- Announcer: Funding for APT's "Out of the Woods"
is provided by Boardman Clark Law Firm,
Arcadia Books, Dane Arts, Nancy A. McDaniel,
Natural Resources Foundation of Wisconsin,
Orange Tree Imports, Wilson Creek Pottery,
Focus Fund for Wisconsin Programming
and Friends of PBS Wisconsin.
[bird squawking]
[bugs buzzing]
[light music]
- This cannot be right.
Did I, am I, am I?
Okay, okay.
[gentle music]
- Uh, can you tell me if the lens is scratched
or is that my glasses?
- Get off the camera.
You gotta get off. - I know that's the camera.
- Son, get off the camera. - I'm about to win!
[woman humming]
- I love my kids, I love my kids, I love my kids, love 'em.
- Oh, I have a better idea. - Get off of me.
- Hey, Jimmy.
[man groaning] [muffled talking]
Jimmy, are you frozen?
- Places.
- Man: I'm here, I'm here, coming.
- Places, everyone.
This is places.
[light dramatic music]
- I really gotta pee.
- Oh, what's up, Marcus?
How you doing?
- Good luck, everybody.
[light music]
[bird squawking]
- Hello, everyone.
Welcome tonight!
Thank you so much for being here tonight.
For those of you that have been
watching us over the last few weeks,
this is our fifth, you've been with us for five,
this is our fifth out of six readings
in our "Out of the Woods"
Play Reading Series.
And tonight we have, "Are You Now, or Have You Ever Been..."
And I am excited for us tonight
to share this reading with you.
We wanted to tell you if you haven't been able
to watch the readings so far,
you can watch the readings.
Our friends at PBS Wisconsin have been generously offering,
recording these and putting them on their website.
So starting June 12th at 7 pm
we will premiere the first one that was five weeks ago,
and we will be able to watch every Friday night,
they will premiere another reading.
And those readings will stay up
and you can watch them anytime you want.
Over the course of time until July 19th.
So from June 12th to July 19th
you can binge watch those,
you can share them with your friends.
So thank you PBS Wisconsin for that.
I also want to shout out to everyone
who's watching from around the country
and around the world.
We found out there's people watching
from all over the globe.
Getting up at night to watch us, and that is amazing
and humbling for us,
and so thank you so much for joining us.
I want to thank our season sponsors.
So, tonight is a gorgeous night here in Wisconsin
and many of us would be up the hill tonight,
what a great night.
But, we'd like to say thank you for joining us here on Zoom.
And we'd like to say thank you to those season sponsors,
Who were kind enough, loyal,
and understand that their support means everything to us.
We can't do it without you;
so I'd like to say thank you to our season sponsors.
Stephen and Laurel Brown Foundation,
Doug and Sherry Caves, JJJ Productions,
Kasieta Legal group, Sherry and Rick Lundell,
Ann and Fred Moore, Nelson Jameson,
Allison and Dale Smith, Steve Brown Apartments,
The Mr. And Mrs. CJ Williams Storage Foundation,
and US Bank.
Thank you, thank you, thank you, for believing in us.
I'd like to shout out and say thank you
to the team that worked with David Daniel;
who you saw earlier, who helped direct this piece.
Gavin Lawrence who collaborated with him
as well as Eva Breneman on text.
Also, I'd like to say thank you to Jacki Singleton
and our backstage crew. Evelyn Matten and Jake Penner.
Jacki is the stage manager on this
and she is more like a mission control tonight.
So thank you, Jacki, for all your hard work this week.
Last, but not least, I want to thank our artists,
for working on this piece.
This has been an extraordinary week.
We all feel it, we all know it.
And to work on this piece has been a gift.
So I want to thank Gavin Lawrence
for bringing us this play about 5 or 6 weeks ago.
And at the time we thought this is the perfect piece
for our company, for Gavin, for our audience.
Important for us and our trajectory as an institution.
And we had no idea,
we had no idea the importance of this piece
and sharing this tonight, it will become evident to you
how important it is.
So thank you, thank you, Gavin, for that.
I want to thank Carlyle Brown, the playwright,
who is with us tonight watching.
Hi, Carlyle, thank you for joining us.
Thank you everyone, and enjoy tonight's reading
of "Are You Now, or Have You Ever Been..."
by Carlyle Brown.
[wind howling]
[city traffic sounds, background conversation, laughter]
♪ [horn instrument] ♪
[wind howling]
[sighs loudly]
[Langston Hughes types]
[crumples up paper]
[tosses]
[sighs]
[groans]
[yawns]
- LANGSTON: Huh.
[exhales loudly]
[rubs hands]
Poetry is rhythm
and, through rhythm,
has its roots deep in the nature of the universe;
the rhythms of the stars,
the rhythm of the Earth moving around the Sun,
of day, night, of seasons,
of the sowing and the harvest,
of fecundity and birth.
The rhythms of poetry give continuity and pattern to words,
to thoughts, strengthening them,
adding the qualities of permanence,
and relating the written words
to the vast rhythm of life.
[knocking at a door]
- LANGSTON: On Saturday, March 21, I received a visitor,
a United States Marshall who had come
to politely serve me a subpoena to appear in Washington, D.C.
by two o'clock Tuesday afternoon
before the Senate Permanent Sub-Committee
on Investigations on Un-American Activities
led by Senator Joseph McCarthy.
Needless to say I couldn't write another thing
for the rest of the day.
And what was the subpoena for?
Well, that space on the subpoena didn't specify.
That space on the subpoena was blank.
But if it had have been filled in it would have said "poetry."
I've been subpoenaed for writing poetry.
[howling wind]
LANGSTON: Um, forgive me.
[Langston types]
[Langston tears the paper out of the typewriter]
[crumples paper, throws on floor]
- LANGSTON: As you can see in the meantime
I've been trying to write a poem.
Do you have any idea how hard it is to write a poem?
It takes clarity, compression, succinctness.
It has to be honest and it must come from deep within your soul.
And then this U.S. Marshall comes knocking on my door.
I'm trying to live in my mind
and I am constantly being interrupted by reality.
So, I don't know what to do.
[chuckles]
Oh but look at me, hmm,
sitting here in my pajamas
with my stocking cap on. [laughs]
This is embarrassing.
It's as if I was trying to make sure that you all know
that this poet is a Negro.
[laughs]
I usually don't get out of my pajamas
until noon.
And sometimes I don't take my stocking cap off
until I leave the house.
So, after I get my subpoena,
I right away call my lawyer Arthur Spingarn,
who has been carrying me without fee
for 25 years.
Arthur put me together with Lloyd Garrison
of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton, and Garrison,
who defended Arthur Miller
before the committee.
Arthur Miller by the way wouldn't name names
and he got convicted,
only it was overturned on appeal on account of a technicality.
No such luck looking at this Negro.
So Garrison says that I am not to plead the Fifth.
That I am to tell the truth.
Well, no no, he didn't exactly say to tell the truth,
he said to tell the full story.
Then Arthur put me together with another lawyer from D.C.,
Frank Reeves of Reeves, Mitchell and Harris,
who is for good or ill,
for Heaven help us or God save us, a Negro.
And I'm glad he's a Negro
'cause I need me Negro in the worst way right now.
'Cause, as a Negro, Frank knows how the particular significance
of being black in this kind of situation
is like to magnify stress in a Negro.
He understands that.
I don't have to explain that part to him.
See, when I'm out there screaming,
"Oh, Lord Jesus
don't let them government people put that jail cell around me!"
He don't say, "Uh, what's the matter, Langston?"
Frank says, "I know, brother, I know,"
and then goes on about the business
of getting me out of this mess.
So, it's been two days now
since I've gotten the subpoena.
Tomorrow morning I got to go down to Washington
and face this thing.
Had to borrow money to pay my own hotel and my airfare.
It's like borrowing money to buy the rope for your own hanging.
And when you're dead you're still in debt.
[howling wind]
- LANGSTON: A moment, please...
[rolls a sheet of paper into typewriter]
[train whistles in background]
Langston: Dah...
I've always been moving.
Hmm...
Moving from town to town even when I was a little boy.
Joplin, Missouri; Lawrence and Topeka, Kansas, Kansas City,
Cleveland; Chicago;
Mexico.
Like a rolling stone, ain't no moss growing on me.
Oh, but it was lonely, awful lonely.
But that's what a writer is, is lonely.
All alone,
eh, and that's what was good about my childhood,
it made me into a writer.
[tears the paper out of the typewriter[
[crumples paper and throws it on the floor]
[sighs loudly]
- LANGSTON: You see it isn't just about you,
you who read my books and poems.
It's about me too.
Of course I want to please you and entertain you,
maybe shock you a little and show you another world.
But to be totally honest it's all pretty selfish really,
because with all of you out there,
the hundreds and thousands of you reading my books and poems,
I don't have to be alone anymore.
That's why we read, isn't it?
I mean that's why we read fiction anyway,
so that we can know that we are not alone.
We can dream, be transported,
even come to grow into our own being.
The world, hard and lonely as it is,
would be an unbearable place if we could not find some comfort
in the covers of a book.
Of course, I have to do it alone, writing is lonely,
but that's a small price to pay.
I literally cannot live without that,
without that relationship, without you.
I want your approval, yes,
but I have to say what I have to say.
That is why I'm a writer, that's what I'm for.
But there's the trouble you see, that sometimes,
there's a difference between what you want from me
and what I have to give you
and then some of you will disappear and leave me.
And I don't think you can hold me responsible for that.
It's not like these words and ideas come from me,
they come through me from somewhere,
from where, I don't know.
Oh they possess me and I have to write them down.
I don't make it, it's already made,
it's the truth and I want you to listen,
I want you to look at it,
I want you to see it for what it really is.
But I am afraid that,
I'm terribly afraid that this business
with the government may come between us.
Look, all I'm asking you to do, is that no matter what you hear
or read in the newspapers or even hear me say myself,
please put it all in context.
Hmm?
You know me and I don't want you to forget who I am.
Now I know that there are things that you expect from me,
demand of me, and you should.
God knows you should.
But sometimes we have to make compromises.
Sometimes we have to pretend
that we are somebody other
than who we really are.
It's not a betrayal, it is for survival.
Each of you buys one of my books
and gets from me whatever I can give.
All of you buy my books and I can live.
If publishers stop publishing me for fears of repression
from McCarthy
then you and I will never hear from each other again.
Only God knows how much I fear that.
[howling wind, sound of a train]
[Langston whispers to himself]
[loads paper into typewriter]
[Langston types]
[train whistle in background]
This is a beginning.
It's a start.
And I know somehow that this is right.
All right, listen to me.
I know that you've all read other Negro writers
beside myself.
Even though I am alone, I know that I have to share you.
[laughs]
Well, there's Dick Wright, Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin,
Zora Neal Hurstan.
I know these people.
They're my friends.
But, still there is a difference of opinion.
Oh I hate it when White people say to me,
"What do Negroes think?"
I want to say, "How the hell would I know,
I missed last Thursday's Negroes' Meeting."
We're all different.
We're not the same and just because we're Negroes
that don't mean that we ain't people dog gone it.
And we suffer and we long, we hope and dream,
we struggle and survive just like everybody else.
And that is what this whole history
of what American Negro literature is saying,
that I am a man,
that I have needs wants and desires like you,
and that I too am human.
And do you know where all this overwhelming aching and yearning
comes from?
It comes from the blues...
Droning a drowsy syncopated tune,
Rocking back and forth to a mellow croon,
I heard a Negro play.
Down on Lenox Avenue the other night By the pale dull pallor
of an old gas light
He did a lazy sway...
To the tune o' those Weary Blues
With his ebony hands on each ivory key
He made that poor piano moan with melody.
O Blues! [laughs]
Swaying to and fro on his rickety stool
He played that sad raggy tune like a musical fool.
Sweet Blues!
Coming from a Black man's soul.
O Blues!
Oh!
