Christopher Kinson
Christopher Kinson was born on November 3, 1988 in Albany, Dougherty County, Georgia to Ronald and Vontressia Kinson, née Miller. His childhood was an interesting one. He loved food at a young age, often telling his dreams to his parents - mostly involving food. He enjoyed playing video games and various outdoor activities with his older brother, Vyron Kinson, who was deaf. Once Chris could ride his bicycle, his friendship networks grew. Instead of only being friends with his next-door neighbor, LaTrice, he began making friends deeper into the neighborhood. Specifically, he met fraternal twins, Casey and Caleb Shy, who are still his lifelong friends. Biking is also how he discovered the beauty of the Cromartie Beach neighborhood. Just down the hill from his home stood tall waterfront homes overlooking the Flint River. Some days, he would ride on the streets bordering the water and take it all in. Later, he learned that his 3rd grade teacher, Ms. Peeples, lived in one of those homes on stilts. One of his first home daycare providers lived down the hill too, Ms. Ollie. Chris still cannot resist that red Georgia clay in her yard.
Very few people in the Cromartie Beach neighborhood were prepared for that beauty and serenity to be drenched in the horror of Tropical Storm Alberto which caused the Flood of 1994. Chris recalls panic and strangeness about that time period. His family abandoned their home to stay in a hotel temporarily until they could stay elsewhere safely. The hotel was nice but he remembers his parents being uneasy during this time and constantly on the hotel phone (a landline) checking in with family members and watching the news. That flood destroyed a tremendous part of the city, especially Albany’s southside, where his grandmother, Liza Kinson née Wallace, resided. Her home, the one “Bubba” (Milton Kinson Sr.) built, had to be completely renovated. Many Albanians had to live in FEMA trailers until their homes were renovated, his grandmother included.
Albany saw another disastrous flood in 1998. Again, displacing many and promoting other to move away and never come back. In 1999, his parents decided it was best to move too, but not away from Albany, right outside of the city limits. This newly built home was where Chris grew into a teenager and eventually into a man. For Chris, middle school was the typical American angsty hormonal balancing act. He struggled with his physical self-image and how his body worked. He also struggled with the concept of love and affinity. Being intelligent and excelling academically probably kept his self-esteem up and distracted him from the negative. One standout from this middle school era was when he won the award for highest GPA all three years of middle school. Outside of school, Chris began making friends in his new neighborhood and playing basketball and football outdoors. And 1 was all the rage during this time, and he enjoyed the antics of street ball. But this would be a phase and a setup for what would become one of his most intense passions: marching band.
In 2001, the film, Drumline, was released and took over the country, promoting aspiring musicians and dancers to “edutain” - educate and entertain crowds at football games. Albany already had a vibrant marching band culture, and any day a parade took place was the most coveted day of the year. Chris loved all of it! His dad bought him a trumpet when he was in 5th grade. He practiced it often and saw improvement while in middle school concert bands, where also played the French horn. Eartha Watkins was his band director at Highland Middle Magnet School and Robert Cross Middle Magnet School. He remembers her as one of his big believers and instilled in him the notion of PRIDE. She was the first person to call him “Doc”. His Aunt Floree Linkhorn was the first person to claim him as “Dr. Kinson”. He’ll never forget them both. When it came time for high school, Chris was familiar with several well-known marching bands including Cedar Grove High School, FAMU Marching 100 Rattler Band, Southern University Human Jukebox, Grambling State University Tiger Marching Band, Morris Brown College Marching Wolverines, and Albany State University Marching Ram Show Band. Because he had seen these bands, he already had specific ideas about what his high school marching band experience would be. And he made it exactly that! By his senior year, Chris had arranged over 50 songs (sheet music) for the marching band - often needing to teach the arrangements himself, led the trumpet section along with his friend Bradley Fields, and served unofficially as the assistant band director. Ask anyone in the Westover High School Marching Patriots during the years 2005-2007; they’ll tell you. His senior project consisted of him conducting the band for an original piece of music he wrote. His dedication to all things band and music pushed him to go to college for music.
Originally, he wanted to go to Georgia Institute of Technology to study computer engineering. But they rejected his college application. Truthfully, this rejection bothered him a lot. Especially considering he was ranked 6th in his class, multi-talented, and stayed out of trouble. (He should have been ranked much higher, but his counselor refused to put him in the appropriate honors classes in his freshman year). Instead of letting his dream school’s rejection stop him from enjoying life, he switched directions and decided to audition for music programs, take professional lessons, and major in music education at the “unsinkable” Albany State University. Marching band at the college level was everything he thought it would be. This was positive, but also negative. His band was composed of fierce musicians, disciplined drill designers, and ambitious arrangers. ASU made it to the 2008 Honda Battle of the Bands in Atlanta, GA. It was fun seeing bands, such as Norfolk State University Marching Spartans and Bethune-Cookman University Marching Wildcats, up close and personal. While those were high points, staying in the band meant subjecting himself to more hazing. He doesn’t like talking about this part of his story, but admits that his experiences were eye-opening. He never rejoined the band after his freshman year. Instead, he focused on mathematics and computer science, and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Mathematics with Magna Cum Laude distinction.
After college, he only had a handful of weeks to spend with his family, because he was joining the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s Department of Statistics as a PhD student. This was graduate school. Although several of his mentors and teachers told him graduate school will be challenging, he later realized that they undersold that fact. For him, graduate school was when he really discovered who he was and the kind of man he was, because he didn’t feel like he had any plan B. During graduate school he began earning money as a teaching assistant in order to pay for school on top of having to take classes and study. The intensity of this level of study and academic pressure almost broke him. He was awarded the prestigious National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship in 2012, which allowed him to focus on studying and research without having to be a teaching assistant. But even then, the work of research only intensified. Had it not been for three things, Chris didn’t think he would have gotten through: 1) meeting the woman, Isis Rose, whom he would eventually marry, 2) his graduate school classmates and colleagues, and 3) social dancing. Graduate school was rough for Chris and dancing became his religious practice, so to speak. He began with salsa. Then bachata and merengue. Then kizomba. Then Guinean ballet and West African dance. Then house. Each dance somehow built onto the other. He immersed himself not only into the movements of these dances, but also into their culture, languages, cuisine, and history. He even taught some dances because he desperately wanted more people, especially black folks, to experience the elation that he had. Dancing unlocked a level of sensuality and confidence that Chris hadn’t ever known before. Majority of these dances were partner dances, where a man was typically the lead, while a woman was typically the follow. Getting close to a woman without ulterior motives nor trying to “holla” led him to appreciate women more. His emotional intelligence also increased while in graduate school, and he believes social dancing and the community within it triggered this newfound intelligence.
In his final year of graduate school, he married Isis and bought a house. Upon graduation with a Doctorate of Philosophy in Statistics, he started a new job as Visiting Assistant Professor, in the same department that he graduated from. Isis became pregnant that year and gave birth to their daughter Xena Rose Kinson in 2018. Their son Obsidian Rose Kinson was born during the COVID-19 pandemic in the year 2021. Chris loved his family immensely, enjoyed fatherhood, husbandry, and home ownership. He currently resides in Urbana, Illinois.
