In Black America; The Origin of Woke, with Elijah Watson

From the University of Texas at Austin, KUT Radio, this is In Black America. Woke was so fascinating because I mean, it felt like it came out of nowhere. All of a sudden, everybody was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, and I was just like, okay, we had it back in the 15-6. Yeah, you know, and so I was like, you know, this word had to come from somewhere, where to come from. So I was doing some digging around and I found a story about him on Twitter. And it, you know, it had said the thing how like this guy was supposedly the one who coined the word woke. So I was like, okay, let me look into it. And found out he was from New York, but I didn't know that he had passed away yet. So I was very excited. I was like, oh, sweet, I get to talk to this guy. I find out what he thinks about everybody using a word that, you know, he's credited with bringing and then found out he had passed away in February of last year.

And so I was, you know, of course, I was devastated, but his family, Aiki and his daughter, both of them just phenomenal people who wanted to tell his story. Elijah C. Watson, news editor for the New York Bay's Black Politics and Pop Culture website, okay, player. The word woke is an African American colloquialism that is now defined as quote, aware of and actively attentive to important facts and issues, especially issues of racial and social justice in the quote by the Oxford English Dictionary. Watson is writing a three-part series that focused on the brother credited with quoting the words. African American Harlem author William Melvin Kelly, who passed away in 2017, Erica by Doomsbury, an adduction of the phrase stay woke and how the word is on a decline. For 30 years, Kelly was an expert in the arts and theories of mixed metaphor. Kelly attended Philston School in Riverdale and in 1956 ended Harvard planning to be a civil rights attorney.

Kelly died on February 1st, 2017. He was 79. I'm Johnny O'Hanston, Jr. and welcome to another edition of In Black America. On this week's program, the origin of woke was journalist Elijah Watson in Black America. The Black surge of creatives that came from Harlem all through from the 1920s, even up until now, to know that this word came from there isn't too surprising because so many Black creatives were, they became woke, they became awakened in Harlem because they were in such close proximity of each other. They were able to celebrate each other, they were able to critique each other. All these different kinds of ideas of Blackness, whether they did create some conflict or not, they all allowed all these different types of Black people to articulate their Blackness in different ways and have those discussions. So each one, whether they all agreed or they didn't, they were all becoming, they all had their own subjective awakening. So it means a lot knowing that this word probably just existed on the block of Harlem and people were being like, you woke, you woke, cool, you woke, and then it just spread until what it is now today.

When we use words and phrases these days, we sometimes have little, if any knowledge of where they come from, one word in particular is woke. For 10 years now, we have attributed that word to Erica Badu because she first sang the word on her 2008 song, Master Teacher. Coming to find out work was a part of the African American vernacular back in the 1960s. First used by William Melvin Kelly and experimental novelist and filmmaker in his New York Times essay, if you're woke, you dig it. Published in 1962, the essay talks about African American slang and its invention and reinvention in retaliation to its appropriation by the majority population. Students essay doesn't use the word won't be on this title. Elijah Watson news editor for OK player was fascinated by the word and decided to do some research on this origin.

Richard M. Black America set down what led him to the project and what he discovered. Born and raised in El Paso, Texas lived there for 18 years of my life and then moved up here to Austin for UT Austin, ended up going through multiple school transfers, started out and wanting to major in music performance that didn't pan out. Want to do English that didn't pan out and then life was like, hey, come to the journalism program came to the journalism program ended up loving it graduated from here in 2014, then moved back to El Paso briefly and now I'm in Brooklyn, New York. And you work for OK players chose about their website. So OK player has been around kind of as a slang word, it was in Philly and it started out with quest love and the whole the roots crew and everybody that they collaborate with maybe like, you know, it was like an affirmative like, oh, OK player, you know, and so from there, it was a music forum in which they would share their music with their fans as well as like stuff they were collaborating with with common, America, but do toilet quality most of all those people that they collaborate with till this day.

And then I think the late 90s was when it finally became a music website and dealt with covering, you know, just black eccentric music as well as black culture and politics and that's what it remains to this day. How long have you been there? I've been there a year and a half now, yeah. And what excites you about going into the office every day? The fact that I'm able to dedicate time and energy to telling black stories across America to me that's that I didn't imagine that was the position I'd be in because I started out as a music writer. So when I first applied for the job, the former editor Eddie, he was like, hey, we also want this new writer to start doing like black activism, black culture, black politics. And I was like, OK, you know, obviously I'm black. So yeah, I don't mind, but you know, I thought I was going to be doing more music, but the more I got into it and the more passionate I became and the more informed I became because, you know, it's just like by doing that,

you have to learn so much more. And you know, even when it was like, I think maybe a month after I joined was the shooting of Alton Sterling and that following day was Philando Castile. So I had to write up both of those and it was just very emotionally heavy, but at the end of it, I felt, I felt good that I was telling their stories and I continue to tell their stories. So that's the thing that excites me the most about going. Elijah, when you were writing music, what are some of the things that most oppressed you about the industry or the artists that you were writing about? For me, it's always kind of been, I guess I guess you could say I went through phases. So like when I was writing for the daily texts in here, it was more kind of like album reviews, kind of trying to find the underground breakout artists that's here or the student that works by day and then as a musician by night. So I think the way in which it's changed is more about showing the humanity of an artist and unpacking the complexities of an artist because, you know, that's what they are.

