Essays – Jonathon Platt

A Fall In Five Scenes

Originally published by Baylor Line Magazine in Fall 2021.

1.

“KAYE!” Curtis watched as the fall happened in slow motion, her name erupting from his lips without even realizing it. No matter how fast he tried to move, he knew it was too late. Despite a running leap, Kaye hadn’t fully made it across a five-foot gorge. Before Curtis’s eyes, the woman he had come to love as life itself was falling back from the edge of a cliff 20 feet down — and 20 feet is a very long way to fall. What should have certainly been a death sentence, though, changed their lives (and the lives of many, many others) for the better.

Courage In Black & White

This is an edited excerpt from my mater’s thesis, originally published by Baylor Line Magazine in Fall 2019

How a student editor challenged segregation on the front page of the Lariat

Ella Wall Prichard’s voice has a high pitch. Her gait is the stride of a woman with a purpose. She is always smiling, always dressed elegantly, always ready to help.

Meeting Prichard in passing, she may not strike you as someone whose life has been spent speaking truth to power, but give her a minute and she will change your mind. She is able to make you care deeply about the issues in her heart.

But when you give Prichard a pen that is when things really light up.

With a pen Prichard can change an entire university. She has done it before in just 140 words.

Cherry Bombs & Peaceful Prayers

Originally published by Baylor Line Magazine in Spring 2019

What It Meant to Protest the Vietnam War at Baylor

It was January 1967 – 22 years since Ho Chi Minh’s August Revolution. American boots had officially been on the ground in Vietnam for 12 years. The governmental and societal structures of the war-torn, southeast Asian country were creaking. U.S. troop escalation was underway. And on January 5, almost one year before the Tet Offensive in 1968, when 40,000 North Vietnamese troops conducted surprise attacks against American troops, the Lariat ran the results of a Baylor student government poll.

Curtis Callaway Has The World By The Frame

Originally published by Baylor Line Magazine in Fall 2018

From a young age, his destiny has been in front of him: adventure and capturing it in a frame.

Oversized couches scatter the second floor of Castellaw Communications Center. In the spring and fall semesters, students set up shop here between their classes and a buzz fills the hallways. In the summer, though, the buzz disappears. The hallways are empty, the couches lonely. In early June, I sat on one of those couches waiting for Curtis Callaway, a senior lecturer of Journalism, Public Relations, and New Media (JPRNM) at Baylor. The linoleum floor and ceramic tile walls of Castellaw make every small thing an echo, especially the stride of Curtis’ boots as I heard him coming up the stairwell. Like these echoes, you are aware when Curtis is there. He is tall, engaging, confident. Usually, he is on campus to teach and he wears a button-up shirt — one of those polyester fishing shirts by Columbia — in neutral colors, blue jeans, and brown loafers. This time, though, he is not teaching, coming into town from his farm for an errand and our interview. He dressed down. An old ballcap, t-shirt with grass clippings on the shoulder, and scuffed boots showed he had just been working outside.

The Forgotten Community of Sandtown

Originally published by Baylor Line Magazine in Summer 2018

Today, you’ll find Interstate 35, the Texas Ranger Museum, the Texas Sports Hall of Fame, Baylor Law School, Baylor’s Mayborn Museum Complex, Grant Teaff Plaza, Baylor athletic complexes and stadiums, Lake Brazos Park, and the Waco Riverwalk. But for the most of the twentieth century, hundreds of mostly Hispanic workers made their homes here.

Exactly zero square blocks remain. This community was known as Sandtown.

Seinan Gakuin

Originally published by Baylor Line Magazine in Spring 2018

How Baylor Went Global

Heading southwest on the Sanyo Main Line out of Hiroshima, it takes two and a half hours to reach Fukuoka, a coastal metropolis. Fukuoka is the largest city on the southern Kyushu island of Japan. In autumn, the mountainside landscape to the east and south becomes a tapestry of color by the changing foliage. Within this city of 5 million are the 400-year-old remains of Fukuoka Castle; the Fukuoka Art Museum, which houses works from Mark Rothko and Salvador Dali; and the largest Baptist college outside of the United States: Seinan Gakuin University.