Honoring Sterling Brown: All Trails Lead to Sterling Brown

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[00:00:00]And it's for Sterling Brown, the blues poet.

[00:00:08]Can I get some overhead light?

[00:00:14]I'm trying.

[00:00:16]The land be bends beneath the weight of the red dust and winding trails that lead to empty plantation houses. The soil echoes with blues chords and work songs. Spirituals sung on Sunday morning. African lullabies in the evening shadows as an old woman sings to her grandchild.

[00:00:42]The loneliness and pain etched into the tenor of her voice rising into the blackness of a southern night.

[00:00:56]Thank you very much for that. And as I said before you uh read that, talk a little bit about, you know, you could you could even add in I'll even add in the um motivation for writing that poem and then also your personal interactions with Sterling Brown and when that might have been and how that went for you.

[00:01:20]Well, poets usually, you know, we get inspiration and you jot things down. But Sterling forced you to think. He he said, number one, who are you writing for? Who is your audience?

[00:01:37]And two, what are you going to say?

[00:01:41]And poetry when I came along was a lot different than it is now. And what I mean by that is everybody has a voice now. But there was only one definition of what poetry was and that was from a Caucasian perspective to be blunt.

[00:02:04]And so you Sterling wrote about the average everyday person. There were two people who you could if you really wanted to see the similarities. It's Langston Hughes and Sterling Brown. And both of them wrote within the the subject matter of the everyday working stiff.

[00:02:31]And so you had You had that that whole thing about I remember Snick had an office on 14th Street and Sterling Brown. First time I saw Sterling Brown, he walked out of there at 11:00 at night, stood on the corner and hailed a cab.

[00:02:58]And he was, this was when 14th Street was dangerous for a 75 year old man to be wandering around the streets of Washington DC. He was fearless.

[00:03:11]You But what he taught you was that what you had to say was valuable.

[00:03:18]And I think that for me, he helped me at least focus on what I was writing about, who I was writing to, and also what you want to say inside the poem.

[00:03:37]How do you do the things you're interested in doing with the poem?

[00:03:45]And this poem, Southern Road, part of it is based on the fact that I'm talking about empty plantation houses. If you go up Route 13, you'll you'll see them. They're right by the side of the road or you'll see a dirt road that goes off to the side. And if you go up Route 13 in the spring, you can go in. There's still houses that were once plantation homes because those farms are still active today.

[00:04:23]>> So would you say that Sterling Brown was a big influence on your poetry? Would you say would you say that?

[00:04:30]>> I would say well >> I mean the way he the the way he wrote what he wrote about would you say believe it or not influenced you?

[00:04:39]>> My first My first runin with black American poetry was with a guy called Paul Lawrence Dunbar >> in the morning. Lies and lies. Bless the Lord. Don't you know today's pride?

[00:04:58]And Sterling was my second influence. But Sterling was like a giant. And what I mean by that is this was time when you know people say, "Well, how did you meet Sterling Brown?" It just it was people knew people who knew people who knew people who knew people. And only thing you needed to do was to get into the flow of that. And what I mean by that is Sterling Brown knew Mercer Cook, who knew Leon Damas, who knew Leopold said, who knew AP Davis and goes on and on and on and on, friendships and relationships.

[00:05:52]And whenever they discovered within that literary group a new black poet that they thought had talent, they passed them on.

[00:06:04]And so I wound up, somebody said, you know, you need to go talk to Sterling Brown. He's up there on that floor, second floor. His office is off of off of the stairwell.

[00:06:16]And so I called the Department of English. I made an appointment to see him and I showed up on time and for about six or eight weeks I got a master class in poetry. It affected how I I did things and what I did with my work afterwards. Yes.

[00:06:47]So want to remind the audience we speaking with Carl Carter, poet and civil rights attorney and um reborn poet as I shall say because it's only like 10 15 years ago I met him and he was getting back into poetry. You tell us a little bit about your book here though that you read from something here but tell us what the name of your book is and or the name of your books.

[00:07:13]Well, I have two books. One's called Southern Road and Selective Points and the other is called Traveler.

[00:07:24]Both are excuse me, Southern Road is really and dedicated to to Sterling and it won in six in 2019 the IABA International Book Award from the AfricanAmerican Historical and Genealogical Society.

[00:07:53]And the second book is called Traveler, which is also a winner of the same award for 2014.

[00:08:03]Um they traveler is a comp compulation of love poems and childhood memories and just stories of things that I've seen that I've written poems about.

[00:08:28]>> All right. Why don't you give us another poem that you think fits the Sterling Brown aesthetic?

[00:08:34]>> Well, high standards, but there's one poem.

[00:08:55]And this poem is was a rebuttal that during the time that it was written in the mid70s.

[00:09:04]It's called culture and it's for Merc the mentor of our times. There's a rhythm in our lives a spirit of union forged by years of oppression as a common expression grounded in our sense of reality.

[00:09:26]Sings its songs in minor keys into the earth.

[00:09:30]Weeps it. So this weeps its sorrow in minor keys through blues rifts written in shacks behind the railroad tracks. A dancing in our way of being through rotations and time to our perception of tides wash from Africa to reach these shores.

[00:10:01]Okay.

[00:10:03]A slow movement of chord progressions from New Orleans to Memphis to Chicago to New York. There's a rhythm in our being of speech and verse, of protest and love born from souls with shackled scars.

[00:10:26]Thank you very much, Carl. Then I'm going to read one poem and then we're going to pivot to Amber who is kind enough to donate her time to us today from Louisiana, great state of New Orleans.

[00:10:42]The poem I've chosen is by Sterling Brown and it's a poem called Checkers.

[00:10:48]And I think this goes back to what Carl was saying about Sterling Brown uh felt comfortable in a lot of different settings and he was enamored with ordinary people and he felt as though that's where he felt most comfortable. So, this is called Checkers. Probably some individuals he met. And I'm pretty sure once Amber starts talking about her paper, you'll hear more of what I was trying to say here. Mojo Pete is bad. Totes a gat. Shoots to kill at a drop of a hat. A man of God is Deacon Cole with the sins of the world upon his soul. But Saturdays these strangers meet. The man of God and Mojo Pete. The barberh shop loungers lie no more silently watching the weekly war. And although Pete won't cuss at all, the deacon's words are biblical. Pan what gets in the jam years in better let somebody play with kin. Be not puffed up with anything. My son trust God and watch your king. Mojo disdains his loud voice. boss forgets his misses rubbish cross. Deacon Cole forgets a world drenched with sin. Vexed by the trouble his kin grows in. The phone bell jangles calling Pete. Pete won't budge. Got the beacon beat. And they play their game till the night grows old. The shepherd and the lost lamb from the fold.

