STAGE 1: FELLOW GRADUATE STUDENTS AND FRIENDS

  Ken Wilkinson entered my life as a fellow graduate student at Mississippi State University in the fall of 1962. His demeanor was quiet, studious, kind, attentive, supportive and unassuming. He continued to present himself accordingly throughout our long relationship. When we met, Ken was in the final phase of his doctoral program in rural sociology. I was beginning the masters program. I had changed career goals from agricultural missionary work to rural sociology because of my intellectual conflict with prevailing theological beliefs, and with issues related to social justice--desegregation and race relations--in the South, especially in the Southern Baptist Convention. I was in search of new friends with common interests. Because of our common backgrounds, intellectual curiosity, and shared interest, Ken and I became friends quickly.

  Both Ken and I grew up in strong families and in the church. We had earned bachelor degrees from colleges affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention. Ken had attended Louisiana College in Pineville, Louisiana. In those days, Ken was a big, muscular guy. He played tackle and attended college on a football scholarship. I had graduated from Mississippi College, Clinton, Mississippi. As undergraduates, both of us had majored in sociology. In the early days, Ken and I spent lots of time discussing preachers, racism, the merits and demerits of college football, and the idiosyncrasies of our major professor, Harold Kaufman. Both of us had two sons who were born while we were in graduate school, so issues related to parenting was a concern too.

  Ken and I had little in common with church leaders who knew the answer to all of society's complex racial and cultural problems, especially those leaders who used religious doctrine to espouse social, cultural and racial superiority. We especially had difficulty with ministers and church leaders who saw no relationship between the Christian ethic, social justice and the Bill of Rights. There were many persons in Mississippi during this period who used scripture to promote racial superiority, leaders who would deny social justice to African Americans because of their religious convictions. One of our common professional goals was to learn more about how roots of prejudice and discrimination develop and/or prevail in some communities so we might help society deal with these complex problems.

  Harold Kaufman was a common topic of discussion among most graduate students at Mississippi State University. He was the University's first "distinguished professor" in any academic area. Dr. Kaufman had built the department of sociology and rural life into one of the strongest in the southeast.

Harold and Lois Kaufman at RSS in Lexington, KY. August 1983.

Thus, the administration at Mississippi State supported his work, as was further evidenced by their agreeing to create and fund the Social Science Research Center (SSRC) under Kaufman's leadership. SSRC remains a strong and viable unit to this date.

  Harold Kaufman was a person with strong convictions and unwavering ethics. Ken observed: "Dr. Kaufman is one of the hardest workers I have ever known, and he expects his graduate students to follow his example." Kaufman would arrive at his university office at the crack of dawn. Every day he returned home at noon for lunch and a "power nap." He was always back in his office by 1:45 p.m. and often worked into the evening. Kaufman was a small, stooped-shouldered man as the result of an illness at an early age. Yet his energy level was high, and his intellectual stature was at the top of the profession during 1966.

  I think Ken and I chose Dr. Kaufman to be our major professor for two reasons. First, because we were serious students, and Harold Kaufman always treated the two of us with the same consideration that he gave to faculty and staff members. He encouraged and insisted that we participate in faculty and in SSRC staff meetings. When visiting scholars or consultants, such as Roland Warren of Brandies University, George Hillery of the University of Virginia, or Alvin Bertrand of Louisiana State University, came to the campus, Dr. Kaufman made sure that we had the opportunity to attend seminars they led and to interact with them in one-on-one settings. Second, Ken and I were attracted to Kaufman because of his contributions to community development. He was a man of high status in rural sociology. He served as president of the Rural Sociological Society and the Southern Sociological Society while Ken and I were at Mississippi State, and he had begun to develop his notion of the community as an associational network or community field theory shortly before we arrived at MSU. From the beginning, Ken was interested in the theoretical implications of community field theory. I was interested in its practical applications. Dr. Kaufman, Ken and I recognized in the sixty's that communities with strong horizontal and vertical linkages, networks, were able to identify problems, plan, implement, monitor and evaluate the way they solved community problems. Developing internal organizational capacity was developing "the" community. Social capital is not a new idea, as some recent authors would have us believe!

  In brief, during the first two years of our relationship, most of the interactions which Ken and I had were typical of relationships shared by most graduate students who become friends. But I'm certain that I learned more from Ken, benefited more from our relationship than he did.