They're always human and I think that we tend to forget that. And I also like to explore kind of like the legacy, how certain genres of music wouldn't exist without its predecessors and kind of like connecting the dots. So, you know, I guess like a good example. Recently one that I did was I talked about black creative such as Donald Glover and Tyler the creator and how through their music, they've created this world, their own respective creative world, how Donald Glover now has Atlanta. And, you know, before that, he had because the internet and then of course a wake in my love and then Tyler the creator with all of his albums and now having TV shows, how they've just managed to redefine the idea of what a black creative can be and do and say and how they can articulate themselves in the 21st century. So for me, it's where I think, you know, when I was younger, it was just like, okay, I'm just going to like write about music just straightforward. Now it's really unpacking and connecting the dots and exploring ideas that aren't being articulated, I guess within the music journalism music critic sphere.

What makes you want to look at the work of William Melvin Kelly? So, woke was so fascinating because I mean, it's like this word, it felt like it came out of nowhere. All of a sudden everybody was like, stay woke, woke, woke, woke. And I was just like, okay. We had it back in the 1560s. Yeah, you know, and so I was like, you know, this word had to come from somewhere where to come from. So I was doing some digging around and I found a story about him on Twitter. And it, you know, it had said the thing how like this guy was supposedly the one who coined the word woke. So I was like, okay, let me look into him. And found out he was from New York, but I didn't know that he had passed away yet. So I was very excited. I was like, oh, sweet. I get to talk to this guy, find out what he thinks about everybody using a word that, you know, he's, he's credited with with bringing. And then found out he had passed away in February of last year. And so I was, you know, of course I was devastated.

But his family, Aiki and his daughter, both of them just phenomenal people who wanted to tell his story were just like, yeah, you know, come on through and we can talk about it. And yeah, that first day it was like five hours of just hearing them talk about this man that, you know, they not only respected as an author and as an artist, but of course as their father and, you know, their husband. So it was just a very beautiful experience getting to learn about him from the people that knew him best. And he was, he was a proud black man that wanted to tell the stories of blackness been a very, very interesting way that kind of was polarizing at the time, but I think now would be more appreciated. Yeah, understand he lived in an Italian-American neighborhood and attended Harvard. Yes, yes, he attended Hartford. And I believe he didn't start out as an English major. I want to say it was, it was something business related.

But he took a liking to one of his English classes and then realized that that's what he, you know, that's where his passion was at. And so from there, he did that. And I believe a different drummer was the first book that he wrote and that's to this day has been his most popular. And the fascinating thing about that story is it's insane because it tells the main synopsis is that all these black people living in this mythical southern state one day just leave. It's a mass exodus and they all leave to the north. But the story is told from the perspective of all of the white people that live in this state. So you kind of get this as I lay dying William Faulkner-esque storyline. And, you know, when I was speaking to his wife Aikia about it, she's like, yeah, you know, it's kind of polarizing because, you know, this book is coming up during the time of the black liberal arts movement. So, you know, black people don't want to have stories, black stories being told by white people are even in the perspective of a white person. We want, we want it to come from black people, you know, the black people need to be the protagonist. They need to be the one speaking about the story within the story.

But, you know, to me, that was just so fascinating and so ahead of his time as a writer, you know, to employ that kind of strategy to speak on race relations and, you know, speak to the ultimate, the ultimate idea until this day in America, which is that white people have needed black people more than we've needed white people, you know. If just joining us, I'm Johnny O'Hanston Jr., and you're listening to In Black America from KUT Radio, and we speak with Elijah Wanson News Editor for OK Player. Mr. Wanson, how did Mr. Kelly actually coin the phrase woke? So, there was a 1962 article he wrote for the New York Times called, if you're woke, you dig it. And, you know, it, it's a really, once again, this, this, that piece also just speaks to how ahead of his time he was, he was speaking about basically cultural appropriation and how our slang words are an integral part of American culture. But the moment that they become mainstream or they become commodified, we're very quick to create the next word that basically meant what its predecessor meant, but just to fool everybody who thinks that they're in the know.