[00:12:32]Sterling Brown from the collected poems of Sterling A. Brown which is a should be on everybody's shelf if you ask me but that's was published in 1981 through the national poetry series. So now we will pivot to our second guest before we come back to me and Carl. And I'm very pleased to welcome Amber Zubolton who is in New Orleans and I I have met her in person but also we connected first online when I was working on my book No More Worlds to Conquer the Black Port in Washington DC.

[00:13:12]And also because when I was doing my research, I came across a great scholarly work called All Roads Lead to Sterling that she wrote when she was uh getting her masters. It's a master's thesis University of New Orleans. So please about another round of applause for Amber Zupolton before we bring her up.

[00:13:38]So, uh, I would just ask Amber to say a few words about yourself, your bio, and then al so as an entry question, like what how did it come that you wrote this fantastic research paper? So, go right ahead.

[00:14:02]>> Thank you, Brian, and good evening to everyone. I so wish I could be there in person with you, but as he mentioned, I am here uh in in New Orleans. Um but uh so for me, I um I I grew up um surrounded by artists. Both of my parents were artists. Uh my father was a poet um uh and publisher. I'm a Zub Bolton. My My mother Adela Goce was an actress, a performer, a writer. And when I was growing up, my parents had a um a bookstore. It was actually next door to our house. Anyone who is familiar with um the houses or the architecture of New Orleans, you may be familiar with the shotgun house. That house that's that goes straight through. The rooms are lined up and there's the shotgun double and we lived in a single home and then we had a shotgun double next to our home and half of that shotgun double was Copathetic Community Book Center um which really was a a cultural hub of um primarily the black artistic uh community, the writing community in New Orleans um for about 10 years through the throughout the 80s and 90s in New Orleans. So, um I was, you know, two or three years old when they opened Copesthetic. Um so, and as I mentioned, it was next door to our house. So, this is literally like I was immersed in this culture, you know, I didn't have a bad time because I'd always be at the bookstore. It was next door and I was always with my parents, always with them, surrounded by um playwrights and poets um and actors and at rehearsals with them for plays and portraiture readings happening just right here. Um that was essentially my home. So I was always familiar with Sterling Brown um growing up. Once I um was in graduate school, I was studying history and because of my upbringing, I always had a love for the history of of the arts, particularly of African-American art. And I myself do I do not consider myself to be a creative writer. I do primarily academic writing.

[00:16:47]Sometimes people assume that I do just because of who my parents are. One time someone introduced me as a poet and I was like, "What poem have you read of mine?" I don't know. I just automatically became a poet by association. Um, but you know, I knew that I wanted to do research on some sort of AfricanAmerican art form. And as I began just my broad research, uh I started looking at different writers and um particularly during the uh black arts movement and there were a lot of people who were uh influenced by Sterling Brown, his name came up a lot and I knew and I knew who Sterling Brown was, but I knew he wasn't someone that is always brought up a lot, you know, in English classes, even in AfricanAmerican studies and literature classes, particularly outside of H.B.CU. So, I said, this is this is what I want to do.

[00:17:56]And I always think about the fact that, you know, much of the the writing that has been done about Sterling Brown, um, first of all, it's going to be people who knew him. So already I came in, you know, I'm someone who who didn't get to meet Sterling Brown. There's so many of his um colleagues who've written about him, colleagues, mentees, friends, you know, whoever, folks who were creative writers. So for me to become immersed in my research, you know, I took some time um at the at the time more than Springar at Howard University uh had a collection of Sterling Brown papers.

[00:18:41]So I went and I spent, you know, a few days going through his papers, reading all of these magnificent letters and correspondence, uh, and was able to get a, you know, a bit of a view into the life of Sterling Brown as a writer and seeing how many connections he had with people because for me there are people can do all sorts of big great monumental work, but I think what's important is the relationships that you build. That's part of what really makes a true legacy.

[00:19:22]And I saw the way people spoke to him and the way people spoke about him. So, I wanted to focus a lot on the relationships.

[00:19:32]And um that's part of what I'll do today. Hey, I want to uh you know share a couple of those letters that I found, read some of those and then uh read some small excerpts from from some of my uh my research if that's okay.

[00:19:47]>> Yeah, that's perfectly fine. I I have one uh follow-up question and then you can go wherever you want to take this.

[00:19:54]And it's just you talk a lot in the paper about the um the scholarship that's out there already and the um the fact that it wasn't a when you first got into it, you didn't see as much, but then it gradually began to come out. So, how do you how do you gauge the scholarship now? Has it has it improved? Are you are you seeing more of Sterling Brown out in in the uh in scholarly circles? And then you can go after you answer that, you can go and talk about the letters and talk about that kind of stuff as well. Go ahead.

[00:20:32]>> Okay. Sure.

[00:20:34]I think that Storm Brown still seems to be like a a niche topic. you know, it's like a specific group of people who know about him, who are writing about him.

[00:20:48]Again, if you go to just a general English literature, poetry class, there's a good chance that Sterling Brown will not come up. So even though there has uh been more scholarship um it's it's still you know niche symposiums events like this where a specific type of people um who know about him would would come and would engage in that type of scholarship.

[00:21:22]And that's something that is uh surprising to me, which is why this work was really fun for me to get into to to explore those things. Um I love visiting archives. As I mentioned, I'm not an uh I'm not a creative writer. I am a historian. Uh so looking at it from you know even when I was working on my thesis my committee members were all historians. I had an English professor on at one point um he wasn't able to stay on um Nia Osandari. I don't know if anyone's familiar with that um that poet and writer um but he was teaching at the University of New Orleans at the time.

[00:22:08]But I had all of these historians you know since we were in the history department. So it was, you know, looking at this as a true literary history.

