The Great Depression; Interview with Maya Angelou. Part 3

CAMERA CREW MEMBER:

Take four. Change camera roll seventy-six, change sound to forty.

MAYA ANGELOU:

In Stamps, Arkansas, by the time I was ten years old, I expected my brother to become a lawyer. He was a year-and-a-half older than I, he was brighter than I. I didn't expect that for myself because I didn't talk. There was a fellow Henry Reed in my school who was almost as bright as my brother, also a little bit smarter than I, not much [laughs] but he was a little bit. I figured that he was going to be a doctor. Now, although the people in my town did not boast of a number of black doctors and lawyers, but I did know that Fisk existed, the university, Fisk University, and Howard University existed. And Tuskegee, and Atlanta, and Spelman, Morgan State in Baltimore, Morris-Brown, and Morehouse. These were, these were heavenly abodes. I mean I kind of thought that if a child was good, and died, the child would go to heaven and become an angel. And if the angel was a good angel and died it would probably go to Howard [laughs]. I mean that was possible, and it was something to dream of. And

black teachers took such pride in black students, and the community took such pride in smart students that a child who had gotten A's would be marched from one church to another. And people would say, \"Now here's brother so-and-so's little boy. Here he is, here's little Johnny, stand up Johnny. Johnny got all A's this week,\" or \"all A's this past year.\" People who—I mean he didn't belong to that church—people would stand up, \"Praise the lord! Bless his heart. God bless you honey. Keep on pressing on.\" So people took pride in the children, and their pride was an encouragement to continue. So we thought, with the larger society saying \"You cannot,\" we thought \"Yes, we could,\"

because somebody had gone before us, Dr. Dubois, Booker T. Washington, Marcus Garvey. Those were names in this little village in Arkansas which were very familiar. Ida B.-, Ida Wells-Barnett, we knew these names. We knew—and Ms. Mary McLeod Bethune. Oh please, I mean that was genius walking around, and Grace. So, the aspirations, I don't think the aspirations were that much different from today's aspirations. the only thing is that we aspired against incredible odds.

INTERVIEWER:

Can you tell me about the odds, the little, the obstacles that the aspirations had to run over?

MAYA ANGELOU:

Well, if a child graduated from Lafayette Country Training School, she or he would have a very good underpinning in black-American literature. You would know Paul Laurence Dunbar, James Weldon Johnson, Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes, Georgia Douglas Johnson, Anne Spencer. You would know the nineteenth and twentieth century writers. One might not know mathematics very, very well or have even been introduced to science other than the name George Washington Carver, because the teachers themselves had not been trained in the hard sciences and they couldn't afford to get teachers, black teachers, from the North or who really had the training because they could go to better paying schools, you see. So the students came out of the high school without the underpinning they needed, the foundation. They could go on maybe to a church college and get some more training in social services, but to try to get to Columbia University, or to Howard, wasn't that easy. They needed maybe two more years of a, of a, like a Junior College to come up to, just to compete with the people in the other schools. That was always an obstacle because families needed their children to work, and children who felt responsible to their families wouldn't take two more years, you see.

INTERVIEWER:

Was there any sense [coughs] of even trying to move into the white society, was there-?

MAYA ANGELOU:

No, not that I knew of. I'm sure there were people way over in Texarkana, way over in the big city, or in Little Rock and Pine Bluff, but not in the small towns, it just didn't happen. Sometimes the teachers themselves had only gotten high school education.

INTERVIEWER:

Well you talked about a graduation ceremony in your book that you went to and you felt, again there was that sense of anger, that somebody was imposing upon-

MAYA ANGELOU:

Limits, mm-hmm. That was a white man who really came to speak and to inform the graduating class that they would, they were going to have a new playing field, basketball field, and an addition to the home economics building. So I thought, oh so this is to say we can become athletes, and we can become better cooks, and more adept washer women and men. But to aspire to be scientists, and philosophers, mathematicians, and doctors seemed to be beyond us because they had—the man also, insensitively, informed us that the white school had been given fifty new microscopes. So obviously we were being told, \"don't you aspire beyond these limitations.\"

INTERVIEWER:

Great, thank you. OK, I think we are done.

MAYA ANGELOU:

OK.

INTERVIEWER:

Yes, thank you.

MAYA ANGELOU:

OK.

INTERVIEWER:

OK.

CAMERA CREW MEMBER:

Camera roll seventy-seven, sound roll forty.

INTERVIEWER:

OK.

MAYA ANGELOU:

Tell me. The last inch of space was filled yet people continued to edge themselves along the walls of the store.

Uncle Willie had turned the radio up to its last notch so that youngsters on the porch wouldn't miss a word. Women sat on kitchen chairs, dining room chairs, stools, and upturned wooden boxes. Small children and babies perched on every lap available, and men leaned on the shelves or on each other.

The apprehensive mood was shot through with shafts of gaiety as a black sky is streaked with lightning.

