In Memoriam: Don Bray, ¡Presente!

• Author: Bill Bollinger,Marjorie Bray,Tim Harding
• DOI: 10.1177/0094582X20961392
• Date: 01 November 2020
• Published date: 01 November 2020

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https://doi.org/10.1177/0094582X20961392

LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES, Issue 235, Vol. 47 No. 6, November 2020, 173–175

DOI: 10.1177/0094582X20961392

© 2020 Latin American Perspectives

In Memoriam

Don Bray, ¡Presente!

Donald W. Bray, a beloved cofounder of this journal, passed away on

October 17, 2019, at the age of 90. For over 40 years he helped develop Latin

American Perspectives from a progressive initiative among members of the

Latin American Studies Association (LASA) into the formidable publication

it is today.

Don liked to inspire his working-class students at California State University,

Los Angeles (CSULA), where he taught world politics and Latin American

studies for 49 years, with the tale of his own unlikely journey from Wisconsin

farm boy in a one-room schoolhouse through the deprivations of the Great

Depression and toil as an itinerant farm laborer before he talked his way into

Pomona College by confounding the admissions dean with his score on an

admissions exam. There he met Marjorie Woodford, fellow student, daughter

of the geology professor. Marjorie would later become his lifelong companion.

Together, they traveled to various corners of Latin America and raised four

children in Claremont, California, near the campus where Don would support

Marjorie in her return to graduate study to earn a degree in international rela-

tions.

Don’s interest in world politics began as a youth in Sparta, Wisconsin, where

he followed events of World War II and observed Japanese American soldiers

being trained nearby at Fort McCoy. At Pomona, Don and Marjorie joined the

Student Federalists, a movement promoting world government. Plans for

graduate school in 1950 were derailed when he was drafted and sent to Korea.

His U.S. Army experience, narrated in a memoir, The Korean War and Aftermath

(2011), affected him profoundly. Initially assigned as a clerk in Seoul, walking

the empty streets he saw an army truck barreling down the street strike and kill

a little girl without stopping, an image that haunted him the rest of his life.

When President Truman ordered desegregation, Don was transferred to a black

unit guarding an air force base, where he experienced racist conditions imposed

on troops that led to a mutiny.

In 1953 Don began graduate study and while at Mexico City College dis-

covered the culture and history that set the course for his life’s work. He

earned his M.A. degree at UC Berkeley before moving to Stanford in

September 1957 to become an editor of the monthly Hispanic American Report

and along with Tim Harding begin work on his doctorate under Ronald

Hilton in Hispanic-American and Luso-Brazilian studies. Soon followed by

Ron Chilcote, Dale Johnson, and Jim Cockcroft, they would help lead a radi-

cal caucus within LASA, engage with dependency theory, and, in 1974, cre-

ate this journal.

961392LAPXXX10.1177/0094582X20961392Latin American Perspectives

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