0:00

I'm Kai Wright and I

0:02

met a listener recently. One

0:04

of you, who showed up at

0:06

a live event we held

0:09

and asked a great I met

0:11

a listener recently, one of you who showed

0:13

up at a live event we held

0:15

and asked a great question. They

0:17

asked me, as a professional storyteller,

0:19

what do I do with the

0:21

knowledge that some stories are lost

0:24

to history? Because they've been blotted

0:26

out of the record the just

0:28

overlooked by those of us in

0:30

the media write write rough draft. draft. Once

0:32

that form of erasure happens, it's

0:34

really tough to reverse. It's also

0:36

consequential very often are the are the

0:38

stories that present the greatest challenges to the quo.

0:41

quo. I didn't I didn't have an

0:43

immediate answer for that listener,

0:45

but the question reminded me of

0:47

one of my absolute favorite

0:49

conversations on this show. on this show.

0:51

Coming up on on America, we

0:53

revisit the lyrical work of cultural

0:55

historian of cultural her book, S idea

0:57

Beautiful Experiments. her book hear the stories

0:59

she has reclaimed from history's

1:01

dustbin, just ahead the Notes From

1:03

America right after this. History's

1:05

Dustbit just ahead on

1:07

Notes from America right after

1:09

this. History isn't cut and dry.

1:12

dry. There was not some, you know, know... tone

1:14

of facts that has been handed down in

1:16

generations and generations and we all read

1:18

off the same book. If

1:20

history is cut and dry, off the gotta cut

1:22

it. If Someone's gotta dry it, right? Black

1:24

studies are really

1:27

efforts to capture the

1:29

ways that the

1:31

history experiences. ways that the

1:33

history experiences, culture, lives

1:36

of black people, African-Americans,

1:38

what our lives are

1:40

about. what institutes them

1:42

them culturally, politically

1:44

over time. time. And

1:46

you can can kind of walk

1:49

through the history of of black this

1:51

way, in that this way, that people

1:53

were emancipated because it was in

1:55

the the of the country to

1:57

preserve the union. the union. It's

2:16

Notes from America. I'm Kai Wright,

2:18

and welcome to our final show. At

2:20

the end At the end of this

2:22

episode, we'll sign off good. I've been working

2:25

on been working on this project

2:27

in one fashion or another for

2:29

about eight years, and it has

2:31

truly consumed a large swath of

2:33

my mind and a heart throughout

2:35

that entire time. So as I thought as

2:37

I thought about how we would

2:39

wrap up in this final episode, like

2:41

what concluding thought we'd offer, honestly was

2:44

kind of at a loss. There's

2:46

just too much to consider. But But

2:48

then I noticed I'd been thinking

2:50

a lot about an episode we

2:52

made almost four years ago. ago. when

2:54

I went back and back to

2:56

that conversation, to I realized I

2:59

offers not a conclusion not

3:01

seems undoable, but rather

3:03

an illustration of where my

3:05

mind's at right now where

3:07

my this moment of intense

3:09

backlash with the return

3:11

to power of a political

3:13

movement movement. to stamping out

3:15

ideas that are important

3:17

to me, ideas about equity,

3:19

about sharing resources and

3:21

working together rather than hoarding

3:23

rather than ideas about celebrating

3:25

our differences rather than fearing

3:27

them. rather than fearing one

3:29

thing I'm thinking about in

3:31

this chilling moment is that

3:33

is movements, those that aim

3:35

to reverse progress, aim to they

3:37

have to also erase the

3:39

people whose lives drive that

3:41

progress. That's why they

3:43

get so personally nasty.

