20181029 - Celebration of Zora Neale Hurston.mp3

Event Introduction and Welcome

00:00:00

Deborah Plant on 'Barracoon'

00:01:32

Margo Jefferson on Hurston's Folklore and Democracy

00:03:50

Jacqueline Woodson Reads 'Their Eyes Were Watching God'

00:54:16

00:00:00

BERNARD SCHWARTZ

Good evening. I'm Bernard Schwartz, director of the 92nd Street Y's Unterberg Poetry Center, and it's my pleasure to welcome you to tonight's celebration of Zora Neale Hurston, featuring readings by Deborah Plant, Margo Jefferson, Ibram Kendi, and Jacqueline Woodson.

00:00:16

BERNARD SCHWARTZ

Before we begin, I'd like to welcome the students in the house tonight. The students are here as part of our Christopher Lightfoot Walker Literature project, which for more than 30 years has brought thousands of New York City high school students here to the Y to meet with writers prior to their appearance on stage. Earlier this evening, all four writers met with students from the Richard R. Green High School in Manhattan, the Burrow Hill High School for International Studies in Brooklyn, and DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx. And thanks to the generosity of our friends at HarperCollins, these students will be receiving souvenir copies of 'Barracoon' and 'Their Eyes Were Watching God' to take home after the show. Books by Zora Neale Hurston, and also tonight's readers will be available for purchase in the lobby after the show, courtesy of Posman Books.

00:01:05

BERNARD SCHWARTZ

But for now, please join me in welcoming Professor Deborah Plante to the stage. (applause)

00:01:32

DEBORAH PLANT

Good afternoon or good evening. And even though I can't see you, I feel your presence. Zora Neale Hurston's 'Barracoon: The Story of the Last Black Cargo' is based on extensive interviews Hurston conducted with Oluwole Kosola, who we also know as Cudjo Lewis in Africatown, Alabama during the latter part of 1927 and the early months of 1928. Hurston completed a draft of the manuscript in 1931, but it was only now that this manuscript was published. And the opening chapter of 'Barracoon' we get a sense of what Hurston's process was in--as she was acquiring Kosola's story.

00:02:42

DEBORAH PLANT

And she writes, it was summer when I went to talk with Cudjo Lewis, so his door was standing wide open. But I knew he was somewhere about the house before I entered the yard, because I had found the gate unlocked. When Cudjo goes down to his back field or away from home, he locks his gate with an ingenious wooden peg of African invention. I held him by his African name as I walked up the steps to his porch, and he looked up into my face as I stood in the door in surprise. He was eating his breakfast from a round enameled pan with his hands, in the fashion of his fatherland. The surprise of seeing me halted his hand between pan and face. Then tears of joy welled up. Oh, Lord, I know it you call my name. Nobody don't call me my name from across the water. But you, you always call me Kosola, just like I am the Africa soil. Thank you, Jesus. Somebody come ask about Cudjo. I won't tell it somebody who I is, so maybe they go into Africa soil someday and calling my name, and somebody there say, yeah, I know Kosola. I want you, everywhere you go, to tell everybody what Cudjo say. And tell them how come I in American soil since 1859 and never see my people no more. I can't talk it plain. You understand me? But I cause a word by word for you. So it won't be too crooked for you. My name is not Cudjo Lewis. It Kosola. When I get in America soil Mr. Jim Mayer, he tried calling my name, but it too long. You understand me? So I say. Well, are you property? He say yeah. Then I say, you calling me Cudjo? That do? But in Africa soil, my mama, she named me Kosola.

00:05:12

DEBORAH PLANT

When Hurston interviewed Kosola, she learned about his upbringing in Bante in West Africa, the town he was born and reared in. She learned about his customs, his traditions. She learned about the raid that devastated his town and his capture, and then his detainment in the Barracoons. And then the journey cross the Middle Passage and then bondage in Alabama, in America. But also Hurston learned about herself. She learned about her worldview, about her beliefs, about what she thought was the situation in terms of African Americans and how African Americans in the United States had come to be in the United States in the condition that we were.

00:06:11

DEBORAH PLANT

And she wrote in 'Dust Tracks on a Road,' one thing impressed me strongly from this three months of association with Cudjo Lewis. The white people had held my people in slavery here in America. They had bought us, it is true, and exploited us. But the inescapable fact that stuck in my craw was my people had sold me, and the white people had bought me. That did away with the folklore I had been brought up on, that the white people had gone to Africa, waved a red handkerchief at the Africans and lured them aboard ship and sailed away. I know that civilized money stirred up African greed. That wars between tribes were often stirred up by the white traders to provide more slaves in the Barracoons and all that. But if the African princes were as pure and as innocent as I would like to think, it could not have happened. No, my own people had butchered and killed, exterminated whole nations and torn families apart for profit before the strangers got their chance at a cut. It was a sobering thought. What is more, all that this Cudjoe told me was verified from other historical sources.