In a deep song voice
with a melancholy tone
Oh I heard that Negro sing,
that old piano moan--
♪ "Ain't got nobody ♪
♪ in this world, ♪
♪ Mm-hmm ♪
♪ Ain't got nobody but ma self ♪
♪ I's gwine to quit ma frownin' ♪
♪ And put ma troubles on the shelf." ♪
Ahhh!
Thump, thump, thump went his foot on the floor.
He played a few chords
and then he sang some more.
"I got the Weary Blues
♪ And I can't be satisfied ♪
♪ I got the Weary Blues ♪
♪ And I can't be satisfied-- ♪
♪ Oh I ain't happy no mo' ♪
♪ And I wish that I had died" ♪
And far into the night
he crooned that tune.
The stars went out and so did the moon
The singer stopped playing and went to bed
While the Weary Blues
echoed through my head.
He slept like a rock or a man that's dead.
Do you know that you can follow the blues like a river?
Follow it along the landscape, on the roads through America
from the south to the north
like a river of souls.
The great Black Migration,
that's what the river is.
The river from slavery to freedom,
the river of the blues,
and from the Congo to the South Carolina Coast,
from the Mississippi Delta
to Chicago.
The blues has rhythm,
it is all chaos and filled with desire...
- ANGRY MAN: Never go back to the United States of America.
Negroes are fools to live in America.
- LANGSTON: My father.
[sighs] I hated my father.
He left us.
Left us for Mexico.
Left us all alone,
waiting, wanting, needing.
And my mother, she,
she couldn't cope.
She was a dreamer, always dreaming.
Hard as she worked,
it always fell prey to a dream.
Mm-nnn.
That was the way to keep us Negroes down,
where we would always fall sway
to the whispers of a dream,
the dream of freedom and opportunity,
the dream of hope and prosperity.
A dream deferred.
Always a dream deferred.
I'm-- I'm sorry.
Forgive me.
Where was I, what was I saying?
Where was I?
Oh yeah, the blues,
the river of the blues...
I'm sorry, just a moment please.
[loads paper into typewriter]
[typing]
[tears the paper out of the typewriter]
[sighs, crumbles paper and throws it on floor]
My father...
My father wanted me to be
a lawyer or an engineer like he was.
Mm-hmm.
Took me to Mexico to learn business and how to be a man.
Imagine me a lawyer.
Mm-nnn, I didn't have it in me. [laughs]
I could never think like that,
so literal, so sure, so final...
there just has to be more to life than that.
Oh I wanted to be a writer,
I had feelings in me,
had things deep within me
that had to be expressed.
There was never any reason to it.
It wasn't practical, didn't make any sense, and it wasn't safe.
It just had to be.
To do anything else would've been a kind of death to me.
[chuckles]
The only thing I got out of Mexico
was to learn to speak Spanish,
because then I could read the poems of Garcia Lorca
in his own language.
[sighs]
[speaking in Spanish]
Yo se' que mi perfil sera' tranquilo
En el norte de un cielo
sin refejo Mercurio de vigilia,
casto espejo
Donde se quiebre
el pulso de mi estilo
Que si la yedra
y el frescor del hilo
Fue la norma del cuerpo que you dejo
Me perfil en la arena
sera un Viejo Silencio sin rubor
de cocodrilo
Y anuque nunca tendra sabor de llama mi lengua
de palomas ateridas,
Sino desierto gusto de retama
Libre signo de normas oprimidas
Sere',
en el cuello de la yerta rama
Y en el sinfin
de dalia doloridas
[laughs]
- Oh God,
how I wish I had written that.
To be a poet or any artist
you have to appropriate yourself
or at least not let your self be appropriated.
You have to have sovereignty
over your own life.
I didn't want to be a lawyer or an engineer.
I wanted to go to Harlem.
I needed a place
and a landscape to write in.
I needed a people and situations to write about.
A people who are like myself.
A people who actually are my very self itself.
♪ ["HARLEM NIGHT CLUB"] ♪
Sleek black boys in a cabaret
Jazz-band, jazz band,
Play, play, PLAY!
Tomorrow... who knows?
Dance today! [laughs]
White girls eyes
Call gay black boys
Black boys' lips grin
jungle joys
Dark brown girls
In blond men's arms
Jazz-band, jazz-band
Sing Eve's charms!
White ones, brown ones,
What do you know about tomorrow
Where all paths go?
Jazz-boys, jazz boys.
Play, play, PLAY!
Tomorrow...
is darkness
Joy today!
♪ ♪
It had no dignity before
But when the band began to play,
Suddenly the earth was there,
And flowers,
Trees,
And air,
And like a wave the floor--
That had no dignity before!
[drums]
Have you dug the spill Of Sugar Hill?
Cast your gims on this sepia thrill:
Brown sugar lassie,
Caramel treat,
Honey-gold baby
Sweet enough to eat
Peach-skinned girlie,
Coffee and cream,
Chocolate darling
Out of a dream.
Walnut tinted
Or cocoa brown,
Pomegranate lipped
Pride of the town
Rich cream colored
To plum-tinted black,
Feminine sweetness
In Harlem's no lack
Glow of the quince
To blush of the rose
Persimmon bronze
To cinnamon toes
Blackberry cordial,
Virginia Dare Wine--
All those sweet colors
Flavor Harlem of mine!
Walnut or cocoa, Let me repeat:
Caramel, brown sugar
A chocolate treat
Molasses taffy
Coffee and cream,
Licorice, clove, cinnamon
To a honey-brown dream
Ginger, wine-gold
Persimmon, blackberry,
All through the spectrum
Harlem girls vary-
So if you want to know beauty's
Rainbow-sweet thrill,
Stroll down luscious,
Delicious,
fine Sugar Hill
[laughs joyfully]
[shouting] Harlem,
oh home of the Harlem Renaissance,
Mecca of the new Negro
in the days when the Negro was in vogue.
[sniffs]
I was there
and I had a swell time while it lasted.
'Cause I knew it wasn't going to last.
White folks weren't going to be crazy about Negroes
for very long.
The millennium had not yet come.
We had not found green pastures.
We were not going to solve the race problem in America
with Art.
But still you have to do something.
Hmm.
Maybe making art is better than doing nothing at all.
Well, some colored folks thought it would last forever,
the Negro vogue.
Some writers especially.
Now they ceased writing to amuse themselves
and began to write to amuse and entertain
white people.
They became over-colored.
They became writer-racketeers
who stole from themselves the honest expression
of their view of the world in order to please white folks.
Mm-nnn, I know.
I'm one to talk.
Only I'm not so elevated
as being over-colored or a writer-racketeer
I am just a literary sharecropper
with past debts overdue and bills to pay.
I got contracts, commissions, obligations so old
I couldn't find them in here amongst all this mess.
Oh you try to be quiet and still so you can write
and then that money thing keeps ringing in your ear.
Pay me. Pay me. Pay me.
And so you say YES to everything
and time keeps ticking away and you don't have much of it.
It is hard.
And when you do get your head clear enough
to sit down and actually write...
to be quiet... to be still...
the hardest part is yet to come...
and that's you.
Yeah, you.
You white readers and you Negro readers out there
the two of you, you are some hard people to write for.
It's hard to put the two of you together
where you could read it in a book; Hmm?
Most of the time when y'all are looking at something,
you both see two different things.
And each one of you
is denying that.
I'm trying to write one book that both of y'all can read.
Now white writers don't have to do that.
They don't even think about that.
And if they write about black folks [exhales]
they become famed and acclaimed.
But if you are a Negro writer
you must keep your eye dead on the white market, mm-hmm.
Use modern stereotypes of older stereotypes.
Big burly Negroes, criminals,
prostitutes, low-lifers.
Put in lots of profanity, violence and pornography
and you will be so modern you'll pre-date Pompeii
in your lonely crusade toward the best seller list,
where you will be misunderstood, unappreciated,
ahead of your time and felt sorry for even by your own self.
And for the Negro market, you new, new Negroes
of the black middle class
with the whispered promises of integration
lulling you all to sleep, [inhales]
you want more optimistic dramas.
You'd much prefer dramas that avoided
the race question altogether.
And where does that put me? [chuckles]
Well, I'll tell you where it puts me.
It puts me in reviews like these
for my "Montage of a Dream Deferred."
- J. Saunders Redding:
"His images are again quick,
vibrant and probing, but they no longer educate.
They probe into old emotions and experiences
with fine sensitiveness... but they reveal nothing new."
[Langston grumbles, then crumples and tosses the review]
- LANGSTON: The Pittsborgh-- The Pittsburgh "hostile" Courier:
-Pit Courier: "A mélange of self-pity, grief and defeatism."
[Langston crumples the review]
- LANGSTON: Babette Deutsch of the New York Times:
-NYTimes: "A facile sentimentality
that stifles real feeling with cheap scent
that demonstrates the limitations of folk art.
Hughes's verse suffers from a kind of cultivated naiveté',
or from a will to shock the reader,
who is apt to respond coldly to such obvious devices."
[Langston crushes the review]
- LANGSTON: And the most unkind cut of all
from the great Ezra Pound himself, from his madhouse
in St. Elizabeth's Hospital for the Criminally Insane...
- Ezra Pound: "Am glad to git some po'try I can read."
[long silence]
[Langston sighs, chuckles sadly]
- LANGSTON: Glad to get some poetry he can read.
Listen, here's a montage
of two poems from "Montage of a Dream Deferred.
See what you think. [clears throat]
Here on the edge of hell Stands Harlem
Remembering the old lies
The old kicks in the back
The old
The old kicks in the back that
They told us before
Sure, we remember,
Now when the man at the corner store
Says sugar's gone up another two cents,
And bread one,
And that there's a new tax on cigarettes
We remember the job we never had,
Never could get
And can't have now
Because we are colored
So we stand here
On the edge of hell
In Harlem
And look out onto the world
And wonder
What we're gonna do
In the face of what
We remember
What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up Like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore--
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over--
Like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
Like a heavy load
Or does it explode?
That isn't bad, is it?
A moment please, this will only take a moment.
[loads paper in typewriter]
[typing]
[removes paper]
[sighing]
LANGSTON: Ralph Ellison just...
just finished his first novel.
"Invisible Man" is the title.
Got got the National Book Award.
Myself, I couldn't get past page 90.
But still it confirms my belief
that the artistic and social vision of Negro Midwesterners
like Ralph and myself
is very different from Southern writers
like Richard Wright who are conditioned
by racism, violence and gloom.
Ours is more subtle,
hidden, and more complex.
Listen to what the invisible man has to say about himself...
"I myself, after existing some twenty years,
"did not become alive until I discovered my invisibility.
"...now when you have lived invisible as long as I have
"you develop a certain ingenuity...
"maybe I'll invent a gadget to place my coffee pot on the fire
"while I lie in bed, and even invent a gadget
"to warm my bed-- like the fellow...
"who made himself a gadget to warm his shoes!
"Though invisible,
"I am in the great American tradition of tinkers.
"That makes me kin to Ford, Edison and Franklin.
"Call me, since I have a theory and a concept, a thinker-tinker.
"Yes, I'll warm my shoes'
"they'll need it.
I'll do that and more."
[taps book cover, sighs]
[groans, drops book]
- LANGSTON: Damn that's good!
I don't get to see much of Ralph these days
since his book came out.
Now he used to be my protégé.
Now he's gone on to other things.
Become one of the new modernists.
The new Negro intellectuals who think that books like mine are
chit chat books, far more full with emotions and sensibility
than intellect.
Well, in this particular case
I'm in complete agreement with Ezra Pound,
I'm glad to get some prose I can read.
If I wrote the book he wanted me to write, you wouldn't buy it,
and then what would I do? Hmm?
I would have to look for a job.
Doing what, I might ask.
Well, Ralph and me,
we had our differences, but that's the way it is.
That's life.
There's bound to be a differences of opinion.
Especially between writers,
that's how we make fiction.
We put two or more characters together
who have a different opinion.
We give them life and feeling, and deep desires
that they cannot do without.
