[MUSIC] The question of black humanity, that is a simple question for black writers like Margaret Walker. One of the great novelists and poets, her novel, Jubilee, is considered the black counterpart of Gone With the Wind. Her poem, For My People, is considered a poetic anthem for the black experience. >> What the black writer was saying, and Langston says it better in that essay that first appeared in the Times on the racial mountain. >> That's right. >> That we black writers are going to express ourselves as we feel we want to express ourselves, and if white people like us, that's fine. And if they don't like us, that's fine. And if black people like us, Colored people as they can call it, if they like us, that's fine. And if they don't like us, that's fine, we going to do what we want to do. >> Mm-hm. >> And we suffer, I am, I, you see, when company comes, you send me to the kitchen. But I eat and grow fat, and I'm beautiful and strong. And one day you'll see how beautiful I am, and you won't send me to the kitchen anymore. And right, boy, you should have heard Richard Wright on that one. >> Mm-hm. >> There again, his ambivalence. >> Mm-hm. >> Just that tight with Langston. And said everything he could against him. You see, that was, that was, that was right. Wright said, Now why do we have to beg the question of our humanity to anybody? We look in the mirror every day, we see what color we are. And we know we're not dogs. so we don't have to go along that Shaksperian business. If you prick me do I not bleed. And you don't hear any of us in the thirties using that theme do you? >> Hm. >> As a difference, completely, if you look at Hayden. If you look at Owen, if you look at Gwen, if you look at Rye, or if you look at me, we are not begging the question of black humanity. We accept it. >> So Margaret Walker. Is reminding us that black humanity has often been the issue in every generation. As Ralph Ellison suggests, blacks were invisible, they were not seen on the pages of history. And they were not considered human. So black humanity is a central topic for poets like Margaret Walker and for her old friend, Richard Wright, who wrote poetry as well as fiction. And for Sterling Brown, a wonderful poet who taught for many years at Howard University. And wrote blues poetry dedicated and inspired by Blues artists like Ma Rainey. Sterling Brown saw the South as a very mixed blessing. >> My wife is a through Faulknerian. She knows the hell out of Faulkner. And knows how he fucked up his families to get wrong people in the wrong place. Because she identifies, she came from a small town. My, you've met my wife. She's, you know, she's a grandchild of slaves. And, to pass of light. And, when he deals with these small towns, it takes her back to her small town. I'm, I, I think a lot of Faulkner. Go Down Death. Little less, in In Intruder in the Dust. Some of the short stories, great. Absalom, Absalom. Good Novel. Light in August. It sucked some. All that goddamn split in Joe Christmas is the old tradition just made sophisticated. It's a lot of crap. I never am sure. Then he is Gavin Stevens, and then he's not. But if he's Gavin Stevens in light of all of this, he's really messed up. Gavin Stevens is a little bit better in The Bear. The Bear is a great story. But the bad is full of crap in the business about Well, well all he really sees is they will endure, they will prevail but not because of any of their own drive. They'll see he is, just one of determination to hold the family together. But it's a white family. I'm concerned. What about her kids? And he is still, he ca, he cannot get over his anti-Yankeeism, and he can't get over. You see, in gone in, in Go Down Moses, the boy goes to Chicago, and is immediately fucked up. You know, comes home, corpse comes home, you see. And all the damn illusions are, whenever he's on the Yankee, it's awful. So in light in August, it's a Yankee woman. Having the dealings, you know. And she didn't meant it. It's the same kind of thing that Robert N Lauren puts in about Oberlin in the band. See, Oberlin was a wonderful school for Negroes, but he's got to belittle it, you see? And the Yankees didn't care for niggers either, you see, it's that. And the Yankees didn't, but by God. You at least could stand on your feet and run the Yankees. And if a Yankee called you a son of a bitch you could knock him in his god damned head and you wouldn't get lynched. You would get, and this whole foolishness that the nigger going North, if he goes knocks on the door for food the white man shuts it in his face. And in the South the white man says what the hell you doing at my front door? Come around the back. And Negroes on back gets a lot of heat, that's a lot of shit. That's a lot of crap. And I got no illusion about no lack of prejudice. Boston is a bad goddamned place or negroes. And I don't know about New Haven, they're bad. But that don't make Atlanta better, and that don't make Memphis better. And if I go down South to Talladega, I'm happy because I'm with my people. And you got a handful of white teachers there who are decent, like you. But I don't know about the rest of the damn county round about. You see what I'm driving at? >> Mm-hm. >> This thing is not simple, North and South. But it is not North versus South, one perfect and the other imperfect. No. But if I got my, if I got, if I got to take my chances. On violence and on insult, I'll take the North any day. because if I get ten miles out of Atlanta, I don't know what I run into. And I got plenty of folk lore on that. >> The poets of the South, like Alice Walker, Margaret Walker. And Sterling Brown. Lead us into a relationship with Blues poetry. And Blues, as a musical form, is poetry. And these poets took it to a literary level. In their tradition of WC Handy, who was the first to write Blues poetry. To compose on paper, the Blues. So we see literature merging with the oral tradition through poetry. And it has a natural link into the blues.
