00:00:11.140 - 00:00:23.570

One of the great things about working at Austin seven areas, seeing all the familiar faces among us this year, we have a new face on campus and I want to introduce to you, uh, Melissa

00:00:23.570 - 00:00:42.210

Wigginton, our new vice president for education beyond the walls, who will introduce our next lecture, Melissa . Yeah, thank you. I'm very glad to have joined this community and especially on today as someone

00:00:42.210 - 00:00:56.330

who used to spend my days practicing law, I'm delighted that this is my job. I get to sit here all day and listen to wonderful speakers and to learn and to push myself to engage new ideas

00:00:56.340 - 00:01:11.620

and that's really what we're hoping Education beyond the walls will be about. And so I'm delighted that these lectures today have helped us consider awakening our moral imaginations , and I can think of few ways better to

00:01:11.620 - 00:01:26.690

do that than through the arts of story and song . So, I'm delighted again this afternoon to be able to hear the stories from dr Tyson and to know that he's taking us on a very thoughtful journey

00:01:26.700 - 00:02:42.460

through his stories and reflections. And we're glad to have Miss Williams with us again. So please join me in welcoming them you word. Mhm. Mhm . Oh mm. Yeah. Yeah, we're all

00:02:42.460 - 00:05:09.490

right. Mhm. Well mhm. Yeah. Yeah . Yeah. Yeah. I love mm. Oh no why not? Yeah. Models on the heart runs. I won't ever. Yeah. Yeah wow

00:05:15.640 - 00:06:57.750

. Oh wow. Yeah. People Mhm. Mhm . Yeah wow. Yeah. Mm. Yeah. Yeah. Go. Yeah. Yeah mary dee Williams , thank you sister. Yeah, as ever.

00:06:58.340 - 00:07:20.820

Okay you think they did this a couple of times a week. You'd stop crying after six years. It's just anyway, yeah. For the last 25 years ago or so people have sort of wondered about

00:07:20.820 - 00:07:48.740

me what's with all the black stuff. When I first started doing african american history in public in the 1990 some of my listeners thought that I was, or at least should be a race man in some

00:07:48.740 - 00:08:07.610

biological way. Maybe I was very light skinned or maybe there was just sort of there was an explanation lurking in the woodpile. As we say. I had some kin folks, some place it was insisted

00:08:07.610 - 00:08:22.970

to me more than once. My lips are not so small and my hair is not so straight, but Mhm. If this is true, I have been passing very successively for a long time. And

00:08:22.970 - 00:08:41.030

then there are those who suspected that I had. There was some other uh explanation for this passion, some that I was uh black nationalist of the bedroom that like Marcus Garvey, I've confronted a world that

00:08:41.030 - 00:08:52.960

sought to make being black a crime, but I made it a special virtue. But this too was not the case really. But I would show up . Mhm. Often not knowing those who invited me

00:08:52.540 - 00:09:07.060

often surprising them when I came and and uh Mhm . To the shrine of the Black Madonna in Detroit . Mhm. Yes. Yeah. You're not familiar with the Republic of New Africa, are you?

00:09:07.840 - 00:09:22.410

Yeah, they weren't familiar with me the, but I would present my paper on robert f Williams, black power and the roots of the african american freedom struggle. And inevitably the first question and often the

00:09:22.410 - 00:09:41.220

2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th questions were why do you do this now? I recognized this. I mean I didn't have any choice about whether or not to be patient with that question. That was

00:09:41.220 - 00:10:01.090

a necessity. But I also recognize that it was really a question of my historical moment. Ask yourself what the question sounds like in 500 years because nobody ever asked the irish american scholar of the italian renaissance

00:10:01.840 - 00:10:20.800

, How on earth she could presume to write about Michelangelo and Machiavelli. People just assume that she was interested in the italian renaissance. And after all, it's a real subject. There's a certain disrespect involved

00:10:20.800 - 00:10:35.460

in the question sometimes, because chemistry is a real subject and the italian renaissance is a real subject. You must be interested in it. Someone thinks it's important there is, after all, a lot to

00:10:35.460 - 00:10:56.210

learn, right? So that wasn't what it was like being a white boy from eastern north Carolina, talking about the black power movement. If you wander that far from the plantation, they want to see

00:10:56.210 - 00:11:16.950

your papers now dr riggs pointed out earlier today, something I thought was quite important that we regard racial categories in a more fluid in eclectic way these days . And that's a piece of why the questions don't

00:11:16.440 - 00:11:26.230

best for me so much. And then again, of course blood don't sign. My name is kind of a long answer to the questions and you can read it that way. So there's that. But

00:11:26.230 - 00:11:43.330

I also, I want to say an amen to her point that many of us sector transcend all our categories of difference in a way that makes some of us disappear. There's a kind of misguided goodwill at

00:11:43.330 - 00:12:07.760

work, except where it actually masks a deep refusal to take any responsibility beyond sipping the acceptance of a pasteurized homogenized skim goodwill. Bell hooks Works nicely. But Howard Thurman tried to tell people back in the