We suffer with them in their struggles,
cheer for them as they rise
and weep for them when they fall.
It's difficult enough
putting all that down on a piece of paper,
much less managing the day to day,
affairs of life itself.
There's bound to be a difference of opinion.
Although there is one bit of difference of opinion
that I will not tolerate,
and that is from that long necked, bug-eyed James Baldwin,
who is always impressing upon us
how he is as much a contemporary of
T.S. Eliot, the mad Ezra Pound, and W.H. Auden
as he is to Langston Hughes.
And that young black writers must look to the works
of Joyce, Proust, Thomas Mann, and Kafka
for their inspiration and not merely Chester Himes.
Black or white, in English
or in any written language whatsoever
"Native Son" is one of the greatest protest novels
ever written.
And he even attacked Richard Wright about it,
who had been so kind to him in the early years.
Now this book was a prophecy of what would become
of our young black men even to this day and he attacked it.
This little long necked ugly duckling has the nerve to say
this about "Native Son":
"The failure of the protest novel lies in its rejection
of life, the human being, the denial of his beauty, dread,
power, which is real and which cannot be transcended."
[crumples review] Now what the hell is that supposed to mean?
Did he read it?
Seems to me like his new book,
"Go Tell It on the Mountain" is exactly the kind of book
he's protesting about, with all of its shameful weeping...
it's an art book about folks who aren't art folks...
a low-down story in a velvet bag and a Knopf binding...
[Langston load a sheet of paper]
[Langston types]
[resumes typing]
[sighs]
LANGSTON: Look, what I am trying to say to you
is that fiction is essential.
It is not frivolity.
It is not entertainment.
It's not just the way you pass through leisure moments
in your life.
It is life.
Stories are the keys to life.
They are the means to our survival,
road maps into our very being.
Why?
Because we cannot do this alone, we must have some record of
those who have gone before us.
Otherwise we are just treading water,
spinning our wheels all over and over again.
The future is where stories lead,
spreading throughout the world.
Oh, to see the future, to know it, to believe in it,
to stand in a place where it will make you safe,
and safe for the generations that follow behind us,
fiction is essential.
You think I'm exaggerating.
Well, let me tell you something.
If you look at history when the writers go
that's where society begins to unravel.
We are the canaries in the coalmine.
Socrates... Voltaire...
Lorca... Thomas Mann...
all were the first to go, and now it's happening here
in the good old U.S. of A.
It's always the same thing, hmm?
Same old thing, there is a group of people
who want power and they'll do anything within their power
to get it.
First they get an idea and they call that idea good.
And if you're good then you'll follow that idea.
And if you're not good then you must be evil.
You must be following a bad idea.
Today it's communism,
tomorrow it will be something else.
The point is that for people in power
there must be only two ideas, the right one and the wrong one.
And heaven help you if you should have some other ideas
or your own idea
or that there should be inquiry and discourse...
well then you have put yourself outside of the good idea.
Don't fool yourself,
when they come for the writers you could be next.
McCarthy's list is already long and growing.
Oh it is so funny how we intellectuals
always want to be on lists: Societies, organizations,
boards of directors, awards, accomplishments...
but there's one list you don't want to be on
and that is McCarthy's list.
And baby, God help me, but I am on it,
I am on McCarthy's list.
And it's a shit list I tell you.
Hold on just one second please.
[rolls in a sheet of paper, begins typing]
LANGSTON: It all started long before I got the subpoena.
The signs were everywhere.
The canceled engagements,
misplaced invitations,
pleas from publishers and editors
to be as inoffensive as possible to conservatives. [chuckles]
People begin to shun you, well, not openly, mind you,
they just don't have the time.
They're busy at the moment.
And they seem to be always busy at every moment.
And then you get the looks, calculating, judgmental looks.
You can read the question in the furrows
of their uplifted eyebrows.
Are you or are you not?
You become isolated.
Everyone becomes isolated.
There is a general fear of association.
And because it's so pervasive you try to accept it
and like a mole down in his hole you become actively passive.
And that's how you get fatted for the slaughter.
Fear is your cooker now.
The trouble is you never know.
You never know whether or not you're on the list.
Or if anybody you know is on the list.
The list becomes like the Book of the Dead
in some secret library where you can never go.
And there, an old and blind master scribe
puts his scaled and pointed finger on your name
and you're done.
Walter Winchell writes his suspicions about you
in his gossip column.
And then an editor of theDaily Worker,
a noted American communist informant, identifies you cold.
And now you know.
Now you know that you have probably made the list.
My agent Maxim Lieber has left the country,
gone to Mexico of all places.
He's been identified by Whittaker Chambers
in a badly written book as a communist operative.
And what is a communist, hmm?
It seems to me like these days anyone could be one,
especially if it's somebody you don't like.
So, I have taken measures to protect myself as much as I can
by distancing myself from the left.
Turning down invitations, declining nominations,
ignoring the phone.
I'm not speaking out on international affairs.
About the uneasy peace in Korea after 50,000 Americans died,
100,000 wounded.
Somebody wanted me to write a statement supporting
clemency for the Rosenbergs.
I declined.
The National Council wanted me to appear on a public platform
with John Howard Lawson, Dalton Trumbo, and Albert Maltz
of the celebrated "Hollywood Ten", who are on the list.
I don't think so.
I suppose there are some of you out there
who would disagree with my behavior.
Well, wait 'til they come for you and let's see what you do.
A major portion of my income is derived from lecturing
in Negro Schools and colleges in the South.
Negro speakers don't have the vast arena
of white women's clubs with their social whatnot
from which to secure engagements.
So our fees must come
almost entirely from Negro institutions,
which far too often
have to submit to conservative pressures.
They invite me and there might be protests,
people physically blocking my appearance, disruption,
loss of funding.
It's a house of cards.
But I'll tell you one thing,
I'll tell you one thing that I will not do.
I am not signing anybody's loyalty oath.
And I refuse to denounce communism or anything else
under pressure or duress.
At least I'm going to try.
[sighs]
Do you know what they did?
They arrested Dr. Du Bois.
They put 83-year-old Dr. W.E.B. Du Bois in handcuffs.
What did he do but write
beautiful, thoughtful, rigorous books
about the social life and the social problems
of oppressed Black folks here in America.
He didn't just work for peace and reconciliation
in the Jim Crow South, but all throughout the world.
All he's done and all he has accomplished
and they want to know if he's a communist.
While the NAACP organizer Harry Moore and his wife
just got killed in Mims, Florida
when a bomb blew up their home...
and no one is arrested, no one is punished,
justice is not served and they're looking for communists.
Millions of Negroes in America don't have the right to vote...
are disfranchised...
have no government to go to, to address their grievances
and they're looking for communists.
I'll tell you one thing.
I'll tell you this.
Somebody in Washington wants to put Dr. Du Bois in jail.
Somebody in France wanted to put Voltaire in jail.
Somebody in Franco's Spain sent Lorca, their greatest poet,
to death before a firing squad.
Somebody in Germany under Hitler burned books,
drove Thomas Mann into exile,
and led their leading Jewish scholars to the gas chambers.
Long ago in Greece, somebody gave Socrates hemlock to drink.
Somebody at Golgotha erected a cross and somebody drove nails
into the hands of Christ.
Somebody spat upon His garments. [weeping]
No one remembers their names.
[rotary telephone rings]
[brinnngg]
[brrinnngg]
LANGSTON: Hello,
Frank, Frank, is that you? [laughs]
Oh, no, no, it's not too early.
I was up anyhow.
Well yeah, you're right about that.
I'm not getting much sleep these days.
But, no actually I've been up writing a poem.
That's right, a poem.
Yeah, you've got to keep those creative juices flowing.
That's for sure.
You'll meet me at the airport?
Oh that is so good, thank you, Frank.
Yes, um American Airlines flight 3-3-1.
Yes flight 331. [laughs]
Yes, coming into National.
Yes, yes, National.
Well, I guess I'm as ready as I'll ever be.
I just leave myself in your hands.
No, I said I'll leave myself in your hands.
You've made a deal?
Wait, what kind of deal?"
I won't have to name names.
All they want is a cooperative witness."
[laughs]
To uplift McCarthy's image, I suppose.
Shit, I got to go through all this shit for that?
But I will be under oath.
They could trick me into perjury
or make me incriminate myself.
Will they keep their end of the deal,
that's what I want to know?
No, I know you don't know, Frank.
I guess that's just the risk we'll have to take.
Well, I hope you're right.
Yeah, I'm all packed.
I've got all of the books and things we talked about,
all the things that will help to put everything into context.
Yes, I know we've got to get them
to put everything in context.
No, I will try my darnedest.
I'll be like Sugar Ray Robinson, bobbing and weaving, [laughs]
bobbing and weaving.
Speech?
What speech?
Oh, the opening remarks,
yeah, my opening statement.
Yeah, I've got it all right here.
Got it right here on my desk.
What, rehearse it?
No, no, no, you don't expect me to memorize it, do you?
"Know it well enough so that I don't have to keep looking down
at the page."
"So they can see my eyes."
"And know that I'm telling the truth."
Yes, I can do that.
I give lectures and speeches all the time, all right?
That's all right, Frank, I know you know.
We are both just a little bit,
we're a little nervous right now that's all.
Don't worry, I'll practice it, no I will.
Yes, it would be helpful
to practice it in front of an audience.
Well, it is a late hour, but you never know who might turn up.
Okay, yes, tomorrow.
I mean I'll see you later today, in the morning.
All right, Frank.
And Frank, thank you for this, thanks for this.
Good-bye.
[Langston exhales] That was my lawyer, Frank Reeves,
My Negro lawyer,
he's going to pick me up at the airport
and he wants me to practice my prepared statement for tomorrow,
and he thinks reading it in front of an audience
might be helpful.
Do you mind?
[sighs heavily]
My prepared statement:
Poets who write mostly about love, roses, and moonlight,
sunsets and snow must lead a very quiet life.
Seldom, does their poetry get them into difficulties.
Beauty and lyricism are really related to another world,
to ivory towers, to your head in the clouds,
feet floating off the earth.
Unfortunately, having been born poor,
a third-floor furnished room is the nearest thing
I have ever had to an ivory tower.
Some of my earliest poems were social poems
in that they were about people's problems--
whole groups of people's problems--
rather than my own personal difficulties,
but when one writes poems of social content,
there is always the danger of being misunderstood.
As the Pulitzer Prize poetry winner, Mr. Archibald MacLeish,
said before the senate Committee,
"One of the occupational hazards of writing poetry
is running the risk of being misunderstood."
Poetry is a very thin and fragile world,
so easily evaporated and destroyed.
I have written many poems characterizing many different
kinds of people and expressing many different kinds of ideas,
some seriously, some satirically, some ironically.
For instance, in my book of poems,Shakespeare in Harlem,
there is a poem called "Ku Klux" in which a Klansman speaks.
But I am not a Klansman.
In The Weary Blues there is a poem called "Mother to Son"
in which an aged mother speaks
and another called "Widow Woman".
But I am not an aged mother
or a widowed woman,
although I use the pronoun "I" and it is my poem.
Perhaps the most misunderstood of my poems is "Goodbye Christ."
Since it is an ironic poem
[and irony is apparently a quality
not readily understood in poetry by unliterary minds]
it has been widely misinterpreted
as an anti-religious poem.
This I did not mean it to be,
but rather a poem against
racketeering, profiteering, racial segregation,
and showmanship in religion, which at the time,
I felt was undermining the foundations of the great
and decent ideals for which Christ himself stood.
Because of this poem, I have been on occasion called
a Communist or an atheist.
I am not now an atheist, and have never been an atheist.
I am not a member of the Communist Party now
and have never been a member of the Communist Party.
I concede the right to anyone to read me or not,
as he may choose, to publish me or not,
to invite me to speak or not, as desired.
That I have the right to oppose in speech or writing
those who would make of democracy, or religion,
a reactionary, evil and harmful mask
for anti-Negro, and anti-American activities.
