The following is an excerpt of an interview for the documentary "Literature & Life: The Givens Collection." This excerpt features Dr. John Wright (University of Minnesota) discussing the Givens Collection of African American literature.

I think it's fascinating to think back on the impact it's had on those of us who have been working with it since it came, and about the whole process about how we got the collection here originally.

What's now the Archie Givens Sr. Collection of African American Literature and Life was originally a private collection that had been put together over the course of a quarter of a century by a White, New York-based writer, playwright and teacher named Richard Lee Hoffman, who worked in a small college in Brooklyn, and who, in the early 1 950s, when collecting African American literature was an eccentric activity, to say the least--not many people were doing it in serious ways, and certainly not outside African American communities--he began doing so. And doing it alongside people like Charles Blockson, another well known, Black bibliophile, who amassed a comparable collection during the same years.

Anyway, Richard Lee Hoffman spent, some 25 years of his life collecting first-editions of African American poetry and plays and novels and short stories and popular culture materials and magazines and playbills and ephemera of various sorts, of letters and manuscripts and screenplays, etc. And they began with the very oldest work by an African American author, 1773 edition of Phyllis Wheatley's Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral.

And they moved through, again, the earliest works of the, of the Revolutionary period, at the end of the, the 18th century; into early 19th century Abolitionist polemics and slave narratives, autobiographies by people like Frederick Douglass and Josiah Henson and Harriet Jacobs and Sojourner Truth; on to the earliest novels, works by William Wells Brown and Martin Delaney; the earliest Black literary magazine, the Anglo African Magazine, that was begun in New York in 1859.

On up to the, the 20th century and the era of the Harlem Renaissance. In part because Hoffman was New York-based, he was able to collect particularly effectively in the materials and the writers and the manuscripts around the Harlem Renaissance era. So the collection was, is marvelously rich with it. And one of the things that we glory in are the first edition volumes that we have that have intact book jackets, from an era that, that was known as the "Renaissance of the Illustrated Book, as well as the "Negro Renaissance" also, in which there was a tremendous collaboration between literary artists and graphic designers, painters, illustrators and so on.

This took place in African American magazines, in book trade, in new lithographic innovations of the era and so on. And, again, the collection is rich with those kinds of materials also.

Professor Hoffman collected works right up to the 1980s. And so we have, again, materials that span the whole of, the whole caravan, as it were, of African American literary and cultural life. And it's "literature" in the broad sense, not just poems and plays and fiction and so forth, but the materials also reflect the broadest cultural and social history. So there are a lot of works in the collection that deal with the, the histories of, of African American musical forms, for instance, the blues and jazz and gospel, and biographies of performers in those fields.

And of, of historians, popular historians as well as formally trained academic historians. And the works of people from W. E. B. DuBois and J. A. Rogers on to contemporary historians are included in the collection also.

It's also a collection that is not only the works of African American authors, about African American life, but also the works of White American authors and European authors who wrote about African American life and culture and character and different periods of our national history, that is a significant part of the collection. And also contains works from other authors of African descent from around the Black world, from the Caribbean, the French and English speaking Caribbean, and from Latin and South America, from places like Guyana and, and Colombia and, Trinidad and so forth. As well as the works of continental African writers. So we feel very blessed to have it here, and hope that the community feels blessed also.

Well, by happenstance--these things oftentimes do happen by serendipity--and the reality was that, Professor Hoffman had reached a pass in his life when he was considering retirement. And he had kept this private, this huge private collection in his apartment and in storage in New York City. And when he finally decided that, his retirement and an upcoming new marriage and family dictated that he, part with his collection, he began contacting major institutions with research libraries and special collections around the country, through a, an agent, a literary, West Coast literary agent called "Joseph the Provider."

And the notice went to the Special Collections of a division of Wilson Library, and it so happened that a student of mine, a very able young Black woman, was working in Special Collections then. And when she saw the notice for this collection, she immediately brought it over to me to take a look at. And as soon as I saw what this collection was, the description and so forth, I knew that this was a rare opportunity.

And we began a process then, a number of people on campus here now who were instrumental in this, in this, in this enterprise. The names are many, but Claudia Wallace Gardiner was, was one who helped mobilize the campus, and to get then-dean of the College of Liberal Arts, Fred Lukerman, and then-president Ken Keller, behind our efforts to, to acquire this collection.

As it turned out, we were the first institution in the country to contact the, "The Provider," the agent, "Joseph the Provider." And we got a 60-day, first-refusal agreement with them, which meant we had 60 days to make an offer on this collection, before it could be offered to anyone else. And so we went to work with the 60 days and high hopes, trying to mobilize the local community, the university and the community at large to help raise the funds to acquire this collection.

And that's the, the point at which the Givens family, Phoebe Givens and Archie and Roxanne and the whole group of, of energetic Black professional folks locally, shepherded in part by Ezell Jones, all banded together to, to mobilize community resources and to secure the collection.

Well, I was, you know, it's a, a dream, come true, of course. And as the collection ultimately arrived and we began opening up the boxes--l had, of course, seen detailed annotated descriptions from Professor Hoffman about what the collection held, but--yeah, if you're at all interested in books as, as cultural artifacts, and the, you know, the beauties and the mysteries of books and bookmaking and so on, there's nothing like opening the volumes themselves.

And seeing the texts, seeing, in many cases, the inscriptions. Because the collection's rich with inscribed copies of oftentimes fascinating notices by authors, to other authors, about themselves and about particular occasions and contexts. So it, it was a long, a long-standing epiphany for me and some of the other folks, to, to open these treasures.

The following is an excerpt of an interview for the documentary "Literature & Life: The Givens Collection." This excerpt features Mary Easter (Carlton College) discussing slave narratives.

Slave narratives are the slaves' experience, in the slaves' own words, without the mediation of someone who listens and interprets. And, there are many of them. Some of them were taken down as testimony, and are in the Library of Congress. And there's, in many cases, there's a lot of mediation, because the slaves, it was illegal for them to read or write. Many, many people were illiterate. And so they would tell their stories to someone who then would write it down.

And, and what's on paper, then, has to do with, the attitudes of the interviewer, how the interviewer, interpreted the language. But even in cases where, there's a, a tremendous screen from the interviewer--for instance, the screen of language-- I think that some Southern interviewers were, had something invested in recording the slaves' lack of standard English.

And so you will see, in trying to replicate the, what you call the "accent," but what we now call a kind of Black English, that has its own syntax, that's related, perhaps, to some African languages, you will see this exaggerated. And you will see a kind of language that, if you've ever been in a Black community and spoken that language, you don't, you recognize, the foreign-ness of the transcription.

So that's one kind of, recording of the slave narrative. Still, there's information in those narratives that is not in, the recorded history written by, White people, or people who were, who were not slaves. Who didn't have the, experience of being born as, as chattel, and dying as chattel.

and then, the wonderful, famous ones, are the ones where the slaves knew how to, read and write, and told their own story in the language they chose, with all the specificity, of choice, that is a part of any writer's life. Frederick Douglass, for instance, wrote one of the most powerful, ones. And one of the best known.

But there were, there were others. and some of them that come to mind, Harriet Jacobs', slave narrative, it's so interesting because it was, --well, it was, she wrote it under a pseudonym. And for a long time, the corroborating evidence, that such a person had really existed, that these, disguised names, slightly disguised names, and places really existed, that this was an historical document and not a novel-- the corroborating evidence was not, around.

But it was discovered at Smith College, in the, archives, the letters from the family that she belonged to. That, that matched events, where they lived, when they moved, whose daughter got married when, all of these things matched her, her narrative, and it was then revealed that, Linda Brent, the name that she had written under, was Harriet Jacobs indeed, and that this was, a slave narrative, an historical account written by the person who lived it.

So that is a, a very exciting one. And then the story itself is just horrifying. And, especially the stories of, the misuse of women, you know, a characteristic, way of dealing with this at the time was that even when the slaves wrote the narrative, they were advised to draw a veil over certain events too terrible to be mentioned. And this drawing of a veil meant that sexual, use of women and, horrible things that actually happened to people, that were widespread part of people's, lived experience, these things were not known except by rumor. They were covered over.

And they were covered over in a way that amounts to a lie about what slavery was. So--in the slave narrative where a veil is not drawn over, these events, they become very important documents of actual people. Not generalized, not homogenized, not seen through a screen. But, this sounds romantic when I say it, but it really; my experience is of one heart speaking to another.

When a slave father, who has escaped writes to his wife, "Send me some of the children's hair," you know something that you don't know about that experience. From, objective historical account of how many slaves existed. You know something about the importance of family, the deprivation of, being separated. You know something about a Black family, about a slave family, that those relationships were important. And that even having a lock of the child's hair would mean something to a person. That's not the picture you get of the slave family that, where oppression was so great it destroyed all family feeling. Nobody knew who they were related to, or cared.

So that's some of how I react to slave narratives. And obviously they touch me, very deeply. I identify with them. An odd thing to say; I'm a privileged, educated woman. Living in the last part of the 20th century. And much of the oppression that is experienced by other African Americans right now, I don't deal, I don't have to deal with. Because of my privileges. And yet, I find, in the courage of the slaves, in their perseverance, in their, ingenuity, in their continuation of culture, in the ways that they found to enjoy themselves and to create things, I find tremendous sustenance in that for my own life.

Well, now, it is odd, because in my schooling, I mean, I grew up in Virginia, and I was schooled in segregated schools. I had some advantages even there. My aunt was the principal of the elementary school I went to. And it was a school, I think, not, not atypical of Black schools in the South, where it didn't matter what the Board of Education said, and what the approved textbooks said, the continuation of culture and the teaching of things about, Black people of history, that was a part of our school. We sang spirituals in assembly, and we sang them for enjoyment. Nobody said, "You should know this, 'cause this is part of your history." These were the songs that you sang.