00:12:07.760 - 00:12:28.450

40s that a person and his or her black skin had to face the timeless issues of the human spirit and the human predicament together that he could not go uh to some universal issue of salvation and he could

00:12:28.450 - 00:12:46.860

not go without his skin. There he was in it at. Anyway, rather than ponder why I am caught up in african american history and culture. Let me turn the question around and ask uh you

00:12:48.520 - 00:13:07.100

instead, why is the whole world obsessed with african american history and culture? I'm just like the crazy people you meet downtown. I'm not crazy, It's everybody else. That's crazy. And I'm saying I

00:13:07.100 - 00:13:20.710

am in a world majority. Um you know from the, from the spirituals and gospel to the blues and jazz and R and B and rock and roll and hip heart, hip hop from Malcolm and and

00:13:20.720 - 00:13:37.250

martin and Toni Morrison and john hope franklin and Maya Angelou and Zora Neale hurston and W. E. B. Du bois and Langston Hughes in style and in slang and in speech in art and oratory,

00:13:37.260 - 00:14:01.970

in intellect and politics, in poetry, slam dunk hip hop. The whole world is a big minstrel show imitating black America and that's odd. Don't you think? I mean, I don't know when I

00:14:01.970 - 00:14:16.170

see a young person and they've got their hat on funny or something else and it's not an accident. It means something I don't when they're using an expression I've not heard before, but it has a certain

00:14:16.170 - 00:14:33.350

zip to it. I don't know what it means , I just know where it came from and it's been like this a long time. The world has been a minstrel show for many years and indeed the

00:14:33.350 - 00:14:50.050

perils of minstrelsy or something we could discuss, but . Mhm. I just think it's interesting if we were mhm martian anthropologists, I think if we came down and took a tour, we might find it

00:14:50.640 - 00:15:09.480

, we might wonder what on earth is going on on earth, Since 12% of the population of one country seems to dominate world culture. I just think we'd be interested and try to fathom what was going

00:15:09.480 - 00:15:31.900

on. But to do that I think you have to really fathom the foundations of the country that we're living in. We have to plumb the american paradox . Not not from Jamestown or even philadelphia but deeper

00:15:31.900 - 00:15:50.370

still. Melville rights. Deep. Deep and still . Deep and deeper. Must we go? Our strange national birthplace is at the bottom of the atlantic . Mhm. Where the bones of millions settled into

00:15:50.370 - 00:16:11.360

the sand from the death machine of the atlantic slave trade Which took about roughly 14 million human souls from Africa. About six of those six million perished either on the shores of Africa in the process of capture

00:16:11.740 - 00:16:33.880

or in the Middle Passage or just shortly after arriving . But yeah that was uh the sharks followed the boats. Always read the diaries of the captains and the handbooks. They use the sharks as a kind

00:16:33.880 - 00:16:53.640

of uh to prevent uh huh revolts. You could always, if you smell the revolt coming you could always take the ring leader and dangle her off the boat and make everybody watch. Mhm. John Newton

00:16:53.640 - 00:17:07.830

who wrote amazing Grace wrote of that. There's a great book The Slave Ship by Markus Riegger. It's beautifully written. But it takes we see it's not undocumented. It's a business, it takes insurance,

00:17:07.840 - 00:17:22.010

it takes capital large loans. It was the biggest business in the world. So the records are there now that we've got computers, we can study them a little better. But um and we've got them

00:17:22.010 - 00:17:34.460

on databases and such. But Marcus Whittaker makes all those numbers come to life and breathe. And it's really actually worth looking at The staggering mortality rate. About 45%. All told. This takes a lot

00:17:34.460 - 00:17:42.080

of business calculation. How many do you set out with? How many do you do get there with ? How many do you need there? That's how you have to figure out how many you need to

00:17:42.080 - 00:17:55.480

start out with? Well, do you pack them in tightly? More will die? Or do you give them some room more will live? But you'll get which way gets you to the other side with

00:17:55.480 - 00:18:17.050

more free labor. So these are these ships are floating factories. They produce not only americans system of ports and plantations. Trade empire capitalism, but these floating factories. These ships, they manufacture slavery,

00:18:17.640 - 00:18:34.080

they manufacture slaves, they manufacture white folks, they manufacture black folks. Because on the ships, the crew, the motley Crue's divided and became white. These categories are not eternal. They did not exist

00:18:34.080 - 00:18:48.570

the way they do in your lives, nor which of course, are not the same categories that existed a century ago. And the and the categories in the early days of the slave trade, we're being

00:18:48.570 - 00:19:07.820

created and they were created in this process of this death machine. But when you're engaged in a business that's at large and that vicious, that complicated that profitable, you need not only planning an insurance and

00:19:07.830 - 00:19:30.810

infrastructure, but you need justification. And this is the church where Christianity and white supremacy got married much to the ruination of the world. Yes, the poet says, against the ruin of the world,