I would like to see an America
where people of any race, color, or creed
may live on a plane
of cultural and material well being,
cooperating together,
unhindered by sectarian, racial, or factional prejudices
and harmful intolerances that do nobody any good,
an America proud of its tradition,
capable of facing the future
without the necessary pitting of people against people
and without the disease of personal distrust
and suspicion of one's neighbor.
[pounding gavel repeatedly]
- DIRKSEN: Mr. Hughes, Mr. Hughes,
will you state your name for the record?
♪ ["Sophisticated Lady" by Duke Ellington] ♪
♪ [performed by Jamal James] ♪
♪ They say into your early life romance came ♪
♪ And in this heart of yours burned a flame ♪
♪ A flame that flickered one day and died away ♪
♪ Then, with disillusion deep in your eyes ♪
♪ You learned that fools in love soon grow wise ♪
♪ The years have changed you, somehow I see you now ♪
[pounding gavel repeatedly]
- DIRKSEN: Mr. Hughes, Mr. Hughes,
will you state your name for the record?
- LANGSTON: James Langston Hughes.
- DIRKSEN: And other than writing,
have you had some other kind of occupation?
- LANGSTON: No sir.
- DIRKSEN: So your chief reputation lies
in the fact that you are a poet.
Would that be a correct statement?
- LANGSTON: Yes, sir, I am a poet.
That would be a correct statement, sir.
- DIRKSEN: Well to begin with, to begin with
I should like to explain to you the purpose of this hearing,
because I believe witnesses are entitled to know.
So last year Congress appropriated $86 million dollars
against an original request of $160 million dollars for
the purpose of propagandizing the free world, the free system,
and I think you get the general idea of what I mean,
the American system.
Now, some funds were used to purchase the books to equip
libraries in many sections of the world,
the idea being, of course, that if people in these countries
have access to American books, which allegedly
delineate American objectives and American culture,
that it would be useful in propagandizing our way of life
and our system.
The books of a number of authors have found their way
into those libraries and there is some interest, of course,
in your writings, because volumes of poems done by you
have been acquired and they have been placed in these libraries,
ostensibly by the State Department.
So we're exploring the matter,
because it does involve the use of public funds to acquire
that kind of literature, and the question is, is it, is
it an efficacious use of funds, does it go to the ideal that we
assert and can it logically be justified.
So we have encountered quite a number of your works, sir,
and I would be less than frank with you, sir,
if I did not say that there is a question in the minds of
the committee, and in the minds of a good many people,
concerning the general objective of some of those poems, whether
they strike a Communist, rather than an anti-Communist note.
Now at this point, I think
probably our counsel, Mr. Cohn, has some questions he
would like to ask you.
- COHN: Let me ask you this: Have you ever been a Communist?
- LANGSTON: No, sir, I am not.
I presume by that you mean
a Communist party member, do you not?
- COHN: I mean a Communist.
- LANGSTON: I would have to know what you mean
by your definition of communism.
Because my feeling, sir, is that
I have believed in the entire philosophies of the left
at one period in my life, including socialism,
communism, Trotskyism.
All isms have influenced me one way or another,
and I cannot answer to any specific ism, sir,
because I am not familiar with the details of them
and I have not read their literature.
- COHN: You mean to say you have no familiarity
with communism?
- LANGSTON: Well no, I would not say that, sir.
I would simply say that
I do not have a complete familiarity with it.
I have not read the Marxist volumes.
I have not read beyond the introduction
of the Communist Manifesto.
- COHN: Have you ever attended a Communist party meeting?
- LANGSTON: No sir, I have not.
- COHN: And if witnesses said you did, they would be lying?
- LANGSTON: They would be lying, as far as I know.
I have never been to a Communist meeting.
- COHN: But you would know if you were
at a Communist party meeting or not?
- LANGSTON: Not necessarily.
- COHN: Were you ever at any meeting about which you
have doubts that it might have been a Communist meeting?
- LANGSTON: That is why I would like a definition of what you
mean by communism, and what you
would call a Communist party meeting.
As you know, one may go to a Baptist church
and not be a Baptist.
- COHN: I did not ask you that. I asked you whether or not you
ever attended a Communist party meeting,
I did not say if you were a Communist party member
attending a Communist party meeting.
So your analogy about a Baptist does not hold water.
The only question now is:
Have you ever attended a Communist party meeting.
- LANGSTON: As far as I know, not.
That is the best I can say.
- COHN: Were you ever a believer in socialism?
- LANGSTON: Well, sir, I would say no.
If you mean socialism by the volumes that are written about
socialism and what it actually means, I couldn't tell you.
I would say no.
- COHN: You want to tell us you have never been
a believer in anything except our form of government?
- LANGSTON: As far as government goes, I have not.
- COHN: What do you mean, as far as government goes?
- LANGSTON: I mean to answer your question.
- COHN: Do you have any reservation about it?
- LANGSTON: No, I have not.
- COHN: Did you write something called "Scottsboro Limited"?
"8 Black boys in a Southern jail World, turn pale!"
- LANGSTON: Yes sir, I did.
- COHN: Do you not think that this follows the Communist party
line very well?
- LANGSTON: It very well might have done so,
although I am not sure I ever knew
what the Communist party line was
since it, it changes all the time.
- COHN: Mr. Hughes, when you wrote "Scottsboro Limited,"
did you believe in what you were saying in that poem.
"8 black boys and one white lie.
Is it much to die?"
- LANGSTON: Well, no, no, sir, not entirely,
because I was writing in characters,
if I may clarify my feeling about creative writing
is that when you make a character,
a Klansman, for example, as I have in some of my poems
where I am not myself a Klansman...
- COHN: How about Scottsboro Limited, specifically?
Do you believe in the message carried by that work
when you wrote this?
"Rise, workers, and fight,
audience, fight, fight, fight, fight,
the curtain is a great red flag rising
to the strains of the International."
That is pretty plain, is it not?
- LANGSTON: Yes, indeed it is.
- COHN: Did you believe in that message when you wrote it?
- LANGSTON: No, sir.
- COHN: It was contrary to your beliefs, is that right?
- LANGSTON: Sir, I do not think you can get a yes or no answer
entirely on any literary question.
- COHN: Mr. Hughes, I think you have gone pretty far in some of
these things, and I think you know pretty well what you did.
When you wrote something called the "Ballad of Lenin,"
did you believe that when you wrote it?
- LANGSTON: Believe what, sir?
- COHN: "Comrade Lenin of Russia Speaks from marble:
"On guard with the workers forever--
The world is our room!"
- LANGSTON: Well, that is a poem.
One cannot say one believes every word of a poem.
- COHN: I do not know what one can say.
I am asking you specifically do you believe in the message
carried and conveyed in this poem?
- LANGSTON: It would demand a great deal of discussion.
You cannot say yes or no.
- COHN: You wrote it, Mr. Hughes,
and we'd like an answer.
Did you or didn't you?
- LANGSTON: May I confer with counsel, sir?
- COHN: Surely.
[whispering]
- LANGSTON: Um, my feeling is that one cannot give a yes or no
answer to such a question, because the Bible, for example,
means many things to different people.
That poem would mean many things to different people.
In my opinion, it is a poem symbolizing what I felt
at the time about what Lenin as a symbol
might mean to workers in various parts of the world.
The Spanish Negro in the cane fields,
the Chinese in Shanghai, and so on.
- DIRKSEN: You know, Mr. Hughes, Mr. Hughes,
I was very curious when you asked
at the beginning of the hearing,
"Do you put your hand on the Bible
in taking the oath?"
And the reason I was curious,
was because of that poem you wrote,
"Good-bye, Christ."
And may I say, sir, from my familiarity with the Negro
people, for a long time I know that they are innately
a very devout and religious group of people,
and this is the first paragraph of your poem "Good-bye Christ."
Listen, Christ, you did all right in your day, I reckon
But that day is gone now.
They ghosted you up a swell story, too,
And called it the Bible, but it is dead now.
The popes and the preachers have made too much money from It.
They have sold you to too many.
Do you think the Bible is dead?
- LANGSTON: No sir, I do not.
That poem is an ironical and satirical poem.
- DIRKSEN: It was not accepted so, I fancy,
by the American people and by the Negro people in America.
- LANGSTON: Yes sir, it was accepted by a large portion
of the American people and there have even been some ministers
and bishops who understood the poem and defended it.
- DIRKSEN: I believe there are many
who have accepted these words for what they convey.
- LANGSTON: That is exactly what I meant to say in answer to
the other gentleman's question that poetry may mean
many things to many people.
- DIRKSEN: I will read you
the third stanza of this sacrilegious poem:
"Goodbye, Christ Jesus,
"Lord of God Jehovah,
"Beat it on away from here now
"Make way for a new guy with no religion at all,
"A real guy named Marx communism,
Lenin Peasant, Stalin worker, me."
How do you think the average reader would take that?
- LANGSTON: Sir, the average reader
is very likely to take poetry,
if they take it at all, and they usually don't take it at all,
they are very likely often not to understand it, sir.
I have found it very difficult myself to understand
a great many poems that one had to study in school.
- DIRKSEN: Of course, when all is said and done
a poem like this must necessarily speak for itself,
because notwithstanding what may have been in your mind,
what inhibitions you had, whether you crossed your fingers
on some of those words when you wrote them,
its impact on the thinking of people is finally what counts.
What, do you, do you write poetry merely for amusement
and the spiritual and emotional ecstasy that it offers,
or do you write it for another purpose?
- LANGSTON: You write it out of your soul and from your own
individual feeling of expression.
It doesn't come from oneself in the first place.
It comes from something beyond oneself.
- DIRKSEN: So you think, you think this is a providential
force?
- LANGSTON: There is something in a creation more than myself
in everything that I do.
I believe that is true of every creation.
- DIRKSEN: So you have no objective in writing poetry.
It is not a message that you seek to convey to anyone?
You just sit there and let these ethereal thoughts
suddenly come upon you?
- LANGSTON: I have often written poetry in that way,
and there are on occasion times when I have a message to convey.
- DIRKSEN: Do you think that any twelve-year old boy could
misunderstand this language?
"Goodbye Christ, beat it away from here now"?
- LANGSTON: You cannot take one line.
Well if you read the twelve-year old the whole poem,
I hope he would be shocked into thinking about the real things
of religion, because with some of my poems that is what I have
tried to do, to shock people into thinking and finding
the real meaning themselves.
I have written many religious poems about Christ,
and prayers and my own feelings
is not what I believe you seem to feel that poem is meaning.
- SCHINE: Mr. Hughes, you are entitled to interpret your poems
in any way you want to, and others will interpret your poems
in the way they want to.
I also should say that you should be entitled to consider
the seriousness of not telling the truth before this committee.
- LANGSTON: Oh, I certainly do sir.
The truth in matters of opinion is as Anatole France said,
like the spokes of a wheel,
and my opinions are my own, sir.
- SCHINE: Mr. Hughes, you know many witnesses come before
a committee, and they are not guilty of a crime,
and then to avoid embarrassment or for reasons that they may not
understand themselves, they do not tell the truth.
They are entitled
to refuse to answer on the grounds of self-incrimination,
but sometimes they do not take that privilege,
and when they've left the room, they're guilty of perjury.
I think you should reconsider what you have said here today
on matters of fact
before you leave this room,
because perjury is a very serious charge.
Do you wish to change any of your testimony?
- LANGSTON: No sir, I do not.
- COHN: Let us do it this way:
Did you write in theChicago Defender,
"If the 12 Communists are sent to jail,
"in a little while they will send Negroes to jail
"simply for being Negroes,
and to concentration camps just for being colored."
- LANGSTON: I would have to see it to see if it is in context.
- COHN: Well, I do not have the original.
I will get the original for you.
In the meantime, I would like to know
whether or not you can't tell us whether you said it.
- LANGSTON: I do not know whether I said it or not.
