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 By combining her
research interests with a desire to help
students seek out the truth, Dr. Kendra A. King, assistant
professor of politics and assistant director of the Rich
Foundation Urban Leadership Program, is practicing what she
preaches when she said, “Oglethorpe is organic teaching,
learning and leadership at its best!”
King, who came to Oglethorpe three years ago from the University
of Georgia, teaches the basics (State and Local Government) and
in-depth studies (From Montgomery to Memphis – The Political
Evolution of Martin Luther King, Jr.), each attracting a large
following during her short tenure at Oglethorpe.
Her newest course, The Politics of Hip Hop, is generating
plenty of buzz on and off campus. It’s being taught in
Oglethorpe’s evening degree program, a program geared toward working adults who wish to
complete their undergraduate education on an accelerated
schedule in a real campus setting.
King will teach an overview of the U.S. political system
while looking at the influence of hip hop throughout the
decades, starting with hip hop’s early roots, with the
questioning of the status quo in Grandmaster Flash’s “The
Message,” through the rise of hip hop in the 1980s and 1990s, to
the misogyny and nihilism of today’s culture. Students will
interact with music and video samples as well as guests from the
hip hop world.
Working with Dina Marto ’05, King has assembled an impressive
roster of influential hip hop artists, managers and observers to
share their stories and visions with her class. King is also
using That’s the Joint! The Hip Hop Studies Reader by
Murray Forman and Mark Anthony Neal as well as research she has
completed for her own politics textbook, which will be released
fall 2007.
As for her motivation, King remembers words from Coretta
Scott King, whom she heard while on a college trip to the King
Center. “Mrs. King talked about how we overlook violence in
basic things that we do,” she explained. “She said it is violent
to live in a home with people or work with people and not greet
them or acknowledge their presence. What she said stayed with
me, so now I try my best to acknowledge everyone. I can tell the
difference it makes, especially to those who do not know me.
Sometimes, even on campus, students will look at me like, ‘Why
are you speaking to me? You don't know me,’ but they respond
back and acknowledge that I've acknowledged them.”
This ideal demonstrates King’s positive influence at
Oglethorpe and makes her a perfect fit at Atlanta’s liberal arts
university.
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