MEMORIES OF OUR BROTHER: A Student & A Scholar (Part VIII)
I will always remember watching Michael file into the purple classroom for our 6:30 a.m. DTEN/Zoom Social Problems class during the pandemic. He'd make his way to his front-row seat, put his face right up close to the camera, smile and say hi before he got down to business and let me know he had a LOT of ideas to cover in that day's discussion. His contagious energy, keen critical eye, ability to find amusement and profundity in small things, and genuine care and concern for his people are what I find myself missing most. I'm grateful for our years of correspondence and friendship and I know his influence will continue to shape me as a teacher forever.
— Professor Megan Klein
Michael was a wonderful student and a beloved classmate. He was an exemplary interlocutor in class: thoughtful in conversation, and ready to comment on the day's readings. But what shone through most was his character: he was quick with a smile and gracious in conversation with others -- as ready with a joking quip as he was with a complement to his fellow classmates. He will be sorely missed.
— Professor Sandy Goldberg
In a poetry class, you come to know students in a deep and abiding way because they attend to their own dreams, fears, and imagination to enter worlds that are infinitely foreign yet strangely the same as their own. Michael did this with honest self-reflection and heart-felt precision. He had a passion for the transformative power of language and his enthusiasm was contagious. His classmates eagerly waited his turn to perform the assigned poem.
In our first conversation (and my first day of teaching at Stateville), Michael discovered that I taught English and drama at his old high school—Percy Julien High—before he was old enough to attend. We laughed and talked about how the school had changed for better and worse, his favorite classes and teachers, and the old neighborhood. He was warm and kind. What also impressed me was how he truly loved learning, creative thinking, and expressing ideas, even as early as his high school years!
Sometimes, before and after classes, a couple years after our class ended, we’d see each other passing back and forth outside or in the education building. Michael would call out, “Love ya’,
Prof,” and I’d call back, “Love ya’ too, Mr. Broadway!”
— Professor D’ Soyini Madison
Although Michael has passed on, he and his kind eyes will be with me for as long as I live. His graduation photo with his grand babies is hanging in my office; I'm always so proud to tell people I had the opportunity to teach him. I will always remember his essay about drinking water fountains during little league practice as a kid, and the connections he made between lead, drinking water, and violence in his neighborhood. Broadway, you are missed.
— Unsigned
We are at our best when we are connected. Michael embodied this. He was deeply connected with himself and others. When I had individual meetings with team members, Michael explained that sometimes he stepped back for students lacking support. He knew he had strong family support that not all people experienced. He was loved, and he felt it.
Michael's very existence was a form of resistance to the carceral system. He lived out abolitionist ideals each day by creating the realities we want to see. His approach to life challenged systemic norms of violence. Everyone who knew Michael was enriched by his presence. His legacy endures through the relationships he developed and the lives he touched, reminding us of the transformative power of genuine human connection. I hope to honor Michael by carrying forward his light.
— Professor Annie Buth
Michael was a student in the course on the mathematics of voting that I taught at Stateville in the fall of 2019. I will always remember his superlative final paper on the design of a voting system for the Chicago School Board. Anyone who has the chance to visit Stateville is aware that Michael did not have ideal conditions for our class: his cell had no horizontal surface on which to write, and the use of regular pens or pencils was forbidden.
Against all odds, our students put a lot of effort into their study, and some of them revealed new ways of viewing the material that I, as their teacher, was grateful to have been exposed to. Michael was one of these students. I wrote in 2020, when there was a chance he might be paroled, that I hoped that I would have the chance to welcome him into my classes on the Evanston campus one day. He was patient, thoughtful, considerate, and a great partner in the enterprise of learning.
— Professor Ezra Getzler
Michael was a student in my playwriting class at Stateville. The last assignment for the class was to write a play inspired by a song. When I announced it, he smiled a huge smile (he was always smiling, but this smile was really super huge) and said, "I know exactly what I want to write!" And he did! His short play, "Project Window," was inspired by the relationship between his mother and his aunt and their long and lively phone conversations. It was funny and sweet and wise — just like Michael. He is sorely missed. The world is an infinitely poorer place without his smile.
— Professor Rebecca Gilman
