Cancer claims seminal figure in the study of black literature

Nellie Y. McKay, a pioneer in the field of Afro-American studies and Evjue Professor of American and African-American Literature at UW–Madison, died Sunday, Jan. 22 of colon cancer.

A native of New York City and the daughter of immigrants from the West Indies, McKay occupied a unique position in the study of Afro-American literature. She earned a bachelor’s degree with honors at Queens College of the University of New York in 1969, and a master’s degree and doctorate from Harvard University in 1971 and 1979.

She joined the UW–Madison faculty in 1978, and helped establish an African-American literature curriculum in the department of Afro-American studies. “There were five students in my first class,” McKay recalled years later. However, in 1980, a burgeoning demand for classes in African-American literature prompted the hire of a second professor in the area, Craig Werner, now a professor of Afro-American studies and chair of the UW–Madison department.

“When she came here there was not a single university that was paying any attention to black women’s literature. Now, there isn’t a single university that isn’t,” he says. “She helped shape the transition of black women’s studies from the margins of awareness to the center of intellectual life.”

McKay ultimately received four teaching awards, including honors from UW System (1988), UW–Madison (1992), Phi Beta Kappa (1999) and graduate students in the UW–Madison department of English (2000). As president of the Midwest Consortium of Black Studies – UW–Madison, the University of Michigan, Michigan State University and Carnegie-Mellon University – McKay shepherded the development of similar groups across the country.

“She was a central figure in a network of black women’s scholars who shared a vision of a more inclusive, more democratic intellectual world,” Werner says.

Following her own academic interests in 19th and 20th century literature – especially black women’s literature – McKay published more than 60 essays, and book and journal articles on such writers as Harriet Jacobs, Ida B. Wells, Zora Neale Hurston, Alice Walker, and many others. Her most important contribution was her co-editorship (with Harvard’s Henry Louis Gates) of “The Norton Anthology of African-American Literature,” published in 1988.

“This anthology in essence has established the canon of African-American literature, and it will continue to do so for at least the next quarter century,” Werner says.

In addition, she published seminal books on African-American novelists Jean Toomer and Toni Morrison. McKay also is co-editor of an edition of “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl” (Norton, 2000). Near the time of her death, she was working on an interpretive history of African-American literature. The University of Michigan bestowed an honorary degree on her in 2002, and she was inducted into the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters in 2001.

In addition to her scholarship and teaching, McKay was a key figure in UW–Madison’s Bridge Program, which links UW–Madison’s departments of Afro-American Studies and English. The program allows qualified master’s candidates to pursue Ph.D.s in African-American literature when they complete their master’s degree. In 2003, she convened the UW–Madison Center for the Humanities symposium commemorating the centennial of W.E.B. Du Bois’ “The Souls of Black Folk.” She also played a central role in establishing the university’s Lorraine Hansberry Visiting Professorship in Dramatic Arts in 1998. The program brings visiting artists of color to campus in order to explore diversity issues in the dramatic arts.

“Nellie was always in her office from sunrise to well past dusk, every day, with her door open, nurturing students and colleagues, building the models that will shape her disciplines for decades to come,” Werner says. “She could have been an academic superstar. She chose instead to build a community.”

The family requests that memorials be made to the Lorraine Hansberry Visiting Professorship in the Dramatic Arts, c/o University of Wisconsin Foundation, U.S. Bank Lockbox, Box 78807, Milwaukee, Wis., 53278. The UW Foundation requests that “In Memory of Nellie McKay” be in the subject line on checks.

A campus community memorial is planned for later in spring.