3:46

Why they why they such vitriol

3:48

and argue angrily about history

3:50

itself. itself. It's also why there

3:52

are so many buried

3:54

stories in our history, because

3:56

they're the stories of people

3:58

who's very existent. challenge the

4:01

narrative someone in power wanted

4:03

to impose. to impose. Those people

4:05

and their stories are on my

4:07

mind. mind. And back in

4:09

2021, I talked with somebody who

4:11

was poking around in our

4:13

history, listening for those faint voices

4:16

of true progress, and then... and

4:18

the back to life them the most

4:21

beautiful and lyrical way. and

4:23

lyrical way. I'm Sadia and I'm

4:25

a writer and a cultural

4:27

historian. This idea has

4:29

been a MacArthur Genius fellow is

4:31

a a of English and and

4:33

Literature at Columbia University. Her

4:36

most recent book has one

4:38

of the most fantastic titles

4:40

in print titles in print called Wayward Lives,

4:42

Beautiful Experiments, Intimate Histories

4:45

of Riotous Black Riotist Black Women, and

4:47

Queer Radicals. and Queer we're going

4:49

to spend the whole show in

4:51

the conversation I had with

4:53

her. And her work with her. so

4:55

fascinating and unconventional that

4:57

we met, I had I had

4:59

to start by just trying to

5:01

understand how she even thinks about

5:03

it as an academic discipline. discipline.

5:07

I've seen some debate

5:09

seen some debate about where your

5:11

work fits in the world.

5:13

How do you think of your

5:15

work? a really a really complex

5:17

question because, I I mean, think that

5:19

I'm really involved in something. that's

5:22

more like a

5:24

historical like a historical poetics. I I

5:26

think historians like to say, know,

5:28

the know, to to actually respect

5:30

the work the yes, we respect

5:32

that work. that really

5:34

shouldn't do the shouldn't do but

5:37

she does, away with it, and

5:39

graduate students don't. do what

5:41

she does. don't do what she does.

5:43

of, of, I'm an an outlier who

5:45

is fortunate by to be

5:47

engaged by historians, but you're

5:50

right, I don't actually fit

5:52

into the category. the category.

5:54

yourself, you don't think you fit in that

5:56

category. That's not what you're aspiring to. You're

5:58

aspiring to something different. I mean,

6:00

I I think that's

6:02

changed over time. I I

6:04

think that in wayward wayward

6:06

lives, beautiful experiments, something

6:08

shifted and I and I

6:11

boundary a boundary and I

6:13

don't I don't think there's

6:15

any going back. back. So, you know,

6:17

I joke that my that my method

6:19

is as wayward as those I

6:21

write about. about. So so I

6:23

think the cultural historian maybe now

6:25

fits. maybe now fits well than it

6:27

it did in the past. past.

6:29

So, settle in, make yourself some

6:31

tea or something. We're not taking

6:34

calls. We're just going to let some tea

6:36

or something. We're not taking calls

6:38

of just gonna let lives tell us

6:40

a few stories of the wayward

6:42

lives and beautiful experiments that she's

6:44

discovered the turn of the focused on the

6:46

turn of the 20th century in

6:48

this book digging she's digging around

6:50

in the archives finding snippets and flashes

6:52

of life and then then trying to

6:54

either more fully document those lives lives

6:56

sometimes just imagine their worlds their

6:58

us For her to begin by reading

7:01

a section from one of her

7:03

early chapters a in which she

7:05

describes this time early the people

7:07

in it who have captured

7:09

her mind. time and the

7:11

people in it who have

7:13

captured her mind. It was

7:15

an was when Negroes

7:17

were the were the most beautiful

7:19

people and this was no less

7:21

true of her of her. even

7:24

her detractors reluctantly

7:26

admitted as much.

7:28

much. It is hard is hard. It's

7:30

to explain what's beautiful about

7:32

a ordinary colored girl

7:34

of no exceptional talents. a

7:37

face difficult to discern in

7:39

the crowd, in the an average

7:42

korine destined to be a star,

7:44

be a or even the heroine

7:46

of the feminist plot. In

7:49

some regard, it is to

7:51

recognize the obvious. but

7:53

that which is reluctantly

7:55

seated. seated. of

7:57

the of the black ordinary.

