A Word on Words; 102; Arna Bontemps

we're delving into the world of books tonight on a bun thompson talks about free headlines your host for word on words mr jon seaton palmer editor of the nashville tennessee good eating that underworld own words against proceeding is on about how one of the distinguished man of american literature were doing along in noble career has published some thirty works biographies anthologies fiction and nonfiction his most recent books that came out in nineteen seventy one offering it less ape oral biography autobiography of frederick douglass the slave who broke the bonds and went north the joy and wendell phillips and we would guess in the abolitionist movement and great slave narrative which is a collection of three first person accounts written

by three people who experience the bonds of slavery themselves within an adoption up by on a barge on the front of them i correct in and assuming that really the first person slave narratives of the beginnings of black literature america well almost i have to pause a moment to decide whether they were before the poetry there was there was a career perhaps if you to nail it down to a date there there was some poetry written before there was a book or a narrative that on the whole and the narratives will be the first literature in america of our bloods which had a real impact on american culture and in reading the year in reading that great slave narratives and selected three which are stories of

relief for people since the while american says by a husband wife iran the remarkable thing to me and as i as i go over those americans is the ability of these people who were caught in the trap of slavery to articulate to their experiences and i take it that they work poorly educated carney explained their ability to sign such graphic detail what what their condition was well i i think that the that the intellectual capacity of these slave has generally underestimated being a sleigh didn't really change the o d the top the capacity of the human being to reflect and to our reach some conclusions about his condition

the the fact that many of them we were not literate and didn't mean that they didn't have the capacity for literature is they had it in there background you may remember a an oral tradition in africa that went back a very long time and as missionaries who first one much of the literature which was an informant proverbs and stories had been preserved without books books so are park without little knowledge isn't due respect for that the nature of this program that the world has been able to land without books at certain periods and in africa there were long periods when there were no books available but literature survive some are not that the basic impulse toward self expression so that the slave headed

trim a built in subject matter and there's some a great story to tell a great experience gets tall lovely slaves who had that the ability to our articulate that experience that frederick douglass does that stand out as the most the last example the river dried he really has reached classic before chanel i would say i'm fascinated to and by your your life of douglas it's a very fast moving a book it takes him from one experience to another i always have thought of frederick douglass serve as a man who wants the broken bonds of slavery and became involved in in them as a public person and as one who was constantly speaking and writing about the conditions when they have always thought of him that in a sense of being personally have a liberated from that torturous

experiences but as i read your free unless ticket it comes to me that that he continued and there are conflict in pain and political lobbies in his life then and i wonder was he ever really free la la as i say the new biography he was for me after his dunk now up until that time no he is one of the things that motivated him most was the young conviction that i'm too old slavery was abolished the so called free blacks were themselves and slavery and i think that if i were to put in a nutshell his greatest achievement it was true the fact that he was able to convince the majority of free blacks that they're that they their only hope of complete freedom

and emancipation was among the emancipation of the elimination of slavery as an institution in the united states and usually and fall that through the hundred conventions which airs live in the narrative that's on the part of the abolitionists and actually we can document the fact that while at first the free blacks of which there were good men in united states are now going back to the revolutionary war when many were freed and others that become her emancipated know that was art that we can document their progress from an attitude in which they thought that if they had anything to do with slavery that talked about if they tried to work against that they would endanger their own situations you never say this about the douglas sirk in in it in the

discussion over of his own development day as a free personality i've come to a point where it seemed to me that after he was involved in the abolitionist movement and it is implied certainly have and in the way things turned out after he was associated with his friend big gaps in life and one of philip there came a time when even wanted to demonstrate it in a more graphic way that it was in a sense his own land and he broke with with them are really over the starting of his own ozone as better than our north star and at the best it's been another point set in and an income in it in the conflict of his life resume right yes i tried he yearns for that first freedom was that was that was that it was the consuming over over all the issue but after i do them by freedom i'm an emancipation but

it began to develop while the campaign was still in this for silken going on that this was not the end that after after breaking the legal barrier there was still a good bit of freedom still to be one and that he had begun to sort of move toward that before emancipation and i think this is explained by his later association with garrett smith yeah as against early garrison because he is convinced that a political action was was another problem which was a while and that association get that sort of led him into associate with john brown right and he was he seemed to flirt with john brown and the whole concept of that that john brown it was i was thinking of wrestling in air but then when it came time to

make a determination about joining him even though he had been with him and with his family and then john brown is also became a time when he just absolutely was repelled by that i guess he thought john brown was was insane he decided that it was suicide and that and that what he could contribute was not was not to make himself a sacrificial out john brown told him you know that it couldn't promise success but he could promise immortality get and so that that didn't suit and he he wanted to he could see he isn't response was that well bram could die for the slaves he could only live for that's right and i know that when he got his break with family from the gap and all the terror that now there was a split in the abolitionist movement about whether you should really use those papers to demonstrate that he was a free man that was a concession stand right with it but it but it was something he could hang onto and so we kept them there and insisted on pursuing that right

