Campus Protest and Composition Pedagogy: G. David Houston's Activist Rhetoric at Howard University

ABSTRACT:This article contributes to rhetoric and composition scholarship that develops localized institutional microhistories of rhetorical education at historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) by exploring the pedagogically focused scholarship of G. David Houston, a Howard University professor of English during the period of the of the early twentieth century known as the New Negro Movement. I examine Houston's 1919 article "Reconstruction in the Teaching of English," placing the pedagogical priorities that it reveals within the context of the author's participation in on-campus activism at Howard, as reflected in his 1920 article "Weaknesses of the Negro College." Drawing on Susan Kates's concept of activist rhetorics, I demonstrate the ways in which Houston's work exemplifies an embodied pedagogy that responds directly to Howard University's unique institutional, historical, and social location. In his scholarship, Houston developed a plan for English instruction that sought to elevate the role of composition training, encourage a cross-disciplinary pedagogical model, and professionalize the teaching of English. Houston's plan reveals a kind of hybrid composition pedagogy that incorporates aspects of both the vocational and classical-liberal arts models of "Negro education" and responds directly to the needs of Black college students.