00:07:36

DEBORAH PLANT

It impressed upon me the universal nature of greed and glory. In Barracoon Kosola's narrative depicts some of the instances of butchery and killing, to which Hurston alludes. And he shares with Hurston these passages. It about daybreak, when the folks that sleep get waked with the noise, when the people of Dahomey break at a great gait. I not woke yet. I still in bed. I hear the gate when they break it. I hear the yell from the soldiers while they chop at the gate. Therefore I jump out of bed and looky. I see the great men and soldiers with French gun in their hand. And the big knife. They got the women soldiers too, and they run with the big knife and make noise. They catch people and they saw they neck like this with the knife. Then they twist the head so, and it come off the neck. Oh, Lord, oh Lord. I see the people getting killed so fast. The old ones, they try to run from the house, but they dead by the door. And the women soldiers got their hair. Oh, Lord. When I think 'bout that time, I try not to cry no more. My eyes, they stop crying. But the tears. Tears running down inside me all the time. When the men pulled me with them, I called my mama name. I don't know where she is. I no see none of my family. I don't know where they is. I begged the men to let me go find my folks. The soldiers say they got no ears for crying. The King of Dahomey come to hunt, slaves to sell. So they tie me in the line with the rest.

00:09:57

DEBORAH PLANT

Kosola's town was attacked and destroyed by warriors of King Glele, the King of Dahomey, an African king. Yet Kosola's story is not a story of Africans against Africans. It is not a story of Africans selling Africans. In Kosola's day there were no Africans as such. There were Ashanti, Igbo, Yoruba, Fulani, Fon. People on the continent did not self-identify as Africans or perceive one another as sisters and brothers, based on skin pigmentation. Identity was based on ethnicity or language, religion or custom, politics or economics. In the matrix of economics and self-interest, the King of Dahomey had more in common with the likes of Timothy Mayer and William Foster, the Americans who conspired to buy and enslave Olawale Kosola and his 109 compatriots. Their kinship was, based in what Hurston described as, the universal nature of greed and glory.

00:11:22

DEBORAH PLANT

Kinship and identity speak to values, core beliefs, and vision. And as human beings, we are called to examine our conscious beliefs, as we are also required to probe and understand our unconscious beliefs, values, and mindsets. Hurston wrote in 'Dust Tracks,' I have no race prejudice of any kind. My kinfolks and my skin folks are dearly loved. My own circumference of everyday life is there. But I see their same virtues and vices everywhere I look. So I give you all my right hand of fellowship and love, and hope for the same from you. In my eyesight you lose nothing by not looking just like me. I will remember you all in my good thoughts, and I ask you kindly to do the same for me. Not only just me, and you, who play the zigzag lightning of power over the world with the grumbling thunder in your wake, think kindly of those who walk in the dust. And you who walk in humble places, think kindly, too, of others. There has been no proof in the world so far that you would be less arrogant if you held the lever of powers in your hands. Let us all be kissing friends. Consider that with tolerance and patience, we godly demons may breed a noble world in a few hundred generations or so.

00:13:04

DEBORAH PLANT

I submit to you that that noble world that Hurston speaks of must begin today. I submit to you that we must be the generation that inaugurates the first of the few hundred generations or so who commit to the practice of tolerance and patience that is required to usher in the kind of conscious humanity that respects all human life and all life forms. In this, Olawale Kosola is an excellent example. Though terrorized and subjected to barbarity, he never became barbaric. Though sold as chattel and treated as a social pariah, he never lost sight of his humanity and his sense of community. Though violated with cruelty and injustice, he never hardened his heart, but continued to love, laugh, and demonstrate tenderness, kindness, and compassion. 'Barracoon' is a narrative that asserts a deep and abiding humanity that contradicts contemporary narratives that give rise to murder and mass shootings, to the separation of babies from their mothers, to millions across the globe suffering from malnutrition. It contradicts the contemporary narratives that inspire pipe bombs, fracking, and a disrespect for the sacredness of Mother Earth. 'Barracoon' is a counter narrative. It's a narrative that invites us to break our collective silence about slaves and slavery, about slaveholders and the American Dream. Completed in 1931, the narrative of Oluwale Kosola has finally found its audience, and Zora Neale Hurston's first book-length work has found a taker, and is now finally published. Though nearly a century has passed between the completion of the final draft of the manuscript and the publication of 'Barracoon,' the questions it raises about slavery and freedom, greed and glory, personal sovereignty and our common humanity are as important today as they were during Kosola's lifetime. Thank you. (applause)

00:16:28

MARGO JEFFERSON

Thank you. Good evening. That was very stirring. I am going to read some excerpts from Hurston's work as a very creative and resourceful and brilliant folklorist. She had, you know, a view of how arts, how cultures, how civilizations are made that just makes our earnest, dogged distinctions between high culture and low culture, and folk and folkloric and vernacular seem like very crude weapons. So this is from 'Works in Progress for the Florida Negro Collection' she was contributing to 1938. Folklore and music. She loved talking. Talking through lore and tales about the origins of things, from the--from ephemera to major cultural ideas and principles.