now try to secure summit so they become so hung up on the idea that the that it's slavery should not be recognize that they're taking this step that was sort of the world well this step to free himself was somehow a surrender of his full of the philosophy that's the thing is that the constitution was not binding in the case of a slave issue there if you take the douglas says the first of the three books really that you're going to write the free again the life of douglas the life of booker t washington the life of the bbb would become a really a period of fifty years of american history and you get three quite different personalities and i guess they represent so the transition in the indian black spot as it related now to the price of nature of the american condition

into for the black man was concerned about gun book the washington will come out the other issues this retired this year and then that you're also working on a book or almonds renaissance remember that strike tapia love about that because it seems to me you are really only a living know working out an artist from that that period which was surly year twenty said they're in harlem with with langston hughes and james weldon johnson and others it could you tell us a little bit about the ominous on for number two it's the debate years were actually at this route is a collection of essays half most of them written all of them written by either by students of mine at yale loehr at the university of illinois chicago circle campus are art by a few others who such as one by a doctoral candidate at vanderbilt or doctoral candidate our car the

post started couple post doctoral people who are teaching one at the university of the louisiana state and while the university of wyoming all of whom interviewed me in depth so that they're all oh and then you know they also use the line at the dental a dozen collections by nikki library at yale and you're curator and i was a curator of that place so that that i was involved in the writing of all of them it indirectly if not directly and this collection there really are represent set to my way of thinking at best example what i have a surplus of explosion of interest in black literature as its local let alone let the key is the suspect has the lead great interest in this book on the harlem renaissance that it must have been an exciting time out are there any early twenties with all those talented intellectuals engaging in

in the end and to cross cut but those currents of discussion about where the movement was going yeah said that and as well as the discussion of how the negro should be presented in our here and in literature because all of the intellectuals who are world war were very alert to me the image of the negro being that had been projected in american art and films numb employees not like anant books are and they they knew were quick to take science and to express opinions and follow this was being priced out the city banned a very young writers are represented by the as you've mentioned at langston hughes and count a column jean toomer eric water and an ally

in the war were doing their own thing it owes me where were worth of sorting the the attitudes then of course this was a period of marcus garvey which marcus garvey was challenging the role of the edible is cps the intellectual leader of the the black masses thinking really move the whole thing toward separatism and held separate as i'm out of touch and then that was at its height in and thirties and the depression hit and it recent i would say restart high point in twenty eight and twenty nine and the end the depression hit in the open the latter part of twenty nine but of course depression in harlem was in felt immediately because nobody there on the name out of stock so they didn't jump out of innuendoes about gradually it began to reach them and by thirty one it dirty it had he was ready

because we had something like a dispersal here's all you were involved in and went your separate ways and you wound up in a small school alabama clear again and and the that was the time of the sky where i really get reece alabama just in time to catch on to observe that close so you actually there and in this they didn't know i had i was an observer and others the number of the people who went down because during the jails and so forth that came to visit us all root because i was in on snow and laid the trigger the the boys were imprisoned down in montgomery and of course the trial was in decatur like the news came through liasson who's going through and stayed with us today is that recreate any it would save and then the cover of you figured that out and put men of the area delicate position in part why will the people you know pull my was

employed this little school thought that he was really the incarnation notes of evil and that may be a problem for you that led eventually to my leaving all the work that we do not let him yes not not immediately but i love to i was given an ultimatum those things that i might i would have to do in the course i couldn't putrid they were what's so what's so tonight it did burn out my books for example a box of the harlem renaissance so that they really pose that was not only suggested that required so you were so i loved and then you were later lauren vault a family of writers project they're that was part of the federal government certainly try to get that they fear that the punishment from oppression and i liked to figure out after a loss obama is and roll like thunder it and only like thunders

they received about that critically although books were not selling at that time and mine certainly didn't sell because it was on the same man that had the same publisher and on the same list with gone with the wind and so naturally they didn't see that but damn one of people who read it was jaunty frederick who i believe is still living and who was the director was a professor at the end of that northwestern at the time later at notre dame really rather than offered me on that to make me a supervisor one of his supervisors on the illinois writers project in that project that'll people like go oh yes that frank yerby was like you know this there and richard wright richard ryan margaret walker and they all had their own not programs at the library programs that they were selling about it that person had it that a different their project in and the innuendo well now some of them out some of these people were

just writers i was a supervisory that conroy was a supervisor that snowden was a supervisor and then there were still others summer jam steely and i saw him on television recently of imagine you collaborated with declan conlon an abominable dozens of laws by the service we were we became and we became a plan that dealt with migrant rinse he had been injured in migrations already industrial migration migration start the industrial centers and i was interested in migration with special referenced of black migration from the south and we sort of pulled our efforts in the book which we told they seek a city in which is later updated every publishes la clase period that about nineteen seventy eight that you'd be updating the ri the whole time i was served was the best