[00:22:20]Um, so not digging into, you know, the specific poetry and writings, but looking at who Sterling Brown was as a figure and then how uh, you know, the stage that was set in the time that he lived in and the um, the people that he knew. So um when I was going through the letters, you know, there were a lot of interesting things that I found. I read this just an excerpt from one letter that he wrote to um Charles T. Duncan, who at the time was the principal assistant US attorney.

[00:22:57]Uh this is from a letter dated March 6, 1963.

[00:23:03]Dear Charles Duncan, I was glad to see you the other evening at the White House. Our meeting reminded me of another meeting a few years ago on the steps of our law school where you expressed interest in a reprint of mine that you had seen. I promised then to send you one, but as I'm afraid you know, I have paved hell with good intentions like this. Still, now that I have the most efficient secretary and I'm catching up on century old correspondence, I'm sending you the reprint you mentioned, plus one or two others. I know and I am glad that you are a very busy man. But when a full-time teacher and part-time writer and writer is in quotes like me with an audience of only 13 and a half readers at my count anyway, he can be forgiven for grabbing at any new prospect. So here are the reprints.

[00:24:02]So So for me, what stands out is him, you know, he's constantly talking about himself as a as a teacher. And I think that's one of the most important things with all of the great work um creative work that he did um research folkloral things for him his most important role and job was as a teacher and his what was most important to him were his students.

[00:24:33]uh when he was teaching, you know, of course many people know that he spent a good number of years teaching at Howard University, but he did start out teaching in the American South and in the Midwest. Um so I'll talk a little bit about his time when he was at those schools.

[00:24:54]>> Yeah, go ahead. That'd be good.

[00:24:55]>> Um so >> I said go ahead.

[00:24:59]>> Okay. Um so his a lot of his path was influenced by the folklore work that he did during and after teaching at places like the Virginia Seminary College, Lincoln University in Missouri and uh and Fisk University.

[00:25:16]So this is this is where he connected the study of folklore and his passion for his students.

[00:25:22]During his time at Lincoln University, he formed special relationships with his students.

[00:25:29]Brown even allowed one student named Buckner, known as Buck, to come to his house to help with chores.

[00:25:36]Buck used the money that he made helping his professor to pay for school.

[00:25:42]The student also worked nights at a hotel. And when he would come by on the weekend, he would cook for Brown and for uh his wife Daisy.

[00:25:51]Buck would cook huge hearty meals including pork chops, potatoes, and cabbage.

[00:25:58]He soon realized that purchasing food for Buck to cook might have other benefits.

[00:26:04]So he would encourage the student to invite his friends who were also students of Browns to come over and you know eat the food that Buff had cooked.

[00:26:15]Although Ron acknowledged that it was getting expensive to keep hosting these students, he felt that uh quote, "They couldn't eat a man's pork chops on Saturday mornings and then flunk his test on Monday."

[00:26:28]>> So they even tried to master Emerson's nature and Shel's uh him to intellectual beauty.

[00:26:36]So, not only was he creating a a space to get his students more connected to his courses, you know, but these informal intimate meetings also gave uh Brown an opportunity to study a cast of characters from the South and the Midwest.

[00:26:55]So, this mildly crew of students included Buck, um a student named Abe Lincoln, a football star named Roba Fats Green, and a dropout who continued to hang around named Nathaniel Sweets.

[00:27:11]This the students would come over and eat and listen to music on Brown's uh portable photograph and talk about blues and jazz. They would listen to Bessie Smith and Duke Ellington's and the students would tell him about my Rainey and Lewis Armstrong.

[00:27:27]And in these times, he would hear stories about working on railroad gangs, witnessing lynchings, and about people that the students had come across in their lives.

[00:27:39]Uh, Buck frequently talked about a coworker at his hotel named Slim Greer, whose tall tales mixed with oral histories would become the basis of a character that I'm sure many of you know would appear in in much of his uh in his future in his future poetry. So, in in addition to the students, was there some Did you have a question after that?

[00:28:07]>> Oh, no. Go right ahead. I was just looking at the uh >> So, in addition in in addition to his students, he did substantial work um under the New Deal uh with the Federal Writers Project. Through the Federal Writers Project, he was um in a title that was called the editor of Negro Affairs. and he um traveled the country um not only assisting with that folkloric work but addressing some of the discriminatory hiring practices in the hiring of black writers.

[00:28:44]He was responsible for keeping track of the number of uh blacks who were employed with the Federal Writers Project. And according to a 1937 report, that estimated number of blacks that was employed was about was only about 2%.

[00:29:01]Uh as editor, Brown came in contact with many prominent black activists and artists. So again, this is a time uh another opportunity for him to um maintain and continue to cultivate relationships that he had with colleagues and other um black writers and activists.

[00:29:21]Many of these people served as consultants on the federal writers project including Mary Mlabun who was a consultant in Florida, Horus man uh who was a consultant of the federal writers project in Louisiana.

[00:29:36]Uh he even reached out to Carter G.

[00:29:40]Woodson uh to ask him to be an advisor on the project and I saw this letter uh where Woodson responded. he agreed that he would give all the assistance that he could but in an unofficial manner because at the time he wasn't able to um give all of his you know um effort to it so he didn't want to you know give only half but he also warned Brown of using his name because he didn't feel that government agencies agreed with the work of the association for the study of negro life and history in the letter uh Woodson calls told found that he was considered a dangerous negro and that maybe he did not want his name to be associated with that project.

[00:30:29]Also on the federal writers project he worked with uh people like like Richard Wright.

[00:30:36]In a letter from Richard Wright, he which we know he worked with the Chicago Writers Project. Uh but in a 1937 letter to Sterling Brown, Richard Wright wrote holding the nature of asking a favor. He had decided to move to New York City and asked if you know Sterling Brown can get him on the federal writers project in New York. Did he get him on? I don't know. But Richard Rice sure did ask for this favor of Sterling Brown.

[00:31:06]And then we go back to Sterling Brown as teacher, as professor, as mentor, despite his work as a writer, as a journalist, as a critic, as a folklorist, folklorist, truly as a historian because I'm a historian. So when I read about the you know the things that Sterling Brown did and I read his particularly his folkloruric work this is definitely a type of you know oral history.

[00:31:35]So as a professor at Howard University Sterling Brown taught hundreds of students and was a pioneer in making changes to the curriculum that led to an increased appreciation and study of the vernacular of American and African-American art forms.