8:00

The beauty resides in and

8:02

animates the determination to

8:04

live free. The beauty

8:06

that propels the experiments

8:08

in living otherwise. It

8:11

encompasses the extraordinary and

8:14

the mundane, art and

8:16

everyday use. Beauty is

8:18

not a luxury, rather

8:20

it is a way

8:22

of creating possibility in

8:24

the space of enclosure,

8:27

a radical art of

8:29

subsistence and embrace of

8:31

our terribleness, transfiguration of

8:33

the given. It

8:35

is a will to adorn,

8:38

a proclivity for the baroque,

8:40

and the love of too

8:42

much. The

8:47

the love of too much. Correct

8:50

me if I'm wrong, but it's almost,

8:52

you're describing a composite of the human

8:54

that you are searching for in the

8:56

archives in this book. Is that the

8:58

case and If so, what

9:00

is the origin of that? Why are

9:02

you seeking out that person? I

9:05

think that you're right. I mean,

9:07

as I began to do

9:09

the research for this book,

9:11

I had this encounter with

9:14

a photograph Bye. by Thomas

9:16

and in the photograph,

9:18

it was a nude

9:20

photograph of a young black

9:22

girl, maybe nine, 10,

9:24

eleven years old. And

9:27

I thought, Who

9:29

is she? How did she wind up? in

9:32

the studio under

9:34

what conditions did she

9:36

find herself naked

9:38

and being photographed by

9:40

Eakins and his team.

9:42

And that

9:44

figure initiated the quest.

9:48

And so in some sense,

9:50

the book is about the impossible

9:52

search for this

9:54

figure and it traces

9:56

her through. the lives

9:58

of a number

10:00

of young women and young

10:03

genderqueer folk, and it

10:05

is a serial portrait. So

10:07

all of those who

10:09

I write about are this

10:12

young girl, and none

10:14

of them are. And you

10:16

said an impossible search,

10:18

because the point is that

10:20

these are people who

10:23

appear in the archives, but

10:25

only in flashes. Yes,

10:27

and often that is how

10:29

black girls and women

10:31

appear in historical archives, whether

10:34

in the archive of

10:36

slavery stripped of names and

10:38

any identity. And here

10:40

she's denied even a first

10:43

name. And that seems

10:45

really exemplary of the problem

10:47

of history and its

10:49

proper subjects, right? So we

10:51

think about these representative

10:54

figures, these exceptional figures, these

10:56

notable figures. So how

10:58

does one write an account

11:00

of a nameless figure?

11:02

And rather than that being

11:05

a deterrent to finding

11:07

out about her life, for

11:09

me, it's the incitement.

11:11

Like what was her journey

11:13

through the streets of

11:16

the city? Where might she

11:18

have lived? Who

11:20

were all the other

11:22

girls who were like her,

11:24

who crossed paths with her?

11:27

And I think that a

11:29

central question is who's fit

11:31

to be a historical subject,

11:33

right? Who's imagined as being

11:35

capable of transforming history, transforming

11:38

social relations, certainly not

11:40

poor black girls. That passage

11:42

begins, it was an age

11:44

when Negroes were the most

11:46

beautiful people. What is this

11:48

age? And why do you

11:50

describe it that way? If

11:53

we think of early 20th

11:55

century American literature, if

11:57

we think by the time

11:59

that there's the advent of

12:01

it. jazz Age, there's

12:04

something about black modernity

12:06

or young black. men

12:09

and women in the

12:11

city cutting too fine a

12:13

figure, too much in

12:15

love with beauty, which is

12:17

considered dangerous and wasteful

12:19

and transaggressive. But yet no

12:21

one can deny it, even the you

12:23

know, the white reformers

12:25

who would eradicate the behavior,

12:27

acknowledge, my God, they

12:29

look really good, right? And

12:31

there's a kind of

12:33

suspicion that's connected with, you

12:35

know, the inexpensive but

12:38

beautiful clothes, the too many

12:40

ribbons, the flash and

12:42

the style, or the leader

12:44

and intellectual Alexander Krummel,

12:46

who actually delivered sermons about

12:48

the dangers of aesthetical

12:50

negros. I love that for

12:52

instance, it sounds like the

12:54

name of the band.

12:56

Aesthetical negros. And again, that

12:58

aesthetical, It's not, you know,

13:00

it's not aesthetic. It's aesthetical.

13:02

the aesthetical is precisely about the

13:04

too much. May we all

13:06

be aesthetical Negroes. Exactly, exactly.

