was better protected if it was not involved in, or many times not even knowledgeable about, the details of the challenges of his job. I have respected this historical bifurcation and provided no discussion of his activity beyond the school community.

Throughout this endeavor, Dr. Byas has served as a willing collaborator. His function has been twofold. During initial stages, he served as an elite informant, focusing specifically upon telling stories and supplying documents. When his accounts began to be ones in which I could anticipate the ending, I assumed data saturation and ceased formal interviews. However, in the final stages, his capacity to provide a member checks of the manuscript proved invaluable. He carefully read the first draft of the entire manuscript, offering cogent points that substantially redirected the final year of writing. In particular, he critiqued my lack of understanding of the significance of Fort Valley in his life, my failure to separate the superintendent from the community in explaining events in Gainesville, and my beginning the story of his life several chapters into the book (initially, I ordered the book by unveiling the professional networks over time and then introducing Dr. Byas and his school in the late 1950s). His questions, corrections, and additional observations forced me to reevaluate my interpretation of some of the events, and because of the significance of each idea to the content of the story, I made all necessary

adjustments, including a general structural reorganization that changed the time sequence. During his reading of the revised manuscript, Dr. Byas supplied missing details, such as particular names and dates. Except in one account of the navy (which I subsequently modified using the new data he provided), he did not suggest revisions on my interpretations of events in this second check. On his third reading of the manuscript, he expressed appreciation but offered no advice except on the spelling of his wife’s name. Because of these detailed readings of the manuscript, I have used a notation system throughout that typically provides links to specific interviews after major stories rather than documenting the source of every individual quote. However, the multiple interviews I had with Dr. Byas and his three readings of the manuscript give me confidence that all quotes accurately capture his perspective on a given subject.

How generalizable is Dr. Byas’s story as a professor? Perhaps more than we have historically imagined and less than many would like. Because of the network substantiating his work and because of the reports of black professors throughout the South who behaved in similar ways, I believe the story has some wide applicability to professors in other settings. In particular, I believe the systemic structure was central in delivering a message commonly embraced by myriad professors throughout the South. However, as his later experiences indicate, Dr. Byas is also a man of exceptional intellect and fortitude. These personal attributes likely also made him a bit ahead of some other black professors during the era. If this difference elevates the particulars of his narrative over the activity of other professors such that his story creates an exceptional case, then I would argue the exceptional case also has merit, especially when it uncovers a network of black schooling that has generally failed to capture the historical imagination.

Dr. Byas is adamant that there must come a time when a reasonable man will declare that all data are in. This reasonable woman now so declares. The segregated world Byas inhabited is a complex one, and thus each chapter in this text could form a separate book. Future researchers will unravel the tensions inherent in the story of commonalities I have told. However, while future inquiry will unveil nuances and expanded meanings on the role of the professor, the perceptions provided are not likely to be altered, at least not as they held meaning for this particular professor. For his contributions to a new generation of educational talk, I am grateful; and with this appreciation, we bid the world of the professor good-bye.