00:19:30.820 - 00:19:48.520

there is only the creative act. So, amid the slave trade's assault on on their humanity, the enslaved Africans gave birth to this unspeakably creative and deeply life affirming culture. Some threw themselves over the rail

00:19:48.530 - 00:20:08.810

, despite the sharks, some revolted despite the odds . What more than half did though was survive? Even though, as john Newton writes every morning, more instances than one are found of the living chained

00:20:08.820 - 00:20:22.220

to the dead. They had a word for each other. They called each other malanga. Shipmate deferred , it meant shipmate, it was a special relationship . So I heard one time that there's a word

00:20:22.220 - 00:20:32.050

in italian for a girlfriend of a priest. It's just somehow, it's a way that, you know how, what's going on in a place because if there's a word for it, then you needed a

00:20:32.050 - 00:20:45.180

word for it. And they had a word for it. This shipmate, it was a special relationship . People recognized each other as being that yeah, they came from many different nations. There were no

00:20:45.190 - 00:21:00.730

Africans. There were many nations, dozens of different languages, Toni Morrison rights. Uh, they had prices, but no value in the white world. So they made their own and they decided what was

00:21:00.730 - 00:21:14.670

valuable and the bonds between them, though. The permanence of their bonds in a day to day way depended on their owners, but their bonds grew very strong and pliable. Fictive ken the scholars call it

00:21:15.240 - 00:21:27.570

. People adopted each other. Mother, father brother , sister, temporary. If you were enslaved, you had about a third, 33% chance of losing mother, father, brother, sister to never seeing

00:21:27.570 - 00:21:38.800

them again sold away from you. About a third of the people would have. So, especially in the part of the world where I'm from, where the soil gave out and, and the fresh soil

00:21:38.800 - 00:21:56.890

was down in Alabama and Mississippi so that Maryland and Virginia and north Carolina became breeding grounds where people were sold away, never to be seen again. The Marcin says they, they took the sense of community

00:21:56.890 - 00:22:08.250

for granted. It never occurred to them. You could stand outside of it. So very notions of community and individuality or shaped somewhat differently. This, this new african american, there weren't african americans in

00:22:08.250 - 00:22:22.260

Africa either. This was a new culture, a born in the bottom of a boat and think of it, what would be the foundation of it? It's a combative spirituality of resistance to white supremacy and

00:22:22.260 - 00:22:36.520

especially and most fundamentally and centrally, the resistance to what Dr king called the thing ification of human beings . The idea that a person could be a thing was the thing that united them. The idea,

00:22:36.520 - 00:22:52.580

the opposition to that idea is at the core of african american culture. And so that is why I would argue that's my answer to the martian anthropologist, because throughout history, all over the world, most

00:22:52.580 - 00:23:08.600

people, most places have been ruled by reckless tyrants who exploited the people and took the resources of that place, steered them into just a few pockets, leaving little to nothing for everybody else. And for

00:23:08.600 - 00:23:25.290

all the things that make life good and sweet and rich, they heard it. Other people's Children into armies, sent those to fight other kingdoms for to get their stuff. Tell me when this starts to

00:23:25.290 - 00:23:37.290

sound familiar, you put your finger down on the map and there's hardly any chance that your finger is going to land on anything. I don't mean utopian democracy. I'm not a utopian. I mean anything

00:23:37.290 - 00:23:52.360

that can be vaguely described in any really legitimate way as a democracy is completely a foreign human experience to what most people, most of the time on the planet have uh experienced. Most of us have been

00:23:52.360 - 00:24:11.170

under the sultans and the imams and the petite and the and the supreme leaders, Their swiss bank accounts swelling with our money, their lives streaming from our loudspeakers. Their secret police, charting our territories.

00:24:11.180 - 00:24:25.580

If you don't like this, these arrangements, they will throw you into prison or they'll kill you in front of your mama. That's the human condition most places most of the time. And that's why the

00:24:25.580 - 00:24:42.590

world is obsessed with african american culture. That's why it's so focused on that voice from the Black South . That voice from the bottom of the boat because that culture began in revolt in opposition to the idea

00:24:42.750 - 00:25:00.490

that a person can be a thing. And it has uh been that way for a long time. It's deepened our democratic tradition here in America through people like uh sojourner truth and Frederick douglass and ella baker

00:25:00.490 - 00:25:19.610

and a Philip Randolph and martin Luther king. All of them emboldened by this culture that powerfully reinterpreted visions of human nature and human history, agape love, prophetic politics into this world historical force. This is

00:25:19.620 - 00:25:34.430

unlike anything that's ever happened. There's never been almost a universal language of struggle all over this planet. It's never existed in any other way where everybody responds in china in chile. You'll hear the songs,

00:25:34.430 - 00:25:53.110

the inflections of this culture of resistance. It'll come to you over CNN. If you listen to it , there's a kind of world historical battering ram of love that has that you can hear in history from

00:25:53.110 - 00:26:06.720

go down moses to most death. The thing that's beating at the middle of it is, I am not what you say, I am, I'm God's child. I'm certainly not what you say. I