So, the interesting thing is that he never says woke within the rest of his article. But from the context, you can already tell that for him, woke meant a certain racial and political context where it's like, you know, if you're basically, you know, if you're black, you're woke, you're woke to this, you understand the ways in which this country functions and how it steals from black culture constantly. And, but yet we adapt. We adapt so quickly that, you know, it's an afterthought for us. So, yeah, that's how he ended up using it. And, like I said, even though that's the only time he used it in any of his pieces, and I don't think he used it in any of his other novels, but that was the one of the earliest documented moments of someone using the word woke. And, I find it interesting in there is that I was driving to Austin the other day, and I was traveling through central Texas.

And, one of the commercials was the car dealership commercial, and I hadn't heard the phrase static, and I don't know how loud. And, the announcement saying, well, you know, we won't give you any static. Well, if anybody out there know what the term actually mean is a problem. So, I can see why you saying that, you know, we use African-American or black slang in everyday conversation to convey a message that is indigenous to African-American. Exactly. Exactly. So, what was it like for him to be working with James Baldwin and Langston Hughes? So, he was in contact with them because they were all kind of in the same literature circles. He didn't necessarily work with Baldwin. He did work with Hughes, kind of like under him as, I don't want to say like an intern, but basically like under, I guess a mentorship, I guess you could say. And, but for him, he was more concerned about just telling the stories of black people not necessarily becoming anything of a public figure, like how with Hughes, you know, he was associated with so much as well as Baldwin.

For William, it was more just about, I kind of want to lay back and allow my stories to do the talking. And when I have to talk, I don't mind, but I prefer just to let the stories be the ones that need to talk. You know, I'll just be, if someone wants to ask me something, of course, I'll answer, but you know, I'm a little more distant. Yeah. Yes, it's really fascinating, because I mean, yeah, every single kind of person I've seen to talk to in every kind of documentation I found, woke was an East Coast thing, and arguably it was a Harlem thing. So then, you know, in my first part of the woke series.

You can spread with. Yes, exactly, exactly. And it's really, it's so fascinating. But, you know, as I write about in the first part is that, you know, when we take this into context with, you know, just the, just the Harlem Renaissance and the black surge of creatives that came from Harlem all through from, you know, the 1920s, even up until now. To know that this word came from there isn't too surprising, because so many black creatives were, they became woke, they became awakened in Harlem, because they were in such close proximity of each other, they were able to celebrate each other, they were able to critique each other. All these different kind of ideas of blackness, whether, you know, they did create some conflict or not, they all allowed all these different types of black people to articulate their blackness in different ways and have those discussions. So, each one, whether they all agreed or they didn't, they were all becoming, they all had their own subjective awakening. So, it, it means a lot knowing that this word probably just existed on the blocks of Harlem and people were being like, yo, you woke, you woke, cool, you woke.

And then it just, it spread until what it is now today. How has Erica Bardou brought this awareness back to the world? So, it's really interesting, and this will be touched upon in part two is that there's a woman named Georgia Ann Moldrow. And Georgia Ann Moldrow introduced basically the West Coast to to woke. She was living, she was living in New York. She, I can't remember the school that she was going to, but she moved to New York for school. And then she ended up meeting a saxophone player who introduced her to the, basically, to the word. But for her, for her friend, it was more of just like, oh, her friend, yeah, Lakisha, friends Lakisha. And for her friend, she just, when she said woke, it was more just like literal, like, I'm just trying to stay woke because I'm just working so much. I'm hustling so much.

And Moldrow, though, transformed it back into what you could say Kelly's intention was, which was more of this racial political context. And so Georgia ends up meeting this production creative group called Sara, creative productions, and they all live on the West Coast and basically kind of just like acid, meo, soul, jazz, funk, kind of stuff. And so she goes out there, hangs out with them, and they're working on music for Eric about to. And so they're just jamming and Moldrow begins to repeat like, stay woke, stay woke. Of course it catches. And what she told me was that, that song, so the song that it ended up becoming was master teacher, master teacher originally had more of kind of like an African tribal feel. But even more interesting was the fact that Moldrow is saying, I'd stay woke, not I stay woke. So when I caught on to that, I was like, you know, why is that? You know, because one is more declarative, one is more, I'm striving for that.

And she's like, because that's what I was, I never felt I was fully awakened, I feel like every single day I'm trying to get to that. But, you know, where I was at my life, and even now I would say that I'm striving to stay woke. And, you know, all of all the lyrics mainly came from Moldrow. And it came from a very tough time in her life when she moved to New York, I think a year later, 9-11 had happened. So you add that on top of her, just like hustling and grinding it out to be the talented creative that she is. And, you know, her catharsis was the song. You know, she told me even till this day, she kind of has a hard time listening to it. Because, you know, for her, you know, as she puts it and excuse my French, she's like, you know, that's... And it was through her in which, you know, it ultimately became an Erica Badu song, but Moldrow is really the one that introduced them all to woke.

