The eave that hangs over Keona K. Ervin’s desk in her office at the University of Missouri in Columbia features two posters. The first is of John Coltrane, one of her favorite jazz saxophonists. Ervin started playing alto sax in eighth grade and continued through her first couple of years at Duke University, North Carolina, where she majored in history, African and African-American studies.
The other poster promotes The Wire, her all-time favorite cable series. Ervin, a Mizzou assistant professor of history, is thinking about creating a class that explores the issues portrayed in the show, such as post-World War II urban inequality and urban life.
The wall opposite her desk, stacked high with journal articles and essays, features black and white photos of such influential African Americans as Tina Turner, Zora Neale Hurston, Alice Walker, Miles Davis, Nina Simone and Ray Charles.
“I’m really into stories,” Ervin says. “I think I’m destined to write a biography one day.”
Although these notable African Americans have inspired her, Ervin says her parents laid the foundation for her career in higher education by always making sure she had books while growing up in Hanley Hills and attending Lutheran North High School in St. Louis.
After graduating from Duke, Ervin earned master’s and doctoral degrees in history from Washington University in St. Louis. Her graduate research began with a class assignment to create an oral history by talking with prominent St. Louisan Ora Lee Malone, a pioneer in the trade union movement who fought for equal rights for women and African Americans in the 1960s and 1970s.
“I thought that Malone followed a trajectory that didn’t fit other narratives,” Ervin says. “She would criticize elements of the Civil Rights Movement for failing to attend to questions around poverty and women’s rights.”
After graduating from Washington University, Ervin taught at Luther College in Iowa and Bowdoin College in Maine before joining MU’s faculty. She teaches African-American History, The Black Freedom Movement, U.S. History Since 1865, African-Americans in the Twentieth Century, as well as graduate classes. At the end of each semester, she encourages her students to be historically minded in everything they do.
“Whatever fields they choose, whatever life path they end on, my hope is that my students will have some sense of history, because it’s significant to questions of the present and future,” she says. “So many questions that we debate in society have histories, they have stories, and it’s really illuminating to know that development as you weigh issues in the contemporary period.”
As a graduate of two universities with a majority-white student body, Ervin says it’s important to get involved in programs on campus and to find a mentor, someone who can help navigate a new or unfamiliar environment.
During her time at Duke, Ervin participated in the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship program under the mentorship of Raymond Gavins. The fellowship program awarded Ervin money to conduct research for an undergraduate thesis on the lives of African Americans in the United States after slavery.
“Programs and strong mentorship from Dr. Gavins were really important to my intellectual and social development,” she says.
“Not only did I learn the tools to do research and write a thesis, but I found a group of other undergrads with interests similar to mine. I really relied on that community in college and graduate school, as well.”Â
