Interview with Gwendolyn Brooks about Black Unity

We real cool the pool players 7 at the Golden Temple. Lest. We learn to drive straight. Through. We see. The poetry of wonder Lynn Brooks she calls herself a black first. I want my next opponent last Tuesday Kirschner of the Dayton General Herald gave this description of Miss Brooks. She wears a simple tweed skirt my lightweight jacket the shoes a low heeled and slightly Scotch. Not a trace of make up Mars the coffee brown skin. A few webs that gray dart through the neat closely cropped Afro are only jewelry as a simple map of Africa on a chain. She might be anybodies and on her way to the supermarket or a neighborhood drugstore. But she is going to the poet laureate of the state of Illinois member of the National Institute of

Arts and Letters and the first black ever to be awarded the Pulitzer Prize. On May 4th Wonderland rugs with a Central State University to share some of her works. And this program she would share with us her views on black life. But first let's take a closer look at one of them Brooks. One on One Brooks is a native from Chicago Illinois and is a graduate of wood high school in the Wilson Junior College. She was silent for creating American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1946. And received two Guggenheim fellowships for creative in 1946. And 1947. She has published five volumes of poetry and a novel and recently the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1950 for Annie Allen a ballad of Chicago Negro life. In 1968. Ms Brooks was named Portnoy for the state of Illinois says even the late Paul Sandberg. Miss Brooks is active on the lecture circuit and is involved in

fulfilling many social and civic. Commitments. Both nationally as well as in the greater metropolitan Chicago area. She was married to him and is a mother of two children nor any injury. Donnelly says when you view one of them group's work and the pre-1967 period you see a poet like quarter the actual when they are still actively searching for a home definition of blackness on the way to becoming a country's African court. Or better yet. A conscious African woman in America who chose poetry as her major crowd. However one of them Brooks describes her poetry prior to 1967 as a work that was conditioned to the Times and the people. In other words poetry that leaked from the pages bringing forth ideas definitions images elections colors etc.. There were molded over a distance of many years. Poetry no book started at the age of 11 as a result and as a reaction to the American reality

and her black regardless of the level of their perception of the world the American reality has always been a battle alley fight. One on one book says until 1967 my own blackness did not confront me with Israel's failing of itself. I knew that I was what most people are calling a negro. I call myself that. Although always the word poets. Dani always say her major associations during this period of redefinition. Young in the black writing that was part of their makeup. She had firsthand witness a resurgence of what has been termed the Black Arts Movement in every aspect of creative. Young brothers and sisters began to call their own images from drama to poetry from fiction to none action from classic arts to them and so on. In every area of creativity black poets clean house and carve

their own statues into what they wanted themselves to be regardless of who was watching. And with even less regard for what critics white and blacks it. She felt the deep void when megger Evers Malcolm X left us. This is expressed very vividly in the two points in time. Evers and Malcolm. Donnelly goes on to say that the murder of Mark Clark and Fred Hampton and other blacks continue to raise questions in her mind and the major questions were. What part do I play. What. Why fitting. What can I do. She reflects these questions during the interview when she is asked to comment on her role as an instrument of social change. When I what do you think your role do you see yourself having an instrument of social change and how do you use your work as a medium for such.

Well that sounds very grand and requiring I really don't get up in the morning saying well now what should I do today to implement social change. I do have as a basic personal thing Brok unity. That is what I think I should be about. So far as conscious about this is concerned. Now when I sit down to write. Which isn't as often as I suppose it should be. I don't say I'm going to write a poem that will spearhead some degree of social change. First of all I'm excited by something that is happening or something that I've seen or read or heard and I am a great note taker so I take notes.