So then, you kind of have this hibernation period, you know, it was really funny when that album came out with Master Teacher. I believe that it's New America Part 2 is the album. And everybody on forums were like, why is she saying woke? Like, you know, for them, for listeners, it was more like a grammatical error, like, okay, like, you know. And then, so you fast-forward to, you know, I want to say it was either 2012-2013 when Erica Badu was on Twitter and she was speaking out in support of Pussy Riot when they were basically getting persecuted in Russia. And, you know, she was talking about them and she put the hashtag stay woke. So then, you know, you get this, it's slow. It's a slow kind of brew where people are beginning to use it. And, you know, the context is going back to what I would say Kelly originally started with, which is that racial and political context. Then, you know, as sometimes the internet tends to do is that it can mutate something to where it dilutes it of the power it originally had and the context it originally had.

So now, you know, that's why, you know, you may see articles on the internet or people being like, oh, woke is dead because it became this ironic thing where it's just like, even if you show like the most minuscule amount of awareness you're considered woke. And, you know, that for one that just dilutes it and kind of makes it this more universal thing instead of this thing which had its roots in blackness. And I think that that's, you know, that's something that both part two and three speaks to is how with woke there's a beauty to it. But if you're glamorizing woke or if you have to say on woke, you're probably not as woke as you think you are. Yeah. So. What has been the response thus far from part one? Really good. I was not expecting to get such a positive reception.

And, you know, so there's a center on Harlem called the Schomburg Center just dedicated, you know, basically towards like archiving just many of the black creatives and artists that have come from Harlem. And, you know, they retweeted it on Twitter and shared it and, you know, they reached out and they want to talk with me as well. But yeah, I mean, just like having friends, you know, be like, oh, wow, I never knew about William. I never knew about his story. And to be able to know, you know, have a better idea of where woke came from. It's just been really cool to have that discussion. And really just to celebrate Kelly's legacy, you know, I think that was the biggest part of part one was to give this guy his dues. Because he's been out here making very just one of a kind novels and offering a perspective that to me, it's like, you know, there wouldn't be a get out without a different drummer. There wouldn't be all these, all these black creatives who are able to tell these really interesting stories.

They wouldn't exist without the footprint that he offered, even if they don't even know him, you know, it's kind of just like that legacy where we're doing things without ever realizing that there was somebody years before us who already laid down the foundation and the groundwork. So to me, that's been the most beautiful thing is just like, now people, you know, I've had friends hit me up, we were like, oh, I've started reading a different drummer, I started reading, you know, other things that William has written, you know, because that was he wanted to be known, but he didn't necessarily know how to balance his creative endeavors with that idea of wanting notoriety. So to be able to at least offer some sense of that and to have people curious about his work and just wanting to look at woke in a more in a different way other than this, okay, it just means that like you're aware. No, it means something far beyond that and it means something much more so to black people. And, you know, if you're going to use that word, please be aware of that context.

How has the Black Lives movement given prominence to the word? So I would say, you know, with the Black Lives Matter movement and even with Durey McKesson, who has his organization, which is called Stay Woke, they, and this kind of goes back to when it was, you know, shortly after Erica Badoor, you know, Black Lives Matter, they were using it as kind of their own chant. And I think that that was really important because I mean, for one, it sounds cool. That's why it became as popular as it did, you know, stay woke. It slides off the tongue. It's perfect. And it perfectly encapsulates what Black people do on a daily basis in America is that we're literally staying awake and trying to remain vigilant and aware to the oppressions that are happening to us. So who better to take that phrase and use it as a means of uplifting people in the Black Lives Matter movement.

So for them to use it, it was, it was really nice. And it was, it's, how should I put it? It's not, not aggressive, but it, it has enough punch to it. And it has enough seriousness to it to where you take it seriously, you know, when someone, when a person utters those words, stay woke, maybe not necessarily now, but when it was at its height and when Black Lives Matter had first come out using it. You know, it was like, OK, you know, this is, this is basically the Black Power Fist in, in, in verbal slang. Elijah C. Washington news editor for the New York based Black politics and pop culture website, OK player. If you have questions, comments or suggestions asked your future in Black America programs, email us at in Black America at kut.org. Also, let us know what radio station you heard us over. Remember to like us on Facebook and the follow us on Twitter.

The views and opinions expressed on this program are not necessarily those of this station or other University of Texas at Austin. You can get previous programs online at kut.org until we have the opportunity again for Technical Reducing David Alvarez. I'm John L. Hanson, Jr. Thank you for joining us today. Please join us again next week. CD copies of this program are available and may be purchased by writing in Black America CDs. KUT Radio, 300 West Dean Keaton Boulevard, Austin, Texas, 78712. This has been a production of KUT Radio.