13:08

mean, and Zora Neal Hurston,

13:10

in her essay, The

13:13

Characteristics of Negro Expression, mean,

13:15

she provides a formal

13:17

language for this too much,

13:19

right? She talks about

13:21

all of these things that

13:24

are considered. excessive, baroque,

13:26

But those are, you know,

13:29

so wonderful. And I

13:31

guess as I watched these

13:33

Aesthetical Negroes move through

13:35

the city and create. lives,

13:38

I just thought, yes, and

13:40

I just wanted to be

13:42

in that moment of possibility

13:44

with them. You're

13:49

listening to a conversation I

13:51

had in 2021 with cultural historian

13:53

Saidiah Hartman coming up We

13:55

joined Saidiah in a moment of

13:57

possibility the story of Mae

13:59

Enoch in... Arthur Harris, just ahead. I'm I'm

14:01

Kairi Wright, and this is a

14:03

final episode of Notes from America.

14:06

Stay with us. with us. WNYC Studios is

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Wherever you get your podcast. Hi,

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I'm Regina Dehere, a longtime a longtime

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producer with from America. I'm I'm just

15:18

popping in to quickly tell

15:20

you about a project that speaks

15:22

so well to what we

15:24

try to do on this show.

15:26

show. Use stories to tell a

15:28

larger narrative about America for

15:30

people who want to embrace a

15:32

truly pluralistic society. you. society.

15:35

in Black is an initiative from from

15:38

showcases the richness and complexity

15:40

of Black life in this

15:42

country through stories told by

15:45

Black people. Because by

15:47

truth is narratives matter. is, You

15:49

can check out You can check .org to

15:51

hear voices like these. like these. What

15:53

does black love mean to

15:55

you and where do you you

15:57

it in your life? life? Black

15:59

love. to me, man, man, it's just

16:01

like force of nature. not

16:03

being afraid to hold someone or scold

16:06

them or hold them accountable or uplift

16:08

them. The ways it showed up in

16:10

my life was seeing you and mom

16:12

together. not just like holding the

16:14

door for her, but how Y 'all

16:16

would laugh together and play. her

16:18

singing to me at night rubbing my

16:20

back so I could fall asleep at three,

16:22

four, five years old, or. or Grandma,

16:24

your mother, making sure when I came

16:27

over there after school, I had some

16:29

toast with butter and chocolate milk, Nesquik

16:31

powder, two scoops, sometimes three if I'm

16:33

feeling froggy. When you put up

16:35

the Nesquik, quick, I can see that metal

16:37

can in her cupboard and I would

16:39

get the biggest glass and turn it to

16:41

a milkshake so daggone thick with chocolate.

16:43

Yeah, and just being at the opposite ends

16:46

of the table, sharing space, holding space,

16:48

you know. as love. And

16:51

your story can be a

16:53

part of the Brightness in Black

16:55

collection. Learn more at BrightnessinBlack .org.

16:57

Okay, let me let you

16:59

get back to the episode. Thanks

17:01

for listening. It's

17:14

Notes from America. I'm Kai

17:16

Wright. And this week we are

17:18

revisiting a conversation I had

17:20

in 2021 with cultural historian Saidiah

17:22

Hartman. Saidiah describes her work

17:24

as historical poetics, which sounds right

17:26

to me. In her book,

17:29

Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments, she rummages

17:31

around in the archives of

17:33

the early 20th century, looking for

17:35

accounts of the kind of

17:37

everyday, radical lives that rarely make

17:39

it into history books. Tell

17:42

me the story of Mae

17:44

Enoch and Arthur Harris. Mae

17:47

Enoch and Arthur

17:49

Harris were the kind

17:52

of young working

17:54

class, black people who

17:56

were entering. the city

17:58

um they entered me city.