[00:31:54]One of the most interesting things uh that I saw was during the um uh the civil rights movement. Sterling Brown was encouraging students to become involved in the politics of civil and cultural movements. He also served as an advocate for students particularly those involved in the civil rights movements in the American South.

[00:32:21]In a July 1964 letter to the then Howard University President um President Neighbor, he urged the university president to meet with him to discuss the financial difficulties faced by students working for organizations like SNIK, numerous Howard University students.

[00:32:45]um as he said, among whom are several of our best and most promising are participating in the freedom movement in Mississippi and elsewhere.

[00:32:56]Because Howard University students have been prominent in the civil rights movement, we are concerned that they should not have to forfeit or or cut short or leave unrounded their education. So basically what he was saying was, listen, these students are are going down to to Mississippi, to Alabama, to wherever to help fight for our rights. We want them to be able to come back to school and there be a place for them to continue their education.

[00:33:24]And that's something that he was an advocate for. Now, Snake also reached out to to Sterling Brown um for their summer project.

[00:33:35]uh he wanted to they wanted him to uh participate in a series of institutes that they were having for the civil rights workers. The purpose of these institutes was to provide the kind of intensive study in the humanities and social sciences which will enable the civil rights worker to carry on his field activity with a deeper understanding of philosophical questions involved in his work. So the snake education committee wanted Sterling Brown to serve as an advisor and a visiting teacher uh in black culture for a few days as part of a month-long session that they were having. So there were always people it appeared that were reaching out to Sterling Brown for various forms of uh support and help.

[00:34:25]Um, and I'm just going to read one of my favorite letters that I found.

[00:34:36]Uh, I'll read this whole wine list cuz it's so good for me. Okay, so this is from a um May 31st, 1960 letter that is from James Bowwin to Sterling Brown.

[00:34:55]Dear Sterling, I need your help again, though I'm a little ashamed to have to ask it.

[00:35:03]I'm doing an article on Florida AMU for Madame Wiselle and have just left Tallahassee. I'm in Atlanta to do an article on King for Harpers.

[00:35:15]There isn't, as you can imagine, very much in the way of written history of FAMU. And that little is mainly official.

[00:35:25]What I'm now trying to find out is this.

[00:35:28]Near the end of 1923, around October, and during the first half of 1924 until March, there was great trouble in Tallahassee.

[00:35:39]There was a student strike. The board of control bounced President Young and four buildings were destroyed by fire and attempts were made to burn two others.

[00:35:50]But I've not been able to find out what the student strike was about nor who set the fires or why or what President Young's role was in all of this. I went back through the Pittsburgh courier files on microfilm but found nothing.

[00:36:07]I never got to the offices of the Tallahass Tallahassee Democrat mainly because of a prayer meeting on the steps of the Capitol, which never came off.

[00:36:17]And then I had to get here to grab King before he vanished.

[00:36:21]I imagine I'll have to stop off in Washington and visit the Library of Congress. But I thought since you have such a tough memory that it wouldn't do any harm to drop you a note. If you do remember anything and if you've the time, I wish you drop me a note. Cariff Bennett, librarian, Atlanta University, Atlanta, Georgia. I'll be here for the rest of the week. From here, I visit briefly poor old Montgomery and my and in my little satchel contains a letter from the office of Eugene Bull Connor. That's how it's listed on the letter head in which the chief of police agrees most reluctantly to see me. Though he feels that there is no problem in regards to race relations that exists in the city of Birmingham at this time. So if you have any evidence to offer or advice to offer as regards this rather peculiar encounter, do pass it on. My best to Daisy. I imagine I'll see you soon.

[00:37:28]yours, James Ballin.

[00:37:32]>> Thank you for that letter.

[00:37:35]>> My absolute favorite.

[00:37:39]I love seeing that, you know. Um, so this was James Baldwin, who of course was already a wellestablished writer at this time. And here he is reaching out to Sterling Brown about something that's not necessarily Sterling Brown's area of expertise.

[00:38:00]Um but knowing that as he said he has a tough memory and that you know there are so many avenues um that Sterling Brown was able to take to get information. Um I want to quickly share I don't know how big the screen is that I'm on. Um but I did just want to show you all my my little personal connection to Sterling Brown. Although I was never able to meet him. Uh in my research of my personal in my personal files, I found a press release in my dad's papers of an event that he was hosting at the bookstore at my parents bookstore where he um Oh, I can't screen share. It's disabled.

[00:38:52]Am I able to quickly get that?

[00:38:55]>> Hold up a sec.

[00:38:57]Okay.

[00:39:38]It just says that it's disabled. Um, but that's okay. I don't need to I don't need to show it. I don't even think people will be able to to really see it.

[00:39:47]Well, anyway, I'll just um read a bit of it.

[00:39:52]It's just an um it is a press release.

[00:39:58]Um dated in February of 1989, so shortly after Sterling Brown's death um at community at Kopathetic Community Book Center on February 11th, 1989. So, just about a month after he passed, at 8:00 p.m., Copathetic Community Book Center and the Jazz and Heritage Foundation will present a tribute in honor of the late Sterling Brown, the dean of afroamerican folk poetry. Local poets will be featured uh reading from his work. So these poets include Kalamu Yasalam, director of Right Moments, Lee Gru, president of the New Orleans Poetry Forum, Vadis Bro of Dillard University, Lis Eli, attorney and veteran of the civil rights movement, Chula Chaja, president of Alliance for Community Theaters.

[00:41:01]Tom Dent, executive director of the Jazz and Heritage Foundation. And some folks may uh know Tom Dent um from other things of course um Adella Goce that's my mom theater artist for Art Arts Connection and Amma Zuboten my dad director of Copathetic Community Book Center. According to Amma Zubotton, Sterling Brown was a mentor, philosopher, scholar and poet whose contributions to literature will live and live and live and live to influence generations in this lifetime. And we plan to honor him so that everyone can share in the works of this giant of a man. And for me, that that is everything that I found. everything everything leads back to that that his influence on the people and the places and the time that he was in and I sure hope that we are able to get more scholarship and get more people knowing and talking about Sterling Brown.

[00:42:08]>> Thank you. Thank you.

