In Black America; The Junior Black Academy Of Arts and Letters, Inc.

¶¶ The Junior Black Academy of Arts and Letters Incorporated was founded in 1977. I'm John Hansen, join me this week on in Black America. As a consequence of putting that together and refocusing things, I decided on my own that I was going to try to revive the spirit, the energy of what I felt the Black Academy was about. The Junior Black Academy of Arts and Letters Incorporated this week on in Black America. ¶¶ This is In Black America, Reflections of the Black Experience in American Society.

¶¶ You know, one thing that's so important is, is some type of new national news letter that just identifies where the people are, the big names, what young artists are doing, how the information can contain the flow through the community. So I'm saying that can be a part of what our institution can do and characters and people feeding into a satellite program based in Dallas, Texas without organization. Mr. Curtis King, founder and president of the Junior Black Academy of Arts and Letters Incorporated. The Junior Black Academy is the offspring and continuation of the American Negro Academy, which was founded in 1897. The Junior Black Academy of Arts and Letters Incorporated is designed to promote the accomplishments of Afro-Americans in the fine, literary, and performing arts. Now housed in a city-owned building in Dallas, Texas,

the Academy is finding a battle for permanent home. I am John Hanson. This week, the Junior Black Academy of Arts and Letters Incorporated with its founder and president, Mr. Curtis King in Black America. I had all of the original discussions of the formation of what happened with the American Negro Academy and the Black Academy. And you had people like Cannonball, Adely, Langston Hughes, Margaret Walker, people like that. Details and details and details and details of documents where these people were discussing history about the formation of the Black Academy. So I have all of those smiles and all of those records. Additional material is stored in the Schoenberg collection

that's totally invaluable stuff like papers and things like that from a lot of those legends. So I feel that what we have is really, really significant. And as a consequence of that, it's been like this, I guess you like a compelling demon, if you will, inside of me, that every time I get discussed about trying to raise money for the project, I continue to think about what happened to that material in the New York City dump. At the time of those documents were discovered, Curtis King was a doctoral student in the arts at the University of Texas at Dallas. He wanted the material that was found to have a secure home, a place which would preserve the history and culture of Black people. Mr. King presented half of the materials to the Schoenberg collection in New York City and retained the rest of the documents to serve as an historical foundation of the Junior Black Academy of Dallas. The Junior Black Academy has presented an array of cultural events

designed to display a Black talent at its best in the arts and letters. I recently spoke with Curtis King regarding the Academy and his career. One is called the American Negro Academy, which started in 1897 by Dr. Dubois and Alexander Kromel and that organization lasted about 27 years and the purpose was to promote, foster and cultivate the arts and letters of Black people. And at that time, there weren't any academies in the country that dealt specifically with fostering the culture of art and scholarship for Black people. So Dubois and Kromel got together and decided they would pool together in an institution that would preserve foster, cultivate, perpetuate the arts of Black people. So it lasted 27 years when Dr. Kromel died and then Dr. Dubois became the first president of the institution, even though he was still like a co-founder with Kromel.

Well, when it died in 1969, there was another organization called the Black Academy of Arts and letters which was founded in New York City and at that time Dr. Siric Lincoln was the founding president of the Black Academy and the purpose was specifically the same thing as the American Negro Academy. Well, I happen to have been a student at Jackson State University in 1972 and went to a conference in Chicago that was sponsored by Johnson Publishing Company and the Chicago School for Continuing Education, University of Chicago School for Continuing Education. And all the people that I had read about or had seen on television movies had seen some of the visual arts work in museums, those people at that conference. Again, I'm a student at Jackson State. Were you in awe? Pardon me?