18:00

York City in 1900, and there

18:02

was a way in there was a way

18:04

in which they weren't by you know old

18:06

you know. of New York right

18:08

of New York, of these in

18:10

all of these cities, mean,

18:12

this is also true of

18:15

Philadelphia. there's a small a small

18:17

presence of black folks and

18:19

many of those people

18:21

are respectable black folks. They're

18:23

not. not identified as a

18:25

problem in the city. the we're

18:27

beginning to see these

18:29

waves of new migrants new

18:31

a fear of their

18:34

presence by the a

18:36

establishment and the Negro

18:38

establishment is only slightly

18:40

less establishment is have just less

18:42

Arthur out in the

18:44

world. and Arthur summer.

18:47

the world and in is in

18:49

the bar having drinks with

18:51

his friend, and Mae is

18:53

waiting for him outside him

18:55

calling and like, come on, I'm waiting out

18:57

here too long. waiting out she's waiting. And

18:59

while police officer him, a not

19:01

wearing a uniform not wearing a

19:03

grabs her and pulls

19:05

her. her and up the street,

19:07

of course, mistaking her for

19:09

a prostitute, a which is how

19:12

the racialized gays saw black

19:14

women who were occupying public

19:16

space. They were prostitutes. And

19:18

in the case of

19:20

Arthur, and he responds a he

19:22

gets in a brawl

19:25

with this white man who

19:27

they later find out

19:29

is a police officer. tenderloin in

19:31

New is 1900, they're in few in

19:33

New York. Can you just say a

19:35

few words about like the scene in

19:37

the Tenderloin? The the vice

19:39

district of the city, So

19:41

so it extended between

19:44

20th and 53rd streets, West of

19:46

of Avenue and running along

19:48

the waterfront. And what was and. terms

19:50

of the racial. the racial organization of

19:52

the that the is that the

19:54

avenues they were So they were

19:57

Italian and Jewish Jewish then

19:59

the the side. streets black,

20:01

and it was called

20:03

a tenderloin because the

20:05

corruption was so great that

20:07

the police officers received the biggest

20:09

payments there. so they would

20:11

say that it was You know, the

20:14

tenderest and juiciest part of the

20:16

graph to be taken was from

20:18

the tenderloin. Good grief. This

20:20

scene that they would be a part

20:22

of. would be just the densely

20:24

packed life it was hot

20:27

so everyone was in the street

20:29

it was two o 'clock in

20:31

the morning the streets were packed.

20:33

the tenement is hot,

20:35

so people are sleeping on.

20:37

fire escapes, people are sleeping

20:39

on the front steps, people

20:41

are sleeping in the foyer,

20:44

so it's bad. public

20:46

aliveness and the

20:48

proximity of city

20:50

life and there's

20:52

an excitement. about that,

20:54

right? If black folks can make

20:56

a way for themselves anywhere, well,

20:58

certainly it's got to be New

21:00

York, right? And so

21:02

it's that nascent

21:05

sense of possibility.

21:07

that they embody. When

21:10

this altercation happens Arthur

21:13

kills the white man in the end.

21:15

He stabs him and the man

21:17

dies in the street. And

21:19

it turns out that he's a

21:21

cop and so then. Just

21:23

sort of describe what happens from there. So

21:26

basically there is a

21:28

search for Arthur Harris,

21:30

but at the funeral. he

21:33

two days later for Thorpe

21:35

the police officer, a

21:37

woman at the wake sees

21:39

a young black man

21:41

walking down the street and

21:43

says, oh, there's a

21:46

black person, let's kill him.

21:48

She didn't use the

21:50

term black person. And then

21:52

that incites this mob

21:54

action that engulfs the city.

21:56

And basically, every negro

21:58

is targeted. So women are pulled

22:00

off streetcars and beaten, children

22:02

are beaten, white neighbors turn

22:04

on their black neighbors. So

22:06

violence engulfs the city for

22:08

all of those days and

22:10

the riot also becomes a

22:12

factor then in the migration

22:14

of black folks out of

22:16

the tenderloin and uptown to

22:18

Harlem. So coming back to

22:20

May and Arthur and that

22:23

fateful night. the part of

22:25

their story where they're in

22:27

the bar and they're leaving

22:29

the bar and when the

22:31

officer grabs them, it seems

22:33

like it doesn't occur to

22:35

them that this is about

22:37

to be a problem. They're

22:39

just in a moment of

22:41

such joy. It doesn't occur

22:43

to them. And I think

22:45

it's also just, you know,

22:47

the assumption of the equality

22:49

of Northern space. I mean,

22:51

Arthur is like, what are

22:53

you doing with your hands

22:55

on, you know, my partner?

