Gerald Early Receives Star on St. Louis Walk of Fame

It's not often you hear someone celebrating failure—especially when an honorific is being awarded—but Washington University Chancellor Mark S. Wrighton did just that Thursday.

Wrighton told the crowd gathered outside the Eclipse Restauarant Thursday to see Wash U Professor Gerald L. Early receive his star on the St. Louis Walk of Fame that Wrighton had failed years earlier. He had failed to woo Early from Wash U to MIT when Wrighton was there. Little did he know he would later have the opportunity to work with Early in St. Louis.

Early, a well-known essayist and culture critic and the Merle Kling Professor of Modern Letters at Washington University in St. Louis, told the crowd he was grateful for his family and the influence they provided throughout the years.

"I had a wonderful childhood," he said. "I'm grateful I had a sister to introduce me to Charles Dickens and Nina Simone."

Early shared stories about his childhood, which was "rich in the ordinary," and the neighborhood that helped to shape him. He learned to take adversity by playing baseball.

"I wasn't as good as I wanted to be, but I wasn't as bad as I thought I was," he said. "And I learned long before Tom Hanks that there is no crying in baseball."

Early is author and editor of more than a dozen books including The Culture of Bruising: Essays on Prizefighting, Literature and Modern American Culture, which won the 1994 National Book Critics Circle Award for criticism, and This Is Where I Came In: Black America in the 1960s. 

See our previous Walk of Fame coverage:

• Gerald Early to Receive Star on St. Louis Walk of Fame
• RIP Stan Musial - from St. Louis Walk of Fame
• Ntozake Shange Receives Star on Walk of Fame
• Ntozake Shange to Receive Star on Walk of Fame
• William Holden Receives Star on the Walk of Fame
• Walk of Fame: William Holden's Star Unveiling Is Today
• William Holden Joining St. Louis' Walk of Fame
• New Star Added to St. Louis Walk of Fame