[00:42:17]Now, a quick followup question is considering your how you feel about Sterling Brown and the work you've already done, are you continuing your work on researching his um life work, aesthetics, accomplishments, whatever. I mean, I know his papers have been moved to Williams College and it's now they're all in they're all in one place, I believe. So, are you continuing your research?

[00:42:47]Yes. So, I definitely want to u make it up to Williams College.

[00:42:52]I did um uh participate in a symposium that Williams College had a few years ago um where I moderated a discussion on Sterling Brown with uh with Immani Perry and Paula Giddings. Um so, that was great, but I definitely want to make it up to Williams College.

[00:43:14]Uh I have um I have been doing a little bit more work about the Federal Writers Project.

[00:43:24]So not specifically Sterling Brown, but obviously he worked very closely um with the Federal Writers Project uh for some time. So that is my current work that does still include um Sterling Brown, digging deeper into the um the writers uh in the Federal Writers Project and specifically the black writers that worked on that.

[00:43:50]>> Thank you. Thank you very much. So, uh, I just want to ask the audience, does anybody have a question for Amber Zoo Bolton at this time in the back?

[00:44:12]>> Hello. Um, I'm not sure if you can see me, but you can hear me. Thank you for your time.

[00:44:17]>> Yeah, I can see.

[00:44:18]>> Oh, great. Great. Um I have two questions and one is like twofold. Um the first one is what is your what was your point of departure when looking for people that um were connected to Sterling Brown and how did your awareness of the community that you came from grow and change over time and how did it guide or inform the work that you did and that you do particularly with your thesis?

[00:44:47]>> Tell me repeat the very first part again for me. Sorry.

[00:44:50]>> What was your point of departure when looking for people that were connected to Sterling Brown? Because you talked about the importance of relationships um in his legacy and I think you mentioned that you talked to former students, friends, colleagues, especially with the um community that you were in in New Orleans.

[00:45:10]>> Yes. Okay.

[00:45:12]Um, you know, I I named my paper All Trails Lead to Sterling. It it came specifically from a um I believe it was a Darren Darwin Turner quote. Um but but it was like Sterling Brown kept finding me.

[00:45:35]uh um my freshman year at um at Howard University.

[00:45:43]So, I was a um a film major and a history minor when I was at Howard, but I saw signs up, you know, my first couple of weeks of school for English club. And I told my dad about it and he said, "Well, you should join." I'm like, "I'm not an English major." He's like, "Join the English club." I said, "Okay, I'm going join the English club.

[00:46:05]So I joined I joined, you know, I started going to the meetings and um they had put together a newsletter.

[00:46:14]Um it was and it was the Sterling Brown English Club. Um so that's probably why he made me join it. Uh so I was going to the Sterling Brown English Club and we were going to print out a newspaper, a newsletter and when I tell you I can't put my hands on it. I've been looking for it for the last week. I don't know what I did with it. Um, so I actually wrote um a blurb about Sterling Brown for our first newsletter of the year. So this is something that I wrote like in the fall of 2000. I did not remember writing it at all. I really don't. It has my name, Amber Zubot. And I was like, when did I write this? I found it when I was doing my research and I was like, wait, I already wrote on Sterling Brown. You're right. I couldn't believe it. And then um at one point we were renovating what what previously was Copathetic Community Book Center next door to our home and I'm going through at this at this time my dad had already passed. So I'm going through a lot of old files of his big you know those big wooden file cabinets going through them just looking at all different things. And that's when I find the the press release. So I'm like, yeah, I kind of I knew about Sterling Brown, but it's like he kept coming up. He kept he kept coming up. He kept finding me. So even when I was looking to do something else uh for my thesis, Sterling Brown kept coming up.

[00:47:49]So I I don't know what path or how I got on the path, but he he found me. He found me. And uh and I'm so glad he did.

[00:48:00]I'm so glad he did. So, yeah. So, when I think about, you know, the people that that press release that I looked at in my dad's files, it listed were part of the artistic, I always say it was an artistic village that raised me. These were, you know, these writers and performers who I was always with.

[00:48:24]Sometimes I I have a sister who's 13 years older than me, so she would do the babysitting thing, but at some point as she got older, she didn't want to always hang with her little sister. So, you know, I didn't have they weren't dropping me off with babysitters. I was with my parents all the time, probably in places that were only for adults. I was always with them, you know. uh when my mom was when my parents were doing theater together, I was at the rehearsals, I was backstage sleeping in the green room or or wherever. So, it was just all of these people that were around me. So, everyone that was listed on that um on that press who used to pick me up from school or, you know, sit next to me in the in the audience.

[00:49:18]Um, I mentioned Tom. Tom Dan. Tom was the um was the uh best man in my in my parents' wedding. Um, so, you know, it was I couldn't get away from it if I if I wanted to. That's why my daddy made me join the English club even though I wasn't an English major.

[00:49:40]But yeah, Sterling Brown and the people who who he influenced were always a part of my life.

[00:49:49]>> Thanks a lot and thanks a lot for that question. We have another question here from Joanie.

[00:49:59]>> First of all, I want to thank Brian for introducing this wonderful young lady to us. I have a simple question. Um, have you had an opportunity to meet or find out about DC poets, whether they're ancestors or still with us who were close to Sterling Brown, because of course some of us in the room know folks like that, poets. So, I'm hoping in your future work you can dig deep and find out some of the wonderful poets who lived here right here in Washington DC with with Sterling. But, thank you for your work.

[00:50:38]Thank you.

[00:50:40]Well, I I will tell you I'll tell you one thing. Um so I know you know um I hope everyone has had a chance to um to purchase and to read Brian G. Moore's most recent publication um because it is truly wonderful uh looking at you know the the poets of DC.

[00:51:02]It's a really comprehensive work and I I appreciate him. so much for it. I learned so much um from it. Um so, as I mentioned, I'm doing a lot of work on the Federal Writers Project right now.