So you knew a lot about it. You knew something about it. But it was certainly not a part of any curriculum, that I, ever studied. And I knew family stories. Told with a great deal of laughter, generally, and a tremendous sense of enjoyment in remembering people who had gone before. In my grandmother's house. My mother told these stories, my grandmother told these stories, my aunt, my uncle. My father, sometimes, participated, but that was sort of, he was estranged from his family, so in a sense, he didn't have as many stories, though he was there.

So I knew these stories. But making the connection between the stories, and reading actual slave narratives really came later in my life. I was at, already, living in Northfield. I was at Carleton. And I used to go sort of, foraging through the college bookstore. I'd look at the books that, --I wasn't teaching yet, my husband was on the staff, my children were small. And, as I'd go through the bookstore, I'd look at what they, people had ordered for various classes.

And there would be small, almost pamphlet-sized, books of slave narratives. And I started to read those. And I hadn't set out to be on any kind of a, a quest for my past or any of these terms. They, they just interested me. They caught my attention so much, and I'd just go back and get another one and another one.

In some way they were like--well, to say "adventure stories" is, too little, it's too little a description--but they had everything. Would they make it? Could they stand it? When they tried to escape, and how did they do it, and would someone find out and they would be caught, and how did they get the perseverance to keep trying again? It was wonderful. It was so satisfying. The horror in it was awful, but it was satisfying to--to see in print something that confirmed the experience that was daily denied by the world around me. Not the Black world, but about-- "Slavery was a long time ago. It wasn't so bad. Plus, it's over now. This shouldn't matter to you."

Well, it all did matter. And it was terrible, And it has everything to do with what is going, what was going on then-- this was late 60s, early 70s--it has everything to do with the inequities that persist today. And the fact, I think, the fact that politically we do not deal with, either slavery or the disappointments of the Reconstruction period--"disappointments," that's a weak word for what happened, about Reconstruction--I think that that, in that denial and that refusal to come to grips to that, is really, in that denial are the roots of the difficulties that persist today, racially.

So that's my opinion, and that's what that reading, meant to me. And it has continued to interest me. I come back to it may seem odd to make an assignment like that in, a Black dance history class, where we're talking about, dancing and we're talking about culture. But I find that many of my students have never read a slave narrative, don't know they exist, don't know that this record, in the voices of the people who lived it, from so long ago, that's there. That exists. Anybody could go get one. Anybody could read that.

So, yes, I was shocked. It’s hard to describe how a shocking, awful thing can be satisfying. But it's satisfying because it is a truth, that, that explains things to you. Makes life make sense, even if it makes a terrible sense.

The following is an excerpt of an interview for the documentary "Literature & Life: The Givens Collection." This excerpt features Mahmoud El Kati (Macalaster College) discussing the origins of African American literature.

What one needs to appreciate is that West Africans had a profoundly rich heritage, in literature already established. A way to tell stories; that's what literature is. And transmit ideas and values and all of that in some form that is recognizable. You know. Using certain techniques. The circulatory technique of Africans, how you tell stories. The point is not to get to the point right away. It's a form, that's literature.

So, when you, when speaking expressly of these Africans in the English-speaking world, when they clash with English, what you have is an on-going tradition of literature, clashing with the literature of written language. Which is, that English people had, at least the upper crust, had become dominated by literature that was written, for, for at least three or four centuries; since Shakespeare in 1512, the settling of American started in 1600. In Shakespeare's time, in his time most people didn't talk like Shakespeare. That was upper crust. They were still speaking vernacular. And most people couldn't read like that. So you're talking to the upper crust, talking about them, primarily.

So African people come into that tradition of written word literature, or literacy, as we call it. And what happened is very interesting. It's happened many times in human history, when you have two contrasting cultures clashing. The dominant culture imposes its will over the people. And the influences are obvious. Black people speak some form of English, some patois, some Creole, some, some Pidgin English kind of thing. And all this means is that the two languages are marrying one another.

And so we have kind of a new form. And what makes African Americans different, I think--unbeknownst to most people--they have two traditions. They have a tradition of oral literacy which goes back many centuries; and they evolved into a tradition of written literacy, from as early as the, late 17th, early 18th century. Of people being able to put some things down on paper. To speak out of an English context. To define themselves anew, where they had to re-perceive themselves.

And we see this in the writings of Jupiter Hammond, a slave on Long Island. Of Phyllis Wheatley in Massachusetts, in Boston, who wrote a book called Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral. Which was really the second book written by a woman in American literature, was written by a Black woman. See, she came up under the Wheatleys under a very nice circumstance. And learned to speak Latin and speak English and write in it very well.

And so we have that tradition in a kind of a written literature, certainly, by the time of what we call the American Independence Movement.

And that was, before the ink was dry on the Constitution real good, these Black freed men, lodged a protest, same thing that the young Americans did with respect to the English, in protesting against the taxation without representation. That's the first, whatever you say, that may be the origins of civil rights movement, you want to date it like that. You know, lead protests in the legal arena.

The following is an excerpt of an interview for the documentary "Literature & Life: The Givens Collection." This excerpt features Mahmoud El Kati discussing the importance of Frederick Douglass.

This is a unique human being, period. Having been born a slave, who transcended his moorings, his environment, in all sorts of ways, you know. He was actually, bigger than his life, as it were, you know. He was a unique person. Everybody who encountered Douglass thought that.

There's a piece of folklore which says that he was once mistaken for the President of the United States. When he went to visit Lincoln to advise him on the Negro question of that day, and that he was sitting in the outer office, in a dark corner, and he had this incredible countenance, you know a look that, this is somebody that, you know. And one of the senators or whoever came in to see Lincoln and he walked in the door--he had never been there before, apparently. And he looked in the corner and he saw this man with this bearing, 'cause it was dark and it couldn't be with the complexion, but he saw his, his silhouette and his sort of profile, and he walked up to him and asked him, "Are you the President of the United States?" And Douglass rose to his full height and said, "No," as if, you know, "Not really, I'm bigger than the President." (laughs) He said, "No, I'm not the President; I'm Frederick Douglass." You know, that's, that's the real deal, you know. And it is said that he comes off like that. We have enough evidence about these men, these two great figures, for that to be constructed. You know. In many, both of them of humble backgrounds, Lincoln being born free, Douglass a slave, who transcended their backgrounds and so forth. Who were in their own respective ways, geniuses of sorts. They were at least minor geniuses, you've got to give them that, both Lincoln and, and Douglass.

And Douglass, we can imagine how he spoke from his language, from his writings. His words lived; they jumped off the pages.

I think that, what is important about the literature of Frederick Douglass is simply this: If it were music, you would call it "classical." if it were religious, you would call it "timeless." But let's just say, his language is as fresh as today's newspaper. Much of it. You and I could sit here all-day and go in the writings of Frederick Douglass and cull out statements that fit exactly what we're living now. Almost exactly.

Douglass said, "The American people have this lesson to learn: They have to know that where poverty is in force and ignorance prevails, where any one class of people is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to rob, oppress and degrade them, then neither persons nor property will be safe. Because hungry men will eat, desperate men will commit crimes, outraged men will seek revenge." You know.

"You have this lesson to learn: Where ignorance prevails, poverty is in force," you know, "where justice is denied, where any one class of people are made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to rob, oppress or degrade them, then neither persons nor property will be safe."

I think, in every revolutionary situation, in every social change situation, words like these are created by the experience. I think Mao Tsetung said it, in other words; I think Ho Chi Minh said it, in other words. I think that, that Patrick Henry said it, in other words, you know. I mean, conditions find certain things, conditions create language. You know.

And there are some fundamental things about the human condition that are, that are universalisms. And that is about people who are oppressed, I don't care who they are, want to be free. All slaves are inherently subversive. I want to extend that. All people who are not free are inherently subversive. They want to subvert whatever the system is that's oppressing them. It has nothing to do with people's color or race, and that nonsense that we, you know, think we are.

But, you know, it's about the human spirit. Everybody, I think human beings have, most of us, most conscious human beings, have a glorious urge to be something better than they are at the moment. Most of us, you know, like. That's just human, it's got nothing to do--and it's relative, you know. As to where you are in time and space.

And so Douglass spoke for humanity when he said that, that "The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to or all those claims have been bought of earnest struggle. The conflict must be exciting, it must be agitating, it must be all-absorbing. And for the time being, putting all other tumults to silence. It must do this or it does nothing for. If there is not struggle, there is no progress."

"Men who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing the ground. They want the rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean's majestic waves without the awful roar of its mighty waters.

"The struggle may be a moral one or it may be a physical one, or it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand; it never did and it never will. You find out what a people will submit to, and you will have found out the exact amount of oppression and wrong that will be imposed upon them. And these will continue until they're restricted by words or blows or both. The limits of tyrants are proscribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress."

"So then, Black people will be held at the North, they will be flogged at the South, so long as they submit to these devilish outrages and make no resistance, either moral or physical. Men and women may not get all they pay for in this world, but they sure as hell must pay for all they get. So then, if we ever get free from all the oppressions and wrongs imposed upon us, we must pay for their removal. We must do this by labor, by sacrifice, by suffering, and if need be, by our lives, and if necessary, by the lives of others."

That's a revolutionary statement. And it's a statement on behalf of the unwashed masses of the world. Frederick Douglass said it way back in 1856.

The following is an excerpt of an interview for the documentary "Literature & Life: The Givens Collection." This excerpt features Dr. John Wright (University of Minnesota) discussing the literature of Frederick Douglass.

Douglass wrote three autobiographies in the course of his career, the first in 1845, called simply The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. A second in 1855 called My Bondage and My Freedom, and the third, late in life when Douglass was an elder statesman, the man very much a citizen of the world, called The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass.

The first, the 1845 narrative, is a small volume, dense, powerful, carefully sculpted. Written while Douglass' career was, was comparatively young. And it would become a classic in its own time, and establish Douglass as an international figure.

But it's not nearly as rich in its discussions of the life of a slave as Douglass' second autobiography, My Bondage and My Freedom. Was, which again, appeared in the mid-1850s, after the Fugitive Slave Decision of 1850 and two years before the Dred Scott decision of 1857. A time when, again, rising sectional tensions over slavery were intense, and when African Americans were trying to ferret out, what their place in the body politic was.

