The book, those words together. This is nonprofit, funded exclusively through donations. One of the ways to help us through this kind of programming is through the friends of fall for the book. To learn more, please visit that web site again. We ask that you, please, remember to silence your cell phone. And thank you in advance for filling out a survey which will help fall for the book improve the festival in the future. Thank you to our main sponsor, african and africanamerican studies. So were pleased to have here Mary Louise Patterson and Jeffrey Stewart, two writers who examine key figures of the harlem renaissance, Langston Hughes and alain locke respectively. Dr. Mary Louise Patterson explores the relationship that her family but particularly her mother had with Langston Hughes, and in the new negro, the life of alain locke, Jeffrey Stewart chronicles the education and career of this central figure in the harlem renaissance. Its important to Say Something about the subjects that they write about. They celebrate, both our authors celebrate artistic genius in a society that said you did not belong. And their great gift to many through their art is to say this is how we do belong. So without further ato, mary louise ado, Mary Louise Patterson, thank you. [applause] thank you, everyone. Thank you, george mason university. Thank you, professor ben cardin, thank you for inviting me. I couldnt agree more that this is these two people, Langston Hughes and alain locke, really are very important people in american history. Certainly in american letters. I would like to introduce you to my parents who, and to the parents of my coauthor who knew Langston Hughes for over 40 years and who corresponded with him for over 40 years. And this is a introduction for you to who these two, these two sets of parents, these four people actually were. My participants, william parents, william and louise pattedderson, and my coauthor, her parents evelyn and Matt Crawford. Their uniqueness, perhaps, was that they were africanamerican communists, and they were very Close Friends of langston, as i said, for most of their lives. And from the first half of the first half of the 20th century. So id like to show you this 17minute video so that youll get some sense of who they were. The letters, the correspondence is this a book that we coedited, its entitled letters from langston from the harlem renaissance to the red scare and beyond. I also want to say that the voice that youre going to hear is the voice of paul robeson, and there are pictures in there that dont have names, labels on them, but if you want to know who the people are in the pictures, you can ask me afterwards. Is that microphone on . [inaudible conversations] we actually knew Langston Hughes from the very beginnings of our lives. On the occasion of our birth, he wrote to each of us to welcome us into the world. He did this because of his close ties to our two sets of parents, Louise Thompson and william pat patterson, and evelyn grace and Matt Crawford. When he learned of my arrival, he wrote me a card from paris. It said to nettie lou from langston. P. S. , glad youre here. And on a visit to california the following year, he saw me take my first steps. When i came along a few years later, he sent me this handwritten first draft of this poem. Mama, i found this soldiers cap lying in the snow. It has a red star on it. Whose is it . Do you know . He also enclosed a letter. Dear mary louise, this is for your first collection of original manuscripts. By the time you are old enough to read, i hope this world will be over. And by the time this this war will be over. And i hope that you will be here a long time to enjoy all of its blessings. So be a nice baby and take your toddler [inaudible] and grow up strong. With love from langston. The story of the friendships between Langston Hughes, the craw fords and the pattersons began with my mother, Louise Thompson, who would later become Louise Thompson patterson. Louise was the first among our four parents to have a close personal friendship with hughes, and it was she who brought her childhood friends, Matt Crawford and evelyn grace crawford, into the poets life. Louise thompson and my mother met in their teens and became best friends in the early 1920s when louise was a student at the university of california and my mother, nettie as she was known to family and friends worked as a stenographer in san francisco. My father had migrated to california from alabama when he was a boy of 8 and attended high school with louise in oak lan. Oakland. In the fall of 1927, louise was a young teacher at Hampton Institute in virginia. She and langston met on the hampton campus while he was there for a speaking engagement. Louise left hampton soon after hughes appearance there and moved to harlem. She had witnessed the brave student strike against the patronizingly racist White Administration and felt she could no longer be part of the school. Once in harlem, she became a part of the circle of artists and intellectuals whose most prominent figure was Langston Hughes. Earlier that year my mother went to new york on vacation. During that brief trip, she met my father, san franciscoborn william patterson, known as pat to his friends. Pat and langstoned had met earlier through langston had met through paul robeson during the heyday of [inaudible] pat had settled in new york in 1920 and was well known in the community as one of harlems most prominent attorneys and dedicated political activists. He would later become a National Leader of the american communist party. In the summer of 1928, nettie grace vacationed in harlem with her friend louise who introduced her to Langston Hughes and his circle of friends including artist Aaron Douglas and his wife alta. They hit it off immediately. After a few weeks of the fast harlem life, she would return home to the bay area and her sweetheart, Matt Crawford, whom she married the following year. Louise, in her early days in new york, worked for a time as secretary to langston and novelist of folklore [inaudible] she was hired with by their wealthy white patron, mrs. Charlotte [inaudible] the relationship with mrs. Mason came to a dramatic halt when the park avenue matron saw that she could no longer control langston or louise. She abruptly dismissed and humiliated them both. One night langston comes to my house. He had been [inaudible] she was a very, very wealthy woman who had been a patron of the arts all of her life. Her particular interests