And then later when I do a well I'll spread these notes out and get together. So shabby little first draft then begins the revision. These days the product is I would say a procession. From my abiding interest in black people. So I believe that anything I do right. Will be in accordance with that theme I just mentioned. Now this has not always been the truth about myself and my writing and my compulsions. When I was a little girl and sooner or later you'll probably ask when did I start writing so I thought you know I began writing when I was seven years on. My mother says I began putting rhymes together then. And I think you could

say that my writing life has been divided into the rebirths. The first stage was from 7 to 13 and I would call that my express yourself category. I just thought I should express myself about anything in my environment and in my environment. There were clouds of dandelions and friends and enemies and books. Chocolate cake. So I wrote about such things as those I also tried to write about a lot of things I knew nothing of. Love Death war. I had never read to boy and other people that I should have known something about. So you would not find any social consciousness except that that was innocent and spasmodic

because of something awful that had happened to me or that I thought was awful. So I say this danger lasted from seven to 13. At the age of 13. I went to a High Park High School in Chicago and there I was exposed to prejudice at a pretty steady basis. This was chiefly a white high school. When I went there and I remember writing a poem called to the hinderer and that seemed to me to open my integration favoring stage when I thought that if blacks especially writers implored whites long enough and strenuously and to love them and help them they would and pretty soon everything would be like paradise in the

country. And I believe that that could happen. Straight up till 1967. Before I get there let me say that I did write a lot of poetry. Not always but often it sounded like this grant me that I am human that I hurt that I can cry not that I now ask alms in shame God hollow admitting me to our mutual as a sort of policing a sort of whitey. I can't imagine myself writing a poem like that today. Well in six days I haven't. I went to a black writers conference at Fisk University and saw young people who seem to have different ideas from that. Remember Margaret downer. Very good poet. Was there too and we just walked around the campus just with our eyes wide open because everything seemed different sound different looked different

and the young people stood up straighter and were the sassier than any I could remember meeting. So I was much inspired by this new spirit and. Brock I was there. Ron Milner was there. Milner wasn't well-known at that time and Baracoa was called the Roy Jones. When I left that conference and went home to Chicago I found an invitation from Oscar Brown Jr. a famous entertainer. He had developed a show out of the talents of the Blackstone Rangers. This was a huge gang of 5000 or so youngsters who had guns and were using them in Chicago and had they had upset the city mightily and they were always in the headlines and they stored their guns

at the First Presbyterian Church and Chicago. Well there were girls among them too and they were called Ranger as well. I had always had this yearning to do something to help the Blackstone Rangers. So I asked Oscar after I'd seen his beautiful show which was called Opportunity please knock if there weren't some writers among the dancers and singers. And he said yes. So I decided I would start a workshop writing workshop for them and some of them came looking at me with a rather odd curiosity. But this group came out so people like Donnelly Haki Madhubuti and Carolyn Rogers and Joe Haria me and Mike Cook and Walter Bradford who helped me get them together get the Rangers together because he was a

teenage organizer a very good writer to this group became just friends because when they joined it those people I just mentioned it was no longer a workshop because they tell me straight off they were not going to write sonnets. They weren't going to let me teach them to write villain nails. This was your opinion that they were going to write their own free verse it any way that they wanted to write they would and they were a great help to me and changed my life entirely. And we used to go around to tavern and recite poetry. There was the wall of respect which happened in 67 and I remember the great celebration down there we were all reciting poetry out in the street. Those were really great days and their motto

was poetry is poetry written by blacks about blacks to blacks. And that became my motto. And I had no sympathy with the controversy that sprang out of that idea that motto of theirs because when the Jewish writers say like Isaac Bashevis Singer right as Jews about Jews to Jews there's never any excitement nobody is spanked for doing what seems perfectly natural. So I'm in that stage now and expect to stay there. OK. As a result of working with the Blackstone Rangers was you doing it time or after that time you wrote your three points about the Blackstone Rangers I think. The first one

the leaders and then you have another one and gain girls and you have the other one. I think I did the plan. Did you like those points after and were doing the times you were conducting the workshops with them. I began to write the poems when I knew them and I should say that they were not part of the group that continued with me for several years. However Wolter Bradford I commissioned to start a little workshop for them. I knew that he could do a better job than I could and elicit more faith than I could because he was young knew the boy and had worked with some of them. So he did that and that went on for about a year and he had about 20 Rangers. And some of them wrote some very interesting things.