- COHN: Did you believe it in 1949,
"If the 12 Communists are sent to jail,
"In a little while
"they will send Negroes to jail simply for being Negroes,
and to concentration camps just for being colored."
Did you say that? Did you believe that?
That's the question.
- LANGSTON: Sir, I do not believe in any kind of literary
work or writing you can take a thing out of context
whatever the whole thing is, if I wrote it.
- DIRKSEN: Surely you would have a recollection as to
whether or not you made some written comment
in the course of your column on the Communist trial.
- LANGSTON: I would have to see the column and the context,
because if it is quoted from some other source,
it very well may be misquoted.
- COHN: Let us forget what it says.
I want to know whether that was your belief.
- LANGSTON: I have forgotten now what you read.
- COHN: "If the 12 Communists are sent to jail,
"in a little while they will send Negroes to jail
"simply for being Negroes,
and to concentration camps just for being colored."
Did you believe that in February 1949?
- LANGSTON: Sir, the entire article and the entire column...
- COHN: Mr. Hughes, did you believe that in 1949?
I think you are fencing.
- LANGSTON: One cannot take anything out of context.
- COHN: Mr. Hughes, did you believe that in 1949?
I think the chairman is very patient.
I think you are being evasive and unresponsive
when being confronted with things which you yourself wrote.
I want to know, did you believe that statement in 1949.
- LANGSTON: If that statement is from a column of mine,
as I presume it probably is, I would say that I believed
the entire context of the article in which it is included.
- COHN: Well, do you remember writing this?
"Good morning, Revolution.
"You are the very best friend I ever had.
We are going to pal around together from now on."
- LANGSTON: Yes, sir, I wrote that.
- COHN: Did you write this?
"Put one more 'S' in the USA to make it Soviet.
"The USA when we take control
will be the USSA then."
- LANGSTON: Yes, sir, I wrote that.
- COHN: Were you kidding when you wrote these things?
What did you mean by those?
- LANGSTON: Would you like me to give you
an interpretation of that?
- COHN: I would be most interested.
- LANGSTON: Very well.
Will you permit me to give a full interpretation of it?
- COHN: Surely.
- LANGSTON: All right, sir.
To give a full interpretation of any piece of literary work
one has to consider not only when and how it was written,
but what brought it into being.
The emotional and physical background
that brought it into being.
I, sir, was born
in Joplin, Missouri.
I was born a Negro.
From my very earliest childhood memories,
I have encountered serious, serious, hurtful problems.
One of my earliest childhood memories was going to the movies
in Lawrence, Kansas, where we lived,
and there was one motion picture theater,
and I went every afternoon.
It was a nickelodeon,
and I had a nickel to go.
Well, one afternoon I put my nickel down
and the woman pushed it back and pointed to a sign.
I was about seven years old.
- COHN: I do not want to interrupt you.
I do want to say this.
I want to concede very fully,
you encounter oppression and denial of civil rights.
Let us assume that, because I assume that will be
the substance of what you are about to say.
To save us time, what we are interested in determining
for our purpose is this:
Was the solution to which you turned
that of the Soviet form of government?
- LANGSTON: Sir, you said you would permit me
to give a full explanation.
- COHN: I was wondering if we could not save a little time.
- LANGSTON: I would much rather preserve my reputation
and freedom than to save a little time, sir.
- COHN: All right.
Take as long as you want.
- LANGSTON: The woman pushed my nickel back,
pointed to a sign beside the box office that said something,
in effect, "Colored not admitted."
It was my first revelation
of the division between American citizens.
I never read the theoretical books of socialism or communism
or the Democratic or Republican party for that matter,
and so my interest in whatever may be considered political
has been non-theoretical, non-sectarian,
and largely really emotional and born out of my own need to find
some kind of way of thinking about this whole problem of
myself, segregated, poor, colored,
and how I can adjust to this whole problem of helping
to build America when sometimes
I can not even get into a school or a lecture or a concert
or in the south. go to a library and get a book out.
- DIRKSEN: I think, Mr. Hughes that would be
adequate emotional background.
- LANGSTON: No sir that would not explain it all,
how I arrive at the point that Mr. Cohn, I believe,
has asked me about.
- COHN: Could you make it briefer, please?
- DIRKSEN: Do you think we need more background
to tell what you meant by USSA?
- LANGSTON: Well yes sir, I think you do.
Because a critical work comes out of a very deep background,
it does not come in a moment.
Well, I am perfectly willing to come back
and give it to you later, if you are tired.
- COHN: No, no, no, we will sit here
as long as you want to go on.
But you are missing the point completely.
What we want to determine is
whether or not you meant those words when you said them.
- LANGSTON: Sir, whether or not I meant them depends on
where they came from and out of.
- COHN: Did you desire to make the United States Soviet,
put one more "S" in the USA to make it Soviet?
"The USA, when we take control, will be the USSA then."
Did you mean those words when you spoke them?
I am not saying you should not have meant them.
I am asking you...
- LANGSTON: Yes sir and you gave me the permission
to give the background.
- DIRKSEN: That answers the question.
- LANGSTON: No I did not say "Yes" to your question.
I said you gave me the chance to give you the background
to the point.
- DIRKSEN: We have had enough background.
- COHN: Tell us whether or not you meant those words?
- LANGSTON: What words sir?
- COHN: "Put one more 'S' in the USA to make it Soviet.
The USA, when we take control, will be the USSA then."
- LANGSTON: Will you read me the whole poem?
- COHN: I do not have the whole poem.
Do you claim that these words are out of context?
- LANGSTON: It is a portion of a poem.
- COHN: Do you claim that these words distort the meaning?
- LANGSTON: That is a portion of a poem
and a bar of music out of context
does not give you the idea of the whole thing.
- COHN: Pardon me Mr. Hughes, but you have belonged to a list
of Communist organizations a mile long.
You have urged the election to public office
of official candidates of the Communist party.
You have signed statements to the effect
that the purge trials in the Soviet Union
were justified and sound and democratic.
You have signed statements
denying that the Soviet Union
is totalitarian.
You have defended the current leaders of the Communist party.
You have written poems, which are an invitation to revolution.
You have been named in statements before us
as a Communist, and a member of the party.
Mr. Hughes, you can surely tell us whether or not you ever
desired the Soviet form of government in this country.
- LANGSTON: Yes, I did.
- COHN: The answer is yes.
I think if you were a little more candid
with some of these things,
we would get along a little better,
because I think I know enough about the subject
so I am not going to sit here all day
and be kidded along.
I will be very much impressed
if you would give us a lot of straightforward answers.
We know every man is entitled to his views and opinions.
We are trying to find out which of these works should be used
in the State Department in its information program.
In the course of finding that out,
we want to know whether you ever desired the Soviet form
of government in this country.
I believe you have said just a minute ago
that your answer to this is 'yes.'
- LANGSTON: I did desire it.
And I would desire it but--
- COHN: That is an answer.
That is what we want.
I believe in your statement before was that you desired it,
but not by violent means, is that right?
- LANGSTON: Yes sir, that would be correct.
- COHN: What did you mean when you said this...
"Good morning, Revolution,
you are the very best friend I ever had.
"We are going to pal around together from now on."
Does not revolution imply violent means?
- LANGSTON: Not necessarily, sir.
I think it means change, like the industrial revolution.
- COHN: That is an answer.
So when you used the word "revolution"
you were using it in a very broad sense,
and meaning a change, is that right?
- LANGSTON: That is right sir.
- COHN: When did you stop desiring the Soviet form
of government for this country?
When did you come to the conclusion that
that was not the solution?
- LANGSTON: I would say certainly about the early 1940s
and from that point on.
- COHN: Well let me ask you this,
do you think it's a wise thing
for the State Department Information Program,
trying to carry a true picture of the American way of life,
to use your early writings,
such as this "Ballad of Lenin" and the Scottsboro thing,
and the curtain, the form of the red flag,
and the singing of the International,
to use that in the information centers of foreign countries.
Without fencing, do you think if you were going to make
a selection of works to give a true picture
of the American way of life, would you place in there
the Scottsboro thing and this poem, "Ballad of Lenin?"
- LANGSTON: If I were a librarian doing it,
I would place in there...
- COHN: I am not talking about a librarian.
This is not done by librarians.
This is done under a specific program of the State Department
to give people in foreign countries a true view
as to the American way of life,
and the objectives we seek to achieve in this country.
- LANGSTON: Yes, sir.
They certainly should have a view of the objective
that we seek racially, and therefore
they should know something about that...
- COHN: Mr. Hughes, we are not talking on the same plane
at all.
Certainly they might have a view
as to what we seek racially and all that.
But the question is, should they have a poem,
which calls for the Soviet form of government,
a poem that idealizes Lenin, a poem that calls for everybody to
get up and sing the International?
- LANGSTON: Well, yes, sir, I think they should,
because it indicates freedom of press in our country,
which is a thing we are proud of.
- COHN: I do not think that you understand the situation at all.
These poems are not in there to indicate freedom of the press
in our country.
They are in there because people in those countries
depend on what is given to them for an accurate picture
of the objectives, which this country seeks to achieve
in its fight against Communists.
Do you think something
which calls for an espousal of the Soviet form of government
aids us in fighting communism?
Please, think before you answer that question, Mr. Hughes.
- LANGSTON: I have answered your first question, have I not?
The other one has been answered yes,
indicating freedom of press.
My answer would be yes.
- COHN: You think it is a good thing?
- LANGSTON: Yes, to show that we have a very wide range
of opinion in our country, yes I do.
- COHN: Well, just let me ask you about this one thing here.
You are concerned about minority rights in this country,
is that right?
- LANGSTON: Yes, I am.
- COHN: You are concerned about the rights of Jews as well as
the rights of Negroes?
- LANGSTON: Yes.
- COHN: Did you write a poem called "Hard Luck"?
"When hard luck overtakes you
"Nothing for you to do
"When hard luck overtakes you
"Nothing for you to do
"Gather up your fine clothes
And sell them to the Jew.
Did you write that?
- LANGSTON: Yes.
- COHN: Do you think that is respectful of the rights
of the minority known as the Jews?
- LANGSTON: Yes sir, I do.
- COHN: In what respect?
- LANGSTON: Because in common parlance,
among a certain poorer class of Negroes,
at least when that poem was written,
on a Monday morning when they were broke and had to pawn
something, it was part of the slang with no disrespect meant
on their part, certainly to say, "I will take my watch
to Uncle or my clock to the Jew."
And the racial connotation
was not disrespectful there.
- COHN: As much concern as you have on the rights of Negroes,
do you think this is a good poem to have
in foreign information centers?
- LANGSTON: I think the poem is a good poem to have anywhere.
- COHN: And how about the poem, "Goodbye Christ,"
is that a good poem to have anywhere?
- LANGSTON: Yes sir, from my interpretation.
- COHN: How about the book, "Put One 'S' in USA?"
Do you think that is a good book against communism?
- LANGSTON: Yes, because I think
people would see it as absurd.
- COHN: You do not think you are a Communist today?
- LANGSTON: No sir, I am not.
- COHN: When did you stop being a Soviet believer?
REEVES: That is like the question,
"When did you stop beating your wife?"
- COHN: Do you want to testify?
REEVES: No, I don't.
- COHN: Under the rules of the committee,
the witness can consult with you,
but you are not here to testify, because if you were,
you would have to be sworn in, give testimony.
Mr. Hughes is free to consult with you,
and the chairman can correct me if I am wrong,
the rule of the committee is that the witness
is free to consult with you any time he wishes,
but you are not here to testify.
- REEVES: May I ask a question of the chairman?
- COHN: Certainly.
- REEVES: My only concern was that the rapid-fire process
of these questions frequently
does not even permit for an answer.
I'm interested in protecting the rights of my client
and it may very well be that he may not have the opportunity
to answer such rapid fired questions.
- COHN: If the questions are given too rapidly, I suggest,
Mr. Chairman, that he turn to his counsel
and his counsel can advise him,
and the witness can tell us that I am going too fast,
and, "I did not understand the question" and we will stop.