And Douglass', the second autobiography of his appeared the same year as many of the classics of the American romantic movement appeared, the same year that Hawthorne's The House of the Seven Gables appeared, that Whitman's Leaves of Grass appeared, that major works by Henry David Thoreau, his Walden, a host of others appeared also. And Douglass' work, in retrospect, now, suffers not the least by comparison with the work of those American masters. And it offers, of course, a powerful alternative kind of voice. And a richly philosophical voice, as well.

One of the things that we oft-times don't acknowledge about the slave narratives, or don't pay much attention to, is the, the philosophical and the meditative qualities that go along also, of course, with the outrage and the protest against the institution of slavery. But Douglass' autobiographies are rich with philosophical insights about the psychology of both master and slave. And that's part of what gives them ensuring--, enduring power for readers today.

Well, slave narratives like Douglass', were part of an embattled literature. And African American writers found themselves, in the, in the years before, in the immediate years before the Civil War, kind of triangulating the course between the works of northern White abolitionists, who created works, oft-times, again, opposing slavery but offering rather different views of African American life and character. Among the best known of these Northern abolitionists' narratives, of course, was Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin.

On the other hand, from the South, a whole body of work had evolved, that we have come to call the "Plantation Tradition," alongside slave narratives. In part, defending the Southern way of life. Often pro-slavery views of the institution and its place. And so, slave narratives operated in between these counter-forces, and with their own independent views.

And African Americans, unlike many of the Northern, White abolitionist authors, did not view themselves, necessarily, as helpless victims, and void of, of energy and agency in their own right. And offered a somewhat different view of the

Psychological realities of slave life and the struggle for liberty, than appeared in the works of abolitionist writers like, like Harriet Beecher Stowe.

And of course, in relationship to Southern Plantation tradition writers, whose works were, crucial in developing the mythology of slavery as a grand, benevolent regime of beneficent White masters who forded genially over docile and contented slaves, in ivory-pillared mansions with magnolia blossoms and all of the accouterments of Walter Scott historical novels, on display.

In the face of those kinds of images, the slave narratives had to offer a different kind of view. And it's a, it's a fascinating contrast. Indeed, Douglass himself, like many, many mid-century African American Abolitionist writers and fugitive slaves were themselves powerfully influenced by these, same kind of historical novels and fictions that were coming from Europe.

Douglass' own name, "Douglass," comes from Sir Walter Scott's long poem, "The Lady of the Lake." And Douglass was the name of the Scottish rebel chieftain in Scott's "The Lady of the Lake." And Douglass took it for own, for his own, gave, gave, rejected his slave name, which was Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey, for Frederick Douglass.

The following is an excerpt of an interview for the documentary "Literature & Life: The Givens Collection." This excerpt features Dr. John Wright (University of Minnesota) discussing the roots of the Harlem Renaissance.

Well, there were a number of things that took place after the turn of the century. It’s hard to recognize it now, but at the turn of the century over 90% of the Black population in this country lived in the former states of the Confederacy. Over 90%. And there were few large, Northern urban centers of African American life, outside the, the old cities of the Eastern coast, Washington and Philadelphia, which had been the old culture capitals of this country.

But the country at large was changing dramatically, from a largely rural, agricultural society into an industrial and increasingly urban society. And New York City was increasingly becoming the culture center for the nation at large. And the book trade, and the rise of Tin Pan Alley, and the publishing industry and so forth, was a tremendous draw for young Americans of all sorts, including young people like then-young St. Paulite F. Scott Fitzgerald, who felt the need to go East to New York City.

Well, similar things were happening for African Americans. Only we were being pushed out of the South, by a combination of forces. A wave of economic catastrophes, of depressions and recessions, of crop failures and so forth. And by the, the rise of Jim Crow and of terrorist organizations like the Knights of the White Camelia, and the citizens' councils, and the Ku Klux Klan and so forth.

And the move north, what would become, called the Great Migration, just changed the social landscape of, of African American life and of American cities. And large, urban Black communities began developing in northern cities where there had been only small enclaves before. And New York, New York's Harlem would become the biggest and best-known of these, would be literally transformed in the course of 15 years, from an originally Jewish community--although it of course goes back to Dutch origins in old New York--but to an increasingly African American community. And a source of tremendous pride. Would become a "Negro Mecca," it would be called during the era, and a culture capital of sorts.

And it would become a tremendous magnet for young Black writers, writers from the Midwest, like Langston Hughes, for instance; writers from the South and the West would be drawn to New York to seek their fortunes and to, to try to, express themselves, whatever artistic medium was their chosen form.

Poets helped defined the beginnings of the Harlem Renaissance in a significant way. One dating point, oft-times, for the beginning of the movement was the publication of, of, of Jamaican émigré poet Claude McKay's famous sonnet, "If We Must Die," in 1917, which was a, a powerful protest against Lynching. That was, of course, a major concern of African American communities in this country.

African American newspapers, journalists, were absolutely critical as helping lay the ground and provide venues for Black writers, at a time when most of the major White publishing houses and literary magazines did not publish African American authors. DuBois had become the editor of The Crisis, which was the organ of the NAACP, then a young and radical race-uplift journal.

And the organ of, of the Urban League, which is called Opportunity Magazine, again, began also in the teens. Both o, these organizations, again, had grown in part out of the, out o. the great migration, and the needs, increasingly, of Northern urban Black populations to grapple with the, the legal and the social and the economic realities of life in Northern urban cities. These, these, journalistic vehicles became mediums in which young Black poets and storywriters like Hughes and McKay and, and Zora Neale Hurston and many others began, began working.

There were also, there was also the influence of the, of the Black educational world. Of Southern Black colleges and universities, which, of course, had grown out of the, out of the, the Reconstruction, the post-Reconstruction era. And certainly in places like, like Howard University, which was the largest of these, in Washington D.C.--and which had the, the biggest aggregation of African American intellectuals and thinkers in the country-- they, also were, were springboards for Black literary talents.

Howard University, where Sterling Brown would, would go up and later teach. And L. A. Locke, and so forth. Literary magazines like Stylus began. Stylus was a journal that L. A. Locke, again, philosopher-esthetician had begun, where Zora Neale Hurston, began writing, early in her career. All these things helped, open up the terrain for young Black writers, again, in the years, following the First World War.

That’s a fascinating question, for several reasons. For one, because by the, the post-World War I years, leaders like James Weldon Johnson and W.E.B. DuBois were then men well into their middle years. Both Johnson and DuBois were born in the 1860s, and they were shaped largely by the 19th century and by Victorian culture and Victorian literary ideals and models.

And yet they became, in some ways, a shepherd for a movement that was devoted to the young. To the youthful. To writers like Langston Hughes and McKay and Jean Tomer and Hurston and George Douglas Johnson and Gwendolyn Bennett and so many others, who, saw themselves much more as in the "modern" mode. And allied in some ways with, with avant-garde, writers and writing and outlooks. And with somewhat different views.

There was an "old guard" and the "new guard" tensions, differences, a generational difference in some ways, that played itself out in the, in the Harlem Renaissance. And in many of the journals, and in a good deal of the writing.

The following is an excerpt of an interview for the documentary "Literature & Life: The Givens Collection." This excerpt features Ruth Elizabeth Burks (Macalaster College) discussing Zora Neale Hurston.

Ah, no. (Laughs) But at the same time, I can understand where Richard Wright is coming from. And, one of the people that he's writing against is Zora Neale Hurston. And it becomes quite interesting because I've studied both of them. And I wound up doing a seminar, in which we did Zora Neale Hurston and Richard Wright. And it was absolutely fascinating, because you finally see that they're not really coming from, although their approach is quite different.

And in a way, one could say that Zora Neale Hurston writes in what has become the African American women's literary tradition. And Richard Wright is very much writing out of the African American male tradition.

Well, he's, yeah. One of the people that he would be directing this to would be Zora Neale Hurston, who he felt, sort of, was pandering to Whites. His intention, particularly with "Native Son," but even you see somewhat before, with, "Uncle Tom's," "Children," is social protest, in essence. That, it, that you write, writing is a weapon. That you use to achieve, freedom from oppression.

Zora Neale Hurston, I would say, also sees writing as a weapon, but wouldn't categorize it in that same way. And, wherein her interest, like the interests of many African American women writers, is, personal. In other words, one approaches things through the personal. You have, Richard Wright looking more at the system.

And, in fact, you'd asked me a question when we were talking on the telephone, in terms of why is there so much interest in, Black women writers. And actually, in that book, that you have, Reading Black, Reading Feminist, there's a wonderful quote, that's sort of excerpted from something Toni Morrison said.

And it talks about how Black men are writing, in a sense, against the oppressor. And, in essence, measuring themselves through the White male. And it talks about Black women not being connected, through either their gender or their sex, to, in a sense, the White male as the center, who are free to write about other things.

Well, there's a very interesting book, a literary history book, called Written by Herself, by Frances Smith Foster. And she does an excellent job, beginning, I think, in 1742, and sort of tracing, at least the beginnings of the tradition that Hurston is coming out of. So as early as, or instance, 1742, you have Lucy Terry, who writes this poem, "Mars Fight," which is probably the first poem, that we have extant, by African American woman writer, who was a slave. And of course there's Phillis Wheatley

Now, the tradition that I think Frances Smith Foster, sort of looks at--and she uses the phrase, "testifying and testing"--that, in essence, you have, these early African American women writers, testifying to their own experiences, and the uniqueness of their experience because of race, sex and class.

And at the same time, you have them, in a sense, testing the language, the language's ability to be able, through both their writing, to perhaps make changes. In other words, so there is a type of social protest, that's going along at all points. Which is something, I think, Richard Wright missed. Because they may approach it in a more personal level. So they're, in a sense, testing the language to be able to represent their stories, and also bring about change.

