A Word on Words; 4229; William Ferris

from nashville public television's stood in the way of celebrating offers literature and ideas for more than three decades but this is a word on workers' jobs ellen johnson dahl and welcome once again the word on words my guest today is an old friend william ferris is a professor of history university north carolina chapel hill senior associate director of the center for the study of the american south he was here in two thousand and nine with his book it not for parties voices of the mississippi blues he's here today to talk about the story itself voice of riders voices of writers in arms the collection a one on one interviews he's conducted with twenty six folders on as thinkers down over forty years we've learned how these on a floor how they perceive there are no recollection of pyle's story in the past or in their lives below grade iv it's great to be with you john it's always on always

good to see old friends and a particularly great to have you back on this program well another collection of cartels song through the written word song reopening and i won't know where the idea came from that collection well these are my heroes and heroines that have helped guide me in my study of the american south over the last forty years and as a folklorist whenever i was able to meet them i would pull out a tape recorder and a camera on a motion picture film and capture their voices in their lives not knowing where it would lead but a few years ago i thought it's time to do something with all of that and to connect the dots so i've put them all into a single book and that's what the story itself is the roots

of and the people who selected what a wonderful experience it must have been the interview and know that was some of them an ohio the us but their heroes of mine and read them a listen live music buzzing the paintings and were collection is and juan i don't just go for minute and then you talk about about the artist and i'm rene is actually yes and again with a couple musicians ok pete seeger well i like you was deeply shaped by the civil rights movement and paid sr wrote the anthem we shall overcome and then i would see him out demonstrations and then later

was privileged to get to know him as a person than to do the interview i also interviewed his father charles yes i know you didn't do this part of this elite unit do so there's a legacy of people who were not southerners by birth but who were drawn to the music and what transformed by southern music in a powerful worry and that's my connection with pete seeger bobby rush bobby rush as a blues singer who's spent his life on the chitlin circuit playing little juke joints around the mississippi delta and he's a very interesting complex musician who are i think of is someone and really is a part of the story itself has tales about playing the blues and having a black dj telling that he couldn't play the blues because he didn't he thought it was too black

and bobby's response to me was for a black man to say that is like saying you don't love your mother because as iran at what we come from it is what they were and bobby rush as you say they are deeply unsettling for the body he serves in the book every performance on i don't feel good about until i know on connecting with the audience was when i feel that connection i know i'm a formal plan amazing how pete seeger bobby rush who made it tell a story with their music out each show them how articulate each of them is talking about the art is true and they come from totally different backgrounds want a black man born in the south of a

preacher on the other a white man born in new york city his father a distinguished scholar and they both understand the stage and the performance and how you have to touch the audience is hard to reach them as you read the interviews you come to understand that was also the music is an art of storytelling that's right and then an n and both of them all will be coming from the north than i he understands the south as well as any other person born and raised in the south in the south take you in and changes you forever whether you were born here or come to it from another place and storytelling is how the transformation happens with stories people learn are part of who they are in the deepest way let's

talk about eudora welty if i think about someone is she's in every sheet one two three in every list of writers identified by the region that they're absolutely wrong i didn't realize until i read in your book that a mother come from west virginia i'm a father come from ohio and neither is southern and still or work on real her personally her being in every way as solemn how does that happen well it happens because again of the love for the story eudora said that she would wait as a child to hear her family tells stories as a cat waits for a mouse to come out of a hole and she had the genius to

take those stories and transformed them in a literary way that to day makes her work a beloved part of everything that we think of those southern and they are known and treasured throughout the world when you talk to her along when you talk to get a sense for what she says for example people like robert penn warren reached out to her know very thomas' rv on the bergdahl says if she considered that one a mental home and it's not that some would just that southern writers seem to enjoy each the work of the other what they really end many times you

find they've intercepted they know each other on is not that they are their work feeds off one off the other point is there was a community of songwriters and they know where they are and then over else is one hand and then again and again it's all courses lions of race and gender an in welch's days her parents coming from elsewhere you know mostly region what it what is it about southern writers that make them different things why do we even bother with the term southern writers i'm in i can think i mean and you know wanted to western writers but region as a rule is not a lawyer was identified on musicians are going to find

a northern writer weston nyad if you really have you can pick out a few western line is so stars by cowboys amended but when it's engrained in the cultural a selfless holders of literature what is about the south that makes it such a fertile field for talented writers musicians will you dora welty wrote about what she called a sense of place and suggested there it's like a guardian angel it hovers over the shoulder of the wider and the southern writer wrestles with place it's a love hate relationship alice walker tells me in the book that she's not comfortable with the phrase southern writer because it's often refers to whites only was gonna ask you about that very quote from bomber because what she thought of me she

knows she has won but she's almost offended by the term that it's an explosive mix of another race only will it has been in the paris but that's no longer the case in this book is a very strong voice for bridging across racial and gender alliance with a southern writer ears and alice reflected on the phrase southern writer as we spoke and she said but on the other hand i grew up in the south and i write about the south so i am a southern writer and let's talk about how his narco on that separates some riders and i guess to go on also roads

author of the art of our mr max he worked with mao on the boat to be uniquely human different stories except that there are links between the experience is reflected in both books on top of optional the alex i would say got it from the very beginning he understood what we were doing in a study of the south and gave it his blessing he would come down to see me and oxford mississippi with will campbell and tom t hall and lamar alexander they call themselves the brotherhood and alex was my great hero in the sixties i read the autobiography of malcolm x i was teaching in the afro american studies program at yale in the seventies when our roots came out both of those