were in what she called primitive people. She did not want them to write poems or audios of social protests. She wanted him to remain primitive, as she said. She had to control you. When she couldnt control you, she threw you out of her life. He was heart broken and had been very grateful to have somebody for a time he didnt have to worry about [inaudible] going to college. He had me to work for him. So he was [inaudible] and she made it very hard for langston for a long time. In march of 1932, langston was on a speaking tour when he wrote Matt Crawford for the paris time from oklahoma first time from oklahoma. Dear mr. Crawford, thank you for your letter. Id be happy to appear under the auspices you mention in oakland or berkeley. I shall be in california in april. I hope we shall meet. Tell [inaudible] im anxious to see her. Sincerely, Langston Hughes. By may of that year, my father and langston had become fast friends. Late that month langston sent matt a telegram about an exciting prospect, a trip to moscow that louise had been organizing from new york. Dear matt heres a copy of a wire from louise. Mossmoss uhuh cow wire, all moscow wire, very necessary you arrive new york ready to sail by june 15th. Have good group. Consult map. Wire immediately, louise. So if youre going, you have to get a passport at once. Airmail louise your decision. I hope you can go. Langston. The group of young black professionals, intellectuals and artists had been invited to moscow to make a film into it withed black and white about the state of Race Relations in the United States. Matt and langston were roommates during their stay in the soviet union. There in the heavy atmosphere of the new socialism, they forged their friendship and commitment to radical political struggle. William patterson had gone to the soviet union earlier. By 1928 he was seriously studying radical political philosophy and traveled to moscow to continue to study socialism. I went to make a Motion Picture for [inaudible] about the in the United States and the labor struggles here. We got there and we found they had no idea what black folks were like in this country. Langston tried to work on the script. I said, well, i dont believe we could make a picture from this [inaudible] anybody would believe anywhere else in the world. And eventually the film was canceled. We left langston [inaudible] i was able to travel all over the soviet union, and i particularly wanted to see the asiatic portion because there are colored people like myself. So i wanted to go and see how they lived. Matt, louise and langston were profoundly affected and uplifted by their trip into soviet central asia. On their return to the states, they would both become active in the fight to free the nine scottsboro boys of alabama. At this time they also joined the communist party, convinced that the only hope for black americans was a fundamental change in an oppressive political, economic and social order. Langston remained in the soviet union until the spring of 1933. Back in the states, langston throws himself into the scottsboro boys case. A Mass Movement was building to free young men. Langston wrote and spoke on their behalf and went to visit them at the scottsboro, alabama, prison. Later in the 1930s he would travel as a journalist for the Baltimore Afroamerican to cover the spanish civil war. Louise had also gone to spain to help with relief work. Spain at that time was a focal point for anyone who had any social conscience. Especially writers came from all over the world to be [inaudible] and so there was langston. [inaudible] the written word is euphoric and to misuse that power, to use it for ugly or lying purposes would seem to be morally wrong. When langston came back from spain in 1938, he said [inaudible] together in 1938 langston and my mother founded the harlem suitcase theater, their most successful production that year was langstons play, dont you want to be free. Throughout the 1930s and 40s, langston spent a great deal of time in carmel, california, at the home of his wealthy friend. He would often come up to berkeley to go to the barbershop and visit with my family. He was playful and lighthearted some of the time, but he also confided in my parents and sought a sense of family among us. He also would seek their advice on serious personal and political matters. He called this needing clarification. In 1941 he was attacked by the evangelist mcpherson for an early poem he had written called goodbye christ. Occasionally he was broke and borrowed small amounts of money, paying them back promptly when he received his next check from a speaking engagement or publishing project. In the early 1950s, langston was called to testify about his political views before the infamous senator mccarthy. Shortly after his ordeal in washington, d. C. , he sent our parents a summary of his testimony with a touching note explaining that with the exception of paul robeson, he had not been forced to name names. In june of 1957, langston invited my parents and me to see his play, simply heavenly, on broadway. My father pat was very disturbed by the play and wrote langston in part dear, lang stomp langston, we saw play tuesday night. Thanks for the tickets and may i hear now very belateddedly thank you for sending us i wonder as i wander and several other books. It is difficult to define my reaction to simply heavenly. I cannot say that i liked it. It did not appeal to me. Simply heavenly does not say what so greatly needs to be said at this moment, lang, at least not to me. So simple is the eternally recurring primitive negro, so childishly simple and so simply childish. Time and place called for something else. The negro can today play the dominant moral role in american life. Thanks again. One must more than dip ones fingers into progressive life. Sincerely, pat. Langston answered the next day. In spite of pats harsh criticism, he replied without anger or surprise. Dear pat im certainly sorry i wasnt at the theater the night you all came, as i would have loved to say hello to you. Your letter is greatly appreciated, and your views valid in a number of ways. I am sure. When it comes to plays, it is a miracle to end up with anything at all one wishes left in the play. After 2030 other people have had a hand in the creation from the producers and directors to actors. So all i can say is i did the best i could under the circumstances. That it gets your serious consideration and you write me so helpful a letter is at least something