Black Voices Past & Present

In February of 2021 the theater world lost Douglas Turner Ward, co-founder of the Negro Ensemble Company, a giant, and an unapologetic trailblazer. As the artistic world reckons with inclusion and diversity, it is fitting that we remember Douglas Tuner Ward who pushed open doors way ahead of his time. BVPP host and producer Steven Anthony Jones was very close to Ward and counts him as one of his biggest mentors as and teachers. In this episode Jones pays tribute to Ward's incredible legacy, the artists that he nurtured, and his unstoppable calling to create even in his last days.

In 2021 many America is perhaps finally looking in the mirror-- but the hypocrisies, idiosyncrasies, and cruelties of our "democracy" were built into this country from the moment the union started to form. Steven Anthony Jones reads the words of Archibald Grimké who boldly and unapologetically called out American "heros" like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson for their false promises and thinly veiled racism which set the foundation for hatred being the cornerstone of America. 

Anger is a real and potent force that can be used for positive change. Yet the anger that black women and other women of color rightfully feel towards a racist sexist world that actively harms them, is often used as a means to oppress them further. Inspired by contemporary black feminists writers like Adrienne Maree Brown and Brittney Cooper, Kaliswa Brewster reads Audre Lorde's 1981 Keynote from Sister Outsider,  "Uses of Anger: Women Responding to Racism."

Many Americans are still in disbelief about the Insurrection at The Capitol on January 6th, 2021. While it's easy to scratch our heads and say, "This is not America," and to ask "How Did We Get Here?" it is important to remember that we have been here before. In 1898 White Supremacists overthrew the local government in Wilmington, NC after an election that the White Supremacists felt fortified Blacks' power in the city. Killing 22 Black people and running countless others violently from their homes, the insurrectionists took democracy into their own hands to maintain white power. Steven Anthony Jones reads Charles S. Morris' account of the Insurrection. Morris' words chillingly echo what happened in The Capitol on the 6th. While the Insurrection D.C. was neither as successful nor as violent, the reasons it occurred were one and the same: racism and white America feeling threatened by black (and now BIPOC) voting power. If we are to move forward we must understand the past. And knowing that we have been here before is an important first step toward any possible healing.

As we say good riddance to 2020, it serves us to look at what we are carrying into 2021. Steven Anthony Jones reads pieces by Langston Hughes, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Gwendolyn B. Bennet, and James Weldon Johnson that celebrate how Black people's feet, voices, spirits, and love, have marched us thus far in the United States-- a country that Black Americans didn't ask to come to but yet built literally brick by brick. A country that Black people hold up every day with pain (and love).

Is it possible for Black people to just "live," without the shadows and reverberations of the traumas of racism? Kaliswa Brewster explores this question through the lens of Gwendolyn Brooks' "Maude Martha."  Known primarily as a poet, Brooks explores the common, everyday life of a common, everyday Black woman in this 1954 novel.   Racism, sexism, colorism, and classism are not the main obstacles for the titular character, Maude.  We follow Maude from age 7 into womanhood as she grows up, searches for love, becomes a mother, and survives life's myriad ups, downs, challenges, and joys. A Pulitzer Prize winner, Brook's writing is a treat for the senses. Kaliswa reads excerpts from Maude Martha and invites you to ask- "what is underneath the regular, common, everydayness of Maude Martha's life?"

In these dark days as we head into winter and another round of lockdowns and isolation, art is more important than ever. Art serves as a balm to the soul, as a way to cry out against injustice, and as a way to reimagine the future. Yet in our times artists are some of the most grievously affected by Covid-19. And Black artists even more so.  In 1926 W.E.B Du Bois gave a speech to the NAACP called "The Criteria of Negro Art" which sounds like a rally cry to all black artists. He impels black artists to create and to tell their stories. Du Bois boldly urges black artists to paint visions of the world that include them, saying, "I do not give damn about any art that is not used for propaganda." Art IS Activism, he says. Steven Anthony Jones reads Du Bois' speech in this episode of Black Voices Past and Present.

Americans showed up, voted, and made sure their voices were heard on November 3rd. In an election year where representation mattered maybe more than ever, Black people showed up and said "We Matter, and We WILL be counted." In this celebratory episode Steven Anthony Jones and Kaliswa Brewster read pieces by Margaret Walker, Larry Neal, Langston Hughes, and Mari Evans that joyfully lift up the strength, resistance, and resilience of Black people. While the battle may not be over, this episode is an ode to the faith and power of Blackness.

While many of us are literally "on our way" to the polls to vote in this election, we'd like to share an excerpt from Fannie Lou Hamer's speech "We're On Our Way."  Hamer came to activism later in her life. No stranger to racism, she was sterilized unknowingly and without consent as part of an inhumane program to control the births of black babies in Mississippi. In another shockingly dehumanizing event, Hamer was beaten unconscious in police custody on her way home from a voter registration workshop. Despite losing vision in an eye and suffering permanent kidney damage as a woman of faith she believed that justice for all was God's will. Fannie Lou Hamer's unflinching defiance was sourced from her faith-- an active faith that she believed called her to not just sit back and "see what God does." She believed that we have to work WITH God to bring about heaven on earth. Hamer truly felt that we were "on our way" to equal rights in 1964 when she gave her speech "We're On Our Way." Remembering that this 2020 moment is in a continuum of struggle, Kaliswa Brewster reads Hamer's raw, real, and truly hopeful (though strong) words. 

