| Welcome to my web page! This is
less formal than the departmental web page and faculty information... so it
should be a lot more fun to work with... |
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We can start at the beginning... or very nearly the beginning. This
is my first grade class photograph from Potsdam, New York. Amazing how
time flies, we moved from Potsdam when I was in second grade, but still I can
name most of the people in the photograph! In the front row, that's Tommy
Serabian, Helen Phillips, David Kaplan, and Susan Kerr. Back row is
Chucky Bullard, Boomer North, Billy Jones, Ann Sullivan, and me. |
| My
father's family came from Scotland and settled in southern Illinois where they
worked in the coal fields. James Landies Hutchison, my father's
grandfather was killed in the Cardiff Mine disaster in 1903. I never knew
my grandfather; William Hutchison was was killed during the labor wars of the
1930s when the Progressive
Mineworkers of America sought to organize the mines and gain better
contracts than John L. Lewis and the United Mineworkers of America had
negotiated. |
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The thirty-two miners killed in three
years of labor violence in the Illinois coal fields are buried in the Union
Miners Cemetery. The cemetery has some importance to labor
history, as Mother Jones asked to be buried alongside the Virden
Martyrs. This monument commemorates the Progressive Mineworkers of
America. Visit
the Union Miner's Cemetery
in Mount Olive, IL. |
| In
1964 we moved from Madison, Wisconsin to Nashville, Tennessee. I split
time between Overton High School and Peabody Demonstration School and managed to
not graduate from either one... well, this was 1970, I was suspended for
such things as distributing copies of The Great Speckled Bird (the Atlanta
underground newspaper), handing out anti-war literature, and the like... my
geometry teacher (and coach of the Forensics Team) stopped me in the hallway one
day and said, "Ray, I want you to know that I told the principal about this
for your own good..." |
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Certainly one of the highlights of my
high school years was the Second Atlanta
International Pop Festival in 1970. Exactly why my parents let me go
is still something of a mystery... I was 16 and drove a carload of friends down
to the festival (Larry Smith, Tommy Norris, and some others). There were a number of
groups that we specifically wanted to see, including Allman Brothers, Ten Years
After, Procul Harum, and Jimi
Hendrix. As the introduction to Hendrix video from the festival
narrates, "Only July 4th 1970 Jimi Hendrix played to the largest audience
ever, 450,000 persons..." |
| The biggest influence in my high school
days, undoubtedly... friends in LRY (that's Liberal Religious Youth for the
Unitarian
Church). The high school years are tuff times but
they were made immensely better by these lasting friendships... thanks to
Amy Kurland, Suzie Schoggin, David Noble, Mark Rippy, Averil and Lisa Lerman.
Paula Underwood, and many others, and also to the older generation of the group
that mentored all of us in one way or another, including Alan Leiserson, John
Mitchell, Tom and Henry Martin... |
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Since I wasn't going back to high school
for my senior year, the best option seemed to be to start at Peabody
College on a part-time basis. Anything was better then another year in
high school.... I played varsity soccer for three years |
| In 1973 I transferred to the State
University of New York at Binghamton and graduated with a BA in Sociology in 1975... special
thanks to Phillip Kraft (Work and Occupations) and Richard Rehberg
(Research Methods) for the insights they brought to my sociology classes and for
their guidance and advice about
graduate school... |
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Graduate school was in Sociology at the University
of Chicago from 1976 until 1982 or so... My dissertation committee
included Morris Janowitz, William J. Wilson, and Gerald Suttles... I became
fascinated with urban sociology and with the new immigrant communities in the
city. |