to be grateful for. Best ever and hope to see you and the family soon as work pressures let up. Sincerely, langston. This correspondence could have caused a break in the friendship between these two men, but instead their bond of solidarity endured frank criticism and adamantly held opinions. In the 1950s and 60s, langstons visits were less frequent, but he kept up with what we were doing and thinking. Mary louise was studying in moscow, and i was in graduate school in new york when news of her marriage to a student at [inaudible] Friendship University was announced. I called langston to tell him ant the news about the news, and he was so happy to receive her wedding picture. In the summer of 1966 on his way back to the sates from senegal states from senegal, langston passed through paris where i was living. My parents were visiting me at time, and the four of us went out to dipper at a little restaurant dinner at a little restaurant. Langston teased me that evening, telling me that i had no business speaking french better than he did. It was a joyous reunion, and after saying our goodbyes on a Street Corner facing notre dame cathedral, we watched dear langston watch up the boulevard in search of the next mornings New York Herald tribune. It was the last time i would see him, for the following year he was gone. So langston, as we knew him, was someone who, along with our parents, dedicated his life to the cause of justice for black americans and other oppressed people around the world. He was our uncle and our friend, and through his writings and the books he suggested we read, helped us to understand the world and our rightful place in it. I, too, sing america. I am the darker brother. A [inaudible] in the kitchen when company comes, but i laugh and eat well and grow strong. Tomorrow i will be at the table when company comes. Nobody will dare say to me, eat in the kitchen then. Besides, theyll see how beautiful we are and be ashamed. I, too, am america. [applause] so now youve met my parents, william and Louise Patterson, my coauthors parents, evelyn and Matt Crawford, and had a glimpse of their 40plusyear friendship with langston. If you enjoyed the video, youll love our book. [laughter] letters from langston from the harlem renaissance to the red scare and beyond, coauthored by me and Evelyn Louise crawford. My mother louise was the last survivor of the aforementioned quintet, and when she departed in 1999, nebbie and i were left with a trove of letters from langston to our parents wed grown up with, be we didnt know but we didnt know if our uncle langston had kept any of the letters our parents must have written him. So in 2002 we went to the library at Yale University to the James Weldon Johnson collection where langstons papers reside to see what, if anything, langston had kept. Lo and behold, he kept just about everything. Including letters we had written to him that we had long ago forgotten about. We sat there in silence, overwhelmed by what we found and slowly realized that this 40year correspondence was a window into some of the most important sociopolitical events of the 20th century, many of which were little known, yet nonetheless of real historical significance. Additionally, this correspondence displayed black radical intellectual brilliance and activism. Their choosing to make a commitment to progressive struggle that they knew would leave them all financially strapped. Lastly, it illuminated a profound, a real friendship. We realized we had to share this discovery. It couldnt just remain our family treasure. We had to write a book. We had to write it for uncle langston, for we knew that one who never stopped because we knew that he had never stopped believing that workers deserved to enjoy the fruits of their labor, or in biblical terms, that the meek deserve to inherit the earth they tilled. He never stopped believing in the imperative to struggle for true democracy in america, the america that never was but could be as he so poignantly wrote in his poem, let america be america again. Id like to make three points about langston from the Vantage Point of being one of his nieces. The first, there was the langston who was politically independent, outside of joining the National Negro congress. The only groups he joined that i recall were writers groups. Most of those were politically progressive. He was also artistically independent, holding a normal 9 to 5 job only twice in his writing life and then only for a but the months. One was at Atlanta University and the other was at the lab school in chicago. Despite the fact he was a famous screenwriter, play wright, poet heard on the radio and a requested speaker for me events, he was penniless most of his writing life, borrowing from friends or thankful for the largess of his patrons and the few awards that came his way. He survived mostly from his speaking engagements which forced him to be on road for weeks to months at a time, often in a dilapidated car facing the grueling schedule that pushed him to a new town every 12 days, enduring the humiliation of jim crow accommodations unless he landed somewhere he had friends or else he slept in his car. This constant travel and the substandard travel conditions meant he was often ill. This, along with chain smoking, had to have taken a great toll on his life, shortening it to 65 years. It wasnt until the 1960s that he made any real money, and then he only got to enjoy it for about 56 years, for he died in 1967. Two, there was the langston who kept his radical ideological beliefs to the end of his life. This was proven by the fact that he maintained an open friendship with my parents who were known communists, and incidentally, with other open black communists like Ishmael Flore in chicago. I through the terrifying witch huntpanicked 1950s were even the mere hint of sympathy towards anyone, group or idea that was considered communist was enough to get one fired, banished, divorced, jailed or dead by ones own hand. Sound familiar . It ought to. Donald trump was mentored by roy cohn whod been mentored and worked for the infamous senator joe mccarthy for whom the term mccarthyism was copied and who was a master at the art of bullying, smear campaigns, lying and the use of the new media, tv, which proved perfect for his popular rising of his fearamongerring theatrics. Mongering. And lastly, langston loved black people. He loved all colored and oppressed people, but he especially loved black people in all our complexities and contradictions, our