Martin Luther King Jr.'s speech "Give Us the Ballot" was given in 1957 in a tumultuous time in American history that in some ways mirrors what we are going through in 2020. On the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, MLK made the case plain for allowing Black people to vote at the Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom. He spoke against both fake and empty "liberalism" and the moral bankruptcy of Southern moderates who went along with the status quo of racism to avoid upsetting the power systems that kept them "safe." King also made the case for hope- he believed that we WOULD pull trough; he believed that justice would reign eventually. In preparation for our 2020 election, with many of us wrestling with anxiety and fear, Steven Anthony Jones shares the urgency AND the hope of "Give Us The Ballot." He also reads his own version of "Ain't Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me 'Round"--  a compelling urge for us to keep moving towards justice no matter what slings and arrows 2020 continues to hurl our way.

In 1865 Frederick Douglass demanded that the US government grant voting rights to Black people in his speech "What The Black Man Wants." The speech takes on new meaning against the backdrop of the 2020 election. Black people can vote in our time. Yet voter suppression by the government coupled with voter apathy due to disenfranchisement each stop many Black Americans from voting. As Douglass says, "If we know enough to be hung, we know enough to vote." Douglass' words ring powerfully today as America grapples with the state sanctioned brutality that has birthed the Black Lives Matter Movement. Steven Anthony Jones reads this timely and timeless speech in this episode.  

 With the murder of Breonna Taylor, some people are waking up to the face the the most disrespected person in America is the black woman. Yet despite the lack of regard for black women, writers like Zora Neale Hurston and Carolyn M Rodgers celebrated their lives as black women in their books, essays, and poems. Though both women came of age in different time periods, they have a lot in common-their words are often irreverent, sometimes downright funny, and always deeply moving as they explore both the macro and the micro elements of black womanhood. Kaliswa Brewster reads excerpts from their works including "How it Feels to Be Colored Me" by Hurston and  "Poem for Some Black Women" and "The Last M.F" by Carolyn M Rodgers. This episode is a tribute to black women of all ages and backgrounds-- may you know that you are not alone.

It turns out Beyonce isn't the first to say "Black is King." Speaking at a convention of 70+ freed Northern black leaders in 1843, Henry Highland Garnet gave a speech urging slaves to revolt and to emancipate themselves. He reminded the free blacks at the convention (including Frederick Douglass,) that it was not enough to bemoan the plight of slaves. Garnet wanted free black people and enslaved  black people to deeply understand that their fates and happiness were irrevocable tied together. He implored all black people, free or not,  to remember that they were born of kings and queens in Africa; he urged them to reject the degradation of slavery and to channel the divine within them. Garnet valued liberty as a holy right that he believed black people must fight for even at the risk of death. Liberty, Garnet believed, was a spirit sent out from God. He urged each and every black person to "wake up," to find power in their numbers, and to take back their God-given freedom. In this episode, Steven Anthony Jones reads An Address to the Slaves of the United States" and ends the episode with Claude McKay's poem "If We Must Die."

One of the chief officers of The March on Washington, Bayard Rustin was Dr. Martin Luther King's mentor. After King's death, Rustin wrote a warning about the necessity to address the "perilous polarization" that was growing in The United States due to the stain of racism. Rustin believed that the country was entering into a dangerous cycle of violence against black people which then caused counter violence against white people. The only way to stop it, he argued was to root out racism and poverty and to ensure that the "promise of equality" was fulfilled. Steven Anthony Jones reads' Rustin's words and the folk song "Trouble in Mind."

Ida B Wells was intent on telling the truth about race in America. This is evident even in the title of her 1895 book, The Red Record: Tabulated Statistics and Alleged Causes of Lynching in the United States." Wells' book was considered to be the very first statistical analysis of lynchings. Born into slavery, Wells became a journalist (she owned several newspapers), a teacher, a suffragist and a founding member of the NAACP. The consequences of her mission to expose the horrors of lynching were serious. Her newspaper office was destroyed and she was driven out of Memphis by death threats. The facts and figures on lynching in her book are backed up by the Chicago Tribune which is important because Wells knew that the public would not believe the word and figures of a black person. Kaliswa Brewster reads Chapter 1 of The Red Record.

Harriet Jacobs, an enslaved black woman from North Carolina, wrote "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl" in 1861. You might call it a "Me Too" autobiography-- yet no one believed her story for 100 years.  Two years earlier, Harriet Wilson, a free black woman who grew up as an indentured servant in the North, wrote " Our Nig: Sketches in the Life of a Free Black,": an autobiographical novel that was a call to action for the North to take more action against ending slavery in the South. 

Steven Anthony Jones reads from WEB DuBois' The Souls of Black Folk. Written in 1903, the book of essays was hugely provocative for its time; DuBois introduced "twoness," the idea that black people have to have two versions of themselves in their mind at all times-- how they see themselves and how they are seen by by white gaze. In a world where "code switching" is often very necessary, DuBois' words illuminate what it STILL means to be black in America.

Excerpts from Baldwin's "Down at the Cross: Letter From a Region in My Mind" from The Fire Next Time feel like they were written today. Steven Anthony Jones reads two pieces that explore race, religion, and Black freedom that are as poignant now as they were in 1963.

On this episode Steven Anthony Jones reads  “Let America be America Again” by Langston Hughes (1935), "The Ballad of Birmingham” by Dudley Randall (1968), “Strange Fruit” by Abel Meeropol (1933), “Still I Rise” by Maya Angelou (1978),  “All God's Chillun Had Wings:, (Folklore), and a piece from “Simply Heavenly” by Langston Hughes (1957).All of these pieces look squarely at the condition of Black people in America- but each piece comes at it from a different angle. Some of these pieces are defiant, some hopeful, and some humorous: but ALL are disarmingly truthful.

Steven Anthony Jones reads Frederick Douglass' 1852 speech, "What to The Slave Is the 4th of July."