00:17:57

MARGO JEFFERSON

Folklore is the boiled down juice of human living. It does not belong to any special time, place, nor people. No country is so primitive that it has no lore, and no country has yet become so civilized that no folklore is being made within its boundaries. Folklore in Florida is still in the making. Folk tunes, tales, and characters is still emerging from the lush glades of primitive imagination before they can be finally drained by formal education and mechanical inventions. In folklore, as in everything else that people create, the world is a great big old serving platter and all the local places are like eating plates. Whatever is on the plate must come out of the platter, but each plate has a flavor of its own, because the people take the universal stuff and season it to suit themselves on the plate.

00:18:55

MARGO JEFFERSON

Earlier this evening, we were talking with some high school students about creativity and finding your own voice, and Hurston has found a lovely metaphor for exactly that. And this local flavor--this local flavor is what is known as originality. So when we speak of Florida folklore, we're talking about the Florida flavor that the story and song makers have given to the great mass of material that has accumulated in this cultural delta. And Florida is lush in materials because the state attracts such a variety of workers to its industries, and the workers are the artistic creators of these tales. That was me, not Zora.

00:19:41

MARGO JEFFERSON

Thinking of the beginning of things in a general way, it could be said that folklore is the first thing that man makes out of the natural laws that he finds around him. Behind--beyond the necessity of making a living. After all, culture and discovery are forced marches on the new and the near and the obvious. The group mind uses up a great part of its lifespan trying to ask infinity some questions about what is going around on its doorstep. And the more that the group knows about its own doorstep, the more it can bend and control what it sees there, the more civilized we say it is. For what we call civilization is an accumulation of recognitions and regulations of the commonplace. How many natural laws of things have been recognized, classified, and utilized by these people? That's the question that's always being asked when the progress of a locality is being studied.

00:20:42

MARGO JEFFERSON

Every generation or so, some individual with extra keen perception grasps something of the obvious about us and hitches the human race forward slightly by a new law. Millions of things have been falling on and about men for thousands of years before the falling apple hit Newton on the head and made him see the attraction of the earth for all unsupported objects heavier than air. So, we have the law of gravity. In the same way art it is a discovery in itself. Seen in detail, it is a series of discoveries, perhaps intended in the first place, to stave off boredom. In a long range view art is the setting up of monuments to the ordinary things about us in a moment and in time. Examples are the great number of representations of men and women in wood and stone at the moment of the kill, or at the bath, or a still moment of a man or beast in the prime of strength, or a woman at the blow of her beauty. Perhaps the monument is made in word and tune, but anyway, such is the urge of art.

00:21:52

MARGO JEFFERSON

Folklore is the arts of the people before they find out that there is any such thing as art, and they make it out of whatever they find at hand. Way back there, when hell wasn't no bigger than Maitland, man found out something about the laws of sound. He found out that sounds could be assembled and manipulated, and that such a collection of sound forms could become as definite and concrete as a war axe or a food tool. So he had language and song. Perhaps by some happy accident he found out about percussion sounds and spacing the intervals for tempo and rhythm. Anyway, it's evident that the sound arts were the first inventions and that music and literature grew from the same root. Somewhere songs for sound-singing branched off from songs for storytelling, until we arrive at prose.

00:22:47

MARGO JEFFERSON

The singing grew like this. First a singing word or a syllable repeated over and over, like frogs in a pond. Then followed sung phrases and chanted sentences as more and more words were needed to portray the action of the battle, the chase, or the dance. Then man began to sing of his feelings or moods as well as his actions, and it was found that the simple lyre was adequate to walk with the words expressing moods. The Negro blues songs, of which Florida has many examples, belong in the lyric class. That is, feelings set to strings.

