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In this episode, host Esi Lewis sits down with Ed Bell, a retired Assistant Vice Chancellor of Student Affairs at SUNY New Paltz, where he worked for twenty years. Ed shares the remarkable story of how he came to New Paltz in 1967 with a singular mission: to build a track program from the ground up — recruiting athletes, purchasing equipment, and working with architects to construct the track itself. His teams went on to win city and regional championships and competed at the Penn Relays in Philadelphia, making their mark in a SUNY system that was, at the time, overwhelmingly white.
Ed reflects on the vibrant Black community that existed in and around New Paltz during his years there — one that included IBM professionals, educators, artists, and Greek life members — and how that community actively supported one another through organizations like Concerned Parents. He also shares memories of his close friendship with printmaker and artist Ben Wigfall, his first friend in New Paltz, and speaks warmly about raising his family in the area. Ed's life story stretches from a childhood split between a small all-white Illinois town and the bustling neighborhoods of Queens, to attending Tennessee State University during the era of segregation, to later traveling to Japan, France, and Cuba.
Ed is also an accomplished poet — a passion rooted in his grandmother, a poet herself who read her work to him after his mother passed away when he was just two and a half years old. He shares the story of how a visit to the White House in the 1990s moved him to write a letter to President Clinton advocating for Black art in the permanent collection — a letter that directly contributed to the acquisition of the first work by an African American artist, Henry Ossawa Tanner, into that collection. Ed closes the episode with two powerful readings from his latest collection, Undulations, including the stirring poem "We're Still Here."
