Veterans of the Civil Rights Movement Veterans -- ///

Memories of My Dad

From: Douglass Hansen
Date: June 16, 2026 at 9:03:04 AM EDT

Dear friends,

Just a few notes about things about dad that may be of interest and importance (or at least things that come to mind), in chronological order:

He first got involved in civil rights work while a student at Xavier, which quickly overtook his life. As I recall, the work in Cincinnati was largely around desegregating swimming pools and the like. He was effectively disavowed by his parents shortly thereafter, and quickly drifted from studies to activism. That led him to New York and then on to Maryland to do civil rights work with CORE. As I recall, after his break with his parents in maybe 1958 or 1959, he saw his parents only once or twice again before their deaths.
He was arrested in Jackson almost exactly 65 years ago during the freedom rides. There are things to be said about Albany, I assume.
He participated in the SNCC trip to Guinea. He took pride in the fact that, despite the ribbing about being white, he was the only one who did not get ill at some point, and that he was able to go on some tours when others couldn't. He claimed it was because of his drinking. I cannot vouch for any of this.
He married Ruthie Buffington, of SNCC in Arkansas, years before Loving. They married in Ohio because the Arkansas state government was naturally opposed. My oldest brother, Billy, was born in Pine Bluff the day Malcolm X was assassinated, and my brother Malcolm (named for Malcolm X) was born in 1969.
After leaving SNCC, dad spent time in Atlanta working for the sharecroppers union and an education project of some sort (sorry, but I don't recall all the details). He eventually tried to move to Nigeria as part of a pan-Africanist plan, but could not get a visa and was waylaid with Ruthie, Billy and Malcolm in Morocco for some time.
He eventually settled in Germany, where he started teaching through the University of Maryland and eventually met my mother. He did his graduate studies at SOAS in African politics. I was born in 1979, named for Frederick Douglass.
During that time, we wandered and spent time living in various countries, including East Germany, Greece and Spain. Dad also spent interludes in Algeria and South Africa.
After several unsuccessful attempts at a PhD and a more-or-less lost decade, dad moved to Kyrgyzstan in 1998, where he taught at the American University of Kyrgyzstan (and later American University of Central Asia) until 2004.
In 2005 he started teaching at the American University of Nigeria, in Yola. He was the first faculty member. He taught the introductory courses in international and comparative politics and political theory, but particularly relished his courses in anti- and post-colonial African politics, particularly the political philosophy of Franz Fanon. (He has written quite a bit about Fanon over the decades, and always pushed back at the offensive distillation of his thought into a justification for violence.
Among his students were some of the "Chibok girls". Much of his academic writing focused on Boko Haram [BH] and the Nigerian state; he was, undoubtedly, more critical of the Nigerian state and its role in the creation of the conditions for BH's rise than most others. I am trying to finish up the final proofs for his last article, so that it can hopefully still be published.
He was active as a teacher until last May, and continued to write until a few months ago. He was in constant contact with former students until the end.
In Nigeria he informally adopted/was adopted by a Nigerian family. These include Fiona, who was effectively his house manager from sometime shortly after he arrived in Yola, and her extended family members Omega, Godwin, Marianne and Sida. He took great pride that the four latter ones went to school. Omega completed his studies in creative writing several years back; Godwin is currently studying business administration; Marianne is about to graduate highschool; and Sidah is entering 10th grade. When they registered themselves to enable them to enroll in school, the four selected "Billhansen" for themselves as their surname.
We built dad a house in Yola, where he died on Saturday.