00:23:29

MARGO JEFFERSON

Now a few excerpts from Negro mythical places. <any of these. It's been said that Hurston collected from turpentine workers who were among the most exploited in every way in Florida. So, you know, in these stories, you will you will hear people making using language to make give art and shape and fantasy to very palpable griefs and longings and deprivations. And the compensations we invent Diddy wah diddy. This is the largest and best known of the Negro mythical places. It is geography. Way off somewhere. It's reached by a road that curves. So. Much that a mule pulling a wagon load of fodder can eat. Off the back of the wagon as he goes. It's a place of no. Work and no worry for man and beast. A very restful place where even the curbstones are good. Sitting chairs. The food is even already cooked. If a traveler gets hungry, all he needs to do is sit down on the curbstone and wait. And soon he will hear someone hollering. Eat me, eat me, eat me in a big baked chicken will come along with a knife and fork stuck in its sides. He can eat all he wants and let the chicken go, and it will go on to the next one that needs something to eat. By that time, a big, deep, sweet potato pie is pushing and shoving to get in front of the traveler with a knife all stuck up in the middle of it. So he just cuts a piece off of that and so on until he finishes his snack. Nobody can ever eat it all up. No matter how much you eat, it grows just that much faster. It is said everybody would live in Diddy Wah Diddy if it wasn't so hard to find and so hard to get to after you even know the way. Everything is on a large scale there. Even the dogs can stand flat footed and lick crumbs off of heaven's table. Czar. This is the farthest known point of the imagination. It is away on the other side of far. Little is known about the doings of the people of czar, because only 1 or 2 travelers have ever found their way back. Beluthahatchee. This is the country where all unpleasant doings and sayings are forgotten. It is sort of a land of forgiveness. When a woman throws up to her man something that happened in the past, some act that he has perpetrated against happiness, he may merely reply, I thought that was in Beluthahatchee. I thought that was forgiven and forgotten long ago. Under other circumstances, one person may say to another, oh, that's in Beluthahatchee that is already forgotten. Don't mention it. I hold nothing against you. This place is the sea of forgetfulness, where nothing may rise to accuse me in this world, nor condemn me in the judgment. You know, she's a great comic writer, but there is so much melancholy inside, inside these tales as well. And finally, I'm going to read some excerpts from an essay she wrote in 1945. Frighteningly timely called crazy for This Democracy. They tell me this democracy form of government is a wonderful thing. It has freedom, equality, justice, in short, everything. Since 1937, nobody has ever talked about anything else. The late Franklin D Roosevelt sort of redecorated it and called these United States the boastful name of the arsenal of democracy. The radio, the newspapers and the columnists inside the newspapers have said how lovely it was. All this talk and praise giving has got me in the notion to try some of the stuff. All I want to do is to get hold of a sample of the thing, and I declare, I sure will try it. I don't know for myself, but I have been told it's really wonderful. Like the late Will Rogers, all I know is what I see in the papers. It seems like now I do not know geography as well as I ought to, or I would not get the wrong idea about so many things. I heard so much about global world freedom and things like that, that I must have gotten mixed up about oceans. I thought that when they said Atlantic Charter, that meant me and everybody in Africa and Asia and everywhere. But it seems like the Atlantic is an ocean that does not touch anywhere but North America and Europe. Just the other day, seeing how things were going in Asia, I went out and bought myself an atlas and found out how narrow this Atlantic Ocean was. No wonder those four freedoms couldn't get no further than they did. Why, that poor little ocean can't even wash up some things right here in America, let alone places like India, Burma, Indochina and the Netherlands East Indies. We need two more oceans for that. Maybe I need to go out and buy me a dictionary too. Or perhaps a spelling book would help me out a lot. It just could be that I mistook the words. Maybe I mistook a British pronunciation for a plain American word. Did FDR, aristocrat from Groton and Harvard, using the British language, say arse and all of democracy? When I thought he said plain arsenal. Maybe he did. And I have been mistaken all this time from what is going on. I think that is what he must have said. That must be what he said. For from what is happening over on that other unmentioned ocean, we look like the ass. And all of democracy, our weapons, money and the blood of millions of our men have been used to carry the English, French and Dutch and lead them back on the millions of unwilling Asiatics, the ass and all he has has been very useful. The Indochinese are fighting the French now in Indochina. This is 1945. To keep the freedom that they have enjoyed for 5 or 6 years now, the Indonesians are trying to stay free from the Dutch and the Burmese and Malaysians from the British. But American soldiers and sailors are fighting, along with the French, Dutch and English to rivet these chains back on their former slaves. How can we so admire the fire and determination of Toussaint Louverture to resist the orders of Napoleon, to rip the gold braids off those Haitian slaves and put them back to work after four years of freedom, and be indifferent to these Asiatics for the same feelings under the same circumstances. Have we not noted that not one word has been uttered about the freedom of the Africans? On the contrary, there have been mutterings in undertones about being fair and giving different nations sources of raw material there. The ass and all of democracy has shouldered the load of subjugating the dark world completely. The inference is that God has restated the superiority of the West. God always does that. When a thousand white people surround one dark, one dark people are always bad when they do not admit the divine plan like that. As for me, I'm a. I accept this idea of democracy. I'm all for trying it out. It must be a good thing if everybody praises it like that. If our government has been willing to go to war and sacrifice billions of dollars and millions of men for the idea, I ought to give the thing a trial. The only thing that keeps me from pitching headlong into the thing is the presence of numerous Jim Crow laws on the statute books of this nation. I'm crazy about the idea of democracy. I want to see how it feels. Therefore, I am all for the repeal of every Jim Crow law in the nation, here and now. Not in another generation or so. The Hurston's have already been waiting 80 years for that. I want it here and now. These Jim Crow laws have been put on the books for a purpose, and that purpose is psychological by physical evidence. Back seats in trains, back doors of houses, exclusion from certain places and activities to promote in the mind of the smallest white child, the conviction of first by birth. I think we can think of those immigrant camps and prisons and holdings. No one of darker skin can ever be considered an equal. Seeing the daily humiliations of the darker people confirm the child in its superiority so that it comes to feel it. The arrangement of God by the same means the smallest dark child is to be convinced of its inferiority, so that it is to be convinced that competition is out of the question, and against all nature and God. All physical and emotional things flow from this premise. It perpetuates itself, the unnatural exaltation of one ego and the equal unnatural grinding down of the other. I give my hand and my heart to the total struggle. I am for complete repeal of all Jim Crow laws, and we will substitute our names and put them all under the category of unjust laws in the United States, once and for all, and right now, for the benefit of this nation and as a precedent to the world, I've been made to believe in this democracy thing, and I'm all for tasting this democracy out. If the Occident is so intent on keeping the taste out of darker mouths that it spends all those billions and expends all those millions of lives, colored ones too, to keep it among themselves, then it must be something good. I crave to sample this gorgeous thing, so I cannot say anything different from repeal of all Jim Crow laws. Not in some future generation, but repeal now and forever. Thank you. (applause)