00:26:06.720 - 00:26:22.390

am the radical assertion that a person is not a thing. And so you hear that all over the planet, when people are standing up for the essential dignity of human personality, when people are standing up

00:26:22.390 - 00:26:42.880

for the essential self ownership of each person, you will hear this culture because it addresses quite directly what it means to be a human being in relationship to the divine and in relationship two other persons to call

00:26:42.890 - 00:27:00.170

and respond to call and respond meaningful to have a meaningful democratic culture that you're a part of, where your call gets a response and the response becomes a call and back and forth. We hear one another

00:27:00.640 - 00:27:11.850

and we are not things not here, not here in the back, in the, in the woods , in the barns in the field, way at the back late at night where they can't hear us

00:27:11.840 - 00:27:33.770

, That's where were people were not things and we call and respond. And that's the that's the that's the context where Christianity that was thrust upon the enslaved in order to more deeply subjugate them, was subverted

00:27:34.340 - 00:27:52.990

and inverted and turned into except I'm just going to say I used to say turned into but I've turned into a theology of liberation and affirmation and love, but I think actually recognized as is maybe the right

00:27:53.000 - 00:28:10.450

thing. I think tradition is complicated. We talked about Elliot in stravinsky earlier and how you can't preserve a tradition by protect putting it under glass. No , history never lives in a museum. I hate

00:28:10.450 - 00:28:21.920

museums, frankly, not every single one, but almost all of them, I can hardly stand them . People like to take me to museums. I hate museums because the more, you know, the

00:28:21.920 - 00:28:33.860

less you like the museum. And even if they mean, well, they put it under its putting things under glass. A culture has to be in in uh in a process of transformation in order to

00:28:33.860 - 00:28:45.840

preserve the tradition must go forward. It must live in order to be preserved. But you know, you can't leave track, lose track of what it is that much at the heart of it must remain

00:28:45.840 - 00:29:07.030

. But it has to stay in this call and response with itself in order to keep its meaning now . Yeah, when I when I wrote Blood Done sign my name, which is a memoir on one

00:29:07.030 - 00:29:22.460

level, it's a story about this white preacher's kid from eastern north Carolina. Um but it's a child of mixed race. Unlike myself, it is like it is a it is a a miscegenation of sorts

00:29:22.460 - 00:29:38.660

of the deep struggles that produced it. I wrote this at the Department of Afro American Studies in Africa in uh uh Madison Wisconsin Where I taught introduction to African American history for 10 years. Uh Ma Rainey

00:29:40.640 - 00:29:55.110

, Ma Rainey, the great blues woman and her and her piano player thomas Dorsey kept me constant company . So both the living in it and in the telling of it, it took blues and gospel and

00:29:55.110 - 00:30:14.780

jazz. Inflections not merely musical, but moral and intellectual imagination came from the blues and gospel and jazz . And I'm going to explain that, and I'm gonna be leaning on on Albert Murray's the hero and

00:30:14.780 - 00:30:30.610

the blues and Zora Neale, hurston's dust tracks on a road and ralph, Ellison's shadow and act and especially Craig Werner's a change is gonna come race, music and the soul of America. See, Elson

00:30:30.610 - 00:30:45.880

says that African american history is rooted in three underlying impulses. He calls them the blues impulse, the gospel impulse, the jazz impulse. And I want to show how these three impulses illuminate some of the

00:30:45.890 - 00:31:07.360

murkier, messier histories of the black freedom struggle and the human condition and my own stumbling towards Bethlehem, where I may never arrive. Mhm. Mhm. Now, to understand how how blues and gospel and

00:31:07.360 - 00:31:21.780

jazz and are working on me and how I'm working on them, but especially how they're working on me these days, you have to remember that this is not categories on your ipod. This is not categories

00:31:21.780 - 00:31:30.840

down at the music store, the bin of C . D. S. You don't go to the blues, Sick. I'm not talking about that music . I'm talking about what's at the heart of that

00:31:30.840 - 00:31:45.070

music. The impulse at the heart of that music , the blues is the most basic one. Okay , now the blues begins in a brutal confrontation with history. Mhm. You know, I'm going to

00:31:45.070 - 00:32:00.620

get my baby out of jail. Um you know , it addresses the grittiest realities of human life, sex, money, violence, mortality, the lack of practically everything. Zora Neale hurston says, love

00:32:00.620 - 00:32:20.480

made and unmade. Albert Murray says that stomping the blues, Albert Murray says, uh, that the blues addresses Hamlets eternal question to be or not to be. Which is what the question is when you

00:32:20.490 - 00:32:37.930

, when you're in a situation where you can't go forward, you can't go back. Part of this is your fault. Part of it is that other person who's dead, maybe now, what am I

00:32:37.930 - 00:32:47.080

supposed to do? You know, there's not a clean place in it. You don't get to sit down in a clean place and decide what we ought to do. You don't get time out, You're

00:32:47.080 - 00:33:00.230

in a blues history. But but the main thing is you have to look at dead in the eye . The blues looks at square in the eye and says, you know, willie Dixon says, I'm

00:33:00.230 - 00:33:16.380

here. Everybody knows I'm here. That's the essential blues posture. You don't pretend it's not happening, you know? But you say, here I am . And so you're confronting the broken world. But

00:33:16.390 - 00:33:35.460

you do that with a kind of existential honesty And then bitter poetry hard one laughter, you're the blues endures, but it acknowledges the brutality. It won't lie. It takes responsibility for its own part.