Were you in awe of these persons attending the conference? Just flabbergastic. You know, about all of the big names. Offer Davis, Ruby Dees, and Charles White, Real Mayor of Bearden, and people like that. And believe me, I took a list of addresses and phone numbers of these people who went back to Mississippi and started trying to write plays because my background is in the theater, started trying to write and produce plays even more so. So when I got into the Grand School, Offer Davis and Ruby Dees that had been in and out of Mississippi to visit Margaret Walker came to do a project at Texas Christian University. And so somebody said, well, you know, Offer Davis is going to be in town and I said, for what? They said, they're doing a production of a black history. I said, oh, fantastic. Well, at the time, I was working as a stage manager for the auditorium that they were going to perform in. So I went backstage and so Ruby Dees said, Curtis, she said, what are you doing in Texas? So I said, well, I'm in grad school here at TCU. So then I talked a little bit about my interest in the black academy. So she said, well, you know, the black academy is no longer in existence.

I said, oh, what? She said, yes. So she said, well, I really can't talk that because I asked her what happened. She said, well, I really can't talk that much. But let me see you after the show is over. Well, we really never had a chance to sit down and really talk about the details of it. But when I left grad school, I found out that Dr. Lincoln was teaching at Duke University and so he gave me some background information. And I went back and forth from Raleigh, North Carolina to New York, you know, trying to do some additional research on the project. And so as a consequence of putting that together and refocusing things, I decided on my own that I was going to try to revive the spirit, the energy of what I felt the black academy was about, because I knew how that organization had inspired me when I went to that conference. And one thing that's real important, while I was in Fort Worth at the time, this was like two years after I got to the grad school, we did a festival called the Sojourner Truth National Cultural Art Festival. And the purpose of the festival was to pump new life and energy back into the black academy.

So several people, like beer riches, Elizabeth Catlett and folks like that, came to the conference in Fort Worth, Texas in September of 76. And so a guy by the name of Joe Nash, who was working with the Black Dance Documentation Program that was housed in the Rockefeller Church, where the black academy was housed, called me up and told me that he had some information that he wanted to give me. And so I said, fine, I said, what is it? He said, well, I'll tell you when I get to Texas. So he bought me about two boxes of material. And the story was that the black academy was housed in the Rockefeller Church, and somehow there were some problems. And so the people who were running the church, I guess, went in office space, told them that they had to have the space. So it was nobody there to really clear the office. So there were some custodians that cleaned the office out. And one custodian that was cleaning the office got the information out of the dump

and took a copy of it to Mr. Nash. And so Joe Nash looked through and he said, my God, where did you get this from? So he told me, say, well, I got it out of the dump. They told us a clean of black academy's office out. He says, what? So Joe rushed down to the dumpster and salvaged as much of the materials as he could. Then he called Jean Huttoner with a Schomburg collection. And she sent some additional students down there too. We still allow the material. Now, what was among the collection of works that were thrown away or being thrown away? I had all of the original discussions of the formation of what happened with the American Negro Academy and the black academy. And you had people like Cannonball, Adely, Langston Hughes, Margaret Walker, people like that. Details and details and details and details of documents where these people were discussing history about the formation of the black academy.

So I have all of those files and all of those records. Additional material is stored in the Schomburg collection that's totally invaluable stuff like papers and things like that from a lot of those legends. So I feel that what we have is really, really significant. And as a consequence of that, it's been like this, I guess you like a compel and demon, if you will, inside of me, that every time I get discussed about trying to raise money for the project, I continue to think about what happened to that material in the New York City dump. And so if I'm an artist myself and thinking about those people's life and history, sort of like ending up in a dumpster, I think about what would happen to people like myself. And I think that it's important for black cultural institutions to exist in this country to be able to preserve that kind of work because by and large predominantly white institutions,

if you will, they don't have the level of interest in what we're doing. And I can understand and I guess I really don't have a problem with it, you know. One of the questions I'm glad you alluded to that, particularly our historically black colleges and universities, how did this information get past them or were they not included in the inner circle when the academy was in its form of years? I think from my research, I think they were included in the inner circles, circles and the workings of trying to preserve something like that. But I always find that a lot of those people who are at the level of where those particular people were functioning like, you know, the people involved in the college of universities who were writing, producing plays and movies and things like that, really did not have the time to administrative the type of project that this project demands. So as the consequences, I think that it just sort of got pushed back in the wings