- LANGSTON: From my point of view,
it doesn't matter what the form of government it is
if the rights of minorities and poor people are respected,
and if they have a chance to advance equally.
- COHN: I think you might just outline to us briefly
point by point, the points of difference
between you and communism
at the period of time
when you wanted a Soviet government
in the United States.
- LANGSTON: Again, I repeat, sir, that communism to me
did not mean the rulebook or the Manifesto
or the laws of the Soviet Union.
My disagreement with them to tell the truth
has been first and foremost that a literary artist
or an artist of any kind cannot accept outside discipline
in regard to his work or outside forces or suggestions,
and that Communist party writers have to accept
the dictates of the party in regard to their work.
- COHN: Have you expressed in writing any place
your disagreement with the Soviet form of government
as to that one point which you just made?
- LANGSTON: Of that, I cannot be sure.
I have certainly expressed it verbally.
- COHN: To whom?
- LANGSTON: To Mrs. Litvinov in Russia.
We had a lot of arguments.
- COHN: Well, I do not think the Litvinovs are available
to anybody in the United States.
But I want to thank you for that because it brings me
to another question I would like to ask you.
What were you doing in Russia?
Why did you go there?
- LANGSTON: I went to make a movie.
It was a job.
I was hired as a scriptwriter for a Russian movie.
- COHN: And it was for a Russian film company was it not?
Meschrabpom.
- LANGSTON: Yes.
- COHN: Was this movie ever made?
- LANGSTON: No.
- COHN: Why not?
- LANGSTON: It was a disaster.
A film about Black Alabama steelworkers threatened
by white southerners, who summon white workers from the north
who come to their rescue.
They had no idea what a fiction that really was.
The translator had no idea what life was like
for Negroes in the American south,
or what life was like in America for that matter.
Oh it was a pathetic hodgepodge that had to be written
along party lines and I refused to do it.
- COHN: Nothing like the freedoms we have here, was it?
- LANGSTON: Yes, sir.
Your, your point is well taken.
- COHN: And yet, after you resigned from
this Russian film company, you remained and traveled in Russia.
Why?
- LANGSTON: Why?
[sighs, chuckles]
I am a writer, sir.
I am a naturally curious person.
I found myself in another world and I wanted to see it.
Like being a character in your own novel I suppose.
Well, I didn't just travel across Russia,
I went east around the world to China and Japan
and then back home again.
I wanted to see for myself what was going on
out there in the world.
And what I saw, oh, it gave me hope.
Yes, so much of it is filled with nothing but hopelessness.
But that is what makes the hope so bright.
People out there are reaching out to each other,
reaching across their race, sex, and religion
to fight for a common cause.
It's not about any philosophy or ideology.
Their common cause is oppression.
It's about freedom and justice.
Now after I returned and since that time,
I have held out that hope
which is contained in my complete body of work.
Not in just one part, but in the whole.
And there was a time
when I put that hope in the Communist party press.
But my hopes there were not realized.
When I looked around in my own world,
I found myself to be just as naive as the Russian translator
on that dreadful movie.
This is all that I am guilty of, sir,
and I would hope that like me, you put it all up to experience.
- SCHINE: Mr. Hughes, in your grand tour of the world
we'd like to get back to the period of the time
when you were still in Russia.
And I'd like to ask you about Mrs. Litvinov,
whom you mentioned.
Do you think Mrs. Litvinov is a member of the Communist party?
- LANGSTON: I rather think she was not
from what they said about her in Moscow.
- SCHINE: What about Mr. Litvinov?
- LANGSTON: Oh, I don't know.
We never met.
- SCHINE: And do you think you talked to any member
of the Communist party while you were in Russia?
- LANGSTON: Well, I would certainly think I must have,
but I do not ask people even in Russia if they are.
- SCHINE: Mr. Hughes, I think it is only fair to reemphasize
to you the danger that you face if you do not tell the truth
to this committee, and to ask you to reconsider
as to whether you wish to change any of your testimony here.
Do you wish to change it?
- LANGSTON: No sir, I do not.
I have never been a member of the Communist party,
and I wish so to state under oath.
- SCHINE: I am not just talking about that testimony.
I am talking about your entire testimony before this committee.
Let me ask you a question:
Will you give the committee at this time
the names of some Communist party members whom you know?
- LANGSTON: I do not know anyone to be a member
of the Communist party, sir.
I've never seen anyone's party card.
- SCHINE: You are quite sure of that?
- LANGSTON: Yes, I am quite sure of that, sir.
- SCHINE: Do you know Paul Robson?
- LANGSTON: Yes, I do.
- SCHINE: Do you know him well?
- LANGSTON: Yes, I know him well.
- SCHINE: I will ask you directly,
is he now or has he ever been a Communist?
- DIRKSEN: Mr. Hughes, Mr. Hughes,
I think we will suspend.
Senator McCarthy would like to have a word.
MCCARTHY: Mr. Hughes, you, you appear to be very frank
in your answers, and while I may disagree
with some of your conclusions,
do I understand that your testimony,
is that sixteen different books of yours,
which were purchased by the information program,
did largely follow the Communist line?
- LANGSTON: Yes, Senator McCarthy,
some of those books very largely followed at times
some aspects of the Communist line,
reflecting my sympathy with them, but not all of them, sir.
MCCARTHY: Do you feel that those books should be on the shelves
throughout the world, with the apparent stamp of approval
of the United States Government?
- LANGSTON: I was certainly amazed to hear that they were.
I was surprised, and I would certainly say "No."
MCCARTHY: All right, well,
may I ask just one question, Mr. Hughes?
Now, we've had so much screaming by certain elements of the press
that witnesses have been misused.
Now, do you feel that you were in any way mistreated
by my staff or this Committee?
- LANGSTON: I must say that I was agreeably surprised
at the courtesy and friendliness with which I was received.
MCCARTHY: So in other words, from reading some of the press
you thought you'd find the senators might have horns
and then you discovered that we didn't have any horns at all,
hey?
- [Langston laughs] Well, Senator Dirksen,
is that his name?
He was most, I thought, most gracious,
and in a sense helpful in defining for me
the areas of this investigation.
And this young man who had to interrogate me, of course,
had tointerrogate me,
was really very kind.
Am I excused now, sir?
MCCARTHY: Thank you very much.
You are excused.
- LANGSTON: Just one thing,
would you tell me, sir, about expenses?
- DIRKSEN: Sir, what about what expenses?
- LANGSTON: I was told that my personal expenses here
would be covered by the committee, is that true?
- DIRKSEN: Under the rules, transportation is paid for
and there is an allowance of nine dollars a day
while you're here.
- LANGSTON: And from whom can I get that, sir?
- DIRKSEN: From the Treasury department, of course!
This Committee is hereby adjourned!
[pounding gavel aggressively]
[howling wind]
Sometimes there's a wind in the Georgia dusk
That cries and cries and cries
Its lonely pity through the Georgia dusk
Veiling what the darkness hides
Sometimes there's blood in the Georgia dusk
Left by a streak of sun
A crimson trickle in the Georgia dusk
Whose Blood?
Everyone's.
Sometimes a wind in the Georgia dusk
Scatters hate like seed
To sprout its bitter barriers
Where the sunsets bleed
[howling wind]
♪ ♪ [applause]
- Brenda: Come on, where's the cast?
Come on, please, join me.
[people join in applauding]
Thank you, everybody, thank you, Gav.
Thank you, everybody.
Is this the whole cast?
No, we're missing Brian, right?
[digital computer chime]
- Brian: I'm coming, I'm coming, I'm coming.
- Brenda: Hi, guys.
We'll wait for DD and Carlyle to join us.
Thank you so much!
My phone is blowing up.
I'm getting text after text after text.
I guess I'll start
before they come in here.
How was that--
how was that for everybody?
How did that feel?
What's it feel like to do this play right now?
That's going to be the first question that I get asked,
that I've been asked by people on my phone.
How did it feel to work on this piece this week?
Anyone?
Anyone like to answer that question?
- Hi, Carlyle!
[applause]
- Hi! [applause]
Hi, Carlyle, thank you for joining us!
Nice to meet you via Zoom!
I was going to ask--
- Gavin: You're muted Carlyle.
- Brenda: You're muted.
- I'm going to ask everyone that's watching the talk back,
Ann Connors, and all you all that are out there watching,
if you please, if you have questions,
please put them in the Q&A,
we'd love to have a lively discussion.
And since we have Carlyle here,
we'd love to be able to ask him some questions.
So, everybody out there,
please in the Q&A put your questions
and Carey Cannon will let us know what they are.
But I want to welcome you, Carlyle.
Thank you for coming tonight and watching.
- Carlyle: Oh, thank you for having me.
It was fantastic.
I enjoyed it immensely, guys.
Thank you so much. - [actor laughs warmly]
- Carlyle: It really was great. - Brenda: How strange is it--
How strange is it to see your piece on Zoom?
- Carlyle: [laughs]
Ah, you know, it was great.
It really came across really--
I enjoyed it immensely, you know.
- Brenda: And how long have you and Gavin,
I know you've been friends and colleagues for a while.
How long have you two known each other and worked together?
- Carlyle: I don't know, a long time.
I don't want to do that much counting.
- [Brenda laughs ]
- Gavin: Early, early '90s.
- Carlyle: Yeah, yeah.
- Brenda: And how did you meet?
- Carlyle: At Penumbra Theatre.
- Brenda: At Penumbra?
- Carlyle: Yeah, yeah.
- Gavin: Did a workshop up of...
- Brenda: What were you working on, Gavin?
- Gavin: Of one of your plays, Carlyle.
We were workshopping a play called "Buffalo Hair"
that then had a full production at Penumbra Theatre.
- Carey: We have some questions up here, Bren, for Carlyle.
- Brenda: Yes, please.
- Carey: Triney actually, who's joining us, is a colleague says,
he loved this.
It's as much about art and the nature of truth and seeing,
as politics and history and oppression.
Where did Carlyle get the idea to write about Hughes in this
particular part of his life?
And about this particular incident?
- Carlyle: You know, I don't know, I had the idea for,
you know, a long time.
You know, that period in, you know,
in African American history, the trial itself was,
sort of pretty important.
And it was a good context to express some personal things
about being an artist.
- Brenda: Yeah, it's amazing how it lines up,
how the conversation about, how much of that.
Somebody asked me how much of the trial part,
is that verbatim, the trial?
The inquisition of him,
is that pretty much verbatim?
- Carlyle: The actual trial was about, or I don't know,
I guess you would call it a trial.
But the actual hearing was two days, and so you know.
So it's cut down, you know, I mean, it-- a lot of it.
A lot of it's repetitive and boring
and just like the same kind of,
badgering, you know.
It is really like an interrogation
and it just kind of goes...
I mean anybody, you know like Clinton,
who can survive that kind of.
It's like that kind of onslaught, it went on and on.
You know, mostly pointless, so this of course,
is edited way down to a, you know,
kind of focus on the issue of, you know, the crisis
that Langston has is that he's an artist and, you know,
he thinks multi-dimensionally and keeps several things
in his head at one time, as artists do and, you know.
He's being talked to by these left or right guys.
"Is it this, or is it that?"
It's, so, you know, you couldn't tell them the truth
if you wanted to, you know?
- Brenda: Right, and Communism and the Civil Rights Movement
has a lot of crossover in the sense that,
I was very fascinated by the fact that, they were,
what were they after with Hughes, ultimately?
I mean, are they looking for those links between civil rights
and Communism?
Is that what they were doing, were they trying to squash...
- Carlyle: Well the link between you know, Communism,
you know.
It's a very kind of complicated world you know.
And the Scottsboro Boys,
the only people who would go down there
and help those people, were Communists.
- Brenda: Right.
- Carlyle: But then, of course,
it's people who are called communists, or socialists,
are why you have Social Security,
the five-day work week, you know.
There isn't, you know, it's just kind of.
But it's always been like that in the culture.