Some other, random thoughts:

He loved baseball and went to very many Reds games in his youth. Part of his commitment to anti-racism grew from learning why the old black men with whom he sat at Crosley Field (especially after his falling out with his parents over race, which largely ended his life in Cincinnati's white communities) rooted for the Dodgers and not the Reds. The answer, of course, was Jackie [Robinson].
He wrote the attached piece at a memorial service for [Nelson] Mandela Memorial Talk in Nigeria. I think it says something about dad.
He put a rainbow flag on the corkboard outside his office. He had trouble, as many (especially men) of his generation did, with understanding gender issues in the "modern" sense and we had many discussions (and arguments of a sort) about trans issues and Caster Semenya... which is only fitting for two white, cis men! But he was an ally, and I appreciate that he tried to yoke himself into being a more progressive man than his 1930s, Catholic, Cincinnati roots might normally predict and allow.
He was increasingly adamant about free speech in his later years, to a point I thought foolish.
He was also increasingly intolerant of resorts to colonial legacy explanations for misgovernment in Africa, to a point I also thought quite foolish but could appreciate since he lived, insofar as he could as a white man in a walled compound with clean water and 24 hour generators, with people on the margins of Nigeria, even if he instructed their scions. I was more patient with his views because he did not live in opulence and experienced through his family the trials and vagaries of everyday life of Nigerians struggling to get by. He viscerally hated the elite in Nigeria, although we disagreed in some ways about why they were in power.
My father was intolerant of complacency and laziness among his students, and often got himself in trouble with university authorities for flunking students from powerful and wealthy families. I am also copying a document with some recent emails to me from former students.
I will never forget the day we went to see Kwame Toure in New York in what must have been mid-1998 (before my dad left for Kyrgyzstan) or maybe late 1997. Stokely, as my father still called him, was wearing a bright yellow T-shirt with some minor west-African political actor or party on it. The two started talking west-African politics and the character or party on the T-shirt, and Toure took it off and gave it to my dad. It was a very poignant moment, and despite my dad's disagreements (and long-cast off suspicions) he fundamentally loved and cared for Toure.
My father always expressed to me a kind of inevitability about the Black Power of later SNCC. He was sad but not bitter, although he disagreed with the turn. He said he resigned before Peg Leg Bates [SNCC conference] to avoid confusing things further.
At a conference in 1997, if I recall correctly, a SNCC veteran pulled me aside and told me that my father was one of the crazy brave people he'd known, who would not back down ever. That inspired me and aligns with my own sense of the young Bill Hansen, and why he was beaten so badly at Albany and other places. It filled me with pride. My father was a contrarian who would not surrender an inch if that meant conceding on principle. Whiteness has many outrageous privileges; I suspect, however, that sitting in a segregated jail was not one of them. Dottie [Miller Zellner] may be better placed to comment on all of this.
I sometimes messed with my dad that I was arrested for civil disobedience the first time at a younger age than him.
He was known to some of his friends in East-Germany as Klassenkdmpfer, or class fighter, and often as the last Marxist still standing. (Although I think that too is a more complicated story.) Fiona called him Babban Doug, or Doug's father.
He was my hero, and the day a highschool classmate came to me with [Howard] Zinn's People's History (I think) and asked if the Bill Hansen in the reference to CB King and Albany was the Bill Hansen, my father, I nearly exploded with pride.
Dad was complicated, like most of us, and age and strokes and, well, being a man, turned the noble principle and sacrifice and his rambunctious, uncompromising, unbending willfulness of youth into something harder to manage and comprehend.
I will not forget him.

William Hansen is survived by his son Malcolm Hansen and daughter-in-law Maja Bergman, and their children Ramsey and Wren of New York, USA; by Fiona Elisha, Omega Phillip Billhansen, Godwin Luca Billhansen, Marianne Bitrus Billhansen and Sida Oliver Billhansen of Yola, Nigeria; and his son Douglass Hansen and daughter-in-law Jessica Hazelwood, and their children Maia and Thomas of The Hague, The Netherlands. Ruth Buffington, his first wife, died in 2009. Brigitte Schulz, his second wife, lives in Germany. He is also survived by his sister Karen Hansen and her children Clifford (Trip) Schwandner, Kara (Booie) Schwandner and Kristin Schwandner.

I hope that this is helpful.

In solidarity,
Doug