00:35:20

IBRAM X. KENDI

Good evening. Good evening. So I'm going to read first from Zora Neale Hurston's book that she published in 1935 called Mules and Men, which was also a collection of folklore she collected. But she also integrated her own voice and her own life in collecting those stories. And I want to read first from the introduction so we can really get a sense of her ideas. And I should also state that she was seeking to collect black folklore. Black southern folklore at a time when sort of intellectual ideas about race were making the case, even among black writers, that African American culture was pathological. Even specifically, poor southern black culture was pathological, and there was nothing of value there. And she declared to the world through this book that there was a tremendous amount of value there. I was glad when somebody told me, you may go and collect Negro folklore in a way it would not be a new experience for me. When I pitched head foremost into the world, I landed in the crib of Negro ism. From the earliest rocking of my cradle I had known about the capers of Robert is apt to cut in what the Squinch owl says from the housetop, but it was fitting me like a tight chemise. I couldn't see it for wearing it. It was only when I was off in college, away from my native surroundings, that I could see myself like somebody else and stand off and look at my garment. Then I had to have the spyglass of anthropology to look through. At that doctor Boaz asked me where I wanted to work, and I said Florida, and gave as my big reason that Florida is a place that draws people, white people from all over the world and and Negroes from every southern state, surely, and some from the North and West. So I knew that it was possible for me to get a cross section of the Negro South in one state. And then I realized that I was new myself. So it looked sensible for me to choose familiar ground. First place I aim to stop and collect material was Eatonville, Florida. And now I'm going to tell you why I decided to go to my native village first. I didn't go back there so that the home folks could make admiration over me, because I had been up north to college and come back with a diploma in Chevrolet. I knew they were not going to pay either of those items too much. Mine. I was just Lucy Hurston's daughter, Zara. And even if I had to use one of our home down home expressions had a Kaiser baby. And that's something that hasn't been done in this country yet. I'd still be just Zara to the neighbors. If I had exalted myself to impress the town, somebody would have sent me word in a matchbox that I had been up north there and had rubbed the hair off of my head against some college wall, and then come back there with a lot of form and fashion outside to show the world. But they'd stand flat footed and tell me that they didn't have. They didn't have me neither my sham polish to study about. And that would have been that. I hurried back to Eatonville, because I knew that the town was full of material, and that I couldn't get it without. And I could get it without hurt, harm, or danger. As early as I could remember, it was the habit of the men, folks particularly, to gather on the store porch of evenings and swap stories. Even the women folks would stop and break a breath with them at times. As a child when I sent when I was sent down to Joe Clarke's store, I'd drag out my leaving as long as possible in order to hear more. Folklore is not as easy to collect as it sounds. The best source is where there are at least there the least outside influences. And these people, being usually underprivileged, are the shyest. They are the most reluctant at times to reveal that which the soul lives by. And the Negro, in spite of his open faced laughter, his seeming ability to acquiesce is particularly evasive. You see, we are a polite people, and we do not say to our questioner, get out of here. We smile and tell him or her something that satisfies the white person, because knowing so little about us, he doesn't know what he is missing. See, the theory behind our tactics is this. The white man is always trying to go into somebody else's business. All right. I'll set something outside the door of my mind for him to play with and handle. He can read my writing, but he, sure enough, can't read my mind. I'll put this play toy in his hand, and he'll seize it and go away. Then I'll say my say and sing my song. I knew, let me stop there. And so I want to then also read a story, one of the many stories she collected in this, in this book. And, and I'll sort of lead up to the story with her own personal sort of story in the moment. Long before Calvin had ended his story, James had lost his air of impatience. They were trying to go somewhere. Now I'll tell you one, he said. That is, if you so desire. Sure. I want you to tell him till daybreak, if you will, I said eagerly. But where's the gingerbread? James stopped to ask. It's in our. It's out in the kitchen, I said. I'm waiting for the orders to come. Ah! Now give us ours now. The mothers may not get here before 440 o'clock, and I'll be done at mine. And I'll be in the wood bridge. Anyhow, I want a corner piece, and some of them. Others will beat me to it. So I served them with gingerbread and buttermilk. You sure? Are you going to Woodbridge with us? After I get through telling this one, James asked. Yeah. If the others don't show up by then, I conceded. So James told the story about the man who went to heaven from Johnstown. You know, when it's lightning, the angels is peeping in the looking glass. When it thunders. They rolling out the rain barrels. And when it rains, somebody done dropped a barrel or two and busted one time. You know, there was going to be big doings and glory, and all the angels had brand new clothes to wear. And so they all was peeping in the other in the looking glasses. And therefore it got to lightning all over the sky. God told some of the angels to roll in the full rain brows, and they was in such a hurry that it was thundering from east to west. And the zigzag lightning went to join the muttering thunder. And next thing you know, some of them angels got careless and dropped a whole heap of them rain barrels. And didn't it rain in one place they called Johnstown. They had a great flood, and so many folks got drownded that it looked just like Judgment Day. So some of the folks that got drownded in the flood went one place and some went another. You know, everything that happened they got to, they got. And so. One of their brothers in black went up to heaven from the flood. When he got to the gate, old Peter let him in and made him welcome. The colored man was named John. So John asked. Peter says, is it dry in there? Oh, Peter told him. Why. Yes, it's dry in here. How come you ask that? Well, you know, I just come from one of the flood, and I don't want to run into no more. Oh, man, you ain't seen no water. You just ought to seen that flood we had in Johnstown. Peter says, yeah, well, we know all about it. Just go with Gabriel and let him give you some new