00:33:35.840 - 00:33:53.580

Ellison says, the blues is an impulse to keep the painful details and episodes of a brutal experience alive in one's taking consciousness to finger. It's jagged grain and to transcend it, not through the consolation of

00:33:53.580 - 00:34:13.510

philosophy, but by squeezing from it. A near tragic, near comic lyricism has a form. The blues is an autobiographical chronicle of personal catastrophe expressed lyrically . The blues is an impulse to keep the painful

00:34:13.510 - 00:34:27.790

details and episodes of a brutal experience alive in one's waking consciousness to finger it's jagged grain and to transcend it not through the consolation of philosophy, but by squeezing from it. A near tragic, near comic

00:34:27.800 - 00:34:44.560

lyricism. An autobiographical chronicle of Personal catastrophe, expressed lyrically. It's often very funny too, especially if you know how humor really works, because it's not funny, at least unless you tell the truth right

00:34:45.340 - 00:35:04.260

? So rather than sipping the weak tea of optimism or praying for divine intervention, Bessie smith takes her whiskey straight and confesses her isolation, her despair, her complicity. But rather than succumb to grief,

00:35:04.520 - 00:35:19.860

she turns it into this bitter poetry. I've been down so long, it looks like up to me . Mhm. She says, uh you may not be familiar with Bessie Smith as a theologian, but

00:35:21.540 - 00:35:38.810

how about this 19 men living in my neighborhood, 18 of them Fools. And the one ain't no damn good. Yeah, execute that. Mhm. Yeah. Now blood doesn't tell my name is more

00:35:38.810 - 00:35:51.930

of a blues history than gospel or jazz. I think in a way it's about a murder that cracks open a community and their marches and demonstrations that come out of first baptist. But there's a another movement

00:35:51.930 - 00:36:06.890

that meets down at McCoy's pool hall after hours and mixes up tide, washing powder and gasoline. It's not a history that takes place where among the saints and the angels. It takes place here, where

00:36:06.890 - 00:36:23.400

we live, where flawed, imperfect people deal with difficult situations that are and are not their fault. They grapple with something murderous and deeply brutal. They don't turn into monsters but they don't turn into saints

00:36:23.410 - 00:36:43.340

either. Um Vengeance is not metaphorical or metaphysical. It comes mixed with gasoline and washing powder. And it unfolds as flannery O'Connor said where the blind don't see and the lame don't walk and who's dead stays

00:36:43.340 - 00:37:05.750

that way. This is not a place where unjust social orders yield to the moral. Please from the oppressed. It's not a place where revolutions emerge. Pristine the innocent die. The guilty prosper fat stem

00:37:06.130 - 00:37:16.750

. My poet friend is kind of the greek chorus from the sideline, telling the blues truth of the matter. He says, uh, I really dig sharks because when they bite your damn head off,

00:37:16.760 - 00:37:36.530

they never say it was for a good cause, execute that too. The But the gospel impulse is there and it takes us beyond the blues. The blues is a necessary precondition for real gospel because you

00:37:36.530 - 00:37:51.270

can't get there with just like you can't make good theology out of bad history. You can't tell yourself a nonsense history a wishful history and then turn it in to make a theological analysis based on ONLYs You

00:37:51.270 - 00:38:01.310

have to deal with the real history. Or so , if you don't have the Blues, you can't get to the Gospel. You know, the And also it starts in the same place because the Gospel

00:38:01.320 - 00:38:19.100

, the Gospel says, were you there when they crucified My Lord. It begins with the burden of it. And it testifies just like the Blues does . But it seeks to transcend those burdens by reaching

00:38:19.100 - 00:38:37.520

out and reaching up. So the Gospel moves towards higher ground by reaching out and reaching up. It's it extends a hand of humanity and a hand of God and it works towards redemption. So the Blues

00:38:37.520 - 00:38:50.200

endures. But the gospel transcends now at its best moment, the black freedom struggle in the South, you know, took up the cross of history and reached out beyond it through the powers larger than its

00:38:50.200 - 00:39:10.170

own. And was a gospel movement. But that was at its best moments. Not at all, it's moments. And even those moments, there's a lot of lying and constructing a pleasing narrative that with

00:39:10.170 - 00:39:22.650

a happy ending, um I'm not against happy endings and I love to find happy things in the midst of horror. It's such a nice surprise. But you need to read at the Dark end of the