colors, our dance and laughter, our walk and attitude, our sartorial expression, our food and generosity, our humor and blues, our language and our rhythm, our strength, our unrelenting struggle for freedom, equality, dignity and the ability to live without fear. He never stopped giving his voice to his people or being the voice of his people. He never stopped assisting young writers here and in a diaspora to find their voices and to hear the songs and voices of their people. Thank you. [applause] i just want to say i am honored to share this, this session with professor Jeffrey Stewart. And im honored to be here with you. [inaudible] is this this one . Oh. I was confused because someone had told me it was the black mic, and i thought that was kind of like [laughter] you know, a little racial narrative coming in here, and so i was just trying to make sure that i didnt essentialize [laughter] the moment. But anyway, im so glad to be here back at george mason where i taught for many years and among my friends and colleagues and to, of course, be here back with a finished book. Because so much of the time that i was here i couldnt finish it, and, you know . But at the same time, i was so nurtured by the community of scholars here who valued me and helped me move along in the path that led to its conclusion. So i really am so, so pleased to be here at george mason and my colleagues. I also want to give a shoutout though to howard university, and in that process read something. One of the things i think about working on a book for a long time is that you accumulate many debts, but you also accumulate many resources. In other words, you talk and you work and you interact with so many people, and you dont realize it, but at some point during the process something theyve said to you, something that was done or whatever comes back, and it fits in somewhere or it helps suture together some thoughts or ideas that were kind of hanging apart for a long time. And one of those people for me was professor eleanor trailer, a professor of english at howard university. I met her when i was working with my great friend richard powell, the duke professor of art history, who had put together an exhibition called the blews aesthetic. Blues aesthetic. So we were working on this, and i just want to read you something. It struck me that when i was working toward the end, it kind of helped pull together what was special about alain locke and particularly what i wanted this book to say. So at the time, this was in the late 80s and everybody was all, you know, involved and in love with alex haleys roots. It was so popular, right . We all know that as historians. We hate to see journalists move into our territory [laughter] and do a job better than we could. But after all, theyre writers, right . In any case, she wrote, ill just read this little part. He says, alex haleys roots is relating the search for reunion. In such a story the quester defines himself as the sum of his past and present parts. The quester achieves totality and full illment as he reunites finish fulfillment as he reunites with his source. This is a very old story both east and west. It is a very beautiful story. It assures us that we belong to continuity. It suggests that there is order in the universe. It asserts that our job is to find it and be reconciled with it and, therefore, experience the fulfillment that unity achieves. Significantly, however, this is not the story that afroamerican literature has characteristically told, nor is it told in the folklore upon which that literature is in large part built. Brer rabbit, john the conqueror, shine, the anonymous author of the spirituals, the wandering blues singers, none of these mythological or actual carriers of folk tradition look to the past as object of their quests. To the contrary, we hear them sing on my journey now and condition nobody turn me around cant nobody turn me round. Neither the folklore nor the literary traditions deny the value or the desirability of reconciliation with the past. Yet what they emphasize and what they place into language as central experience is not the quest for roots, but the act of shaping rootlessness. And its this rootlessness that i think was a characteristic of alain locke, and i think its a characteristic of what he began to find in the rest of back culture that was actually a source of creativity. And i think about this when i, one of the things that i focus a lot on in the book was his analysis of the great migration. The great migration which brought, you know, hundreds of thousands, millions really of africanamericans out of the south into the north in world war ii world war i and afterwards. That really created the harlems, the chicagos, the pittsburghs, a kind of Critical Mass of blackness. Most of the people like charles johnson, emmett j. Scott, they always looked at this as the product of social forces, the pull of opportunity created by world war i for employment in wartime industries, the push of jim crow and lynching in the south. But locke didnt see it that way. Locke saw it, basically, as a consciousness change. He says its really the change in the consciousness of the people in the south that led them to seize opportunity, to see a future that was different from the past that led them to respond to these social conditions, a new psychology as he calls it to seize opportunity and to make a new man, a new woman out of it. And so this idea here of consciousness is very important in alain locke, okay . Thats the philosopher in him. Yes, we are pushed by social forces, but at some point we have the choice how we respond to those. And what he saw, picking up on what he was saying about the love of black people, is that he found in black people that agency. That despite everything that was going on, people had the ability to pick up their lives and do something new with it, to transform themselves and to make a new negro out of their situation. Because it was that agency, that consciousness, that ability to act on your own and in your own, along your own agenda that made for the new negro. And, you know, when you think about it, you know, the 1920s, i mean, we always think about the roaring 20s and everything as being a great time, but the 1920s was a lot like today. I mean, you know . You had a conservative president in the white house, you had the rise of nativism, the National Origins act of 1924 basically cut off immigration of almost all nonwhites to the United States. You had the ideology of 