The associate professor emeritus of history, who taught at Haverford for almost 30 years, died March 23.
Paul Jefferson, associate professor emeritus of history, died March 23. He was 77 years old.
Jefferson earned both his B.A. and Ph.D. from Harvard University, where he won the Graduate Prize Fellowship. He also studied at the University of Ghana, researching W.E.B. DuBois. Jefferson was selected for a Fulbright Fellowship at the University of Paris in 1967, but turned it down to become associate director of the Yale Summer High School. He was a teaching fellow at Harvard, a lecturer at Babson College, and an instructor at the Commonwealth School in Boston before joining the Haverford faculty in 1981, where he taught in the Department of History until his retirement in 2010.
Jefferson was a scholar who specialized in 19th- and 20th-century intellectual history. He taught different classes on American intellectual history, African American intellectual history, and African American political and social thought, among others. From 1984 through the late 1990s, he was the coordinator for the College’s African American Studies Concentration, now called African and Africana Studies. He published on Black public intellectuals, including DuBois, William Wells Brown, and Haverford’s first tenured Black professor Ira de Augustine Reid. In 1983, he was awarded a postdoctoral fellowship award from the National Research Council for his research on the history of Black sociology. In 1988, he won the Christian R. and Mary F. Lindback Foundation Teaching Fellowship.
“Paul was the most punctilious teacher I have ever seen, investing hours of effort preparing for every class he taught; and he was totally ‘on’ in every classroom performance,” said Professor of History Linda Gerstein. “He was also a man of strong aesthetic sensibilities who created a world surrounded by good music and good art, and a passion for tennis, chess, and the cultivation of the healthy body.”
He used that passion for chess to help Caitlin Coslett ‘05 launch the Greater Philadelphia Chess Open, a day-long tournament at Haverford for Philadelphia public school students, which ran for several years.
"Until family life and kids altered the exercise of friendship for me, Paul was my very closest friend at Haverford," said Professor Emeritus of History and East Asian Languages and Cultures Paul Smith. "In those early days I was still something of a social scientist, and no one knew social science history and theory better than Paul. And Paul possessed one of the sharpest intellects of anyone I knew. So I spent a lot of time at Paul’s sanctuary at 1 College Lane … a place of seductive magic, filled with books arranged by topic, magazines and journals stacked by title, and a truly serious collection of jazz cassettes. (To say nothing of his two dogs, those guardians of the school bus-stop, Max and Ike.) But Paul’s curatorial instincts really flowered when he outgrew the solipsism of bachelorhood to join forces with his beloved Lydia, who set aside a portion of her home for Paul’s ‘Growlery’ – a spectacular temple to books, music, chess, and the arts of the mind. The magic of 1 College Lane had successfully migrated north to Bucks County, and Paul was happier than I had ever seen him. Paul was a unique individual and an important figure in my life, and he will be deeply missed. But he will never, ever be forgotten."
Jefferson is survived by his wife, Lydia Quill; step-children Edward, Rachel, and Daniel Quill; seven step-grandchildren; and his sister, Kristin "Cookie" Jefferson. A memorial service will be held June 25 at 2:00 p.m. at Bryn Gweled Community Center in Southampton, PA.