books were epic are books about what it means to be black in america and as a storyteller no one could touch alex he could weave a story that would have you spellbound within less than a minute and in this book he talks about hearing the stories of his aunts and grandparents on their front porch as a child in a utility henning can say and they would talk about chicken george clinton can't say and names he'd never heard and years later he began to research those names that became the core of his journey in groups well i think that the i think alex haley and again on his ability to reach out to malcolm x a time when malcolm x

were being condemned by both only if our lives in this across moving on christian simon somehow alex sol story there i'm at malcolm and so didn't understand it was alex i think your soup with malcolm in context that's fair yes i think it's absolutely right alix went for this story he was not bothered by religion or politics or race he saw an ad malcom x an incredible story of a single person and he saw and roots in his family the multiple stories that played out over generations and that's what led him on that journey not amazing

it all using the coast guard he comes out and goes to literature and a writer and much of it as he tells you had to do with writing letters on this or other moms coast guard while he is well are out to say yet writers come from all different backgrounds history when you're talking about southern writers will when we look at these riders many of them like you dora welty and ernest james alice walker delved into the south and it's stories by way of russian writers like checked off and dostoyevsky they found within russian literature a key to what they were trying to do with their own people it's interesting how they've all knowledge from other main alice walker for example she relied on coming and

victor hugo as chew over quote mentors questioned know them personally but their work it inspired her work years what i think looking beyond through the limbs of literature was a liberating experience in one of the common threads of all of these voices she's a deep love for reading and education that they began as young children and you doris case they had a house filled with books encyclopedias analysis case there was no real librarian her parents would bring home books that they've borrowed and they were thrown away and magazines and ellis became a voracious reader with whatever she could get her hands on so with the common thread in all of these figures says that they were hungry to read and to grow through the literature that they

hand you're just joining us i'm talking with women first my friend about his new book the storied south voices of writers anonymous let me read you something in yours or do you i do not write as a woman i just write i'm a woman i'm totally won sohn totally and i cannot imagine riding outside of what i know and feel and understand and that says something about your wealthy that you only get when you read your work it's true she identifies herself was as a writer and an not a woman on gaza's you say i'm against domino's own mom and indeed i can make the case that she's a model of them innocent and done but it's interesting how you were able to capture how writers see themselves rely on both boat writing those letters on for his

colleagues i you know our constitution yes obviously a woman of the moment talk about robert penn warren read warren absolute very close to the city where we are in an amazonian as phil and he felt those groups and i mean you read all the king's men is classic and an end and you're reminded yes he was also ideology is yes you brought this educated many people who won lots of those paul dillon precision lonely picture of it and i'm still use not only on its humanity not only it was a southern writer blood use work reflects on and understanding of politics that maybe

maybe no low rider in the history of the country he and then of us from real life of fictional personality all and he uses that life can tell a story everyone stands on politics understands talk a little bit about his ability to capture capture that spirit of southern politics that we all know about but nobody especially when we read we'll mark penn warren i think of as the consummate man of letters our nation's first poet laureate and wrote the greatest political novel in america who wrote anthologies of portray of criticism he'd get it all and he and qui ont brooks founded the southern indian

voters in isn't your book yes he was are the first to recognize and publish eudora welty and they were at lsu win huey long was at his peak so they witnessed although again they all the king's men was being played out around them and in the store and saw the story and it and created this extraordinary novel you know i'm margaret walker says do you usually originally he said everything a good against mites and you he said why have been made to question our humanity than any bike interesting thing about that quotation is now writers all willing to delve into the background or writers learn from them mentor them being mentored by them but still all there was a

time they feel strongly that criticism of langston hughes i might consider unfair she knows that there maybe were gonna considered unfair of langston hughes southern was a writer as a human being and the sushi does not eat as they decided well placed in hues turns up repeatedly and here he resented i need to margaret walker anti alice walker unlike so many of these writers eudora welty robert penn warren they were all generous to younger riders who were coming along it helped them get a leg up man and i think of ernest gains years and ive is to our state in his home a few years ago and over his desk where he writes is a photograph of william faulkner who is one of his great heroes well it's not surprising that they are heroes almost the work of a

hero without peripheral contacts veins also mentoring device you made a bit of a study of this is this something that the region is there something about the southern writer on some i'm not a wellspring that that produces m that's unique that's different it is it that this ground it was so bloody by war armed was it was so punished by slavery owned was so torn by conflict not just a civil war but a second american revolution so white movement that makes it unique and different other stuff other stories in a solo and the region

is that justin lives of mind no i think you're absolutely right and this is where the great american stories have played out in forging a single nation undivided through the civil war and forging martin luther king's dream for inequality which you played a courageous role in paris in the sixties and today in shaping what we think of as the new south with the growth of hispanic and asian and then global populations the south is where america's stories are played out in yet today with her first black president whose wife has deep roots in south carolina and georgetown we're seeing yet another relationship and change that the south in many ways is a key to understanding

both the hope of the south in the hope of change and those who resist change are there also the employers if you look at the national news it's fascinating to say all of the forces and the voices across the full spectrum from someone like jesse helms to martin luther king they're all southern voices and they are all deeply shaped and defined by the southern story what would you tell me what it was about the towel own muscle or nerve lead you do include a couple of fingers art of political well the painter's in many ways have had the toughest time because a writer can send a manuscript to new york city to a publisher and

get published an acknowledged and become famous as a writer but a painter until recently had nowhere to go in the south they were very few museums and galleries so if you wanted to succeed you have to go to new york or chicago yeah or to france or italy and yet these painters in the book many of whom made that journey look to faulkner and look to the riders as their great mentors and they compare their abstract expressionist images with faulkner's stream of consciousness rioting and they are just as eloquent about the creative process in the southern story as are the riders and the musicians are not old friend it's so good it back it's so good to know the story itself on

bookshelves all across this country that have come in thank you jon thanks all of you for watching i am john civil war or word on words i say he really did