100 americanism, hypernationalism. And yet in that time africanamericans created the harlem renaissance, okay . So that when we think about now and this kind of, you know, a lot of negativity, i think we need to think about the fact that thats not really new. And what we need to focus on perhaps or at least what locke might say today is to focus on the creative resources that you have to do something new and maybe turn off a little bit so much attention to the noise of White Supremacy and white racism and other demonizing forces in the society. And so locke became kind of the person at the head of something much larger than him. He was kind of the surfer on the wave. And that wave was the great migration of working class and lower middle class people out of the south. It was also the wave of all of this talent that we were seeing here. Langston hughes, paul robeson, zora neale hurston, nell la larson, richmond bar today, jacob lawrence, Katherine Dunham who essentially were giants in literature, poetry, visual arts, folklore, performing arts, and they transformed American Culture through their creativity. And thats an important story. I think that we should keep it in mind even as we struggle with our current situation. Not so much looking back, as eleanor trailer would say. I mean, obviously, having connection. But what about the past is useful for us today. A new negro is always possible even in the darkest timings. Locke, i think, would timings. Locke, i think, would say that even today. And particularly about the art of the harlem remember sax as renaissance as we heard, it was not detach from the social conditions of the people in which that movement was embedded. You know, it wasnt just art for arts sake. It was art for peoples sake, even as artists struggled to exercise their artistic freedom. To really lockes idea was that art and culture could be used to reinvent and repurpose and revitalize black and brown communities throughout the United States and also the diaspora with that haiti, with the caribbean, with latin america and, of course, africa. Now, i think that another part of this is very important which is that locke was gay, and i think his gayness is not inconsiderable in the story. I mean, at a time when even the naacp was largely a middle class, heteronormative family affair, locke often felt alienated from the communities around protest politics, fearing he would be outed or exposed. And yet rather than retreat from racial struggle as some did, he found a way to use something he loved, art, to revitalize the race and reinvent the nero in americas culture as the quintessential american artist. Indeed,queer people of color have always been a driving force in the industries in america, and yet i think what locke said is that they can be essential to the black struggle and not be put off, not be or marginalized for that. That a new way of thinking about who and what the negro is came out of the creative ferment of so many queer, gay and lesbian artists of the time. I think also the issue of art added something that maybe politics and economic struggle didnt, which is that locke really believed in the power of imagination, you know . That the other inside of us could be tapped, and we could then use that as a way to connect to the other outside of us. So that some of that rootlessness in our own self could be connected to other people, and we could begin to bond with the fact that we are all moving in circles, not really knowing where were going. And yet from time to time, able to crystallize that movement into song, into poetry, into a painting, into a dance. So this book is really, you know, about the harlem rep sans, but its also renaissance, but its also about the benefits, bobss and tragedies of obstacles and tragedies of intersectionalty and how we need to complicate our notion of black identity even as we fight for its survival and vindication. And here i think a unique part of lockes life which is one of the reasons it takes so long to work on it is his travel, his cosmopolitanism. He wrote this one essay, and what i think he was trying to say there is part of us moving out, part of us being exposed to that outside of us is very important for us understanding what is inside of us, that we cant become so barricaded within our culture, so hunkered down that we dont see whats outside of it, that being more cosmopolitan, more transnational actually is a way for us to become more understanding of our own culture. That a die logic di alogic approach is important for us becoming who we need to be. So i think locke would worry a little bit sometimes about how identity politics at times contains a kind of danger, you know, that we can become it can become a new dungeon almost, a kind of prison house of the monologic instead of the dialogic and that in the 20s and the 21st century our great great opportunity with new forms of communication and transportation is really to discover the outside in terms of geography and also of mentality. And that its through that struggle with that which is not us that we become something larger and something better. Now, his idea of reinvention was also part of lockes struggle and something that he did in the 30s. Generally speaking, he was not on the side of the radicals and protests for a variety of reasons, some of them personal, some of them that he felt that you could get further without dramatizing racism. But in the 1930s, he began to become involved with the indianafascist movement antifascist movement, supporting people in the spanish war, particularly interesting, very powerful and underresearched women like Thyra Edwards and others who basically ran nursing and other medical things in spain. He became part of the National Negro congress. So much so that by the 1940s he began to be investigated by the fbi. To be able to understand that which he disagreed with fundamentally and to incorporate that into his own subjectivity. Another one that was mentioned, beauty, as my colleague professor reminded me when i was here at george mason even before plato continuing the idea that beauty is a universal as aristotle put it it is a virtue and an idea, but it is something that is often denied minority people and communities and are often described consistently in the discourse of the White Supremacy. The contemporary rifle perhaps put it best beauty its variety is infinite, its possibilities endless, but beauty is denied the mass of human beings or choked away from it and their lives distorted and