David Driskell:

And so my professor at Howard University, James A Porter who wrote the first major, uh, book on African American art, modern Negro art. He wrote it as his, um, thesis at The Institute of Fine Arts in New York in 1939, but it was published in the 1943 with the Dryden Press. And, uh, I was so fortunate to have him as my mentor and my professor at Howard, mm-hmm. And he said to me, proud to my coming to Skowhegan, he said, you, um, are a good painter. You’re gonna be a good painter, he said, but you have a good mind, and we need, uh, people who can help define the field. Right. I didn’t know precisely what he meant, had an idea, um, and so he said you have to study history, you have to make sure that you  are doing research. That brings us along. mm-hmm, and so I felt, oh, but anointed, uh, obligated as though the mantle had been passed to me. And when I took his class, I want to say 1952, Julie would know more precisely, um, I was the only person in the class and he taught it as though they were 100 people. <laugh> my God, quoting from his book that I had all but memorized. And I think he was very impressed with what I did.