[00:51:14]Um but the other research project that I've just begun is um uh following this path of um my father, Amma Zubolton, who um lived see in the 70s, I think, for about at least five or six years. Um, and he was he lived in DC at least five years before I was born. Um, and it's a lot about it was like a different life that he had. It was before uh him and my mother met. Um, so I'm re I've recently taken on um researching more about my father publishing work and particularly his time in DC. I came up a couple of years ago and spent a little time uh at George Washington University at the Galman Library where E. Etherbert Miller has his papers. Um and Grace Cavaleri uh has the audio tapes um going back many years of the poet and the poem. Um so that's what I'm working on right now. And I I know that I will come across so many other DC poets and writers uh who may be widely unknown. So I'm looking forward to digging deeper, not just learning more about my father, but learning more about what the DC poetry scene was specifically in the 70s when when he lived there.

[00:52:49]>> Any more questions out there?

[00:52:54]appreciate uh we got a question coming.

[00:53:01]>> Uh the question I'm I have has to do with um a writer and so he wasn't a poet but you said that Sterling Brown had a huge influence on different writers and um I'm think did he do you know anything about any connections he may have had or influences on um I think it's Edward P. Jones. He wrote Aunt Hagar's Children and Lost City. And I just he's I think he's an incredible writer. And I just wondered if you knew if there was direct influence or indirect or >> Thank you.

[00:53:38]>> I must say I don't know if Edward P.

[00:53:41]Jones is from Washington DC. He's a fiction writer. I don't know if he was influenced by Sterling Brown though.

[00:53:47]Does How about you Carl? Do you notice?

[00:53:51]I'm not sure about that because he was a fiction writer and uh he's still here actually. He's still here.

[00:53:58]>> Yeah.

[00:53:58]>> Yeah.

[00:53:59]>> Still here teaching at uh is it American U I believe.

[00:54:04]>> So thanks for the question even though we don't have an answer.

[00:54:09]Any other questions out there?

[00:54:12]Just want to thank uh Amber Zoo Bolton again. get a round of applause for her before we pivot back to Carl real quick.

[00:54:23]And I wanted to Amber can still hang around though if you have a question.

[00:54:26]But I wanted to ask Carl after hearing Amber did is this the same the kind of perception she presented of Sterling and his attachment to ordinary people and how people relied on him. Is this your recollection as well of Sterling Brown? Well, >> what comes to mind is there was a period of time when Sterling Brown, Stephen Henderson, um Merc at least those three individuals were all at Howard.

[00:55:16]Henderson and Cook wrote the book called Militant Black Writer, which was a treatise, a short essay treatise on the elements of the black writers in Africa and in America.

[00:55:37]At the same time, within the same period of time, there was Stephen Henderson. No, uh, Sterling Brown and Leon Damas.

[00:55:55]All those four individuals were in the same in the same place.

[00:56:05]And you wonder why didn't somebody sit all four of them down and interview them, get their writings together?

[00:56:17]Because I I knew Mercer Cook because he was my first wife's boss. He was the head of the French department. She worked there. and I came across a manuscript of his when I that he was writing and I never you know I don't know what happened to it but it was on it was on the black movement itself you know and that was the period that was just the way things were back then that all of these writers who had a name in like Richard Wright.

[00:56:59]Um the uh librarian, the woman who ran the library at Howard University, uh Dorothy Porter, she was married to her husband who was a painter.

[00:57:14]and they all worked at Howard. But at the same time, Howard was like a post office for people who came in and out of town because there was no internet there. So e either you had the post office or people had a had other ways of communicating.

[00:57:36]And what I mean by that is there's a book called Expatriots which was written by a guy named I think. But what he was was he was a courier for the State Department.

[00:57:51]He was a courier for the State Department. And he would go all over Africa picking up the mail.

[00:58:00]And so you would have expatriots who would be writing to people back in the States. And so a lot of times their letters would be just they wouldn't be postmarked.

[00:58:14]They would just be given to him and he would deliver them or put them in the mail in America.

[00:58:24]So when you talk about that and Amber you were talking about looking at that period there's a exhibit or called Blackbox.

[00:58:39]And what it is is it it is a recording of every black poet, every poet in DC in the 70s and 80s. And I'm think your dad is on there and you can you can go there and get a copy of the poet reading their poems on Ethylberg Miller's Ascension series.

[00:59:06]So you know you might just for the sake of it you can call them up said look you got anything on Iubot and they they will tell you whether they do because that it's cross referenced like that.

[00:59:24]Thanks a lot. Uh I guess there's a question for both of you all. Why would you Why do you all think this is for Amber and Carl really quick? Why do you think that Sterling Brown, fabulous writer, poet, he wrote uh published Southern Row 1932, it's like still the gold standard for black poetry, for poetry in general. Or do you think he kind of got disenchanted with it with it and would refer to himself just as a teacher and he wouldn't ref like that letter she Amber read and he said you know he kind of like brushed the writer part aside.

[01:00:10]What do you all think? And you all can go in whichever order you want. You want to go first Amber or you want to go?

[01:00:18]>> Let Amber >> go ahead Amber.

[01:00:20]>> Okay. Okay.

[01:00:22]Um, I think that, you know, um, Sterling Brown to me is a is a is a writer's writer, a poet's poet. Um, and those type of people are not necessarily always the most widely known, but when you ask, you know, three of your favorite writers from a certain period of time they will um they will speak on Sterling Brown as a as a source as an influence.

[01:01:02]Um sometimes I think in terms of literary his place in literary history um just looking at the time I think that there's sometimes that it gets lost in the shuffle um when when people are looking literary history, particularly African-American literature from a broad sense, right? So, I'm talking like, you know, 101 type classes, you have to you have to put it in these chunks. It's like, is it is it Harlem Renaissance? Is it is it black arts movement? Is it, you know, those type of things? and because he didn't fit perfectly in any of those time periods or or so-called artistic um time periods.

[01:01:51]I think that's sometimes um why he is not at the forefront in terms of uh African-American literary uh scholarship.

[01:02:07]>> Well, Sterling Brown I knew was very comfortable in himself.

[01:02:14]And what I mean by that is the poet was only one person, part of that personage. The teacher was part of that personage, but he was really a student of human nature. and like um he was talking about a gentleman he interviewed when he was at um in the hills of Virginia and there's there's similarities between Sterling and Langston Hughes even Langston Hughes had Jesse B simple and who was a commentator on on black life and all from a from a different point of view, but Sterling had at this at the same time Slim Greer and there there's a great similarity between those two characters, but if you if you really want to know, you know, everybody talks about American poetry and Robert Frost, read what was it, After Winter.

