Distinguished Professor Clarence E. Walker, American historian and a highly esteemed scholar and critic of African American history, passed away on August 2, 2024 just shy of his 83rd birthday. Professor Walker joined the Department of History at UC Davis in 1986 and served the institution until his retirement in 2015. Awarded the prestigious UC Davis Prize for Undergraduate Teaching and Scholarly Achievement in 2015, Walker established a reputation for himself in print and in talks as a fount of historical knowledge and as a fierce cultural critic. He was also a dedicated teacher who educated thousands of Davis undergraduates and many doctoral students. Sharp, engaging, and spicy, his enormous personality and dedication to scholarship and education earned him the devotion of colleagues and his many undergraduate and graduate students, many of whom he retained as long-lasting friends.
Born in Houston, Texas on August 8, 1941, Walker spent most of his life in northern California. He grew up in Berkeley, completing most of his education there but for one very difficult year when he lived in Sugarland, Texas. He excelled in his education and completed a bachelor's degree and a master's degree at San Francisco State University. He then went to the University of California, Berkeley where he completed his Ph.D. in American history in 1973. He held the position of Assistant and then Associate Professor in the Department of History at Wesleyan University. In 1986 he joined the Department of History at UC Davis, where he remained for the rest of his career. He retired in 2015.
Walker's published works include, A Rock in a Weary Land: The African Methodist Episcopal Church During the Civil War and Reconstruction (1982), Deromanticizing Black History: Critical Essays and Reappraisals (1991), We Can’t Go Home Again. An Argument about Afrocentrism (2001), Mongrel Nation: The America Begotten by Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings (2009), and with Gregory D. Smithers The Preacher and the Politician: Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama, and Race in America (2009). He also authored numerous articles, book chapters, and book reviews. Walker was in many ways part of a pioneering generation of African American historians who challenged his peers to move beyond a reductionist view of African American history and instead embrace a more critical perspective. He likewise taught his undergraduate and graduate students to think along similarly critical lines.
A fearless and incisive scholar, Walker’s first book, A Rock in a Weary Land, was the first to explore the history of the AME Church in the American South during the Civil War and Reconstruction. His analysis challenged Marxian historical interpretations of religion as the opiate of the masses, and instead presented readers with analysis that revealed the complex ways in which religion and politics, race and class, became both intertwined and a source of friction in black life throughout the South.
In many ways, A Rock in a Weary Land presaged a career of fearless historiographical interventions. Walker’s subsequent published works showcased his voracious reading habits, his insightful (and sometimes uncompromising) analysis, and his refusal to be swept up in historical conventions. His second book, Deromanticizing Black History: Critical Essays and Reappraisals, ruffled so many feathers among professional historians that it continues to have reverberations in the profession some three decades later.
Walker’s student Gregory Smithers wrote, “Walker’s Deromanticizing Black History is why I went to grad school at UC Davis. As an undergraduate in Sydney, Australia, I stumbled across a used copy of the book in, ironically, a Marxist bookstore! As I read Deromanticizing I was taken aback by the way Clarence interlaced historiographical analysis with biting cultural criticisms. It was unlike any history book I’d read at that time. The book was equal parts smart, funny, contrarian, qualities that drew me to Clarence’s mentorship and for which I’m forever grateful that he gambled on me and extended an invitation to join the grad program at Davis.
As a mentor, Clarence proved generous and caring. He always made time for his grad students and could talk about virtually any topic. I treasure memories of long hours in Clarence’s office, or the extended lunches that he’d treat his grad students to, discussing everything from politics, to movies, to Australian poetry.”
His former student Louis Moore remembers that “Clarence Walker was a brilliant man. Every day that I was on campus from 2003-2008, I came to his office to listen and learn. He saw the best in me, and he believed in my vision about sports, race, and American history. My whole career, all I ever wanted to do was write books that made him proud.”
Brian Behnken, another former student, recalls that "Clarence Walker was for me a steadfast and constantly supportive presence in my academic journey. He was a wonderful and consummately good mentor. I now model my own mentorship of graduate students on what I learned from Clarence. My scholarship and teaching also continue to benefit from the things I learned from him. More importantly, he became a very good and trusted friend. I will miss our long conversations, where he continued to always demonstrate his support of my work and accomplishments."
His friends and colleagues will remember him with fondness and admiration for his erudition, his vast and ever-growing library, his natty appearance, his kindness and friendliness, his intellectual generosity, his humor and loud laugh, his gourmand appetites and love of good champagne, and for his unprintable collection of salty “folk” sayings.
--Brian Behnken, Louis Moore, Sally McKee, and Gregory Smithers