CSM professor, activist Rudy Lapp dies

Lapp died from complications associated with two strokes he suffered while at home in his 19th Avenue Park residence. He was 91.

Lapp was at the forefront of teaching black history, making CSM the first community college in the country outside of the south to teach the curriculum. He started the class in 1958. He went on to publish three books on black history, was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, actively opposed the Vietnam War and promoted free speech at CSM in the 1960s.

"For us on the faculty, he is a model how one can be a teacher and a scholar at the same time,” said history professor Mark Still, who shared an office with Lapp.

At a community college where work load is sometimes staggering, Lapp managed to pioneer a new subject and earn awards for his scholarly achievement while remaining accessible to his students, Still said.

Lapp’s early years began in Chicago, where he taught classes for Works Progress Administration during the Great Depression. He helped the unemployed find career paths. He also participated in social movements of that decade, including various student organizations.

Chicago school officials labeled Lapp as an "agitator” and part of the Young Communist League in a 1933 Time Magazine article about a student walkout.

Lapp had a lifetime of civic activism. Lapp witnessed racial inequalities while growing up in Chicago and later when he served in the army during World War II. His activism continued when he taught at CSM and actively opposed the Vietnam War, said his wife Patricia Lapp.

Lapp was drafted into the U.S. Army in World War II and spent all of his three years in the Army a short distance from London, participating in an adult education program for troops. He was turned away from enlistment a number of times because a childhood illness left him deaf in one ear, Patricia Lapp said.

He married Patricia in 1943 and the two moved to the Bay Area so Lapp could pursue a doctorate degree in history at the University of California at Berkeley. It took him six to eight years to earn the degree, Patricia Lapp said.

In 1955, the couple purchased a home in 19th Avenue Park. At the time, only three model homes were built in the new development, Patricia Lapp said.

The same year, Lapp began teaching at CSM. He started his evening black history class in 1958 and its popularity made it a regular day class by the next year.

"His work on African American history ... No one had gone there before, no one had been working there,” said Mitch Postel, a former student and current president of the San Mateo County Historical Society.

By the 1960s, Lapp was a key leader at CSM during the free speech movement. He actively opposed the Vietnam War, speaking at rallies at the college and in front of San Mateo City Hall. He led a contingent of faculty and staff to Washington, D.C. to present President Richard Nixon with a petition signed by 2,500 asking that tax dollars be spent on education and not be used on war spending.

Lapp had a way of bringing important issues to the classroom and promoting constructive conversations and debates among students. He had a dry sense of humor that punctuated much of what he said and resonated with students, Still said.

Lapp officially retired in 1983, but continued to teach well into the 1990s. He maintained an office that remains his today, although he didn’t visit often in recent years, Still said.

Lapp was honored last year with a scholastic award by the Conference of California Historical Society for his contributions to black history. His book Blacks in Gold Rush America was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in 1977, the year it was published.

Dana Yates can be reached by e-mail: dana@smdailyjournal.com or by phone: (650) 344-5200 ext. 106.