made ugly. The charge to humanity with a charge to all of us who shall write this universal failing to. Allen walked up thaalan walker e challenge and obligation and provided one covered answer to the question by asserting something quite radical that was even today black people were charged with writing this universal failing of demanding the right to beauty in our own lives and the Race Relations what was demande demanded was tt of africanamericans to beauty to speak and write about and carve out. America has for much of its history been unable to see its life is beautiful ground down and a sense of ourselves as always lacking. They might be able to get out of bed to sleep and perhaps not only discover those among us but perhaps a new american. Thank you very much. [applause] we are going to open up to questions from the audience there was a lot of interaction especially because Langston Hughes considered the poet laureate of the race and was publicly that best poet of the harlem renaissance to create a new form. He was able to use the verse. But the tensions emerge between the two of them because they encountered to the analysis failed to live up to the expectations he had and so after that whole relationship of patronage disintegrated, they were no longer friends. So theres a lot of rivalry and tension in these relationships as well as there is this kind of hothouse creativity. He was also at the largess of Charlotte Mason and is the one who introduced my mother to mrs. Mason. He was older and was born around 1885 and langston was born in 1802, said he was considerably older. He maintained that relationship with mrs. Mason biondi when louise and mason were no longer with her. On the one hand one of the things about the harlem renaissance is that it was more interracial than the black Arts Movement and the sorts of things but there were tremendous tensions and the power that talks beautifully about the obsession with power which i think its also related to the fact that she was actually incredibly talented, powerful white woman that has no power outside of black people so you had it right there it had to work. She had a lot of frustrations but in addition to Everything Else had a mother complex. His own mother was very important to him and when she passed away he sought out other mother figures to sustain him so while he was disappointed in the situation that occurred in the blue of his own need for nurture van hem to stay with this person he had to know was highly problematical to be involved in the movement, but his own personal needs were overwhelming. Everything is it was a small community, so they actually everyone involved in that crime ithe crimeand the cultural lifem they all knew each other, all of them. The circles overlapped but there they were political circles, cultural circles, everybody knew everybody else in the film and i think it was your mother, i get a little confused sometimes, who left hampden to come to harlem and im studying about period can you say more about the circumstances that caused her to leave virginia and go up to harlem . At that time there were very few africanamerican professors. Most of them were white. Often times they didnt have college degrees. There was a student strike that preceded my mother is leaving. The students struck the conditions that have them were plantation conditions. The students were segregated and the young men from the young women have to wear their skirts a certain length and my mother would describe the nature and some of the white professors would act to take a tape measure and measure the difference between their hand to the ground to make sure that they in fact thatmethodist bishop how long e skirts needed to be and they would keep inside the keyhole of the dormitory rooms to make sure that men and women were not forgotten i think and plan the south african colonel visited with the United States to see what the new africanamericans looks like in Higher Education after which, upon which they sort of pattern there been to Educational Programs he went to hampton and they forced the students to, but the students struck a and the white professors incidentally could only sit together on the hampton campus. They were told they couldnt fraternize in town comes with students were forced to come into the dining room and they would sing to the white professors and students filed in silence. They didnt sing and they didnt serve and they went on strike and they were expelled from the university asked my mother wrote a letter to the head of the crisis magazine at the time. She wrote him a letter about the strike and he published a letter. She didnt expect do but she did and when the contract was up past the end of the year, she couldnt return. She talked about the paternalistic attitude towards the students was more than she could take and she left and went to new york. I have a question about the content of the thoughts and ideas and expectations of artists of the communist systems that dont want to too great of a range and rising or representation unless it serves a kind of purpose to teach and keep a long and ideological paths. This is the stereotype and i would like you to sort of engage with that stereotype in relation to both Langston Hughes and alain locke. I think it was probably early on, walkabout into that in a certain extent thats one of the things he began to experience the change that has occurred in the communist party that occurred with a popular front and with the popular front being declared 1935. Two begin to enlist locke and others to talk about the culture as a way of working against this problem, the so he was welcomed into those sort of things to talk about the folk music as an expression of the working class, so there was a shift not to say that it was true before hand, but there was a shift in being more open to the cultural field after 1935. The. If you look at the last book, he was a marxist himself who said literature has the possibility of carrying imaginative possibility that can lead to new formations in the future. Even if the economic base controls the superstructure is found to be not true and there were people who were critical of that as well. I would like to add that the revolution called a lot of cultural people around the world and they sold the freedom to be creative. A number of people went to the soviet union expecting and finding the artistic freedom that they had not found or have difficulty struggling to have in the last. So initially, the Russian