It's this tradition that I would say that Zora Neale Hurston is very much in. Not only, is she testifying to, in essence, the experience of the Black woman in America, but at the same time she tests the language. Their Eyes Were Watching God, which is perhaps her, most well known, novel, although she wrote six, is, what she's doing with language. And with the blues and the kind of signifying, and rhetorical devices that she uses to, in essence, show that Blacks are equal to Whites.

I mean, her approach is through language, not, in, not, like Richard Wright, through, necessarily, content. Although one would say that the content also is very much, a feminist concept. So, in other words, there's also the, the protest there, too.

Well, it's not in the sense of what she's doing. I mean, there are, you know, Langston Hughes is also, in a sense, going back to, indigenous, peoples and, and, and folk language and so forth. And Zora Neale Hurston is certainly doing this. The difference, perhaps, between Langston Hughes and what Zora Neale Hurston is doing is that she's also coming from the position of an anthropologist. So she's in many ways, documenting, and attempting to save and preserve, the language in somewhat different ways.

The following is an excerpt of an interview for the documentary "Literature & Life: The Givens Collection." This excerpt features Bruce Jenkins (Walker Art Center Film & Video) discussing the African Americans in early cinema.

Probably the first screen image of Black people would have been in those ethnographic films, what were called "scenics." They were films made in exotic locales, often made by companies in France, where some of the first film making was done. Cameramen going around the world to capture for, big urban audiences, the look of places they'd never get to.

Griffith is the major figure in the development of the feature film. The really unfortunate aspect of his movement into this theatrical form was that he picked an extraordinarily racist subject. He picked Thomas Dixon Jr.'s "The Clansman" as the book that he would adapt. It was a book and a, a stage production and actually, the author went to Griffith and convinced Griffith that it would also make a great film, a long-form film.

And it is a film that is filled with falsification of historical material. It's filled with, White supremacist racism. It’s filled with images of, of Blacks as vengeful, greedy, mendacious people. And it's equally a, a kind of ode to, an extraordinarily longhaired ode to the, the Ku Klux Klan. And it had, among its other unfortunate side effects; it actually was a kind of piece of propaganda. And in fact, the whole re-emergence of the Klan in the teens and early 20s can be seen to emanate from "Birth of A Nation."

First of all, it was a film that was widely seen, so it was enormously influential. The film is always regarded for it’s ‘firsts, it's the "first this" and the "first that"--well, among its negative firsts is the predominant use of, White actors in black face for, any significant roles. There are some Black extras who were seen from time to time, but the predominant roles of Black characters, mulatto characters, are invariably played by Whites.

There is a way in which the film plays with the sense of authenticity of the moving image medium, as a way of validating, again, the extraordinary falsifications found in the film.

But what it does do--and maybe this is the one positive side--is, it sparks Booker T. Washington's secretary and many other people, to not only protest, but, to go out and begin making their own films. And three years later, a film called "Birth of the Race," which is now seen as the first, feature-length, Black-made, film in the U.S., was made. It's not a great film, it's certainly not the film you'd want to point to, but it's the beginning of the independent Black cinema that we still have in the 1990s in a very visible form.

I think--maybe this is a slight overstatement--but Micheaux seems to be, a sort of commercial realization and an affirmation of, the creative genius that one sees in, you know, the Harlem Renaissance of the 20s. 'cause here's a man who is, in his lifetime, able to make, more than 30 feature films, to write, 7 or 8 novels, to have an extraordinary output, with very small resources, really being his own producer, director, writer, exhibitor, distributor. And, and going out and single-handedly, in a way that, say, a Griffith never single-handedly made.

I mean, he actually makes, in the end, twice as many feature films as Griffith, and, I think, sparks the notion that self-representation is possible. That there is a place for a Black voice, there is a place for Black melodrama, there, there is a way for Black performers to enter this new medium, or this fairly recent medium, on a ground that's positive. That's not in the mode of some form of humiliation.

Well, this is actually one of the dilemmas, I think, facing, Black filmmakers. Already before there is a cinema, in the late 1880s, there is a series of ruling and laws that allow for "separate accommodations." So that, very early on in the, in the 1890s, where, the cinema begins, as introduced through vaudeville, theatres are already segregated. And that means that if, people of color are allowed in, they're allowed only in the separate section, or they're only allowed, at particular times, like midnight shows, or on particular days of the week. But more often than not, there are, separate theatres.

And in major cities, what they were "last-run" houses. So the new--we're talking, now, already, the post-nickelodeon period, like the teens and 20s--the last-run house would show, you know, the Hollywood feature film, you know, a year after it was released in the White theatres. And it would occasionally show Black independent films. So Black independent films were shown in Black cinemas, which, you know, often had a program of, you know, Hollywood films and independent Black films.

And I think, I'm sure Micheaux occasionally went and did the kind of showman route, which is, you go into small areas where there is no theatre, and you set up in a church basement, or in a library, you know, in some type of public building. Your own one-night showing.

Well, Micheaux works in "genre." I mean he's working in, essentially in melodramas. And at the same time, his melodramas capture the look of, the speech patterns of the kind of daily experience of Blacks in urban and rural environments. It is, for the most part, a brand-new world, a world that had not been seen on film. It's exactly the kind of impact, that Spike Lee had in the 1980s, that Micheaux had in the teens and 20s.

So I think that there was a universe that was never seen. Blacks were always subsidiary characters, or in the most stereotypical roles. Griffith introduces Blacks in "Birth of A Nation," as slaves. We see them in the cotton fields, we see them, you know, dancing and partying, and then we see them rioting and looting. These are less than a one-dimensional characters.

With Micheaux, suddenly we have Black sharecroppers talking about the value of education, in a film like "Within Our Gates." We have, you know, the most, put-upon, distressed rural characters realizing, that they have ambitions and needs and desires, who are articulate about them. These characters never existed within White cinema.

The following is an excerpt of an interview for the documentary "Literature & Life: The Givens Collection." This excerpt features Lou Bellamy (University of Minnesota/Penumbra Theatre) discussing the importance of black performance.

The idea of, of taking on an alternate ethos has been important for Africans living in America since the, since their arrival here. The, for most of them, that existence was so, so dismal, so horrifying, that the taking on of another personality, another way of dealing with those issues, was part and parcel of the existence. In other words, it allowed you to exist. It was a psychological safety valve.

The idea of using stories, for instance, to explain the cosmos, explain your place in it, is very, very African. Very folk. I mean, everyone has those stories. For that existence it was particularly important because this is the only group of people that I'm aware of in the United States where it was against the law for them to be able to read and write.

So this idea of acting things out, the idea of telling stories and so forth, was a way of passing culture from generation to generation. As well as providing that psychological safety valve. And there has always been a degree of humor in that existence. And you see that sort of thing, where you'll find folks making fun of the "house Negroes" and all that sort of stuff that we know grew into minstrelsy.

Some folks saw that, and sort of misinterpreted the, they took it away and began to use it to for satire for all Blacks. Which we've got to say, and this will fall with a, perhaps, some consternation by some historians, but I gotta say that's the beginning of the American musical. You see. Now, those kinds of celebrations and those kinds of, of, that, that kind of drama. So it's always been a part of this experience, the acting out and so forth.

The earliest, Black-produced legitimate theatre that I'm aware of happened in 1821 in New York, with a theatre by the name of Brown's African Grove. They had a production of "Richard the Third" and a number of other productions. They were closed down by the police. And, the actors were held in jail until they promised never to act Shakespeare again. So that was the first legitimate attempt at, at the theatre.

But it has, it has played a role in the African American, perception of self since those early days. Folks like W.E.B. DuBois, they recognized the power of this medium. And began to teach people. W.E.B., for instance, published a Brownie Book, where he showed people how to put theatre together and how to use it for social change and so forth.

Much of the philosophy that guides the theatre we do here at Penumbra is pioneered by people like that. I still quote W.E.B., Langston Hughes, all those kinds of folks. I'm just here standing, on a hill that's made up of their thinking. And that's what allows me to see as far as I can see.

The following is an excerpt of an interview for the documentary "Literature & Life: The Givens Collection." This excerpt features Lou Bellamy (University of Minnesota/Penumbra Theatre) discussing the work of August Wilson.

I'm sure that August would say that he is, is brought to a place because of what's come before him. In fact, he's said it, he says, l'm standing in my grandfather's shoes," is the way he says it poetically.

One of the wonderful things, I think, that August does, because he is a poet, is that he can capture the musicality of this experience in the language that he uses. In fact, his plays are so dense that it takes actors a goodly amount of time to bring those words into themselves, then bring them up and be familiar enough with his load that they're carrying, so that they can get up ride on top of the language and the music, rather than carrying it around and plodding through it. And "Ma Rainey" is a stunning example. It's chaotic, you know, but the music is still there. There's all kinds of arguments and fights, and these men start trying to play this music, and they never get the song out because something else takes them all off somewhere. But the music goes on, you know. And that's a theme that you're seeing him hit constantly.

It’s wonderful; it’s hard. Because see, as I say, you know the character, and you know what he's doing. I mean, all of us know it, if you grew up in, where all of us grew up, and you know that old man that he's writing about, just as sure as shooting, you know who he is. But that poetry, and that language, is hard to carry. So you've got to have a degree of craft, a facility with the language, and have all of your technique together so that you can master that language, and then go back and be that old man that he created.

And that's hard to do. Especially for many African-Americans who go through these "finishing schools." They tend to sweep out that kind of stuff with the training. You know what I mean. And, and keeping that identity is quite difficult. When you're always taught that the only way you can test your mettle is by a European classic. See what I mean?

So this kind of work that he, this grist that he gives us is, is phenomenal. But it's hard! It's not easy to do this stuff. (Laughs.)

As an African American actor from the North, what’s it like play Wilson’s Southern characters?

Well, you know that almost all Black people in the United States have a link to the South. I mean, we all do. In fact, August says, and I think he's right, that's the closest as we're going to come to Africa. I mean, you go down South and you see all them people moving around, and that's Africa. (Laughs) It's really interesting.