00:39:22.650 - 00:39:36.990

Street by Daniel McGuire. It's the very, very important new book about black women in the civil rights movement. It's called at the Dark End of the Street, Black Women resistance and rape from rosa parks

00:39:37.280 - 00:39:46.670

to the rise of Black power. And if I just ask you to read the 1st 75 pages or so, if the Montgomery bus boycott, if we've got that story that as wrong as we had it

00:39:46.680 - 00:40:02.640

, think about that's the story, we do know there's many, many things we don't know and we can't make a good history out of uh tv movie stories sugarcoated confections you know not to wallow in in

00:40:02.640 - 00:40:15.730

some kind of nostalgia of horror at all. But at least I have the blues strength to look at in the eye so we can get to that gospel moment that we were trying to get to when we

00:40:15.730 - 00:40:30.230

lied. But you can't lie your way into gospel really. We all want to bypass the booze and go straight to gospel and just stay away from jazz . But you can't really get there and if we're

00:40:30.230 - 00:40:49.340

gonna make it to higher ground were higher ground than we can imagine now we're gonna need some jazz thinking and some jazz alchemy and some jazz borrowing some creative improvisations on our traditions. C blues and gospel both

00:40:49.350 - 00:41:02.610

ground themselves in a brutal history and respond to it in their own commendable ways. But jazz imagines how it could be. It's like the blues and it's like gospel in that it's rooted in that brutal experience

00:41:02.610 - 00:41:20.030

which is really a human experience. Not that you know the fortunate the blessed, the wealthy, the handsome and beautiful. The Lucky have deal with a brutal experience. It's hard down here. Mhm.

00:41:20.710 - 00:41:31.350

Okay. I was reminded of all the song, I can't remember all of it. But the there's a snatch up that goes it's hard down here because we're running out of beer and we're all gonna die

00:41:31.350 - 00:41:51.600

someday. Mhm. I know the last one is the worst part. Um See yeah a jazz artist keeps one hand wrapped in what Ellison calls the chain of tradition, right? It keeps it keeps she

00:41:51.600 - 00:42:01.680

keeps one ft on the solid rock of the tradition but with the other always reaching out and trying to find a new way to phrase it. A new way. Jazz is about thinking your way out of

00:42:01.680 - 00:42:14.510

a situation, changing your circumstances, through a creative approach to what you're doing. Alright? Stay in touch with the tradition. They always go back to that melody, you know? But the rest is

00:42:14.510 - 00:42:30.490

improvisation louis Armstrong said jazz is music that's never played the same way once. So this is not just an approach to the saxophone, right? This is a way of rethinking the human condition. So jazz

00:42:30.490 - 00:42:45.460

says, we don't have to do it the way we've always done it. Yeah. The whole world is looking up from a blues history, looking for some gospel hope and hoping we can figure out a

00:42:45.460 - 00:42:59.430

jazz way to go forward and not do things the same old way. And you have to remember these are approaches to human predicaments, not just the music , You can apply them to anything. For example

00:42:59.430 - 00:43:12.390

, your marriage if you've got one oh or your efforts to aid those who do if you don't. I think that pretty much covers us, doesn't it ? Right. But you see, you can take

00:43:12.390 - 00:43:27.620

a blues approach to your marriage. Like the woman who sang Killing Him didn't make the love go away . Mhm. Yeah. Or you can take a gospel approach, reaching up to God and out to

00:43:27.620 - 00:43:42.950

your community from your marriage. Uh Or you can take a you can improvise a jazz approach, move to the garage maybe. Mhm. Start a home for wayward husbands. Like Kitty Wells. Did you

00:43:42.950 - 00:43:52.820

don't know? I can't There's an old song that used to be on the jukebox at a place I won't talk about. But there was there was a song on that jukebox called by kitty Wells called I'm

00:43:52.820 - 00:44:02.090

gonna hire a wino to decorate our home. And it was it was she was going to bring a jukebox and bar and all the stuff at the bar into the living room so that he would stay home

00:44:02.090 - 00:44:15.810

for heaven's sake. I don't know if that's blues gospel or jazz. You think about that. You know I hear some blues, I hear some definitely jazz. There could be gospel. I don't know

00:44:15.690 - 00:44:29.600

. The tongue was deep in the cheek but I don't know. Mhm. It's not a clean thing . One or the other way or the other. Blues. Gospel and jazz are like eros and philia

00:44:30.190 - 00:44:51.140

and they got bag. You need all three. You're not likely to make it on. What? So what can this tell us? Oh here in the next 11 minutes. Yeah. Mhm. Hey

00:44:51.140 - 00:45:02.310

, I know who that was, I don't think I know that laugh. Mhm. Yeah. Yeah . I'm really, I'm gonna I'm gonna deal with her later. She's trembling. She goes, she

00:45:02.310 - 00:45:16.960

knows. Yeah. The, so what can blues and gospel and jazz tell us here in the age of Obama and I, you know that early Obama was easy. He plays that gospel thing so beautifully

