Benjamin Adrian Currence

1951 - 2019

Benjamin Adrian Currence
Image source: Buccaneer 1971

A native of Rowland, N.C., Benjamin “Ben” Adrian Currence graduated from ECU in 1972 with a bachelor’s degree in chemistry. Currence later earned a law degree from North Carolina Central University, cum laude, and a LLM in international business law from the London School of Economics and Political Science. At NCCU, Currence served as editor-in-chief of the school’s law journal. As an attorney, Currence contributed to community-based legal issues in North Carolina and the practice of international business law in the Virgin Islands.

During his years at ECU, Currence was active in campus life. He served as vice president of the American Chemical Society, as a program director of the Law Society, and as vice president of the Society of United Liberal Students (SOULS). He was also a member of the University Lecture Committee and the Richardson Foundation.

Notably, Currence was among the group of students who on the evening of March 26, 1969, confronted President Leo Jenkins on the front steps of his Fifth Street residence asking for action on the list of black demands for social justice earlier presented. The back side of Ralph Hardee’s photograph capturing Jenkins surrounded by the students identifies the individual just left of Jenkins as Currence. Earlier, Currence was among the signatories to the demands presented to Jenkins.

Following the spring 1969 confrontation with Jenkins, Currence contributed a series of radical pieces for the Fountainhead beginning with “Spring offensive will continue” in which he declared that “Spring ’69 was only a beginning in the movement to abolish racism and provide a situation where all students are exposed to equal opportunities.” Currence concluded the essay quoting Eldridge Cleaver, “You’re either going to be part of the problem or part of the solution.”

Most of Currence’s work was part of his occasional column, entitled, “Up against the wall …,” alluding to, with ellipsis replacing vulgarity, the poem by Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones, 1934-2014), “Black People.” In these essays, Currence first questioned the presence of ROTC on campus and its role in the Vietnam war. Later, drawing on the ideas of Huey Newton, principal founder of the Black Panther Party, Currence critiqued the hypocrisy evident in many “white liberals and ‘revolutionaries,'” as well as the “super-patriot” slogan, “Stand up for America.” After first noting that the “civil rights era is dead,” Currence analyzed explanations of “black power” in terms of four dimensions: black capitalism, black politics, black community control, and black anti-colonial opposition to U.S. imperialism.

He also discussed women as a minority group “used and abuse” by those subscribing to “male (or white) superiority.” Locally, Currence called the Greenville City Council racist and claimed that moratorium day protests of the Vietnam War brought as many SBI agents to campus as protestors. Alluding to the Declaration of Independence, Currence’s last piece declared that continuing “the exploitation and oppression of today would morally justify revolution.” After this explosion of radical thought, however, Currence’s column disappeared. Apparently, the Spring ’69 offensive had subsided, at least temporarily.

After completing his law degree, Currence, in 1976, was named a Reginald H. Smith Community Lawyer Fellow, enabling him to work with the Durham Legal Aid Society. Representing the Coalition for Responsive Media, Currence filed, in 1978, a petition with the Federal Communications Commission claiming that WUNC television and radio stations were violating federal requirements for equal opportunity in employment. The petition noted that all of WUNC-FM’s full-time employees were white, and that over 90% of WUNC-TV’s employees were white, despite the fact that 23% of the local work force was black. The petition was first ever to challenge WUNC’s license renewal with the FCC on such grounds.

After moving to the Virgin Islands, Currence took a position as staff attorney and managing director of litigation at Legal Services of the Virgin Islands. He later joined Pallme & Mitchell on St. Thomas as an associate, and then became a managing partner of Mitchell & Currence. In 1989, he opened the Law Offices of Benjamin A. Currence, focusing on international business, civil litigation, commercial, corporate, personal injury and bankruptcy matters.

Currence passed away on February 25, 2019, in St. Thomas.

Currence’s contributions to campus culture in the late-1960s and early 1970s, plus his legal work in North Carolina for equal opportunity and then, in international business law for black businesses in the Virgin Islands, well establish him as one of ECU’s outstanding graduates and foremost exponents, in theory and practice, of black power.

Sources

Citation Information

Title: Benjamin Adrian Currence

Author: John A. Tucker, PhD

Date of Publication: 6/25/2019

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