So we all got that link. And all you have to do is just, just tap into it. We're only (snaps fingers) that far away from it. We are an agrarian society, primarily, and only recently we started living in cities. I mean, these are people who came off the farm, and stuff, you know. And August has got that feel in there. There's a certain competency that one has in one's physical being, from hard work, touching the ground and so forth, and all those people have that.

So that stuff is part and parcel of the drama. The characters he creates are so, so heavy, sometimes, that they weigh on you. I mean, I did "Fences" for about, I guess, totally about eight months of my life. And carrying around Troy Mackson on my back was something to behold. Because it made me get introspective and figure out--I believe that my education, my socio-economic level and all those things, had put me at a level that was beyond, you know, much of that stuff.

And then when I start getting into Troy, and seeing what this man was about and so forth, I realized that I hadn't come that far. So it was really a heavy thing to carry.

You know what August has done more than anything, is he has taken the big issues that traditionally, like |Shakespeare has to have kings, to do Lear and so forth and -put them in a garbage man. You see a Troy Mackson. And then he’s dealing with these huge problems. August took that stuff out of the realm of royalty, and put it in everyday man stuff. Very much the way Arthur Miller did. It's pretty amazing.

The following is an excerpt of an interview for the documentary "Literature & Life: The Givens Collection." This excerpt features Dr. John Wright (University of Minnesota) discussing Paul Robeson.

In the Givens Collection here at the University of Minnesota, we have works by Paul Robeson himself, Here I Stand, for instance, as well as collections of essays about Robeson, and of course, his granddaughter Susan Robeson's, The Whole World in His Hand, which is a marvelous collection of photos tracing Robeson's entire career. We also have some ephemera relating to Paul Robeson, some playbills of Robeson performances, certainly the famous performances as, Brutus Jones in, O'Neale's Emperor Jones. And of course, Robeson's record-breaking performance as Othello, on the Broadway stage and the London stage.

We also have, in that connection, the 33 1/3 LP recordings of Robeson as Othello, with Jose Ferrer as Iago, and Uta Hagen as Desdemona. To, again, to help flesh out and give Robeson's, living voice, its place in the Givens archives also.

I think there is--Robeson's impact, of course, on African American life, was profound, as an artist and as a writer and thinker. And now that in recent years we have been able to recover, through some extended scholarly studies of Robeson's life and the growing body of work about him, much of what had been lost about his career, I think, you know, his import looms even larger.

Well, Here I Stand, of course, you know, helps document what's still a not well-understood facet of African American political and intellectual life. That is, the place of, of, of radical social-political thought and action, and the place of socialism and communism in African American life. In part, because Robeson, along with Angelo Herndon and Richard Wright and W.E.B. DuBois and a list of many others as well, who, again, we have, represented in the collection--Harry Heywood and others also-- it's a fascinating period of African American life.

And the, the, the 20s and 30s were a period during which the romance of the Russian Revolution and of the, the possibilities for inter-racial brotherhood devoted to radical transformation and, and the achievement of, of, of social justice, was, was richly manifest in African American life. And that would remain so, at least until the Stalinist era, until the horrors of the Stalinist era began to disenchant, understandably, American political radicals generally, African Americans among them.

But, at least some of the underlying principles of the, of the, of the romance of the left and of communism persisted for African Americans, even after the disenchantments of Stalinism had passed. And certainly in Paul Robeson's career, and in DuBois' and Richard Wright's, the commitment to, to, to radical political change, to revolutionary change, the idea of revolution, remained for many of these figures.

And of course, became, for them, again, a source of political persecution, particularly, of course, during the McCarthy era, an era in which, again, for instance, both W.E.B. DuBois and Paul Robeson were pilloried by the McCarthy, by the McCarthy committees, and, in which Black literary figures like Langston Hughes and Richard Wright, were, publicly, humiliated.

The following is an excerpt of an interview for the documentary "Literature & Life: The Givens Collection." This excerpt features Dr. John Wright (University of Minnesota) discussing Black Arts Movement.

The Black Arts Movement was the second major cultural movement among African Americans in this century. It's a movement that was initially defined by its promoters, first and foremost by LeRoy Jones, who would become Amiri Baraka and Larry Neale, who together edited an anthology called Black Fire in the mid 60s, a movement they saw as the aesthetic and spiritual sister of the Black Power Movement.

It’s a movement that grew out of the turmoil taking place across this country, in the wake of the failures of the civil rights movement, which were becoming increasingly apparent, as the civil rights movement moved, in the late 50s and early 60s, from trying to desegregate Southern lunch counters and accommodations and so forth, into the North, the American North. And found barriers of a wholly different and in some ways more intractable sort.

And the spirit of Black Power, which also linked African Americans to a worldwide rebellion against imperialism and colonial domination throughout the Black world. All these things helped set the stage for the Black Arts. Which was in some ways a movement that we can compare very directly to the Harlem Renaissance, but differentiate in important ways also.

Some of the connectives have to do with the sense of tradition that the Harlem Renaissance provided the Black Arts era authors. And for people like LeRoy Jones, the living presence of someone like Sterling Brown was a direct kind of connection. The living presence of Langston Hughes, again, who survived as "the dean of African American poets," as he was often called, into the 1960s, to find his own career and writings in some ways revitalized by the generation of young poets coming of age in the 60s.

I mean, Hughes' last volumes of poems included ''The Panther" and "The Lash," which were allusions, again, to the Black Panthers and the White backlash. Hughes' late-50s experiment with jazz, Ask Your Mama: Twelve Moods for Jazz! Which took up the dirty dozens, a more volatile form of folk vernacular as a means for political comment. Also looked ahead to the use the Black Arts writers would make of the dirty dozens, and its rhetoric of confrontation as models for poetic and dramatic experiments. These were some of the ties with the, with the older period. And the Black Arts movement, like the Harlem Renaissance could a movement across the arts. And the performing arts, theatre, music, drama, would be at the center of this, his new explosion of, of creativity.

The following is an excerpt of an interview for the documentary "Literature & Life: The Givens Collection." This excerpt features Sandra Adell (University of Wisconsin, Madison) discussing the importance of Gwendolyn Brooks.

In the mid-60s Gwendolyn Brooks went, I think it was, to Fisk University, where she first heard this "new sound," as she calls it. From these very young poets. And was intrigued. And talked to them. And wanted to help them develop. She didn't criticize them. She said, hmm, there's something new here, this is something interesting going on.

She was tremendously affected by it, and that's why she got involved and began to write more in free verse, her own verse loosens up more. And to begin to develop some of the themes, that reflected, again, some of the concerns of these young Black people. Except that she was a much more skillful poet at it. Skillful writer.

And it's in that sense that, she saw a possibility for her to help develop these people. And Don Lee is, who became Haki Mahtabouti, is her protégé. And the story is that is that one day, he went to her South Side Chicago house, and that's where she still lives. And I should, before I tell the anecdote I should also point out the fact that she's remained in her community. Despite all of these accolades has also had a tremendous impact on other people. You know. She practices what she preaches, in other words.

But anyway, Don Lee, went to her house one time and knocked on her door, and said hello, and said, gave, you know, said his name. And said, "I want to be a poet." And she said, "Come in." And that's how they began to work. And she began to, develop the poetry workshop. And so there was a steady trail of young people going for a long time, going to her house. To these poetry workshops. That's how giving this lady is.

And then there are these other stories about her being escorted into the bars with the Blackstone Rangers. You know, going into the bars, and then, they would get the group quiet, and then she would say, "I'd like to read some poems to you." Can you imagine? (Laughs.)

So that's the story of Gwendolyn Brooks. She just has a style and a charisma all of her own. But she also has this tremendous legacy. She is a living legend. One of our treasures.

The following is an excerpt of an interview for the documentary "Literature & Life: The Givens Collection." This excerpt features Alexs D. Pate (University of Minnesota) discussing the Black Arts Movement and his writing.

Well, I mean, yeah, I was coming of age during the Black Arts movement, the, Black Nationalists, the cultural activists, that whole period of time. It was, like, really charged. I was a young writer, and I really was seeking, searching for, role models and people who were sort of breaking the mold. I mean, they had, you know, the Black Arts movement, the whole mid-60s/early 70s period, sort of, it, was a sound in a, in a, in a world that had been quiet, you know? There was this silence that had existed.

And suddenly, you know, you have poets like Nikki Giovanni, Don L. Lean, who later became Hakim Ad Abooti, Askeed Mohammed Turay, Quincy Troop, Sonya Sanchez, I mean it was just, they were just coming out of everywhere. And they were being published, and there are all these magazines, literary journals, circulating throughout the community. There were poetry readings. There was all this energy.

In the early 70s I went to the Black Writers' Conference at Howard, for, like, three years in a row. And it would be like war, you know, we'd all get charged up and you'd hang out with your favorite writer's camp, and there'd be all these arguments about what was the appropriate image for the Black person. What was the role of the Black writer. How do you create these, you know, this whole notion of the Black aesthetic. What Black writers and artists had to do for the Black community. I mean, all of this was sort of tied in together.

And so, it's just the vibrancy of that time. It shaped me as a writer. It, it caused me to sort of, accept the responsibility for my art, and for my work. To not be ashamed of, of--one of the big controversies was, you know, are you a writer who's Black, or are you a Black writer? Well, for me, that question became, you know, totally and completely dealt with during that period of time. I was a Black writer. I would always be proud to be a Black writer. And I am, you know.

And that meant that I had a connection to community, and a connection to the history of the writers who came before me. And a sense of responsibility to them. So the images, you know, that I remember are arguments and late night talks that went on and on and on, about issues of art and culture and race and racism.

It's like, this is what was going on. You know. How militant are you? How strong against the system are you going to be? You know. And that stratification became really clear. There were people who were willing to write poems and pick up guns. There were people who were willing to write poems and march. There were people who were willing to just write poems.