Did they carry it to a point where they became like very productive in the extrapolation momentum of writing poetry. Did it have a lasting impact on the fact that I was interested in them had a lasting impact on them. And some of them kept in touch with me came over for dinner and I remember Walter and I took them to see several of them to see the Battle of Algiers which had a great effect on them. And but I can't claim any great results from that encounter so at least so far as writing is concerned I don't know of any other that have continued to the extent that they would publish. But that is not the be all and end all of existence and becoming a writer that is not my chief interest in life. I shall go on writing. I imagine as long as I live.

But my chief interest is in helping young black people. You made a comment about black unity. Now when you refer to black unity how does this relate to the third world concept. So why that is and it doesn't relate the third world concept has never been anything that excited me always felt that black people have got to nourish each other and extend each other and love each other I'm not scared of that word. But some people feel is Martin and I am interested in people. I think all people. Are. Capable of beauty. Progress have great potential but I am not in the in my first youth and I don't feel that I have time allotted to

me whatever it may be. I just feel that I had better work in my own vicinity of influence and that is the black area and I think that if we don't help each other absolutely nobody else will be Indians and I empathise with them are interested in the Indians. I do not see them killing themselves to help blacks. The Appalachians I've never heard of any interest that they have in the black edition and I don't need to mention Caucasians. The days of liberal in the US certainly seem to be oh there's a great deal of the difference in apathy so far as whites are goods so it seems as though it's up to us.

And look at what we're doing. We're off in this direction in that direction in the other direction and we're very busy fighting each other you know. Resenting each other and feeling that to ourselves they're inferior to other dispensation. So I think I will continue with my decision to help blacks as much as I can. Users are poetry as a vehicle of communication to transmit ideas that we invent in circumstances of her times. She emphasizes explicitly the

paramount importance of the unification of black people. However to eliminate misunderstandings and discrepancies in the general semantics of black unity. First we should explain what black unity is in this particular case. Black unity is the coming together of black people on a universal level to meet the economic political and social needs for the overall improvement of the quality of life for blacks thus enabling them to make ample contributions to the path of righteousness for all mankind to stand bravely. One of them Brooks says quoting here. Before it's a black synthesis of Black Union so tight that each black may be relied on to protect enjoy listened to and warm curry his fellowes. Was

written. Thank. You. If.

You. Tell. Others how they could help blacks in their own given area thank for instance how could a teacher a black teacher I'm speaking up. Help Black children other than just teaching them in the classroom to the point they're turned off by the systems. What would you offer them as far that by teachers my Those are people who can really make a difference. I would urge them to do something on the order of what I'm doing no. In Chicago I have a co-op of high schoolers. These are people that I found on my block 18 of them. So I organized them into a forum and they meet with me. The

idea is that they are to express themselves in any way they see fit. To be absolutely free. And they talk about drugs and sex and love and their teachers and their parents they say anything that's on their minds and I have to go back a bit to tell you why I organize this club. It is because of two things that happened in my life. One I was during Attica time. I was listening to television looking at television I saw a reporter speaking to one of the Attica prisoners. He was behind bars a most gloomy sight it all was. And this reporter was asking him questions about how he felt about himself and his plight. And he said that if it

was a certain time in his life there had been just one person who had had any interest in him had been willing to take some time with him to show him that he or she cared at all about his continued existence. He would be where he was. That impressed me very much. One morning a policeman knocked on our door about eight o'clock in the morning and asked us if we knew the identity of the young fella who had been found dead behind our garage with us. They asked me what a what a way to begin your morning. In that case they want us I did not go well of course he had taken away a bit anyway. But it is how I had known it. But some of the kids on the block said that he was someone who was hard to know but

virtually alone are always in trouble swallowed. So it's a to me that if we had known and had done something to indicate that he was one of us that we did care about him on that block anyway. Well maybe he wouldn't be did also felt guilty because I had heard shots in the night and had called the police naturally I was going to go out. Ed to tell you the truth you do have to be got a selective about your police colleagues because you don't want to get an innocent person into trouble. Ed.. I wondered if had I call his wife might have been say the gilts the attic interview. And this the killing itself made me decide to start the form.