[01:03:28]after Winter by Sterling Brown.

[01:03:31]He's right there with the best.

[01:03:35]The problem is the subject matter and the people that he decided to play display at their humanity.

[01:03:49]Sterling taught me one thing. Look at So Sterling would love to go what I would say he's like the guy who walks into the juke joint, sits in the back of the room and sips his beer and does a whole study on human nature.

[01:04:12]I remember once I was in um they called the Pigfoot up on Rhode Island Allen Avenue and this brother walks in and the the guitarist, he knew the guitarist. The guitarist was playing a jazz rift and going on and the brother comes in. He has high water pants, red socks, and he says, "Bill, play me some You know, you you don't know how far a dog can run when you see him sleeping in the sun. And that was Sterling Brown.

[01:04:56]He was a man of many faces and many personages.

[01:05:03]And each one was involved in the very nature and dignity of the average individual.

[01:05:15]Gotcha. On that note, I'm going to read After Winter. This is one of my favorites.

[01:05:22]After winter, he snuggles his fingers in the blacker loom. The lean months are done with the fat to come. His eyes are set on a brushwood fire, but his heart is soaring higher and higher. Though he stands ragged and old scarecrow, this is the way his swift thoughts go.

[01:05:47]Butter beans for Clara, sugar corn for Grace and for the little fella.

[01:05:54]running space.

[01:05:56]Radishes and lettuce, eggplants and beets, turnipss for the winter and candy sweets.

[01:06:04]Homespun tobacco, apples in the bin for smoking and forada.

[01:06:10]When the folk straps in he thinks with the winter his troubles are gone. 10 acres unplanted. to raise dreams on the lean months are done with the fat to come. His hope winter wanders hassen home butterbeans for Clara sugar cone for grace and for the little fella running space that's after winter sterling brown one of my uh very favorites and I think that is the essence of his pure humanity there it's like uh it's also the title of Ster of Holly Griema's celebrated film on Sterling Brown which was shown here I think last week.

[01:07:06]Does anybody have any comments or anything to add before we close shop?

[01:07:11]Go ahead.

[01:07:12]>> And I'm I just happen to have the microphone still. Um, I saw the film the other night and my understanding of what he said, I mean, he said in the film, I'm a minor minor poet and a I'm a minor poet and a teacher. And my my take on it is that he just had a great deal of integrity and modesty and and every I mean, minor poets can be absolutely great. I mean, you know, so it wasn't as though it was false modesty or anything like that, but it was he compared himself to some others and he was just, you know, he was talking about where he would fit in the in the cannon. Um, whether he deserved to be considered minor, but I didn't have the I just had the feeling he was just coming from a place of uh a little bit of modesty and a lot of integrity.

[01:08:05]But, you know, anyway, >> thanks Is it?

[01:08:15]>> Thank you. I I'm curious to know if anybody knows what was Sterling's relationship with the administration at Howard.

[01:08:26]>> I can't speak from facts. I've heard rumor and innuendo it wasn't good, but that's not facts. That's just me. what he said they you know they knew I at least from what I heard he was fired once.

[01:08:44]>> Yes.

[01:08:46]>> He said that they fired me and then they brought me back. They rehired me and then they fired me again. So you figure out what the relationship is.

[01:08:58]>> Yes.

[01:09:04]Thank you.

[01:09:05]>> Oh, I'm in trouble.

[01:09:06]>> No, you're not. I'm Cynthia Jacobs Carter. I know that guy right there.

[01:09:11]Anyway, Carl Carter. Uh, when I was working at Howard University, as we all have, uh, come through there. Um, the administration, one of the main things they hired me to do was to raise money.

[01:09:24]I'm a fundraiser at the National Museum of African-American History and Culture right now. But then I was hired to raise money for the Sterling Brown share. This is what the administration wanted more than anything. So that's what it's there now. So that's my take.

[01:09:45]>> Well, I I'm not sure I think with this whole the kind of positive direction your panel has been going, bringing Howard and Sterling is wrong.

[01:09:56]Now in my view I think we should table it. It's not constructive uh because I think it's deeper than that.

[01:10:07]But I want to bring some uh other well an issue I think uh that is critical to bring to me Sterling Brown is a left-wing intellectual and the architecture of his portraiture is about peasants and sharecroers and working people.

[01:10:37]Okay. So for me, Howard is a very bourgeoa place. I've worked 43 years, served there in that plantation. 43 years. I can say that.

[01:10:49]But to me, the fact he's militant is is the actual crux of his contradiction because he is amplifying the working people all the time. And I think even his offsprings two to two side towame and Baraka shows you the direction of even his students.

[01:11:20]So I know in you know in the you know most of us with deeply rooted in black black nationalism in a very bourgeoa way the workingass aspect of black nationalism gets undermined and I think to me why I did the film even is because it was progressively left for me. And I knew that was a contradiction to the bourgeoa black planet because he he insisted on resurrecting the resistance spirit of working people and peasant peoples. He uh in a very in in in a in in a bgeoa literature uh sharecroers it's a blue story of broken people he made it a resistance people people who resisted in spite of their class status in class in in spite of their condition their economic condition and the fact that they are would not endowed with much resources but they stood upright and resisted. To me, I think uh I don't know if you've seen um Paul Robson's voice over on Native Land.

[01:12:50]Uh to me that is a Paul Robson kind of uh I mean a Sterling Brown kind of leftwing. And also I also believe James Baldwin and Richard Wright regardless of their quarrel white with white supremacist communist party they were leftwing to the to the end in my view and I think Sterling Brown was their pope. Often they come to town they go to him. That showed you there is some ideological uh ide ideological idea in this whole situation. I just felt if you could, you know, comment on that, I would I would be happy, but I know you're closing it, Mr. Moderator. And >> Oh, no, man. I would say I would agree with you on that. And I I would agree somewhat based on uh I would say secondary source. My father taught my father took class from Sterling Brown.

[01:13:59]Got to know him when he was at Howard University. My uncle was at Howard University. Uncle was an aspiring poet and he showed some of his poetry to Sterling and they both say pretty much what you said. He was he was really about that. I mean he was about people ordinary people. I think Amber even states in her paper her paper she talks about the fact that he wanted no parts of the DC middle class bgeoa mentality. He wanted no parts of that even though he was born into the middle class. He he rejected it. He rejected it in in the work that he did his life work teaching people who and and working as Carl was pointing out and Amber was pointing out working to help students get to the next stage who didn't have any money back then. It wasn't like everybody had money. So I think that's consistent what you said.