Revolution that liberated our art and creativity and was embraced by artists around the world and including the impact of the revolution and the ideology of the work being able to set the policies and benefit from those of their own labor inspired artists all over the world. I would like to ask you to reflect on yourself as writers in particular trajectories working on family papers and reflecting back historically but personally in terms of it taking a long time for the project spanning a good deal of time how did that shape you into your work and also how did you approach writing from family papers are going through that . There seems to be an interesting story always about the writers. My coauthor and i have never written informally anyway prior to taking on this project it took us almost 17 years from the truth to the university where we found what langston had kept in the strobe of letters to promising 2016 if one is quite a journey. First of all, we had to figure out did we think this was a book, and we quickly came to the agreement that it was definitely a book. We then felt that we needed to clarify that although he had to do what we call it a tactical retreat in the 1950s when he appeared before mccarthy for the renouncing which was seen but now that im an older man, ive thrown away those young men urges, but that really wasnt true. It was a tactical retreat that he took at the time mentioned in the film. They kept the beliefs through his entire life into the open friendship was an example of that. The other thing is the letters were wonderful. Filled with gossip in first drafts of his writing. We felt based on that they needed to see the light of day and then we had to figure out as you could see we were born sisters and we lived in an apartment by the country and never collaborated on anything but to have a working relationship with somebody is different. Life intervened as it tends to and we have no money, so all of this including the failed that we did on our own dime so it took a long time, but even when there were long periods we could come together and we would assign each of the tasks and then not do them and then come back together and start a no vote we never gave up and we also have the support of friends and family members who understood the mission to go ofk offense to go into somebodys basement and try to work it out, then we have to figure out what it was and i didnt know what people were talking about it. What does that even mean. So there were a lot of challenges. I dont know if i would call myself a writer. We edited these letters and did a lot of research. We wanted to not only introduce our parents to the audience that wouldnt know who they were but also the activities, the events, the thinking was that it also obscured. So when they mentioned for instance the affair. All of that when researched and wanted to include in the book. It was left out of history to put it back into the letters. Last, we had a champion in the canon, professor robin kelly who without him there would be no vote and he championed the book from the very beginning and wrote a wonderful introduction and made it possible for this book to be published. I love listening to to talk coming and it always reminds me of things when you talk about the mccarthy era and i hope im saying her name right who was actually one of the nicest people to me when i first came to george mason and she told me about how she lived in the mccarthy period and said she was from virginia and she said they would get in their cars and drive out some place to talk because they were constantly concerned about being monitored and people had their phones tapped so this was a real period that people are sometimes worried about now that free speech was dangerous and you could end up losing your job or the mortgage on your house or whatever because of some overheard words taken out of context, and for me it was astounding when i realized somebody who was not considered was hauled into the fbi headquarters several times because in some ways i think there was an aspect that he was a closet radical and also of course because he was homosexu homosexual, people could use that. One of the things i think was a struggle that i had to acknowledge is my education didnt prepare me to write that his education, the harvard undergraduate road scholar expatriates to germany, expert on myanmar, the realm of references that he produced that i had to go and find out what they read was just enormous and at times he would be overwhelming. I think the writing itself was a challenge. Writing a certain way when i got out of graduate school i was able to do certain things and there was a different kind of writing when you write life stories it took me a while to and i woulinvite would say no tt it. One of the people who actually helped me i was telling him about my struggles but the biography that was done was a model. I started reading the models of biography and also gave me the idea that if yo youre giving a biography of even though i wasnt going to charge the whole book about it it gave me an idea and then once i got that idea i started seeing it pop up all over the place and that would help me kind of get it together here yet so i think again for me it is the people who i dialogue with and who reacted to my frustration with suggestions and continued to progress because you had to go over more hurdles until you get to the end. The voice was sso strong it wouy voice, so i ha i have to do to e my own separate from him even though i used a lot of his letters, so that was a challenge as well. And life intervened as you said. I just want to add we were told that their voices to sing the. So that was the charge we got early on from the head of the Schaumburg Library in new york city. That was always uppermost in our mind that we had to let their voices sing. Sing. But we were writing the narrative that he was writing. He had sort of connected narratives because there were years where there were no letters, so we couldnt find any letters and so we had to fill in what had happened that year but it wasnt the kind of writing that he was doing. Did you find anything about your parents through these letters and were you hesitant about what to reveal or something newsworthy just too personal . I was going to speak to that before. You find your parents at the age that you are. You find them as younger people when you didnt know them so what does it sound like and how did they write a. My mother talked of orange blossoms