The big bogeyman that will, you know, destroy your life,
you know.
You know, when in fact, it's just the opposite.
So, you know if black people wanted, you know,
I mean, it's white people that have the power.
And if black people wanted an ally,
they would be with anybody who showed up.
- Brenda: Right.
- Carlyle: And it was the Socialist and Communist Party
people that sort of showed up.
Which makes this question like, you know,
like really difficult because, I mean Langston's there thinking,
like "well, you're not doing shit for me"
- [Brenda laughs]
- Carlyle: "and you want me to deny the people who are."
So...
- Brenda: Right on.
Gavin, you've done this role before.
I mean, how much, how much did you deep dive into,
I mean I just did this much when you brought the play to us,
about all of this.
And obviously, every time you would say something,
I would look it up and I would, every time I read it,
I would look up the next...
It's all so much for me to learn,
I've got so much to learn.
But how much deep dive did you do when you were doing
this piece and how, how does it inform?
- Gavin: Oh, a lot, a lot.
First of all, you know I'm I love research
so anything that gives me an opportunity to go back in time,
especially when you're in a different time period,
anything that can help you, you look for.
So and I think around the time that Carl and I first started
working on this, I think they had just released
the transcripts of those trials
because some of them hadn't been made public for years.
So, some of it was available, which is really helpful.
But like Carlyle said a lot of it was just boring, repetitive
badgering of him.
So, I did a lot of um research with Langston Hughes,
in particular.
And, DD, one of the things DD and I kinda, kinda joked about
was that
when I first did this production,
I wanted to try to do, [laughs] do the poems
like Langston Hughes, himself, would recite his poems,
but if anyone has ever heard Langston recite his own poems,
- [laughter]
- Gavin: you would think it was a completely different person,
who could not have written these words.
So I have to--
- Brenda: Why, why, why???
- Gavin: Because he has a-- he does not....
He does not go there.
He's a Midwestern--
- Carlyle: His voice is terrible.
He doesn't even seem to get his own rhythms in his poem, for me.
He's the last person who should read his poems.
- Gavin: A completely different thing,
it's really shocking.
So I used my research on Langston as a person
and his voice for like some of the storytelling,
when I was speaking to my readers in the first part,
but in terms of poetry and stuff like that,
I have to just find these characters
of whom he was writing, you know, about whom he was writing.
So yeah, I did a lot of research,
and as Carlyle knows, sometimes too much.
- [group laughs]
- At one point, Carlyle would just say, "It's a play.
Just do the play!"
- Brenda: Hey, Carey, what else you got?
- Carey: Well, there's a question that kind of
is along these lines from Marnie
about, Carlyle, about the structure,
about the conversational parts,
the poetry composition, the quotes,
the performances of the poems, then switching to the hearing.
There's a lot of different modes in there.
How did you approach how you wanted to tell your story
with all these different methods of storytelling,
packed in this one piece?
- Carlyle: I wanted to write a play that worked like a poem.
- Brenda: Mm.
- Carlyle: So, that's the way I thought about it so...
- Carey: All those-- - Carlyle: Pardon me.
- Carey: That you're using,
all the techniques that he uses
in his poems.
He's using he's following the rhythm of jazz
or linear storytelling,
and you adopted some of those, as well.
- Carlyle: Well, you know, I mean, you know,
I'm a poet, you know, I mean,
so I just-- I just followed my way through the craft.
I just-- I just had set that idea in my mind.
I mean one thing about like the question about like,
where did I get it from Langston Hughes.
Well, you know as an African American writer,
you know, he's one of my predecessors.
There is like a kind of lineage of, you know,
African American literature,
which maybe African American writers
might look at a different way than, you know,
other people do, but you know he is so.
Whenever you're gonna start on that journey.
You're gonna know about people like him and you know,
intimately and study their writing and sort of whatever.
So, how it came together:
all I know is that I wanted to write a play
that worked like a poem
and that I wanted creativity to be a character.
- Brenda: I got-- I got a question that came on my phone.
I just wanted to read it to you.
Pure Confidence and African Company Presents
Richard the Third,
aso discussed moments in history
that may not be widely known.
For Carlyle, what draws you to illuminate
these particular stories
and are there other incidents you want to write about?
- Carlyle: I think it's because these stories provide--
Most people in America when they talk about race,
they have absolutely no context,
- Brenda: We appreciate it.
- Carlyle: Nuance, or never mind like sort of general
so for one, you know, I guess I wanted that to-- my contribution
to, you know ,like the legacy of Langston, like I said,
following that sort of activist tradition in writing.
And, you know, African American stories in history
are just to just fantastic stories, you know. [laughs]
They just start.
I mean, if you know if you kinda get past all the other like
you know, yeah, the race thing is there, you know,
but you know, I mean you know we have an ongoing conflict
living in America as black people, you know,
it's, you know, and a lot of it is...
It's not a story about victims.
It's a story about you know, heroes and imagination
and you know an ingenuity and resilience and persistence.
- Brenda: When you're writing, do you feel a little bit like
nice sometimes too write?
Do you feel conflicted to write for a white audience
who will buy that or a black audience?
I love that whole discussion that Langston had with himself
about who's gonna read his work and what people want from him.
Do you-- do you have to-- do you have to
deal with that conflict?
when you're writing?
- Carlyle: Well, yeah, you know. absolutely.
I mean you know, especially if you're doing it for a living.
I mean this idea sat for like a long time because
it was just like what Langston's going through
was just like too much like my life.
You know what I mean? [laughs]
I wanted like some level of escape in my writing,
you know, I mean it was just hard to like
you know work on that when you can't pay your rent.
You know, you know, it's like you know,
it's uh, the piece will end up being, you know, tortured
and not about something else.
So you know there was sort of a period of time where you know,
okay, you know.
I'm not gonna get evicted, I'm not gonna starve.
I'm gonna, you know, the lights will be able to turn on so...
- Brenda: Do you feel like that's changing, perhaps?
If that right now is that a possibility that could be
there could be an opportunity for things to be changing
in that respect in your mind
or is this a time when
that you get to write more of what it is, you wanna write?
- Carlyle: Well, you know that's individual.
I mean right now at the moment.
I'm pretty you know fortunate that regard
and you know I kinda sort of produce my own work,
you know, but you know, in order for--
Ishmael Reed once said that-- and people have a lot of trouble
with him, you know, [inaudible] I kind of [inaudible]--
but said that if black people
had their own social and political capital--
In other words, you know as a beginning to happen
had their own studios and their own publishing company,
then the people that you think are great writers or whatever
you might never know them, right.
You know what I mean? - Brenda: Mm-hmm.
- Carlyle: If there was sort of like a kind of a different
esthetic, but like you know what the white people gonna say,
you know, certainly, you know, looms large
in terms of the market, you know.
And I think that's you know,
that's a flexible thing that kind of changing,
but the other thing about particular material as a writer,
I want to... I wanna write roles for black actors
to compensate for the fact that
we don't have our own conservatories, right?
You know, that like we, you know practice our art,
you know under the judgment of the Western canon,
which you know, doesn't really know anything about us
and isn't really interested in knowing you know
so you know that's a sort of a complicated way to like
you know, find you know your way.
You know, like-- I hope I'm not going out too long,
but you know like--
- Brenda: No, you can talk as much as you want.
- Carlyle: Like, the African Company presents
Richard, the Third
and I hope I won't say this out of school
because they toured it and they did a great job,
but I think it was the Bardavon Theater in Poughkeepsie.
It was like the beginning of the tour was up there
and the artistic director said to me, you know,
they said you know it was like the thing with the ending.
She said, "You know, we're a Shakespeare company
and at the end of the play,
you know, all the actors in the African company
are rejecting Shakespeare."
And so I said,
"Why is it with you white people that when we embrace ourselves,
you think we're rejecting you?"
and to her credit, you know,
she said, "Oh, okay, [laughs] it's actually your play.
You know what I mean?
So you know white people don't really have to discern
and negotiate your identity.
You know there's a script and there's your craft
and there's your work
and how well you bring human beings to the page.
There's always this other thing going, which is you know just--
- Brenda: Got it, I'm here.
I'm listening to you.
It's, it's the truth.
I mean we did that play and that was a question that came to me
as the artistic director from an audience member.
It seems like they aren't liking Shakespeare.
I'm like, "No, they're liking themselves and their words.
That's what's happening there."
I wanna make sure I answer--
I'm asking you all the questions
as if we're having a private conversation.
I apologize.
I should take some of the questions in the audience,
and there's a lot.
So, if you wanna say some of those things, Carey?
- Carey: We do have a question about what, you know,
what the parallel to the HUAC is to what's happening now
and listening to this play now, Carlyle,
to you, as opposed to when it was first produced?
Whether this moment is having this play live and breathe
in a different way for you, as its creator,
than it did when it was produced before?
- Carlyle: No, I don't really think you know--
I don't think much has changed.
I think it's still resonates and you know maybe you know
maybe more so but I don't really think you know much has changed
in terms of you know like in the second act,
you know the Committee, you know,
I mean that's-- I mean,
the reason that they operate that way for the most part
is because you know
they don't have any imagination.
I mean that particular cause that was,
you know, there, you know the Republican Party
or excuse me--
I'm not trying to be partisan.
I know this is nonprofit stuff.
- Brenda: No, you can do your thing.
- Carlyle: They've been spending so much years gaining power,
you know, that they don't know how to govern you know
and hopefully this pandemic is exposing that, you know.
I mean, it's kind of astonishing like the whole,
can't get the ventilator, can't get the masks thing.
I mean, you know, we are the country
you know that mechanized for World War II.
I mean, you know; I mean, you know whatever complaint you have
about America, you know,
this is some 'can do' stuff.
This is definitely not beyond our capacity you know.
And you would think like he could just say,
"Oh, hey, you guys, that's what you're here for.
Just do it."
Oh, but that's right.
He fired those guys. [laughs]
You know, so it's you know it would you know...
Someday, hopefully, it'll be like a-- you look back on it,
somebody will write a farce or a funny comedy about it because--
- Brenda: It might be a few years
before we get a farce or a funny comedy out of this, I think.
Perhaps, maybe...
What are the questions we got out there?
- Carey: We have a question Lester Purry,
who I know Gavin will be happy to hear, is here
and probably Carlyle, as well,
says the poems displayed seem to be a character in themselves.
Was that intentional?
- Carlyle: Yes.
- Carey: Well, that was quick, yes.
[laughter]
- Carlyle: Well, you know all of them,
you know all of them together.
You know Langston says, you know,
and he says a couple of times that he's like sort of
the conduit for this expression
and so the part of the idea and I guess it's really suggestible
is that like the last thing that gets stated in the end
is the finished poem.
You know and so, Langston might never work again
We don't know what will happen to him.
But you know the poem lives.
- Carey: There was a question about
whether or not historically, there were any repercussions
to his career after the, after his appearance
in front of the Committee.
- Carlyle: Yeah, there were
repercussions for everybody's career
and his work certainly changed after that.
You know, he did, like, a lot of children's books and stuff.
You know, just it was-- a lot of it was like you know
stuff that pays the bills.
He didn't, you know, apparently McCarthy just wanted to say--
I don't know he just decimated so many people's lives.
He wanted to look magnanimous.
You know and not send Langston to jail.
It was, sort of believed
that it was just kind of a publicity stunt,
you know, to get out.
- Brenda: That's why I was gonna ask.
I was gonna ask like what did he--
Gavin, I'd love to ask you,
what were they actually after with Langston?
I mean, what exactly was that Committee after with him?
- Gavin: Well, I think like Carlyle was saying,
he had such a terrible image by this point
in the course of the hearings that they wanted to take me
'cuz there were
two there were two hearings.
There were the closed-door hearings and then there were
the public hearings and he was basically bringing in someone
who he thought if he would be a cooperative witness
would somehow bolster his own-- McCarthy's image
and I think at the same time, having the privilege
and the power that they had,
they wanted to play with me--
they wanted to play with Langston
and get him to say certain things
just because they had the power to make him do it, right.