And that distinction became the way in which people were stratified. Collected together. You know. How active and aggressive are you willing to be? As a artist, what is your job? In the Academy, or on the street? And so you have street poets who, you know, were strong, forceful people who believed that poetry and art was an active thing. You know. And when there was a march or, you know, a protest, or an action, they were there.

And you had to learn from, you know, as a writer I learned from that. You know. And you come to just decide, who are you? I think those kind of, that kind of clarity doesn't exist now.

And I think when, in the, in the late 60s, early 70s, you had people being creative, doing their art, and saying things that you were thinking. I think, this is, the language, you know, language is a very interesting thing. You know. If you, if you hear Nikki Giovanni read, or if you read her poem, "Nigger, Can You Kill?" you know, which to me was like a litmus test during that period of time. Can you kill? Can you kill your nigger mind?

I mean, it was like a big test for everybody who heard that poem. And so the language wasn't special. You know. It's not, we're not talking about T.S. Elliot or some elaborate new form of language. But rather, a kind of directness. A kind of clarity, of specificity.

I mean, remember, the 50s, this quiet period, wasn't quiet entirely. I mean, the late 50s or early 60s, Black people were getting their heads beat in. They were trying to integrate coffee shops and cafeterias. There was this whole struggle that was going on. And it bloomed into a place where Black was beautiful. Suddenly, James Brown says Black is Beautiful. And everybody knew that already.

It did turn against people, when they pushed. And so you had, you know, the Black Panthers, the Black Power movement, you had, Baraka with artists in Newark, you had all kinds of political-artistic interminglings that said, you know, this is a time to fight. You know, when I teach the Black Arts movement, I tell my students, "This was a time when people actually believed there would be a revolution in this country, that would be led by Black artists and Black people." People believed that.

Again, I was so young that I only was watching. I wasn't really active. And again, in my watching, I was plotting my own course, where I belong.

But the absence of the Black active artists' voice, I think, existed. It was a calculated thing. I mean, no, not many novels have been published. You know. I, I can, again, I can say, you know, in the 60s and the 70s, you thought, oh God, we're going to have all these great artists, all these great poets. And then I would challenge people to say, "Name me," you know, "five new Black male poets that were published by mainstream press in the last ten years." Male. "Name me ten new African American male novelists." You can't do it.

I mean, not that they don't exist, but people just don't, that information is not as popularly known, as commonly known, as you thought it would be in 1972, '73. You thought that by 1996, I mean, the participation in the literary-artistic system would be strong.

I think rap music carries a lot of it forward, carried a lot of it forward, but really, there aren't a whole lot of other places to go looking for it. You can't find it in the classroom very often. A lot of students, a lot of young people don't know it very well. It all has sort of, It's all, it's all sort of wrapped up in Malcolm X, you know, now, and not really as diverse and as wide-ranging as it once was.

I think it's community, you know? It was just, there was a period of time in, in the mid-70s where I got together every Saturday with a group of artists, Black artists. And most Saturdays we would start off with a writers' workshop in the middle of the day. Do that for, like three or four hours, every Saturday. Go have dinner. Meet at somebody else's house. You know. Listen to music, play instruments, read more poetry. And it was, that was the way I spent my Saturdays, for, like, three or four years.

And it was, like, that is what I remember most. That shaped me. That made me what I am, in a way. That's where I learned about what good writing was. That's where I learned about what my responsibilities, what I would take on for myself as purpose as a Black writer.

My writing is driven by this desire to clarify myself, and to clarify, the existence, or to clarify, the idea and the purpose of my own humanity. To try to help people understand the complexity of the Black male mind. And to understand, in that complexity is a human being, a really sensitive, warm, loving, sweet, nurturing, diplomatic, accessible, intellectual feeling person. As opposed to the brute, heathen, angry, mean, violent, irresponsible character that is most often exemplified on television. And so, I mean, for me, that has been my purpose, with my work.

I've been a writer for a long, long time. I mean, probably since when I was hanging out on the corner in, you know, when I was 13, 12, making up poems, you know. Being chased by guys because they thought, "Well, what are you talking about?" teased by them. Because, you know, words have always been important to me.

So I've been doing this, I mean, in my mind I've been doing this for a long time. I think I became a professional writer, the day I realized I couldn't do anything else. I mean, that, this is about all I can do (laughs). So I just better get good at it, or I better keep working at it. Because, it's the thing I love to do. And it's like, I think you become a writer when you love it. When you really understand it, you love it.

Oh, yeah, well I, you know, I have my own little rituals, but I think essentially I'm a late night person. I start working, usually, around midnight or 1:00. I work, I usually work between that period of time and five or six in the morning. I truly understand the middle of the night, I mean, when it is absolutely quiet outside. I know the exact moment the last bus goes by my house. I know the exact moment the first bus, bus of the morning comes by. I know when the newspaper guy changes the old papers out of the newspaper box across the street. I know precisely when the truck comes to put the new papers in, for the, for that day.

Generally, during most of the year, I have NBA basketball on tape and, I put that in the VCR. And I write with that going on in the background. I, it's, it's just sort of my way of, I, you know, it's sorta, it's like I like, for some people it's like listening to the ocean, you know. For me, listening to men run up and down the court and that sound of the crowd in the background and the pauses and the squeak of the sneakers on the court, and the basketball pounding, you know, all of that sort of becomes my, meditative state by which I let myself go into whatever subject I'm dealing with, as a writer.

I mean, that's sort of the atmosphere that I work in, and, my subject matter generally pulls me in a certain-- Like, for example my new book, Finding Makeba, is, a story about a father and a daughter who reunite after about ten or, about ten years' of, absence of separation. And that was a very difficult story to write. And I spend a lot of time, you know, meditating before I would sit down to write. And so, my process often leads me into long periods of isolation, and then the production of the work, and then another long period of isolation as I sort of get out of that space.

I think that for me it is a combination of what is--who are people that I have known, situations that I have experienced, feeling that I have had. all my characters have a part of me in them. And all of my characters are based on real people. And yet, by the time they are completely formed, they are fictional. Unreal people, who are now, feel real. But totally made up, a new persona. But the, but if you took those characters apart, they have pieces of all kinds of people, including myself, in them.

stories haunt me. Situations haunt me. Circumstances haunt me. And those are the things that find their way into my fiction. What I say is that a lot of my fiction is based on my, on my life. a lot of the, my work is a kind of autobiographical documentation of the ideas that I've had. Feelings that I've had. But the situations are totally made up.

It so it's like, it's a really fine line between what is real and what is made up. You, it's almost impossible at times. For example, in Losing Absalom, there's a scene where Absalom meets his wife-to-be, Gwen, on a bus. Now, nobody has ever told me that my father and mother met on a bus, or at least, I don't think anybody ever told me. But I must have heard that story somewhere, because, I went home for a reunion and I heard people talking about this moment when my father and mother met on a bus.

And it was like, "Oh." Then I felt guilty, like, "You mean, somebody told me that?" You know. I didn't make that up? I thought I had made up this great scene. I don't know the truth, I mean, I didn't stop to say, well, what is the truth here? Did I know that ahead of time? I think, I like that, not being sure about what I know, what is my experience and what do I intuit, and what do I make up, and what's magical. I, you know, that's all open for interpretation.

It’s really funny, because in Finding Makeba, half of the book is written, or not half, but every chapter is alternated from a, by a journal entry by the daughter. So it's really like a dialogue. And in Absalom, yes, there are moments when I know that I'm slipping into a woman's point of view. And when I teach class I, you know, I try to get my students not to do that, because I don't think most people are capable of doing that. Not just from gender, but from race as well.

It's what you call "empathetic imagination." The whole idea of being able to empathize with another person who's not like you. But not, but to go beyond empathy but into sort of build imagination, to be able to imagine someone else's life and their thoughts. You know. And to have empathy for that in such a way, within being so different, that a gender might separate you. That you could actually feel and understand what a woman might think at a precise moment. I think that's very challenging task for a writer.

At first I mostly have taught writing classes. I love working with young writers. I love that process, of helping someone who is struggling to find voice to get closer to that discovery. I love that. There is nothing greater than that. If somebody did that for me, I mean, you know, every writing teacher I ever had, pushed me along that line. I want to just help other writers do that. And I think it's really hard for young writers to learn how to write. I mean, to be good at it. The temperament, energy, the, the focus that it takes to do that. so I, I really enjoy that.

But I've also discovered that I love teaching literature classes. I mean, teaching the Harlem Renaissance or teaching the Black Arts movement, helps me as a writer to go back and revisit the material that I love so much. And to put it into perspective. And I teach from a writer's point of view. So I, you know, I'm not a scholar. I'm a writer. And I don't profess to be a critic and a scholar. so my perspective about what is going on in a particular text is more from a writerly point of view. rather than a deeply analytical or scholarly point of view.

The following is an excerpt of an interview for the documentary "Literature & Life: The Givens Collection." This excerpt features Dr. John Wright (University of Minnesota) discussing the work of Gordon Parks.

We actually have a, a shooting script of The Learning Tree in the Givens collection, which makes for some fascinating comparisons with the, with the final version of the film that was released, because there are some significant changes. But The Learning Tree is also a text that invites us to look at the ways in which Gordon Parks has used the elements of his own autobiography, and reshaped them fictionally. Because there are some profound differences, between that part of Gordon Parks' life that The Learning Tree deals with, that is, his, his adolescence and early manhood, and the treatment of that same period in A Choice of Weapons, which is "straight" autobiography.

And there are some, some fundamental, re-orchestrations of his life experiences, that's taken place in The Learning Tree, that, hasn't received much attention, but I think certainly invites a closer look. Some of it has to do precisely with Gordon's experiences as a young man in, Minneapolis and St. Paul. and which in some ways have been re-shaped, for the, the telling of the tale of the protagonist of The Learning Tree, who is like Gordon Parks in many ways but different from him in some significant ways also.

In what ways?

