by Herb Boyd
Dr. Doxey Alphonso Wilkerson, a formidable educator, devout Marxist, and civil rights activist, was born on April 24, 1905 in Excelsior Springs, Missouri. He began his prodigious education journey at Sumner High School in Kansas City, Kansas and he continued on to the University of Kansas, where he earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in 1926 and 1927. Many years later in 1958, he received his Ph.D., specializing in education, from New York University.
As a teacher, Dr. Wilkerson had stints at such institutions as Virginia State College, Howard University, and Yeshiva University. At Howard, he was a professor of education and president of the teachers union from 1935-1943, and later working as a research associate for the Carnegie Corporation study of the Negro in America, 1939-1940. His study, “The Negro in American Education” was included in the study’s final publication. From 1937-41, he was the national vice president of the American Federation of Teachers, facilitating federal aid for the education of Black Americans.
In 1941, demonstrating his academic and civic versatility, Dr. Wilkerson published a study on the Agricultural extension services among Negroes in the South, where he concluded: “While realizing that there is need for further expansion in extension work with Negroes, it is also realized that such expansion can not be made without adequate funds to finance it. Because of the cooperative nature of the work, availability of State and county funds, in addition to Federal funds, is a factor which has to be considered.”
Two years later he joined the Communist Party, where he wrote for the organization’s organ, “The Daily Worker,” and served on its national committee. Like many of his comrades, he was targeted by Sen. Joe McCarthy and his Senate subcommittee on the House UnAmerican Activities Committee (HUAC) as part of the Red Scare. In 1957, disillusioned about the activities of Russia’s leader, Joseph Stalin, he resigned from the party. His political activism also manifested as the executive editor of “The People’s Voice,” founded by Rep. Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., which had a seven year run (1941-1948). The paper was perpetually under attack for its radical views, and when it closed Dr. Wilkerson resumed his socialist/Marxist views as the director of curriculum and teacher at Manhattan’s Jefferson School of Social Science.
By 1959, Dr. Wilkerson centered his concerns on teaching, which he did at Bishop College, in Marshall, Texas, but two years later was asked to resign because of his participation in the lunch counter protests against segregation. His next academic post was at Yeshiva University where served for more than a decade before becoming a vice president of the educational consulting firm, Mediax Associates. He remained at the company until his retirement in 1984.
He was a prolific writer with countless articles, book chapters, and books to his credit. And one of his most explicit articles was his response to why he joined the communist party. “I joined the Communist Party as the logical and impelling next step in a series of experiences which pointed inexorably toward that end. My feelings as a Negro American, considerable study of social theory, direct observation of social relationships in many parts of the country, increasingly extensive activities in the trade union movement, and in numerous progressive organizations, all served to define social values and to develop social insights, the inevitable outcome of which, at some time, simply had to be affiliated with the Communist Party,” he wrote.
Moreover, he said, “I joined at this time, leaving a challenging professional career to become a full-time party functionary, because of a powerful urge to render maximum service to the winning of the war. It becomes increasingly clear that this war has assumed a character which opens up new vistas of freedom for the millions of ‘little people’ of the world. To the well informed, it is also clear that no civilian organization in our nation has more completely subordinated its own special interests to all-out and effective promotion of the nation’s victory program than the Communist Party. Having passed the age of military service, I entered the service of the party because of the conviction that therein lay the opportunity for my maximum civilian contribution toward victory and the building of a constructive and durable peace.”
Along with his union with the CP was his first marriage with Jeanette May and they had one child, Doxey A. Wilkerson, Jr. In 1944, he married Ferda Yolanda Barnett, with whom he shared the Marxist ideology and the teaching profession. They moved to S. Norwalk, Conn. in 1962 where Dr. Wilkerson died at the age of 88 on June 17, 1993.