Preserving the great legacy of Dr Burch
I have had occasion this past fortnight to go deep into my archives accumulated over my nearly 80 years as a journalist and historian.
Today my feature is on Charles Eaton Burch, who etched his mark on the face of history as an academic, educator, poet and bibliophile. He became the eminent authority on the life and literary and political activities of Daniel Defoe, English author of Robinson Crusoe.
I became aware of Dr Burch when I joined the staff of the Bermuda Recorder newspaper in 1948. Its managing editor, AB Place, had closely chronicled the career of this scholar long before my connection with the paper, and certainly long after.
Dr Burch was born in St George’s on July 14, 1891. He was one of five siblings, including former Member of the Colonial Parliament, Collingwood Burch. Upon receiving his elementary and high school education, and passing the Cambridge examinations, he left Bermuda in 1910 to attend Wilberforce University in Ohio. He received a bachelor’s degree in 1914 and four years later, a master’s degree in English literature from Columbia University. In 1933 he received his doctorate in English literature from Ohio State University.
Dr Burch taught at such prestigious academic institutions as Tuskegee University in Alabama, from 1916-1917, and Wilberforce University from 1918-1921. His professional career was significantly catapulted when he joined the Faculty of English as an assistant professor at Howard University in Washington DC in 1921. He was appointed head of the department in 1933, a post which he held for 15 years until his death in 1948.
Under his leadership, the department formed its historical senior faculty: Jason Clifton Grant, Ivan Earle Taylor, Charlotte Watkins, Gertrude Beatrice Rivers, Sterling A Brown and Arthur Paul Davis, who in 1964 offered the first graduate course in the study of African American literature. Dr Burch made many scholarly contributions at Howard, one of which was the development of a signature course titled Poetry and Prose in Negro Life — one of the very few courses devoted to black literature in an American university in the early 1920s.
Dr Burch gained international acclaim when he became an eminent expert in 18th-century English literature. He travelled in 1927 and again in 1935 to the University of Edinburgh, Scotland to conduct research on the life and works of Daniel Defoe. He wrote many highly acclaimed articles, some of which were published in the London Quarterly Review, the Philological Quarterly, the London Quarterly and Holborn Review and the American Peoples Encyclopedia.
Dr Burch’s essays and other writings can also be found in the Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature, the New Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature and also the Moorland-Spingarn Research Centre at Howard University. A biography highlighting the life and times of Dr Burch is published in the highly-acclaimed Harlem Renaissance Lives from the African American national biography published by Oxford University Press in 2009.
Dr Burch married Willa Carter Mayer. During her professional career she served as a professor of education at Miner Teacher’s College in Washington DC. She also served as a supervisory official of the public school of the District of Columbia. Dr Burch died of a heart attack. As a testament to his significant contributions in English literature and academia, Howard University established the Charles Eaton Burch Memorial Lecture in 1949. The speaker at the annual lecture this year was Dana Williams of Howard’s English graduate faculty.
My archives include the names of many Bermudians with a direct association to Howard University.
One noted family in particular is that of John W Cann of Somerset. He attended Howard University medical school in the mid-1880s. He was subsequently followed by his three sons, Eustace, Braxton and Millard, all of whom made an impact both here in Bermuda and abroad.
This intimate connection with the medical profession extended into its third generation for the Cann family. Braxton Jr graduated in 1961 as an otolaryngologist (also known as an ear, nose and throat doctor) specialising in disorders of the head and neck ranging from hearing loss to cancer.
Eustace’s only son, John, recently retired as the Bermuda Government’s Chief Medical Officer after nearly 30 years of service.
Personally, I have had more than ordinary interest in Bermudians at Howard University including world-renowned Victor Scott, and especially Ewart Brown, who was the rambunctious president of the student association. He was pure news as a college student, gaining notoriety in the media throughout the US and Bermuda, thus imposing a fear in the thinking of the political establishment on his home front. He trumped them all by subsequently becoming Premier in 2006.
Another important matter concerning Howard University crossed the annals of my mind when a son of mine was up as a candidate for the defence of his PhD dissertation. By the grace of God he was successful.
His late mother, Ismay, was one of the first to congratulate him. One of the distinguished professors who served as an invigilator later told Ismay that she was a brave woman. The mother of a previous candidate committed suicide upon the sad news of her son having been denied his dissertation. Those were emotional times.
In continuing the legacy of Bermudians attending Howard University over the last 135 years, and in ending on a positive a footnote, I am happy to state that my grandson, Carlsen Philip II, graduated from Howard this past spring with a bachelor’s degree in economics and a minor in mathematics.