00:45:16.960 - 00:45:31.470

. That's really his forte. But it's a little harder when we get two other pieces of it. Not just the high notes but the death threats, the actual murders. What do these traditions say to

00:45:31.470 - 00:45:51.990

the purposeful destruction of Brown versus Board of Education With all deliberate speed after which the lynch mob did not even grant the parents the decency of a public burial , but instead they denied that they had killed it

00:45:52.200 - 00:46:07.510

even while they hung the corpse in the public square and dared anyone to touch it. What do you say to a country that's crucifying generations of young black men in its penal system, which has become enormously

00:46:07.510 - 00:46:30.290

profitable and has predictable consequences that are so dangerous there unimaginable. I went to a few quick Verena that well known hot bed of radical leftist thinking in eastern north Carolina. I went to the methodist church there

00:46:30.290 - 00:46:47.680

, which I happen to know has a pretty strong clan history. And we talked about race and history and a man stood up. A gray haired white man, 70 people looked a little surprised that it

00:46:47.680 - 00:46:59.650

was him. I mean, I didn't know him , but I could tell that everybody else was wondering what he was about to say. And he said , I just want you all to know, I've

00:46:59.650 - 00:47:13.470

wasted my life. And then he looked at me and said, I've just retired as a uh, warden down at the prison. And then he explained to everybody else, all of whom knew that.

00:47:13.470 - 00:47:27.750

He had had been the warden at the prison, that he had gone into law enforcement because he wanted to protect people against those who would hurt them. And that first he was a cop and then after

00:47:27.750 - 00:47:35.770

he was a cop for a while, he realized that that wasn't it? He really you had to go to the heart of the matter. So he had so he went into went back to school and

00:47:35.770 - 00:47:47.930

he went, became um studied prisons and stuff and he became the warden that at prisons. And he said That since in the last 25 years or so , it was all right for a while. He

00:47:47.930 - 00:48:04.410

thought he had done some fairly decent work. But he said around 1980, somewhere in there, he said, they I started to realize that the people I was letting out of prison were more dangerous than

00:48:04.410 - 00:48:23.620

the people I was putting in. And I kept doing it. So I made the streets much more dangerous with my work by putting in people who were less dangerous than the people I let out. And

00:48:23.620 - 00:48:37.580

he couldn't explain. But he said, if you don't think this has anything to do with what Professor Tyson has been talking about the race business, then call me up, let's go down to the prison

00:48:37.970 - 00:49:05.500

. Mhm. And he sat out. Yeah. Well, I very quickly I uh I grew up in church and uh I was reading Stanley higher wash my colleague at Duke. And he said he never

00:49:05.510 - 00:49:22.250

he didn't feel it. He didn't that God didn't he didn't connect with God, never had that his wife did. His friends did, but he never had it wasn't that for him. Yeah. I

00:49:22.250 - 00:49:45.570

found that interesting. I it certainly was for me mama and daddy. And then before I could talk I remember walking on the red carpet. I remember the way it smelled. Mhm. So there was

00:49:45.570 - 00:49:59.550

that moment pre language Really? But I understood because it was a direct experience. Oh perception. My perception. I trusted it because it was a powerful thing. I knew that it was connected to the

00:49:59.550 - 00:50:13.700

story I was told. But I did feel it in a way that felt quite real. Have been got upset about the church. It disappointed me, hurt my feelings, he disappointed me really? The

00:50:13.700 - 00:50:28.280

church I had in my imagination as I went down the red carpet didn't exist. I found or I thought I found I collided with the church as it is when I was older About 15 or so.

00:50:29.360 - 00:50:40.310

And you know, I became so I was so smart too. Mhm. And pure of heart as well. So, so I left the church and I found a new church. It was called being

00:50:40.310 - 00:50:52.520

a hippie. And actually it was a lot like being a hippie was a lot like the church that I had had dreamed of on the carpet. In a way. We loved everybody, We hugged everybody

00:50:52.530 - 00:51:13.430

, we shared everything. We walked with the poor and lowly, just like jesus, we had the Church of Drugs, we shared anything you had was anybody anybody who was there that was, that wouldn't

00:51:13.430 - 00:51:25.510

sustain life. So then I then I found I left, I became not a hippie and I found the people of the night, As Langston Hughes said , I became a bartender and a a man of

00:51:25.510 - 00:51:36.150

the world a bit and I educated myself, I learned a lot I had, I was happier. I danced quite a bit. I stayed up all night. Langston Hughes has a great little couple of

00:51:36.150 - 00:51:47.240

, he says it may not be right, but the people of the night will give even a snake a break. And the thing was, I found so much generosity and love out there in the night

00:51:49.260 - 00:51:58.850

. I used to I sort of had thought when I was maybe 10, that the good folks were all at church and that the world was bad and people were hard hearted out there and Lord have mercy

00:51:58.850 - 00:52:08.300

, the people of the night. There's a lot of generosity there more than here. No offense, lots, a lot of problems, a lot of self destruction, all kinds of. I'm not selling