one i guess for people who were involved in in writing and was seeking too to make their contribution to study through the writing of out of out of that birthday my some great contributions to the letters and in the days that follow i i would say so certainly i think means that we know what what richard wright speech or was frank europeans and katherine dunham too by the way that they they sort of for the end these dance and theater projects were suburbs of sawed into the writers because they didn't abolish them all at the same time so that some of those lawyers brought him and all that they're your career is that covered so many different the interesting facets of the feeling of crying two that stand out my mind is is the work to get counted problem that later

became late in the place of a woman and that's a fascinating ideas johnny mercer was involved in latin music and how long they wrote the atlantic on phantom rider and that was really that bad adaptation of the book you encountered on this world it was it was ceded to the book and i was my first novel godsend sunday ran during the harlem renaissance art was dramatized by count day and may and later on it was after he had and that had already been then found a producer but during the course of his early getting the finances ford and setting a setting up the arrangements casting it he decided that a rather be that probably a lot of the musical and so they brought the use of this team of mercer and ireland was became interested and eight and probably i think that waylaid this was ever show this is where she began where she began on those

states what i think are you in your career and your associates was a librarian and of them as an anthologist that i am the messiah had known about themselves is with the oversight both woman it wouldn't surprise me but i don't suppose the church since you really have is worthy of ghost writer for the sea and he's a biography of those the cn well using is a gracious and likeable person very outgoing very friendly but he was saying he had his hang ups about his career and about his approach to his music he had a drought one traumatic experience in his life he had done his first success you know as the memphis blues and he had sold it for a fifty dollars but day it had been a great success and it made somebody else rich and this or that shook him up terribly so that about fortunately he had another one up his sleeve so after that he

wrote those loans is st louis blues and early oliver with a beale street blues and a few others so that he was today he recovered but he never got over the city the real trauma well having his own work stood and read somebody else was he could only get that that fifty dollars and then in the end a group never know nothing's done about it until a copyright ran out years later rewarded this really got that inside is ride a recitation of that and inside his book ryan and i guess there was some conflict that as a railways is when we get to august together one of the magician and the other is a writer and he wants to have the only artist that the ride out a writer's book i think that's probably true whenever anyone helps another with that with the writing of his personal story so i but i

enjoyed it and that he was he was so gracious and so friendly he came down here he i was in nashville by the time you know i think it's just vanish before i came to nashville but he he continued to come we come down here dr evan on them to visit him that he was very very anxious never lost his interest cinemas as well according to satisfy those others which switched it quite well have done quite well over the years he estimates in paperback now get yourself faced with langston hughes how that again you really would work was possible dr levy we became a quiet nineteen twenty five on his return from his period of wandering and seafaring yes well he had dropped out of columbia had dropped out after his first year as it crosses the question has come up as to why some people have an animated that he was not that not a good student that that up you were

on it i thought that myself for years and he never tried to climb that he was but i did eventually saw his his grades of columbia they were good of course he was an engineering i was it was it was not pursuing engineering art for a while his father wanted him to be an engineer i think that in his freshman year he's probably taking a general but general subjects but he had done very well in everything except what was it i think as physical education in a band and he was a good physical specimen to know so that that there are there's really no reason for that but he had done is the major subjects he had done very well but leverage so that it was they couldn't be attributed to our weakness and scholarship he was a first rate scholarly but he added he had thought for other reasons i believe more than anything else is based on the help he was getting from his father he was having his parents were divorced and he was living

alternately with his mother who was a waitress and cleveland and his father who was a lawyer in mexico and doing very well and his and his feelings were divided so yes so he doesn't really what we call a drop out there and a lot of weather abroad who worked on boats in to see the world go through no way affected his ability to write what they know when he came back i met him on it on user of money returned and he was give them a little reception by a group of writing people were in harlem including charles ives johnson and the editors of one of the magazines i was taken there by count a column by the way two to meet him and we you know we agree we became friends then and it has continued

kush are all wrapped up now in these in these writing projects there and ed first called the booker t washington book and then there will be problems and then finally the third book in the trilogy gratified by any means in terms of what were to happen that i'm sure you want a network for many years but it could we talk for just a moment about the washington booker the us at yet it represented that are quite interesting a figure in an unknown in the black movement and move america for such a long time and and that seems to be that the third book really sort of lead in the second book on washington song leads into the third book on the boys and because there was a conflict between between the two men and how you got a handle that conflict well i know i'm going to treat it as a conflict or not between personalities because there was really no the most significant friction and hostility between the two men they respected each other and booker t

washington twice offered at the word on words featuring jon seaton ballpark is produced in the studios of wbez and tv channel to nashville tennessee