So for me, you know,
but at the same time as playing Langston, as someone
who knows that there, there could be repercussions.
He could be shunned by his community, his readers,
or even his fellow artists.
It was ia tricky situation because you never know
what's gonna go on behind closed doors, right?
So yeah-- - Brenda: They had agreed,
they had agreed that he wouldn't give names.
That was something that the lawyer--
- Gavin: That he wouldn't have to give names,
which is why when Schine then starts asking him
really specific questions about Paul Robeson
that Dirksen ended the whole thing.
- Carlyle: Because Schine just went off the rails,
but you know my answer
to the thing about what are they after?
They're not after anything.
I mean that is that's exactly what it's like.
It's like you know the investigation of Obama.
They're not after anything.
There's not-- you know.
They know that there's no, you know.
it's just.
It's just to put people on screen that we see that
they're persecuted and we figure 'Oh, well, those people--
- Brenda: Have done something wrong.
- Carlyle: That's what it's for.
They're not after anything, you know, but that,
to emasculate power, to circulate fear, and so it's--
- Brenda: I got a text from someone who said--
From a friend, Alys, she says,
"Good job, everybody" and she said, "Carlyle,
"I had the pleasure of playing Annie
"in African Company Presents "Richard the Third."
"Thank you for that, and question,
"Inside the current moment of racial reconciliation,
"do you find yourself getting inspired to write
"about this particular moment in history
that we are currently living in?"
That's for you. - Carlyle: Oh, yeah.
I don't, not at the moment.
- Brenda: Gavin, you getting inspired to write something
about the current situation we're in?
- Gavin: It's interesting you ask that
because one of your first questions
had to do with how is it to be doing--
- Okay, thank you.
- Brenda: Somebody's on-- somebody's on mic.
I guess it sounds like Eva. - Gavin: As I've said before,
and will say again,
this is nothing new for me as a black man.
We've been dealing with this kind of crap
for a very long time.
It's just so happens that there is cell phones now that record
things and people are being held more accountable.
So.
Being here right now in Spring Green in a fishbowl,
as one of the few black people in this town,
that has its own kind of effect on me,
just as a person, much less as an artist.
But for me, the only thing that is different for me right now
is that I have a 22 year-old son
who gets pulled over by the police simply for being
a 22 year-old black man and there's that concern,
but as far as I am...
It's-- There's nothing new in it for me,
other than more people who happen to be white
are coming at me wanting to say, "I'm sorry.
How can I help?"
There's more of that,
which, for me, as I'm trying to do my work,
I'm trying to just live my life,
sometimes gets to be a little overwhelming
because I can't fix that for other folks,
but it's really nothing new under the sun, for me.
- Brenda: That's-- that's terrible.
- Gavin: For my son, I do hope
that it's-- that something comes out of it
that is positive and helpful in us as a country.
finally, really like talking about
this elephant that's in the room
that we still have an issue with talking about,
but we have such a long way to go and this is so not new for me
that I got old stuff that I was working on 20 years ago
that could speak to what's happening right now.
So, yeah.
- Carlyle: Yeah, I feel the same way, Gavin,
with like, you know, one caveat.
I mean, yeah.
I mean I've been writing about this thing all my life,
but it's not--
Nothing-- there's not much that's surprising about it,
except that racism has gotten so bad
that even white people are mad about it.
you know? - [laughter]
- Carlyle: I don't know what to say to that, you know whether
it's amusing, but it's actually quite you know astonishing.
I mean the masses of you know when you think about you know
the civil rights movement, you know
the masses of white people did nothing.
You know the people that was there.
It was just you know.
It's just a really small group of people that were, you know,
the Freedom Rides and whatever,
I mean, you know, they were allies.
They were really there on the line you know,
but like you know,
there are more white people than black people
in all these things, you know,
and they're mad and they're staying out there a long time,
and they're seemingly committed and so something is different.
- Brenda: It's certainly, as a white person,
from my perspective, feels very different.
I have a lot of different--
I just see people that have never ever, ever, ever, ever
ventured into a conversation about things saying,
there's-- they've got to do something.
So, from my perspective over here in my limited work with--
inside this conversation in the last 10 years,
it's a-- it's feels different.
I hope only to God that we stay persistent and consistent
and work hard on making some real change.
I wanted to ask.
There's a question from someone here that texting me.
Sorry, my phone is just blowing up,
but is there-- a lot of people wanna talk.
One thing that Alys also asked was,
"What did the other men working on this learn this week?
"What were you practicing while you're in the room
"with this play?
"What things did not occur to you
"before working on this piece?
What personal things came up and how are you working on this?"
Jim Ridge?
- Jim: The way that the play is structured,
I got to listen to the first act over and over, so
I got to just be in the room and listen.
So, so much, I'm learning.
Tonight, one of the things that struck me was,
I'm gonna not quote it accurately,
but it's, "Making art may not be the best thing,
but at least it's something to do,"
which for the first time it was like,
Oh, there's a point of connection
and then, yeah, just listening to the--
It was really, really struck by the--
Carlyle's already addressed it,
but the having to keep two audiences in your mind,
while trying to create.
It's just, it makes the creative process
exponentially more difficult than--
I was really struck by that this week.
- Brenda: How about you Jim DeVita?
- Jim: [clears throat]
Uh, I don't know.
I think I just-- I--
Just listened a lot more than...
I don't know.
I think, I just wanted to support this work
as best as I could.
I don't have a lot of context for this.
I'm gaining more context for the, for the--
for this subject matter in the world today,
I'm gaining more context every, you know, every year,
but so it's a great, again,
a learning experience for me to listen to this play--
I mean to get to listen to the whole first act
and just to listen to Mr. Hughes and listen to Gavin
and I think listening is really important
today
not just as an artist, not just as an actor, so...
I think, yes, I think it's a gift to be able to listen
to Mr. Brown's work and Mr. Hughes' language
so I just felt myself bringing that to bear
more than more than usual.
- Brenda: And playing McCarthy, how was that--
How's that, Brian?
I mean, that kind of character, I mean?
- Brian: Well, it's interesting because
I am not aware of how much, how much McCarthy was involved.
It sounded like he had his henchmen,
at least the way this play portrayed it,
his henchmen was sort of doing the tough questioning,
McCarthy, perhaps, because
there was a public relations quality to it,
maybe McCarthy was sitting back in the actual questioning.
I'm not sure of that.
What I was aware of was the power that this panel possessed
and it's almost embarrassing to portray it.
It is embarrassing to portray it
and I had the really odd duty of doing the voice
for that one line in the first act of Ezra Pound,
where he mocked him in a racist way
and that's just a very--
Um...
It's just, it just felt very awful,
and hopefully, it served the play,
but so I but I felt that kind of carried over to the men,
the white men in the room as we did it,
and it was...
You know, art kinda heightens what's really going on
and, and I've I could feel that; It was palpable.
- Brenda: Hey, Jamal.
How you doing?
- Carey: We did have a question actually for Jamal
in your role as Frank Reeves
about being a lawyer and my eye was drawn to you
on more than one occasion when you were not--
particularly when you were not allowed to speak.
What it is that you were able to do to support.
So, what was it like to play that role?
Although you didn't have much presence,
in terms of your line count,
you had a lot of presence in the story.
So, what was your experience with the play?
- Jamal: Uh, as Gavin said, this type of situation
is not new to me, unfortunately,
where you either feel like you have
to defend yourself to white rooms or positions of power
or that you can't speak because if you speak too heavily,
you might be in the crosshairs and that's not your job.
So, unfortunately familiar.
Yeah, it's, it was--
'cuz Langston Hughes--
His poetry is amazing,
but there's, there's some things
that I was exposed to that was definitely new, new for me.
Like, I love all three of those of the Harlem poetry.
Like, ah, ah, ah, ah, ahhh... [clears throat]
- [group laughter]
- That's all I can say that I can think of.
Like every time, I was like,
"Yo, can you do that one more time?"
I just love it, I love it.
So, the thing is it just seemed familiar.
- Carey: I don't know if our audience knows that you sang
that, sang at our intermission piece,
but that was, Jamal, gorgeous singing.
- Jamal: Thanks.
- Carey: Thank you for that.
- Brenda: Eli, we should get a shout out to Eli.
- Jamal: Oh, yeah.
- Carey: Yeah, Eli Saperstein
read the "Georgia Dust" poem in our last-- in the last--
in the second half.
Brenda: Thank you, Eli.
I suppose we should--
we could talk all night, but I suppose we should wrap--
If you have any-- one last question?
Yes, please, Gavin.
- Gavin: If I may, I'd like to say, say,
say one thing.
I just have to say just,
speaking from my heart, that
I'm very, very proud of this theater company.
- Brenda: Hmm.
- Gavin: At a time when
people are operating out of fear,
this theater is operating out of courage and out of love,
as difficult as it is and as uncomfortable as it is,
I'm very, very grateful,
knowing all the things that are on the line,
and knowing that this kind of work
is not necessarily what our audience is used to
or maybe even wants to hear initially,
but to step into this piece the way we have with,
with the respect for Carlyle's words
and the respect for Langston Hughes
and what this piece represents, in and of itself,
much less within this specific time period
and what we're dealing with,
I just feel as if every artistic organization could have
an ounce of the kind of courage and tenacity that we have,
I think--
Then, I think some change would be happening
and I'm not just speaking these words to pat Brenda on the back.
- [Brenda declines praise]
- All of us-- Melisa--
All of us have been leaning into it,
as difficult as it is.
Jim Ridge, everybody,
Jimmy, Marcus, everybody, Brian, Jamal.
I just thank you deeply, because
as much as it's bothersome to me having to go to this place
and having to listen to white men tell me what to do
as an actor and, you know,
we have a white director, DD, who did a great job.
with all of that--
That's what we have to do!
It's gonna be uncomfortable, it's gonna be sticky.
It's not gonna be smooth.
We're gonna have to do a lot of self-reflection, all of us,
but we're doing it
and so I just wanna say thank you, Brenda,
for staying the course.
Thank you. - Brenda: Uh, I have to--
As long as you did that, I get to do it, too.
Okay?
I have to say that when we did the "Julius Caesar" last week,
we had a, like, a little-- For all of you listening,
we had a conversation after that talk back
because that came in the middle of--
that piece landed on top of the time of the riots starting,
and it just felt surreal.
And you all were like in that piece,
and we did that talk back in, and, Gavin,
I, I pulled up the screen
and there's all these white folks,
and then you're sitting in the center of it
and the amount of work we have to do
so that that's never the composition of that room
again, it was just--
It was so clear and your leadership and Melisa
and the amount of--
and all the actors of color that come to work with us,
the kind of work that you take on
to make us better, APT and our audience,
see and feel and learn
is extraordinary responsibility
and I don't know how you do it or why you choose,
but if we can do anything to honor you and I hope tonight
felt as brilliant as you were for you.
I just need to say thank you
and we have so much work to do
and I'm so glad to have you next to me doing it, all of us.
It's a gift, your gift.
this group of humans that are asking themselves
all the questions that we're trying to ask each other,
hard questions, and we have to stay accountable,
and we have to keep talking,
but I really, really appreciate you
and thank you, Carlyle, for joining us.
Thank you, all, thank you very much.
Gentlemen, much respect.
And, Gavin, you killed it, man, you killed it.
- Yes, you did!
- [group laughter and applause]
- Brenda: Thank you, everybody, thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you, take care.
- Carlyle: Bye. - Brenda: Bye-bye, be safe.
♪ ♪
- Announcer: Funding for APT's "Out of the Woods"
is provided by
Boardman Clark Law Firm,
Arcadia Books,
Dane Arts,
Nancy A. McDaniel,
Natural Resources Foundation of Wisconsin,
Orange Tree Imports,
Wilson Creek Pottery,
Focus Fund for Wisconsin Programming,
and Friends of PBS Wisconsin.