clothes. So John went off with Gabriel and come back all dressed up in brand new clothes. And all the time he was changing his clothes. He was telling old Gabriel all about that flood, just like he didn't know it already. So when he came back from changing his clothes, they gave him a brand new gold harp and handed him to a gold bench and made him welcome. They were so tired of hearing about that flood. They was glad to see him with his harp, because they figured he was fixing to play and forget all about it. So Peter told him, now you just make yourself at home and play that music you please. John went and took a seat on the bench and commenced to tune up his harp. By that time two angels come walking by where John was sitting, so he throw down his harp and tackled them. Say he hollered, y'all want to hear about the big old flood? I was down in earth. Lord, Lord, it's short reign and talk about about water. Then two angels hurried off on just from him, just as quick as they could. He started telling another one and he took to flying. Gabriel went over to him and tried to get him to take it easy, but John kept right on stopping every angel that he could find to tell him about the flood of water way. After a while he went over to Old Peter and said, thought you said everybody would be polite and nice. Peter said, yeah, I said, it. Ain't everybody treating you right. John said, no, I just walked up to a man as nice and friendly as could be, and started telling him all about the water I left behind in Johnston, and instead of him turning me a friendly answer, he said, shucks, you ain't seen no water, and walked off and left me standing by myself. Was he an old man with a crooked walking stick? Peter asked John. Restaurant? Yeah. Did he have whiskers down to here? Peter measured down to his waist. He sure did, John told him. Ah, shucks. Peter told him. That was old Noah. And you can't tell him nothing about no flood. So the last thing I want to read is an excerpt from a letter that Zora Neale Hurston wrote on August 11th, 1955, that appeared in the Orlando Sentinel and the year before. As many of you know, the Brown decision came down. I think what's not as well known is the rationale that the Supreme Court used to issue this decision, that that segregation was now, particularly in schools, unconstitutional. The the Warren Court found that the schools were equal or being equalized. And so what they made the case about was that segregated black schools were retarding black children. And so therefore segregated education is unconstitutional. They did not say segregated white schools are retarding white children. And so one thing I would say before reading this, I would encourage all of you to actually read that decision, because I think it will give even further context to what Zora wrote in her letter to the Atlanta Sentinel critiquing the Brown decision. I promised God and some other responsible characters, including a bench of bishops, that I was not going to part my lips concerning the US Supreme Court decision on ending segregation in the public schools of the South. But since a lot of time has passed and no one seems to touch on what to me appears to be the most important point in the hassle, I break my silence just this once. Consider me as just thinking out loud. The whole matter revolves around the self-respect of my people. How much satisfaction can I get from a court order for somebody to associate with me who does not wish to be near me? The American Indian has never spoken of, has never been spoken of as a minority, and chiefly because there is no wine in the Indian. Certainly he fought and valiantly for his lands, and rightfully so. But it is inconceivable of an Indian to seek forcible association with anyone. His well-known pride and self-respect would save him from that. I take the Indian position now. A great clamor will arise in certain quarters that I seek to deny the Negro children of South their rights. And therefore I am one of those handkerchiefs or handkerchief head niggers who bow low before the white man, and sell out my own people out of cowardice. However, an analytical glance will show that that is not the case. If there are not adequate Negro schools in Florida, and there are some residual, some inherent and unchangeable qualities in white schools and possible to duplicate anywhere else, then I am the first to insist that Negro children of Florida be allowed to share this boon. But if there are adequate Negro schools and prepared instructors and instructions. Then there is nothing different except the presence of white people. For this reason, I regard the ruling of the US Supreme Court as insulting. Rather than honoring my race since the days of the never to be sufficiently deplored reconstruction, there has been this current, there has been current the belief that there is no greater delight to Negroes than physical association with whites. The doctrine of the white mare. Those familiar with the habits of mule are aware that any mule, if not restrained, will automatically follow a white mare. Dishonest mule traders made money out of this knowledge in the old days. Lead a white mare along a country road. And slyly opened the gate. And the mules in the lot would run out and follow this mare. This ruling being conceived and brought forth in sly political medium with eyes on 56, and brought forth in the same spirit and for the same purpose. It is clear that they have had that they have taken the old notion to heart and acted upon it. It is a cunning opening of the Barnard barnyard gate, with the white mare ambling past. We are expected to hasten pell mell after her. I am not delighted. I am not persuaded and elevated by the white mare technique. Negro schools in the state are in very good shape and on the improve. We are fortunate in having doctor de Williams as head and driving force of Negro instruction. Doctor Williams is relentless in his drive to improve both physical equipment and teacher quality. He has accomplished wonders in the 20 years past, and it is to be expected that he will double that in the future. It is well known that I have no sympathy nor respect for the tragedy of color school of thought among us. Whose fountainhead is the pressure group concerned in this court ruling? I can see no tragedy in being too dark to be invited to a white school social affair. The Supreme Court would have pleased me more if they had concerned themselves about enforcing the compulsory educational provisions for Negroes in the South, as is done for white children. The next ten years would be better spent in appointing truant officers and looking after conditions in the homes from which children come used to the limit. What we already have. Them's my sentiments and I'm sticking to them. Growth from within. Ethical and cultural desegregation. It is a contradiction in terms to scream race, pride and equality, while at the same time spurning Negro teachers and self-association. That old white mayor business can go racking on down the road for all I care. That's Zora Neale. Thank you. (applause)