[01:14:58]It's consistent what I was told by my father and my uncle and many other people who interacted with Sterling Brown that that's a kind of that was thus was his politics that he felt an affinity for the working class and he was going to I mean he uplifted them throughout this book here. He uplifts them in special ways. Even people who you would think are unsavory, he never he never dismissed them as you know you dismissed them like people get dismissed today where they say like oh you you unsavory you don't have any morals or something like that. No, you never never always seeking to find a find a human in all pe all people, especially from the working class. It's and what you said about Robinson to me is is the same. My father referred to Paul Robbertson and Sterling Brown all the time as race men.

[01:15:52]That's what he called them all the time.

[01:15:54]He said, "That's those are race men."

[01:15:56]And I didn't even know what that was for years. But eventually I after doing research and stuff like that I came to understand that. So I don't know if somebody wants to add to that. the um what I can say is it's it was a whole culture up until the 60s that race men were expected that race men were expected to exist within within our culture because if you look at the labor movement and my favorite my favorite photograph of Walter Ruther, the ambassador to China under Richard Nixon is he has he has a baseball bat in his hand. He is standing with a group of strikers facing some goons from Ford Motor Company.

[01:17:00]That's where Walter Ruther started.

[01:17:04]There has been this fear of the leadership that comes out of out of the black community. We couldn't fly airplanes.

[01:17:16]But what they don't tell you, they tell you about the Tuskegee Airmen, but what they don't tell you was they had, it was not only the airplanes, it was the mechanics, it was the doctors, it was the administrators, it was down to the cooks, the waitresses. It was a whole all black unit, separate and unique unto itself.

[01:17:44]I have my father's annual from 1945 and that is it just shows you the breath of black talent and it's talent from a group of people who taught themselves to read and write.

[01:18:07]So that when you what you talk about, Holly, is here we are again.

[01:18:16]Everybody's decided that we don't need to vote anymore.

[01:18:20]You know, to me, I always wonder what the how next week the Republicans will be asking the minorities, well, don't you want to be a Republican?

[01:18:32]Some folks have decide well yeah if I get back on voting roles I will.

[01:18:38]So the whole thing is as you said it was just part of how we entered into the system. Okay.

[01:18:51]Howard was a feeding grounds on and you know I'm not I mean Charlie Houston was was wasn't you know their good marshall was a took the benefit of that.

[01:19:11]So I think you know it's it's was all part of the culture that we were in.

[01:19:22]So uh Amber you want to get the last word on that question there or that comment from Holly? an epic comment or >> um >> made me think about it. Well, I'll just think just one thing came to mind. I think it's something that might be in the in my footnotes. There were lots of things that I wanted to write about and I was like, let me just put this as a nugget in my footnotes and maybe I'll come back to it later. Um but when I was thinking about um something that that Amir Baraka said about Howard, um he said uh Howard was like an employment agency at best, at worst a kind of church for a small accommodationist black middle class. And he complained that while he was at Howard, he said E. Franklin Frasier was on leave. Lock had retired and Sterling Brown taught his best classes unofficially on his own time.

[01:20:28]So, you know, that was the that was what the the stage that was set at Howard at that time. And obviously, many can argue it it continued to be that way.

[01:20:48]My sister, if you come to town, please visit us here at Sankova. I think I have material for you. I wouldn't want you to take it to those white folks in that university where his stuff has gone.

[01:21:00]It's not settling well with me because there's a there I think accessibility.

[01:21:05]Why why is it there? Why did Howard not fight to keep it? All these things are embroiled in me. But anyhow, we have material that I think that has not made it into the film that I would want to make it available to you. I like where you're coming from. You're the kind of person we've been waiting for. Please show up here when you can and let's see what we have and see how to organize archively what we have here because my wife and me were very very much um uh devoted to him. We sat on his porch all the time like just you know for me Howard when I came to Howard is not there anymore. How I met him I don't want to you know drag and bore people but it was for me a teacher. I came to teach but he was a teacher that I sat as much as I could every evening at his porch uh with his bourbon big ice cream he eats. I sit there. We even have one son who was born while we were still visiting him. And uh my wife and him, we are we're crazy about him. Seriously devoted to him. That's why we we insist at Howard. We insisted. I don't you know I as I said I didn't want to go into it.

[01:22:24]Howard Howard tried to stop the the film. Um and I think the recording that was, you know, that should have been done could have been done. There were resources wastefully wasted on things that I know I saw with my own eyes, miles and miles of films wasted shooting presidents on inocation in vacation whatever you have that kind of Greek culture. So, as far as I'm concerned, we have saved something. He's the, you know, he's a he's a dinosaur we saved in this footage that we have and we want to make sure you know more what we have and we'd like to share it with you. Um, I think Henderson, my brother, maybe you can speak to that. Henderson has had crew film video crew recording and that recording I think is being restored now by Benjamin the new brother at the library there. So who is it?

[01:23:31]>> Yeah. So we you know we yeah at Howard.

[01:23:35]So we see things might be available still that are being unearthed. The brother is very positive and I think if you come we'll introduce you to him too.

[01:23:44]You might know him but we we will have him. So anyway, thank you so much my brother. Uh we need to have you more time here. So my sister if you come this way let's celebrate you again. Do us a sterling brown part five 10 part 11 20.

[01:24:00]Okay. Thank you so much my brother. I give you the mic. You do your thing you know.

[01:24:07]>> All right. Thank y'all very much. And how about a round of applause for our guest? Thank you. Thank you, Carl Carter, Amber Zoo Bolton from New Orleans.

[01:24:21]Thank you. Thank you. And uh I'll just close by saying that if you want to get a copy of Carl's poetry, he has some in his bag. And uh other than that, thank you all for coming out. This was really nice.

[01:24:36]My book is called No More Worlds to Conquer. It didn't win the Pulitzer, but I don't care. And uh it's about the black poet in Washington DC.

[01:24:49]>> Available at Sanc Kofa or Georgetown University Press. Thank you all very much.

[01:24:58]>> Thank you.