in terms of levels of priority for a lot of these people. So, you know, I'm saying that, you know, to respond to your question is that they were there. But I think that just by, you know, every day situation, you know, the living situation in terms of people trying to make a living at what they do became more of a priority than, you know, trying to preserve an institution because it takes a tremendous amount of time, energy and money to keep a black culture institutions together. I think that was one of the problems. I understand that the Junior Black Academy of Arts and Letters Station and Incorporated in Texas is that the only organization, the only academy of arts and letters to your knowledge dealing specifically with black culture and history. Yeah, I think this is the only kind of organization of this kind that, you know, the does exist in this country. And let me say this, what our focus is, based upon the research and the information that we've gotten from the other two academies,

one is that we want to offer a degree program in the concentrates in six disciplines, music, theater, dance, film, television, literature and the visual arts, with a specific concentration in the study of black American arts. Everything that you discuss, now I don't want to sound like a racist, but everything that you discuss, everything that is produced, everything that is written about everything that is visualized within the walls of this particular organization with deal with the life, the history and the work of black people in this country. And we want to be able to offer a degree program in that. Some people say, well, God, what are you going to do with a degree in that? Well, we're going to create jobs, black people create jobs for everything else, you know? And so I think that, you know, this is the only type of institution in this country that does offer a degree program, or that has a goal to my knowledge, that offers a degree program to concentrate in these areas. And then, this is the main reason why we have, over the past ten years, continued to bring in the big names like the Felicia Rashad,

the Esther Old, and the Romeo of Bearden, and the Marley Walk, and the Sonya Sanchez, and people like that, so that they can be a part of the foundation of building the organization so that the people or the artists that are coming along, who want to develop specific careers in the art, that these people will have firsthand relationship with these particular giants. And that's the way I think the process is perpetual, and that's what we have focused and have worked on for the past ten years. I think now we are beginning to focus in the second stage of development of an institution and that's trying to build a very strong, physical, image-looking facility that will be able to accommodate the type of program that we're talking about. And I think Dallas is a very good place for it to be, because Dallas is located in the center of the country, and it's a place you can get to to New York fast, get to California fast, and wash it in places like that. So I think it's in a good place. Okay, are other black professionals knowledgeable of the Junior Black Academy of Arts and Letters? I think we have a tremendous number of people that are very familiar with it.

Over the past ten years, we have had 97 people that have been to Dallas in the literary, the visual, and the performing arts, that have specifically worked in the classrooms, in the workshops, in programs like Symphony and Black, programs like Black Music and the Civil Rights Movement, things like that. And these people have worked directly within these projects. And as a consequence of that, I think they have been like the messengers to carry the word to other people in other parts of the country. I had a meeting the other day with Brock Peters, and we had a very interesting conversation, because he was saying that he wanted to work more specifically with the organization based up on the focus and the direction of what we have done and that the institution itself, and I quote what he says, has become a legend. He knows on the lips of a lot of people that live on the West Coast area. Is there a permanent house for the Junior Black Academy of Arts and Letters? Well, we are in the process of trying to develop there.

We are in the process now trying to, we are in the process of launching a major fundraiser called Leap for the Legacy, the developed out of a whole Egyptian concept to get a facility. We present and have a facility that's located in the heart of downtown Dallas directly across the street from the convention center. It's about a 35 or 40 thousand square foot facility, and we're trying to raise an additional $250,000 to renovate this facility. It's in the prime location. How can someone help you? A phone number, address, well, they can send contributions. For people who are interested in donating to the project, area code 214-827-6241-R827-6242. They can call that number and get additional information. If they want to send information, they can send a contribution to the Junior Black Academy of Arts and Letters,