Well, he's a, in some ways, a much more sheltered adolescent than Gordon Parks himself was. The protagonist of The Learning Tree, while he has momentary immersions in the world of, of the roadhouses and brothels of, of Kansas, again is quite a different character from Gordon Parks himself, who had a much more worldly and forcible and lengthy immersion in that part of Black community life here in the Twin Cities than The Learning Tree reflects.

Well, The Learning Tree is, is basically a story about the transition from innocence to experience. And it also ends, again, in early manhood, with the young boy, again, from a rural, in some ways ideally agrarian kind of environment, just poised to, to go into the world of the, of the modern city, the complex world of the modern city. Gordon Parks' later works are not about, the world of the innocent. It's the world of a man of the world. Of a citizen of the world, of a cosmopolite, of a very sophisticated artist and activist and thinker. And, I think, we get a dramatically different kind of experience in Gordon Parks' later, autobiographies, and in, in, Voices in the Mirror and To Smile in Autumn, than we experience in The Learning Tree, or even from A Choice of Weapons, which was the first of the autobiographical series.

The following is an excerpt of an interview for the documentary "Literature & Life: The Givens Collection." This excerpt features Rob Silberman (University of Minnesota) discussing the films and photography of Gordon Parks.

Of course, Gordon Parks, this protean figure--photographer, writer, composer, director--so, is an amazing man and an amazing figure. He lands in film, you know, at the right, he's the right man at the right time. He gets his chance to, an African American man who can direct his own book.

He clearly has a great eye. He's worked in a wide variety of styles as a photographer, from documentary to fashion, black and white and color. When he filmed "Learning Tree" he worked with a very good cinematographer, Bernett Guffey, to help him with the, the differences with the movie camera. But clearly, it's Gordon Parks who knows that landscape. He grew up in it, knows that world, has a feeling for how he wants it to look, and can use the Hollywood people to help him realize his vision.

And he gets to "Shaft" and knows New York. He appears in his cameo, his wonderful cameo. But he knows that world and has a feel for how he wants to film Times Square or Harlem or an apartment or a street scene. He didn't really want to do more films like "Shaft," he didn't want to do more of those, that wasn't his choice. But he certainly did a good job with "Shaft."

But one can also understand, perhaps, why he didn't want to continue to make urban detective stories. I mean, it's too bad that he didn't do more of his own autobiographical stories, or other stories of his own choice. But he, he goes in so many directions that it just depends on timing, I suppose, what is offered to him, or what he can get funding for at any particular time.

He's always more, I think. He's more than whatever category you want to put him in. That's what made, one of the reasons, Gordon Parks so interesting. He certainly could do style documentary photography, that where he--. But remember, he started in St. Paul doing fashion photography. He was a fashion photographer, he worked in Europe.

He did that gritty black and white, he could do pictures of the poorer sections of Washington and make people cry. Or abroad, the Latin American, South American slum work that he did.

On the other hand, he's done non-fashion color work, which, in Africa and elsewhere, which is gorgeous. You know. With a capital "G." And which at times moves toward abstraction. He did a photo that was used as a "colorama," the big photographic billboard in Grand Central Station, which, is almost an abstract photo. It sort of shows piano keys, and above it, this beautiful patch of color that's almost like a watercolor abstraction. So he really is an expert at the whole range of camera techniques and styles.

True. I mean, he tells stories about the families or the individuals, the boy in the slums in South America, the family in Harlem. And how he didn't just take the picture and run, how he tried to stay in touch, how he went back, how he tried to help. And of course, that, that's rare, that any photographer takes that kind of long-term concern with the subject, after the photos have been taken, after the fame is earned. And that's totally admirable.

The following is an excerpt of an interview for the documentary "Literature & Life: The Givens Collection." This excerpt features Gordon Parks.

As a young person, my reading matter was very limited, back in Kansas. You went to a segregated junior high school. You didn't get much. And when you got to high school, where there was a mixture of black and white students, there was no, much encouragement from those quarters either, because there was still a great degree of separation and discrimination and bigotry.

The kids that liked one another, from both races, just liked, in spite of what the teachers and things were, pushing towards you, you know. So there were some elements of, literary elements that, if you were lucky, you picked up on.

But most of my literature came, in those early days, from the funny papers. The symphony orchestras came from the Junebugs in my father's wheat fields or corn fields. That's about the closest I got to the symphony. And all these things that came later, especially when I moved to Paris and I was exposed to fine painters, fine writers--l knew Camus--had dinner just about every Wednesday night with Edbaro Jacques Ometi, the sculptor. I met Horowitz while he was in concerts in Paris at Saint Playele. Met Rachmaninoff. I met Pablo Meruda, the poet. As I say, Camus. Richard Wright was there as well.

So I was exposed to a great, culture. All culture, you know, from music, writing, everything, painting. Alexander Calder and I were friends. So I came on that late. I think that perhaps it was almost accidental, when I was a waiter on a railway between St. Paul and Chicago and Seattle, that I just hung out at the library, no, at the Art Institute on Chicago. Simply because there was no place else to go. There I discovered some Degas, some of the great painters of the past era, and of our time as well. So I was suddenly exposed, things, I never seen this before. Never had a chance to see before. Something I was lacking in Kansas.

Richard Wright was a very powerful writer, to me. In fact, his book Twelve Million Black Voices, in which he wrote the text for the Farm Security Administration photographs, was my Bible. In 1942, it was my bible. I got to know him later, because when I was made a Rosenwahl Fellow in 1942, I was assigned to photograph, twelve Black people, important Black people, who were the subject of a book by Edwin R. Embry, who was the president of the Rosenwahl Foundation.

There was Miss Bethune, Richard Wright, Paul Robeson, people I thought, of their caliber, and I learned an awful lot, by just meeting those people and having them talk to me about certain things. And certainly Wright was one of the most powerful figures, because he was such a gentle man, but yet such a bombastic writer, he was just like a bomb bursting out of a flower.

After he went to Paris to live, and I was there, I think he missed America, he missed being here where he could exert his mind against the prejudices and the discriminations that we faced here. Because, very frankly, there wasn't enough of it in Paris.

Wright faced a very strange situation. When he came to Paris, he'd moved there because Ellen, his wife, was white. A few stones came through the window in America. The French said, "Come live with us. You don't have to put up that mess. Come to Paris." And Wright went, moved to Europe. But he, he lacked the fire and the spontaneity of addressing these problems, you know, and that's what he was all about.

I remember I called him one day and said, "Dick, I’d like to take you to lunch." He says, "OK, let me call you back in five minutes." I said, "All right." He called me back and says, "You know where I want to go?" I said, "No." He says, "You're not going to believe this." I said, "Go ahead." He said, "Maxim's," which is probably the most, the fanciest restaurant in all of Paris. And so much I'm like Richard Wright, I was thinking he was going to say the Left Bank. We were to have wine with some of his Communist friends, you know, or something like that. And we would sit, I was going to glory in this, you know, to see him talk with some of his Communist friends.

So we went to Maxim's, and while we were there, Rita Hayworth came in with Ali Khan, who she eventually married, I think. And I knew Rita, and she said, "Oh, hello, Gordon." I said, "Hi, Rita, how are you? This is Richard Wright. The Richard Wright? Oh, my God," she says.

And so, Wright says, after she left, "How does she know me?" I said, "Richard, a lot of people know you." So after we got through eating, he said, "You know, part of me didn't want to come here, but I just wanted to see what it was like. I wanted to see how the rich people lived," he said. So the bill came, and he reached for it. And I said, "No, I'm going to take care of that." And he said, Oh, I'm not going to pay it, I just wanted to see how much it cost. And he looked at the bill, he said, "I could feed my family for three weeks on this." So we went over to the Left Bank. He said, "Come on, let's go over to the Left Bank and have a bottle of cheap red wine." And that's what we did.

But he was a wonderful man. A little while after that, Richard died. He was a wonderful man.

Well, when I did a story on somebody and I work with them, I truly tried to get to the best side of them. I was not in there to defile them in any way. I didn't know too much about Malcolm when I was, when I started working with him. He would call me, "Mr. Parks." Very politely, but coldly. Mr. Parks. I would say, "Brother Malcolm. "Yes, Mr. Parks?" Went on like that for quite some time.

Until I was with him when some of the Muslims were shot up out in Los Angeles. We were on a late plane back to New York. And Elijah Muhammad had just damned him for allowing any of the men to get killed. He said, "You guys should have risen up." And Malcolm was feeling rather sheepish about that. We were on the late flight from L.A. to New York. He had just read my book Choice of Weapons, and he said, "I just read your book. Very interesting. And I'm going to re-read it." And he said, "My daughter Qubilla needs a godfather. How about it? You're elected." I said, "Fine. I'm honored." And he said, "OK, brother." And he put his head on my shoulder and went to sleep.

I woke up in New York and I let him out at his place in Harlem. And I said, "You know' Malcolm, you called me 'brother' last night for the first time, on the plane." He said, "Yeah?" He said, "Well, you deserved it for the first time." (Laughs)

Muhammad Ali was a different thing. I stayed with him in his camp when he was down in Florida, I think it was. He asked me if I'd go to London with him, a couple of times, and I went with him when he fought Cooper. And I watched for moods of Ali, that are much different from what the average photographer looked for. They all looked for the loud, showboat. I looked for his quiet moments, when he was alone, when he was by himself. And I knew the real Ali was at work with himself. You know. And I would very quietly shoot a picture. And he said to me one day, "You know," he said, "These people here in England treat me like I'm a gentleman." I said, "You are a gentleman." I said, "You know, the people in America look up to you, too, but you've got to give them a chance, Ali. You know. You've got to give them a chance to look at you differently. And you're going to make a speech tonight that's going to be beamed all over the world. Think about it, you know, before you make it, you know. Don't lash out at the world, and the world could be for you, you know." And he did, he tempered his speech that night, and he was accepted when he got back. People were endeared to him. And he always thanked me for that.

In writing The Learning Tree, What was it like for you to relive those moments and people from your childhood?