when she went to new york but she found orange blossoms and i think that was jane and orange juice. Then she started smoking. So we found ourselves as people who were finding themselves and so that was something new. But i think overall, what we realized both of us love our parents, they were incredible people, installed in a culture along with elaine locke and paul robeson and w. E. B. Du boise only 35 years postemancipation and we were not talking about a long way from the enslavement and if you talk about plessy versus ferguson, that was the t. 96. They were raised by people who had been slaves and that had a profound effect on all of them and that was only 20 years after the emancipation proclamation became the wall of the entire land. These are people that have a college education. They chose not to do that so there was a deepening of our love for them out of the understanding of what they chose not to do with their lives that could have personally in christ to them to go engram biased them but we could argue on whether that was the correct way to go or not but thats what they did. It was born out of a love for the people. It was a sort of international that they are able to embrace a. Its for the exact same thing. They wanted to come out of the yoke of colonialism so they could identify that they did that. So this book became a labor of march 2 not only links do not our parents as well. I hope that answers the question. its been a wonderful afternoon so far. If this is too complicated, we will hold off until later. You spoke eloquently on the notion of the fault for not looking back looking forward to a. It was a search for a kind of dialogue and im not familiar with the trips to africa in terms of the work. I guess the questio question ofa dialogue for the sake of where is the dialogue going and i wondered if both of you could address that as a way of looking forward in dialogue to what. There is a whole line of thought that was lessons from the congo and the lessons you get to apply to now to apply arts now so you are aware of the past but you try to distill it into things you can use now, and not just to create art but also a better world through that art and so even with links to moving to africa and the idea is to. They didnt want to study the history and even if it is a poem to liberation or a better life so that is what its for to create a better life through one that is filled with art but also sees a different way of arranging the priorities of the cause of you didnt acquire as much as possible and then they will leave you alone. We just hammered them enough to. It came out of the neurosis of the worry it about becoming a stereotype. He had a sense of wanting to be with the people. They taught that to a man while he often saw him as the person i think part of the reason he was so attached to the artists but only because they were of course incredibly handsome, but also because they were the source of a knowledge that hadnt been given to him by his upbringing and that was the path of liberation for him. I am not sure that i have anything to add to what has been stated. I think that he was on a mission to insisting he assisted writers from all over the world in a number of them worked in africa and i think he realized that their voices were left out in so doing was important in terms of searching out the voices and trying to give them a platform to an audience outside of africa. The. They were going to meet their counterparts in so he realized the importance of the connection of the writers all over the world that there was an exchange that needed to take place, and he championed that. Thank you, everyone. [applause] great questions. Come on out if you would like to meet the authors [inaudible] Sandra Bullock captures lee and so while thats when her husband saw the movie for the first time he gasped and said theres two of them. It was shocking to me and the first time i saw one of my characters end up on the screen so i was more impressed than maybe i should have been. I also subsequently sought brad pitt captures billy dean and all sorts of ways and Christian Bale captures michael bare in all kinds of interesting ways, Steve Correll captures and the acts of imitation and impressions they do, the movie business might seem like nonsense, but there is a trade and they are so talent talented. I love Sandra Bullock and she is the best. She is a great actor but the one that scared me the most is Christian Bale because michael who is he has aspergers syndrome and has no connection to the outside world, he is the first to see whats going on in the subprime Mortgage Market world and when the market is going to turn and why. And its based on having studied the loans that were made that shouldnt have been made. Anyway, in person he is a little quirky and ive heard Christian Bale had gone and spent one day with him and that was it. He called him very publicly can i come spend the day with you. He watched her, talked to him and he said it was odd for me because he didnt get to go to the bathroom or eat, he sat in my office for 12 hours and i was exhausted at the end of. Hes wearing the clothing that he was wearing when i met him because he went into the close closet and took them. I cornered him to say you spend one day with him and i spent a year studying this person and i couldnt have done and the impression. Youre doing all kinds of things. How did you do that and he didnt want to talk about it. It was like magicians dont want to tell their magic. Finally it bothered him so much he said okay, and this was the thing it was obvious right away. He breathes funny. I said what . When he talks he takes a breath that bob parks. Maybe i should breathe right and Everything Else will follow. You can watch this and others at tv. Org i think because of this entire experience, he became convinced that the only way for democracy to survive and be a strong country is to have a great School System where we show democracy is better than dictatorship and we would have sufficiently brilliant and talented people in government and science, and the way to do that is to have the sat. If we were going to be a great nation in the hightech world that he foresaw approaching in the 50s and 60s so he had an extraordinary impact on american life. A [inaudible conversations] spinet programming. Or here at the roosevelt house and i welcome you on behalf of the president of the college who cant be here this evening and
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