Gerald W. Barrax, a celebrated poet and retired North Carolina State University professor, died after being struck by a vehicle while walking across a Raleigh road Saturday evening, police said.
Barrax, 86, was in a crosswalk on Sunnybrook Road near Walnut Creek Softball Complex when he was hit, a crash report shows.
The vehicle’s driver, Jamal D. Jones, 41, was charged with failure to yield to a pedestrian and misdemeanor death by motor vehicle, Raleigh police said in a news release.
A native of Alabama, Barrax began teaching at North Carolina Central University in 1969, then at N.C. State in 1970, according to a documentary the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources made in 2009, when Barrax won the North Carolina Award for Literature.
Barrax said in the video that when he arrived at N.C. State he was the first black teacher there. He taught a black literature class and creative writing courses.
Barrax’s colleagues at N.C. State describe him as both a ground-breaking writer and a generous teacher and mentor, someone younger colleagues aspired to emulate.
“A normally quiet person of utter integrity, he kept a low profile, but his colleagues understood his many strengths—and how lucky they were to have him working in their midst,” professor Antony H. Harrison said in an email.
Laura Severin, the head of the English Department, remembers Barrax as “a highly dignified man and an outstanding poet.”
“I have always been grateful for the kindness he showed me as a young assistant professor,” Severin wrote in an email. “He taught me that a few, carefully chosen words are often more powerful than many. I shall always remember his quiet, gracious presence.”
“Gerry had mastered being supportive but appropriately rigorous with our students,” professor Wilton Barnhardt said in an email. “He could not abide the phony or the false in poetry, and one sees that standard in his own work.”
Barrax retired from N.C. State in 1997.
He wrote several books of poetry, including the 1992 volume “Leaning Against the Sun,” which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award.
That publication led to more popular recognition of Barrax’s poetry, which explored existentialism, the Black Arts movement and later, more confessional themes, according to an article in the Encyclopedia of Alabama.
He was inducted into the North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame in 2006 and served for years as editor of Obsidian, a respected journal on black literature.
Walking was also important to Barrax, his son Jerry Barrax Jr. said Sunday. “It helped him stay healthy and active. It was kind of his tonic.”
Barrax married twice and had five children.
This story was originally published December 08, 2019 3:16 PM.