00:54:24

JACQUELINE WOODSON

Hello. So I'm Jacqueline Woodson. I'm going to read from chapter five of their eyes were watching God. And we meet Janie Crawford in this book. One thing I want to say about their eyes were watching God when I first came to this book. I didn't understand it. I was telling the young people here. And I had unlearned this language, which I think now is kind of tragic, because I think one thing that's so amazing about my people is that ability to code, switch and speak a number of languages that are all English but different. And so when I went back and listened to Ruby Dee read it, I suddenly unlocked and heard it. And then as I was thinking about it, reading it tonight, I thought, oh, I'm going to try to read it like Ruby Dee. And I said, no, I'm going to read it like Jacqueline Woodson. On the train the next day. Joe didn't. I'm sorry. Joe didn't make many speeches with rhymes to her, but he bought her the best things the butcher had, like apples and a glass lantern full of candies. Mostly he talked about plans for the town. When he got there, they were bound to need somebody like him. Janey took a lot of looks at him, and she was proud of what she saw. Kind of portly, like rich white folks. Strange trains and people and places. Didn't scare him, neither. Where? They got off the train at Maitland. He found a buggy to carry them over to the colored town right away. It was early in the afternoon when they got there, so Joe said they must walk over to the place and look around. They locked arms and strolled from end to end of the town. Joe noted the scant dozen of shame faced houses scattered in the sand and palmetto roots, and said, God, they call this a town. Well, it ain't nothing here but a raw place in the woods. It is a whole heap littler than I thought. Janey admitted her disappointment. Just like I thought Jo said. A whole heap of talk and nobody doing nothing. I God, where's the mayor? He asked somebody. I want to speak with the mayor. Two men who were sitting on their shoulder blades under a huge live oak tree. Almost sat up right at the tone of his voice. They stared at Joe's face, his clothes, and his wife. Where y'all come from in such a big haste? Lee Coker asked middle Georgie. Starks answered briskly. Joe Starks is my name from in and through. Georgie, you and your daughter are going to join us with us within some fellowship. The other reclining figure asked. Mighty glad to have you. Hicks is the name Governor Amos Hicks from Beaufort, South Carolina. Free, single and disengaged, I got. I ain't nowhere near old enough to have no grown daughter. This here is my wife. Hicks sank back and lost interest at once. Where is the mayor? Stocks persisted. I wants to talk with him. Yells Mike two previous for that. Coker told them, I ain't got none yet. Ain't got no mayor. Well, who tells you all what to do? Nobody. Everybody's grown. And then again, I reckon us just thought about it, and I know I ain't. I just ain't thought about it. I did think about it one day. Hicks said dreamingly. But then I forgot it and ain't thought about it since then. No wonder things ain't no better, Joe commented. I'm buying in here and buying in big. Soon as we find some place to sleep tonight, us men folks got a couple people together and form a committee, then we can get things moving around here. I can point you where you can sleep, Hicks offered. Man got his house done, built, and his wife ain't come yet. Starks and Janie moved off in the direction indicated, with Hicks and Coker boring into their backs with looks. Starks I'm sorry that man talks like a section foreman, Coker commented. He's mighty complement. Shucks, said Hicks. My britches is just as long as his. But that's that wife of his. I'm a some kind of conjunction. If I ain't go to Georgia and get me one just like her. With what? With my talk, man. It takes money to feed pretty women. They get to lavish a talk. Not like mine. They loves to hear me talk because they can't understand it. My code talking is too deep. Too much code in it. Mm. You don't believe me, do you? You don't know the women. I can get to my command. Mm. You ain't never seen me when I'm out pleasuring and giving pleasure. Mm. It's a good thing he married her before she seen me. I can be some trouble when I take a notion. Mm. I'm a bitch's baby round lady people. I'd much rather see all that than hear about it. Come on, let's go see what he going to do about this town. They got up and sauntered over to where storks was living for the present. Already the town had found the strangers. Joe was on the porch talking to a small group of men. Janie could be seen through the bedroom window, getting settled. Joe had rented the house for a month. The men were all around him and he was talking to them by asking questions. What is the real name of this place? Ace. Some say West Maitland, some say Eatonville. That's because Captain Eaton gave us some land along with Mr. Lawrence. But Captain Eaton gave us the first piece. How much did they give? Oh, about 50 acres. How much have you all got now? Oh, about the same. That ain't near enough. Who owns the land? Joining on to what y'all got? Captain Eaton. Where is this Captain Eaton? Over there in Maitland. Ceptin when he goes visiting or something. Let me speak to my wife a minute and I'm going to see