One man said, \"I ain't worried about this fight. Joe gonna whip that cracker like it's open season.\" Another said, \"He gonna whip him till that white boy call him Mama.\"

At last the talking was finished and the string-along songs about razor blades were over and the fight began. \"A quick jab to the head,\" in the store the crowd grunted. \"A left to the head, and a right, and another left.\" One of the listeners cackled like a hen and was quieted. \"They're in a clench, Louis is trying to fight his way out.\" Some bitter comedian on the porch said, \"That white man don't mind huggin' that nigger now I bet ya.\" \"The referee is moving in to break them up, but Louis finally pushes the contender away, and it's an upper cut to the chin. The contender is hanging on, now he's backing away. Louis catches him with a short left to the jaw.\" A tired of murmuring ascent poured out the doors and into the yard. \"Another left, and another left. Louis is saving that mighty right.\" The mutter in the store had grown into a baby roar and it was pierced by the clanging of a bell and the announcer's \"That's the bell for round three, ladies and gentlemen.\" [coughs]

CAMERA CREW MEMBER:

Take six

MAYA ANGELOU:

Yes? \"He's got Louis against the ropes and now it's a left to the body, a right to the ribs, another right to the body. It looks like it was low. Yes ladies and gentlemen, the referee is signaling but the contender keeps raining the blows on Louis. It's another to the body. It looks like Louis is going down.\" My race groaned. It was our people falling. It was another lynching, yet another black man hanging on a tree, one more woman ambushed and raped, a black boy whipped and maimed. It was hounds on the trail of a man running through slimy swamps, it was a white woman slapping her maid for being forgetful. The men in the store stood away from the walls and at attention. Women greedily clutched the babes on their laps while on the porch the shufflings and smiles, the flirtings and pinchings of a few minutes before were gone. This might be the end of the world. If Joe lost we were back in slavery and beyond help. It would all be true. The accusations that we were little lower than—Sorry [coughs]—It would all be true. The accusations—Sorry.

INTERVIEWER:

Can we start again with \"My race groaned\"?

MAYA ANGELOU:

My brother, this is taking me now. I'm doing the best I can. Please.

INTERVIEWER:

I know, I know.

MAYA ANGELOU:

I didn't consider that I would be doing anything other than a reading. That's another preparation. I'll try.

My race groaned. It was our people falling. It was another lynching,

yet another black man hanging on a tree,

one more woman ambushed and raped,

a black boy whipped and maimed. It was hounds on the trail of a man running through slimy swamps,

it was a white woman slapping her maid for being forgetful.

The men in the store stood away from the walls and at attention. Women greedily clutched the babes on their laps while on the porch the shufflings and smiles, the flirtings and pinchings of a few minutes before were gone.

This might be the end of the world.

If Joe lost we were back in slavery and beyond help. It would all be true. The accusations that we were lower types of human beings, only a little higher than the apes. True that we were stupid, and ugly, and lazy, and dirty, and unlucky, and most of all that God himself hated us and ordained us to be hewers of wood, drawers of water, world without end. Amen.

We didn't breathe, we didn't hope, we waited.

INTERVIEWER:

For the last piece if you could just start with \"champion of the [inaudible].\"

MAYA ANGELOU:

No, I, that wouldn't—

INTERVIEWER:

unintelligible OK.

MAYA ANGELOU:

That doesn't follow either to. I have to do this. I have to do the next, you can cut it if you like. Yeah? \"He's off the ropes ladies and gentlemen. He's moving to the center of the ring. And now it looks like Joe is mad. He's caught Carnera. With a left hook to the head, a right hook to the head, it's a left jab to the body, another left to the head, There's a left cross, a right to the head. The contender's right eye is bleeding. He can't seem to keep his block up. Louis is penetrating every block. The referee is moving in but Louis sends a left to the body. It's an uppercut to the chin, the contender's dropping. He's on the canvas ladies and gentlemen.\"

Babies slid to the floor, women stood up, men leaned toward the radio.

\"Here's the referee, he's counting one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, is the contender trying to get up again?\"

All the people in the store shouted, \"No!\"

\"Eight, nine, ten.\" There were only a few sounds from the audience. They seemed to be holding themselves in against tremendous pressure. The man said, \"The fight is all over ladies and gentlemen. Here, let's get the microphone over to the referee. Here he is. He's got the Brown Bomber's hand, he's holding it up. Here he is.\" And then that voice, husky, familiar, came to wash over us. It said, \"The winner and still Heavyweight Champion of the World, Joe Louis.\"

Champion of the World, a black boy, some black mother's son, some black father's son. He was the strongest man in the world. People drank Coca-Colas like ambrosia and ate candy bars like Christmas.

Some of the men went behind the store and poured white lightning into their soft drink bottles, and a few of the bigger boys followed them. Those who were not chased away came back blowing their breath in front of themselves like proud smokers.

It would take an hour or more before the people would leave the store and head for home. Those who lived too far had made arrangements to stay in town. You see, it wouldn't do for a black man and his family to be caught on the lonely country road in the South when Joe Louis had just proved that a black man was the strongest person in the world.

That's it.

MAYA ANGELOU:

Thank you.