P.O. Box 224-199. And that's Dallas, Texas, 752-22. And I need to maybe someone out there that will send us 150, 200,000 out of contribution. How has the reception been from the Dallas Fort Worth area or from Central Texas in general? I think, let me say this, I mean, I have to say this, I say it very forcefully, I say it very strongly. If it had not been for the Black community in the Dallas Fort Worth area, I think for all practical purposes, the JBA would not be in existence. We have a massive following. We get some money now that's picking up from the City of Dallas. Some very small funding from the National Endowment. This past year, we didn't get any money from the State Arts Commission. But again, I think that the people who are involved in the project, our Board of Directors, we have 75 very, very active and strong volunteers. We have a very good staff of people, five part-time people, two full-time people,

that work extremely hard to make sure that the institution does exist. And I think that more than anything that the people within the Dallas community are very important. Now, we began to branch out and develop chapters. We have had meetings in Chicago with Earl Callaway. We've had a meeting in Chicago with Tommy, I mean, I'm sorry, in Mississippi, Jackson, Mississippi, with Tommy Stewart, and what they are in the process of doing now, we're working on developing chapters in those areas. So I'm saying the things are beginning to really develop and pick up. And those people from those areas would start raising money and sending money back to the junior, to the junior black academy because this will be like the umbrella organization. To produce things like calendar events of black arts activities that will happen in the country. You know, one thing that's so important is some type of new national news letter that just identifies where the people are, the big names, what young artists are doing, how the information can continue to flow through the community.

So I'm saying that can be a part of what our institution can do with establishing chapters and people feeding into a satellite program based in Dallas, Texas without organization. And that's what we've done on a very small scale for the first 10 years as a tester and it's really beginning to work. Something I want to go back to, you mentioned one of the fundraisers or one of the activities of the academy, it's the symphony in black. Are you referring to symphonies written in composed by black persons and performed by a all black orchestra? Well, yes, let me say one thing. We only have one black symphonic orchestra in this country and that's in Detroit, Michigan. The Metropolitan Detroit Orchestra and that's headed by a person by the name of Harriet McTerry. And what we have done in the past couple of years, we worked with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra and doing the symphony in black project. Works by black composers, excuse me, conducted by black composers

and have tried to branch out to develop that project in other parts of the country. Now, they've done the same project in New Orleans. They've done it in Chicago. They've done the project now in Detroit. And what we want to do next year, once we have our big massive opening of our tenure celebrations, is to bring the all black orchestra to Dallas to do work by black composers, conducted by black conductor and played by an all black orchestra. So those kind of things, we've been very successful with a lot of projects, examples. We did a project called, as a part of our regular concert series called Black Music and the Civil Rights Movement. Billy Preston has been here for that, Jennifer Holiday, Earth a Kid. Well, when Earth a Kid came last year, she was so impressed with the concept and the idea of the project. And we have such a massive turnout that she said to Rodine Preston, who was guest-conducting and miss Preston is over the James Cleveland Gospel Workshop of America,

that we should do an album with this. So one year later, we got with the Caravan of Dreams production in four words and produced an album with Earth a Kid. This is the first time that she's done an album in this country in the last twenty years. So we're getting ready to promote that album with Earth a Kid and Rodine Preston, which I think is a very, very good album. I'm excited about it. Again, we have turned massive, turn away crowds. Last year, we did Black Music and the Civil Rights Movement Concert. I'm sorry this year, we did Black Music and the Civil Rights Movement Concert. We did it with Jennifer Holiday. We got a pop music call in Dallas that seats 3,400 people. We turned away 3,900 people after door of that concert. Then we did a project called Dallas's Black Living Legends. We worked with the Black newspapers and outlined 17 different categories to let the community select who they felt were living legends in categories like art, education, and so forth. Then once we got the tallies in, we added the tallies up,