the man. You cannot have no town without some land to build it on. Y'all ain't got enough here to cuss a cat without getting your mouth full of hair. He ain't got no more land to give away. You needs plenty of money if you want some more. I specs to pay him. The idea was funny to them and they wanted to laugh. They tried hard to hold it in, but enough incredulous laughter burst out of their eyes and leaked from the corner of their mouths to inform anyone of their thoughts. So Joe walked off abruptly. Most of them went along to show him the way to be there when he got his bluff blown call when his bluff was called. Hicks didn't go far. He turned back to the house as soon as he felt he wouldn't be missed from the crowd, and mounted the porch. Evenin, Miss. Starks. Good evening. You reckon you're going to like it around here? I reckon so. Anything I can do to help out while you can call on me? Much obliged. There was a long dead pause. Janie was not jumping at her chance like she ought to. Looked like she didn't hardly know he was there. She needed waking up. Folks must be mighty close mouthed around where you come from, he said. That's right. But it must be different at your home. He was not long time thinking, but finally he saw and stumbled down the steps with a surly bye good bye. That night, Coker asked him about it. I saw you when you ducked back to Starks house. Well, how'd you make out? Who, me? I ain't never been. Never been near that place, man. I've been down to the lake trying to catch me a fish. Mhm. That woman ain't so awfully pretty nohow when you take the second look at her. I had to sort of pass by the house on the way back and I seen her. Good. Ain't nothing to her except in that long hair. Hmm. And anyhow, I done took a liking to her man, and I wouldn't harm him at all. She ain't half as pretty as the girl I run off of, run off from, and left up in South Carolina. Hicks, I'd get mad and say you was lying if I didn't know you so good. You just talking to consulate yourself by word of mouth. You got a willing mind, but use to light behind a whole heap of men. Seemed the same thing you seem. But they got better sense than you. You ought to know. You can't take no woman like that from no man like him. A man that ups and buys 200 acres of land at one whack and pays cash for it. Nah, he didn't buy it. Sure enough, he sure did come off with a paper in his pocket. He done called a meeting on his porch tomorrow. Ain't never seen no such colored man before in all my born days. He going to put up a store and get us a post office from the government. That irritated Hicks, and he didn't know why he was the average mortal. It troubled him to get used to the world one way and then suddenly have it turn different. He wasn't ready to think of colored people in post offices yet, he laughed. Y'all let that stray darky tell y'all any old lie. A colored man sitting up in a post office. He made an obscene sound. He's liable to do it to Hicks. I hope so, anyway. Us colored folks is too envious of one another. That's how come us don't get no further than us. Do us talk about that white man keeping us down? Shucks. He don't have to us keep our own selves down. Now, who said I didn't want the man to get us a post office? He can be the King of Jerusalem for all I care. Still and all, tain't no use in telling lies just to get us. I'm sorry. Just because we don't matter. Your common sense ought to tell you the white folks ain't going to let him allow him to have no post office. That we don't know, Hicks. He said he can, and I believe him. I believe he knows what he's talking about. I reckon if colored folks got their own town, they can have post offices and whatsoever they please, regardless. And then again, I don't suspect white folks way off yonder to give a damn. Let us wait and see. Oh. I'm waiting. All right. specs to keep on waiting till hell freezes over. Get reconcile. That woman don't want you. You got to learn that all women in the world ain't been brought up on turpentine still. And no sawmill camp. There's some women that just ain't for you to broach. You can't get her with no fish sandwich. They argued a bit more, and then went on to the house where Joe was, and found him in his shirt sleeves, standing with his legs wide apart, asking questions and smoking a cigar. Where's the closest sawmill? He asked Tony Taylor. About seven miles. Going towards Apopka. Tony told him. Thinking about building right away. My God, yeah, but not the house I expected to live in. That can wait till I make up my mind where I want to locate it. I figured we all need a store in a big hurry. A store? Tony shouted in surprise. Yeah, a store right here in town with everything in it you need to paint a bit like it used to be. I'm sorry. Tina. Bit use. Oh, I'm sorry, I just figured it out. Tina. Bit of use in everybody in way over to Maitland to buy a little meal and flour when they can get it right here. That would be kind of nice, brother Starks, since you mention it, I. God. Of course it would. And then again, a store is good in other ways. I got to have a place to be when folks comes to buy my land. And furthermore, everything. Gotta have a center and a heart to it. And a town ain't no different from nowhere else. It would be natural for the store to be the meeting place for our town. Thank you. (applause)