Writing any memoir is painful. It has its beautiful moments as well. But you have to go back to those days when you lost friends. I had three friends, Johnny Young, Emphy Hawkins and Barry Brady, all killed by violence. And the guys you loved. I wrote a poem about it recently. You have to write what you felt. You have to write about your early loves, your childhood loves, what happened. Like in The Learning Tree. My girlfriend is made pregnant by a White guy, a rich White guy in town, you know. Things like that. What happened to her, she goes to San Diego and loses her mind, and you reach back and say, "Hey, was all that true?" Yeah, it was true, that's where it all sprang from.

That charwoman was my very first professional photograph. But I did it with an honesty, you know. It was, the terrible bigotry of Washington hit me the first day I was there, so hard, that I wanted to react to it. I wanted to show America that, you know, what I felt of America. So I walked in and took this Black woman in this government building, put her against the American flag with a broom and mop, and said, "Here she is."

I thought the photograph had been destroyed, because of a strike or something, it was a government agency, FSA, it was an indictment for the agency. But I thought--and there were a lot of Southern congressmen, senators, that didn't want that picture in the files. I didn't realize that it was being preserved until I was on a plane years and years later, and I saw it on the front page of the Washington Post when I was on a plane coming from California to New York. I was actually shocked.

When I got to the airport, I didn't come home in New York. I took the first shuttle I could to Washington, D.C., went to the Library of Congress, had a copy made of the print and a negative made- and she's with me forever.

Now, the novel, like, that was written in all honesty, too. It was the only thing, I didn't have any other tales to tell, was not experienced in making up things. So I just wrote with an honesty. And in spite of all the other books that I've written, which is probably better-written books, The Learning Tree hangs in there as a best seller.

Why? As I know, I asked a lady today in the audience, "Why do you English teachers and librarians love that book so much?" And they just love it. It's in its, going on sixtieth printing since 1962. And they say, it'll never go out, because we're going to keep preaching. And I said, "Well, why do you do it?" He said, "Because it's so well-balanced."

I think that The Learning Tree, when I look at it in retrospect, I realize that some of them Black people were good, some of them were bad. Some of the White people were good, some of them were bad. So you have these two elements of reality being threaded together by a wonderful, lovely woman who was my mother, who was just above all of it, you know. She was a fantastic woman, you know. And she threaded it together for us, her spirit.

And that's why the book lives, and, and as I say, it's in about 12 languages, and I get letters from all over the world about it.

It means a lot to me, especially a book called A Choice--the book called A Choice of Weapons. It, that the kids have an out. That if you want to really go for it, you can go for it. You don't need the gun or the knife to do it. You can do it with your pen or your computer. You can do it with a paintbrush, and so forth. You can be heard, and heard a lot longer and a-lot stronger, if you use the right weapons. And those are the weapons that I have chosen.

That book, I'm especially proud of the reaction that I get from it. And the books you write, you know, like, I wrote a novel called Shannon, and another book called Moments Without Proper Names, and things of that sort, you, you write that from the gleanings of experience through a lifetime, you know. And I've had a long lifetime, which I'm very happy for.

l think people understand poetry, if you feed it to them right. I think, I haven't through my own experience, some of the more abstract poets, I found, when I was younger, I found them difficult to understand. My favorite poet is Pablo Meruda. I met him in Rome many years ago. Pablo--becomes involved with abstraction too, but he's always down to earth. He tells it like it is, you know, and that's why I love him. And I don't-if I'm going to write a novel, I spend three weeks reading Pablo Meruda.

Or some other poet that I like very much. I like some, several South American poets, too. And, I don't know, they have, they say something to me. And read them just to get rhythm. I like the rhythm. And that's what I'm after when I write the novel. So I can eliminate all the "ahs, "ands, "buts, " you know. (Snaps fingers) Right to the point, you know what I mean. (Snap) Say what you want to say, (snap) say it clearly.

As long as you know what you've said and you've said it the way you want to say it, that's the end thing about poetry. And I say again, if I had my druthers and I could only be allowed to do two things, I would probably just compose music, serious music, and write poetry.

I make more money off of doing a movie, of course. Doing this, photography, I make more money. You make less money off of a poetry book, you make less money doing music. But you, your soul's there. You're communicating with the rest of the world. Nobody's telling you how to do it. You're doing it.

And it's glorious, at 3:00 in the morning, when you can sit down and write a poem, or quietly compose a piece of music that you love.

I write for all children. I don't write only for my children, I write for all.

Yeah, I got to tell you the truth, now, if you want me to tell you the honest-to-God truth, which I would, I've never probably admitted before--you know, I'm a little astounded at the number of people who write me. Right now, in my home in New York, there's gotta be three to four hundred letters. It's impossible for me to answer. Just can't answer the letters, as much as I want to.

"Parade" magazine just did a story on me. Well, I didn't realize "Parade" magazine reached so many people. But I've gotten at least 80 or 90 letters, just from the "Parade" article. Even a guy in the south of France wrote me. I had another guy from London call. And then the schoolkids write, and they want to know individual things.

They say, "I want to, I'm going to become a filmmaker," or "I'm going to become a composer, I'm going to be a writer. "So I have to answer each individually. And that takes a lot of time. Means I got to sit down at the computer, answer, as I did recently, 90 letters. Because you’ve got to help all those kids, they want to write you back!

I had no idea that I was going to become a photographer or a writer or a composer, you know, or a poet, or anything of that sort. All I was trying to do was survive, stay alive. That it happened, I'm grateful, I’m still a little surprised that it's been so successful.

I'm surprised when I get a note from my publishers, The Learning Tree, to show how that book is still selling, you know. Or how another book has been selling, or that The Learning Tree has been voted one of the most important films in the history of film, by the Library of Congress.

I don't feel old. I still think of myself as a young man like you. That I can hand-wrestle you, that I can ski better than you, I bet. That I can probably beat you on a tennis court. (Laughs) You know? That's what keeps me going. You know.

Some people don't accept age gracefully. I don't accept age at all. To tell you the truth. I'm just finding out this myself, as I'm talking to you, I don't accept age at all. I'm just here. Some mornings I wake up feeling like 21.

Well, I hope it’s something young people in the urban areas, no matter what color they are, look up to. So they can come to me if they need to, lean on me. I have kids calling me in New York saying, "Look, I just, give me, just give me 15 minutes." I say, "Well, OK, I'll give you 15 minutes, and I wind up giving them three hours.

My mother and father were my heroes. People ask me, who are your heroes? My mother and father were my heroes. I can't think of anybody in the world who did more for me than they did. And my mother, before she died--and I was only about 14--she knew she was dying, she knew I was the youngest of 15. She knew the others had been meted out into the world, and they knew a little bit about this, some of them were married.

But she knew that I, at 14, was gonna need an awful lot. And she knew that my father didn't have the kind of strength to hold that family together and look after me. That's why she wanted me sent to Minnesota immediately after she was buried. And my father came to me, and I was in a taxicab, ready to go to--Dan Stover's taxicab, I'll never forget. My sister had come from Minnesota to pick me up. And my father just sort of touched me, had a corncob pipe in his mouth, and said, "Well, boy, follow your mama's teachings and you'll be all right." Then he went off to feed the hogs, and I went to the train. It was just that simple.

My father was an incredible man. He did something once that I'll never forget.

I was playing, shooting marbles with a friend in the, in my front yard. He came in out of the fields and says, "Boy, when your mama comes home, tell her I'm up at Mercy Hospital." I said, "OK, Papa," and I went on shooting marbles with my friend, Elmer Kiner. My mother came home, and I said, "Mama, Papa said he's at the Mercy Hospital." "Well, what's he doing up there?" I said, "I don't know." She got nervous, she said, "Come on, we're going up there. With her long skirts dragging, we go to the hospital, which is about a block and a half up the hill.

She goes in, the lady attendant says, "Yes, who are you?" Says, "I'm Sarah Parks. My husband is here. "Oh, let's see. Yes, he is here." "Well, what's he here for? Well, he's in Emergency." Emergency? What's he doing in the Emergency?"

"Well, Mrs. Parks, just calm down." And she says, "The little Savage girl, little Black girl, her name is Ethonia Savage, was burned badly all over her body. And they put a call out for people to give skin. Nobody answered but your husband. And he came up here, and we've had all the skin taken off of his back. and off the backs of his legs, and his fronts of his thighs, to put on the little Savage girl."

"Oh, my God." So she said to him, went in, said, "Jackson, why didn't you tell me?" He said, "Oh, Sarah, you would have said yes, do it." So I asked my father when he came to Minnesota years later, I said, "Papa, did the Savages ever come to the hospital while you were there, bring you flowers or to thank you for what you did?" He looked at me as though he was insulted. He said, "I didn't do it for flowers. I didn't do it for thanks. I did it for little Ethonia Savage. The girl who needed skin ."

I felt ashamed about asking. I felt I'd insulted him. But that's the kind of man he was. Now, I couldn't have given all the skin off my back, and very few people could.

But that's, those are the kind of parents that, that I was brought up with. And every what I amounted to, they made me that. And I'm thankful for them. That's why I say they're my heroes. I don't know of anybody else in the world that I know who would do what my dad did. Or what my mother did at times, you know. Like, she got up in court when three guys was going to be sent to prison for beating me up. She said, 'No, let me mete out their sentence." And she sent them to prayer meetings for a year. You know what I mean. But those were...

I do think sometimes that, well, my brothers, my brothers and sisters tell me that one of my brothers called me Pedro before he died. They're all dead now, I'm the only one left. "Pedro, Mama and Papa look after you. They know what you're doing. Don't worry about it." And when my sister Gladys died, here in St. Paul a few years ago--l rushed back from Chicago when I heard she was dying--she was smiling when I went in. She only had a few minutes to live.

And she said, "What is tears doing in your eyes?" She was smiling. I said, "Well, I don't know." She says, "Look, I'm going to see Mama and Papa. I'm going to tell them all about you. Tell them what you're doing." And she was smiling. That's the way she died. Now you've got to have had some great parents to die like that.