In addition to providing a forum for these kids to talk I found out that there were other things I could do for them. I took the over to high keys Institute of positive education which is a block and a half away from me and he talked to them about how he had joined my group and about how he had been writing poetry. Think Black grads greed and so forth and how he had gone Dad Africa and he got out a map and kept talking about Africa and pointing to Africa. So finally one girl Georgette Smith said the others are going to say it if they because they're too polite. If she looks good she looks very much like you. It does that but I am going to speak for all of them. Is it. I

am sick and tired of hearing about Africa that Africa has got nothing to do with us. Not a one of us is ever going to Africa and nothing from there is coming to us. So why don't you just stop talking about Africa so that gave me this quick idea that I'd have to send this video them as I could to some African country so they could find out whether or not there was anything relevant over that so I sent the first two last August to Guyana. And they stayed a week in Paris a week in LA. And I think that they were perhaps overly impressed by the Grand Hotel in Paris but they were delighted to get to Africa. Then look at all these black people. That's what seemed to have Prez the most All these people walking around as if they own the country which they do.

And. They certainly found that there were no blacks swinging from trees and the not that that's not all right of Bright Water. It is not a side of a periodic. Table. Good night good night good night. Good night.

They came back and told the others what they would say and we had a special meeting.

And the. Two more will go. Not this summer but next I have to raise them my pocketbook probably to the same boys because that is my favorite African country of the Abyssinian I've been to Kenya Tanzania but Guyana seemed to me to be the blackest of the three corners when I went to the other two. That was in 71. Both countries seemed to me to be much of the Great Age of us who had absolute contempt right in Brighton and I could understand the effort toward. Losing them from those countries. And you're impressed. Yes even in view of the things that are you know the thought of my time

that way I think that the self-help concept that you talked about now. But now you have to remember I least I should have told you that I have no authority on any of these countries. I walked into the tree just up and decided I wanted to go I wasn't with any group and I went into the bush and as a name was welcomed by a very impressive black family that had just scooped out part of the bush for our own home weren't supposed to but they just the news that it was their land and they were it was their country they were going to have part of it. So I'm not an authority I'm trying to say I have a great admiration for what I know of your rary But what I saw was the Asian influence very strong. They were the

ones who were when I walked into a store and I did a lot of jobs walking around going into this and that when I walked into most of these places there was that agent not happy at all to have you coming in. Yes they were insulting often in a whoa very clever way. That makes me think about an article I read in National Geographic about Tanzania and it was talking about a lot of Asians being sent to Tanzania to help build the country and as a matter of fact they probably could have that feeling because they feel that they helped it that country you know be built up to the point that is that now maybe they don't want black Americans to come over here in assuming there. I would say natural role. Of course there are a lot of people who feel differently. But I guess they say well if they come over here they're going to pose a threat to us and they know that actually

we belong there more you know more thought than they do even though they are what they are world people but we have that color factor going for blood draw blood try with them is our home. Right. OK when you want to one of the you said that you know this thing about Africa you know develop ways of trying to find it. But the kind is all about what the people are about there now that we've all seen and read roots. Do you think this will possibly dispel some of these feelings that may have been present among black youth. Yes I'm really obsessed with the roots and what I feel it is doing for people. I think that the great impact is and will continue to be on the children. I have a daughter who teaches in Chicago and she has

noticed a great difference in her children's attitudes about Africa and themselves. She is one of the most committed and dedicated teachers I have ever met. And she when her kids came to her this to they cave with the idea that they didn't want to be identified with Africa. They didn't want to be called Africans they were Americans but. She began reading routes to them as soon as the book came out and they were most excited about the order of the dignity and the warmth the real beauty of those relationships and then they did what it about it to say that there was a mixture there but so there there have been many spirited discussions in her quiet because they also saw the telefilm and were much impressed and angered creatively Eggert

if any one particular significance that black art of the Harlem man and have in common with black art of today. Well it seems to me that it was more of a protesting when it dealt with ourselves and now I think I better go back to the right sixties in the late 60s there was a great impatience with protest because that was pallid. That was stagnant and there was more of an obsession with the idea that I expressed as a motto that literature is literature by about and let's get black. And that eliminated the white listener.