00:52:08.300 - 00:52:20.040

it, I'm just saying a bit of what I had longed for was there And that was nice. But again, that was not nearly enough. So I went to history and I learned and learned and

00:52:20.040 - 00:52:31.720

I went to college. I was 24 and it went well. I learned much. I transfer, I dropped out of school. I had no academic credentials and I transferred to Emory and graduated from Embry

00:52:31.720 - 00:52:43.600

and got a scholarship to Duke and got a PhD and then got a job at the University of Wisconsin . A great job, a great job. The best job anyone from Duke University in history had ever

00:52:43.600 - 00:52:52.490

gotten in the history of the whole department. A fine job. And then, and I loved it . I was in the department of afro american studies between nellie McKay and craig Warner. I learned every

00:52:52.490 - 00:53:05.200

day. It was wonderful. And I noticed though . And of course by this time I let out for the territory, I hadn't, I didn't know anybody that went to church. I lived a completely

00:53:05.200 - 00:53:17.670

secular life. Yeah, right. But I realized something that I was, I had started the church at my house. We stayed up all night playing the piano and drinking whiskey and singing and hugging everybody

00:53:17.880 - 00:53:31.830

and sharing everything. And it was nice. And then, um, but I was teaching about african american history. And so I began teaching about the black church in slavery, the religion that was born

00:53:31.830 - 00:53:44.430

down in the, in the brush harbor, the invisible institution. Albert Raboteau called the uh, and I start, I was teaching about because I had to lecture. And then one day I was lecturing

00:53:44.430 - 00:54:00.410

and I realized, oh my heavens, you're, you're preaching. I was, I was proselytizing for that church. I was, I realized I joined it. I had joined the damn church. But

00:54:00.410 - 00:54:17.550

the only problem was it didn't exist. That was a problem. Oh, but in my historical imagination , it existed with great vividness because it was rooted in something very powerful and very real. Mhm.

00:54:19.140 - 00:54:37.350

That was that I had smelled in the carpet. And then, uhh I wrote this book. Unlike my other books. Some people read it. And mm and I came home to north Carolina and I

00:54:37.350 - 00:54:49.530

began now is when we were marketing the book, the marketing people, they didn't like the name and they didn't like the photograph I suggested for the cover . I remember one thing the editor said, which

00:54:49.530 - 00:55:00.720

was, well, you know, people that see that that are going to think that it's a religious book. And uh, you know, if if the people who want a religious book are not going

00:55:00.720 - 00:55:10.410

to like your book. And the people who like your book are not looking for a religious book. I think she's from a small town, it's called Manhattan. They don't get out much and she had

00:55:10.410 - 00:55:22.030

a certain vision of that. She was provincial, I think it's the right word and and uh you know of course, so so everybody that bought and of course her reader and the marketing people, the

00:55:22.040 - 00:55:35.080

her reader was in Connecticut and was very liberal, Nobody like that bought the book. It was just southerners and christians. The they didn't do any advertising , any books or anything like that like that in

00:55:35.080 - 00:55:44.020

the south. I was in Seattle. I was no, no, no the books sold a lot of books and all of them in the south and most of them to christians. So I ended up

00:55:44.020 - 00:55:59.540

in church a lot talking to people about it and then these strange things were happening and I got asked to preach and I got involved with the naacp in north Carolina, reverend William Barber, he's a great

00:55:59.550 - 00:56:10.290

man of God and a wonderful political leader like the country is not seen in a long time, like north Carolina's perhaps never seen, but he asked me to preach at his church, we've been working together

00:56:10.290 - 00:56:24.640

for a couple of years at that point very closely and uh I preached and it was the disciples of christ church, I think maybe one of my ancestors helped found it. I haven't really quite nail that

00:56:24.640 - 00:56:45.860

down but I'm half oh but sure anyway the holy spirit got on me, gonna be bad lord have mercy. I didn't like that, I couldn't help it anyway. But I got through the sermon I

00:56:45.870 - 00:56:57.400

thought and I sat down but of course Barbara knew what was going on and he just came down front and I thought he was gonna give the benediction and next thing I know he's talking about me, he's

00:56:57.400 - 00:57:07.450

saying you know the people He's been working. He says he said that this man emails me at 4:00 AM, you should see some of the things people say to him, it ain't all nice. Some

00:57:07.450 - 00:57:16.830

of his people are pretty mad at him for doing this being out here with us. And he called me down front and then the sisters knew what they were doing. People they came down and they put

00:57:16.830 - 00:57:32.650

their hands on me, maybe 20 with the hands on me and then lot more than that with their hands on them. Mm Yes it was some powerful stuff. Where are we going to go from here

00:57:35.130 - 00:57:46.370

? I don't know. I don't know. But maybe you do. Maybe you'll help me. Maybe we'll figure out where all we're going, where we're all going to go one way or another beyond the

00:57:46.370 - 00:58:00.440

things we know, beyond the things we can trust , beyond the way that carpet smells and beyond the things you feel you've known a long, long time , maybe. Well, maybe we'll find our way