announced who the recipients were, then we got visual artists, like visual artists in the areas to do portrait of these individuals, and then had the portrait unveiled for Black History Month at the Dallas City Hall. We had a massive turnout for that. We had 1,500 people on a Monday night at Dallas City Hall for that particular event. So I'm saying that those type of projects are projects that we want to do and implement those projects in other sections of the countries, particularly those areas where they're developing chapters as a Academy chapter. Are there any programs specifically directed towards our young people? Yes, we had this past summer. We had a program called Summer Arts Institute with Children. We had 175 kids from all over Dallas that participated in that program. And what they did is they took classes in music, in theater, dance, and in creative writing. Very, very intense courses started at eight o'clock in the morning to four o'clock in the afternoon,

and they took that class, those classes, for four weeks. And as a consequence of that, they have to do some final product. And what we do in programs like that, we try to divide the kids based upon whether they want to develop, whether they want to develop a career in the arts, or those kids who are just interested in art as an appreciation. And then we focus in and up on that, and then try to do a track of those kids each year. Now this year we had 100 of those kids that came back into the program this year, so we were able to track what they did last year, and what they've done this particular year. But that's one program that we have, specifically designed for children. And the class, the regal classes that we have, you know, youth can take those classes too, and then we have classes for adults. And I don't want the adults. I don't want people to think that just because it says, junior, it means, you know, for children only, because that's not what it is. We say junior because of our relationship, historically, with the other two academies. And reading the literature on the academy of memory served me correct.

Are you all trying to put together a new all in style parade? Yes, this is a part, I'm excited about this, this is a part of our 10-year celebration. What we wanted to do, since we have been in Dallas, we have moved seven times. So the place where we are now, we want to have what is called a second line parade with a dance industry with the umbrellas from the present facility to our new facility downtown. Then once we get to that facility, then we have, you know, released 5,000 balloons, thousands of cannons. You know, we have our festival chorus, which consists of 100 votes that did the recording. Then we have a ribbon-cutting ceremony. And in that ribbon-cutting ceremony, if there are 5,000 people, we want to buy enough ribbon for those 5,000 people to be able to cut the ribbon, because the people are very important, and the center of keeping the institution alive. Then we want to have like a midnight concert, and of course Jennifer Holiday is working with us to chair, trying to identify other celebrities to participate in that.

And the following day, we want to have what is called a All-Star Testimony or brunch. And we want to do the Testimony or brunch in the form of a torch pass and ceremony, where each artist that's been here over the past 10 years would do like a two-minute, would make like a two-minute staper in the form of a proverb, what they would lead with the organization for the next 10 years, based upon their relationship that they had with the organization over the past 10 years. How has the film right and producer Spike Lee contributed to the Junior Black Academy of Arts and Letters? Well, he was a very interesting, we have gotten some communications from his publicist, that he was very interested in the project, and that he wanted to succumb to Dallas as a part of our celebration to participate in some of the activities, along with Roy Campanella Jr., who's already been here,

and so what they have done has made some level of communication in the sense of trying to pull together some concepts and ideas that were funding that could be pumped back into the organization, so he's been very interested from that level. Before I let you get away Curtis, give me the name, the address, excuse me, and the phone number for persons who want to help you all contribute to a permanent home. Okay, send it to the Junior Black Academy of Arts and Letters, and it is a nonprofit organization. P.O. Box, 224-199, as Dallas, Texas, 75222, is a zip code, and the area code is 214-827-6241, R827-6242, it's the same area code, and so again, we are seriously interested in trying to develop a national institution that would do the things that I have described, you know, to you, John.

Mr. Curtis King, founder and president of the Junior Black Academy of Arts and Letters, Incorporated. If you have a comment or would like to purchase a cassette copy of this program, write us your dressiest in Black America, Longhorn, Radio Network, UT Austin, Austin, Texas, 787-12. For in Black America's technical producer, Cliff Hargrove, I'm John L. Hanson, Jr., please join us next week. You've been listening to In Black America, Reflections of the Black Experience in American Society. In Black America is produced and distributed by the Center for Telecommunication Services at UT Austin, and does not necessarily reflect the views of the University of Texas at Austin or this station. This is The Longhorn Radio Network.