The white listeners to whom protests had been lifted. I think you mentioned the art of black art in 1960s. What about the Harlem Renaissance. Do you see a relationship between that those two particular our I guess our you know quota France Fernand. He says Black Art is our cultural fable like bringing back old values and introducing new ones. So what I'm asking you here is that do you see black artists of the 60s and up today showing bringing back some of the Harlem Renaissance styles of variety or are they bringing back something from that type already so that they can hold on to the values of the past through their time type of writing. No I don't see any return to the values and manifestations of the Harlem Renaissance. Even the people who have veered from their forwards and anus in the

late sixties that they had in the late sixties have not it seems to me a return to the Harlem Renaissance aesthetic where that always irritates me. What they're doing now those viewer is turning into themselves. I don't expect them to stay there for the reason that you just talked about the advent of routes which I do believe is going to make a great deal of difference in the writing that will be receiving from the youngsters and what's happening all over the African continent. I believe it's going to have a strong influence on writing to come. But right now we have a lot of very personable writing with the writers going into themselves

instead of going out of themselves and finding their brothers and sisters outdoors there which is what they did. Then the first. Fiery creativity of people like hockey. Sonia is early Nikki Giovanni and aether is nice and Mari Evans. Those were people who turned black poetry around. I thought it was going to stay around but not that I mean that I want poetry here to the end of it to sound exactly like the product of those people. Chorus we would progress to do something a little different here and something a little different there but I had thought that the feelings the warm feelings for each other that we had and that were evidence did those writings of the people I just named

rebel is something we did wrong. We should have worked in such a way that our values would have come forth coolly and powerful to the young people of today. If you asked them about Malcolm X A lot of them have never even heard of Malcolm X. They heard of Martin Luther King. Is he still in the headlines. But I had to play the message to the grass roots for my kids and they listened. It was new to them. You know you think there's an interrelationship between poetry jazz and blues. Well people like hockey and Baraka have invested music into their writing. And the exciting effects. I mean if you look at the writing you will see the

music not the notes but a. But I'm not capable of doing it is that thing. I listen to music I'm excited by it but I really don't know about it as history. Did you read some of your works and recite one poem that I know from memory. We real cool the pool players 7 at the Golden sample. Wait we left school we learned like we strike straight saying we said we did jazz Joad way. This poem is called the mother and it's about abortions which I have had I always say that because for some reason people think that

because I written this poem for I must have had the experience. I guess that's a tribute to the authoritativeness of the broader Tate of sound of the poem. But I have no women who have had abortions and they have talked with me not all of them have felt as this woman who well but to some of them have felt so. Abortions will not let you forget. You remember the children you got that you did not get the Dail small part with a little or with no hair. The singers and workers that never had told the air you will never neglect or beat them or silence or a bag with a suite you will never wind up the socket or scuttle off that cup. You will never leave them. Control League your lushness return brought us back of them with goblet mother. I have heard

in the voices of the with the voices of my idea kill children I have contracted i have eased my dead dears at the breast. They could never sock I have said sweets if I said device seized your lock and your lives from your unfinished reach. If I stole your bird is that your day. You are straight baby tears and your game your stilted our lovely love you are two bolts your barrier just eight and your death. If I poison the beginnings of your breath believe that even in my deliberate design I was not deliberate though should I whine whine that the cry was other that men sense that a how you were dead are rather cards that you were never made. But that too I am afraid it is all me. What shall I say. How is the truth

to be seated. You were barred. You had body you dad it is just that you never giggle or pullin or cried believe me I loved you all believe me. I knew you though fate and I loved I loved you all. That last part so familiar. You remember that poem appeared in my first book which came out way back in 45. It's been quoted recently on the Diana Ross show. My daughter told me that she heard this in a little tribute to Black women singers at the end of her program and she was amazed to see no credits there. And I was amazed to get no part of that million dollars.

Thank you. Thank you very much. And while everything in this universe.

Well this program was produced by Cheryl Brown and William Miller Ford public affairs. Special thanks goes out to one Illinois State University a very valuable contact and of course to Miss Brooks herself. Look at Dawn of the flaming in this.

War you got to do with 1 3 1 3 1 3 1. 3. Your thoughts. I am.

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