22:57

And he's ready to defend

22:59

her. and to confront a

23:01

white man in the street

23:03

and I think that that

23:05

sense of defiance is also

23:07

something that characterizes the new

23:09

Negro and it's something that

23:11

the white mob reacted to

23:13

and literally the description is

23:15

who are these Negroes moving

23:17

through the streets with so

23:19

much swagger and attitude, right?

23:21

Like they don't know their

23:23

place. And that's what the

23:25

city represents, the possibility of

23:28

no longer having to be

23:30

confined to a place. What

23:32

really struck me in reading

23:34

this particular story in the

23:36

book is how it ends,

23:38

because in that era, black

23:40

thinkers and organizers, we're trying

23:42

to record our own facts

23:44

about this violence, right? I

23:46

mean, there's community journalism that's

23:48

going on, there's public history

23:50

that's going on. And so

23:52

the community... does in fact

23:54

chronicle this story and when

23:56

the story is written. And

23:58

when when black

24:00

people write black

24:02

people write this is entirely

24:04

absent from it. absent

24:06

from it. I just, I

24:09

It me me up to say it. There's

24:11

a strategy for

24:13

achieving. rights and equality,

24:16

equality, and that's about the

24:18

politics of respectability. So

24:21

if. black people if we can

24:23

kind of kind of our best

24:25

faith. if we demonstrate that

24:27

we share the same values

24:29

share the we ascribe to

24:31

the same. ascribe norms, moral

24:34

maybe maybe

24:36

eventually folks will recognize that

24:38

and we will be granted we

24:40

equal footing. an equal footing.

24:42

likes of of May and Arthur

24:44

that outside of that framework

24:46

of I mean, were mean, they

24:49

were in a marriage an

24:51

wasn't a legal marriage, right?

24:53

It was a common

24:55

law marriage law police immediately

24:57

described May as a prostitute.

24:59

Arthur didn't denounce his

25:01

violence. I mean, he only

25:04

says in the context

25:06

of the of the court had I

25:08

known he was an officer, it

25:10

it would have been different. So

25:13

we produce this record, but

25:15

but even that record

25:17

has certain kinds of exclusions.

25:19

And we have black

25:21

intellectuals, you know, know, like like

25:24

Paul Dunbar, others who are you

25:26

know, you know, people shouldn't be migrating

25:28

to. the city. migrating are

25:30

a problem, There know, that you

25:32

know, level of conflict that's

25:34

happening of this type of

25:36

happening is entering the city and too

25:38

great is number. the city and

25:40

too great a number. Perhaps

25:47

the most famous black intellectual

25:49

of the early of the early

25:52

among those who were truly

25:54

uncomfortable with the life choices

25:56

of poor black people in

25:58

northern cities. people in northern cities. was a

26:00

young man at the time. He He

26:02

was a rising star in academia, in

26:04

and and his perspective on black life

26:06

was increasingly definitive. was At the

26:08

time, he was studying At the time, he

26:11

was and he did not like

26:13

what he saw. and he did

26:15

is the part of he story

26:17

this doesn't often get told. story

26:19

that doesn't often get is

26:21

the boys at this moment? DeBois at this

26:23

is a brilliant is a

26:26

brilliant 28. Ural, who's arrived arrived

26:28

in with his new with his

26:30

new wife. Basically, he's

26:32

been hired to do

26:34

a as of the

26:36

black community. there as he

26:38

writes, he says, there

26:40

was the notion that

26:42

there was a problem

26:45

were the were the problem.

26:47

So they invited me

26:49

to come down down and

26:52

this was the this was the case.

26:54

DeBois is just, you

26:56

know, this brilliant bundle

26:58

of contradictions. I

27:00

think we need to. we need to think

27:02

of him in this period as

27:05

an as an as a Victorian,

27:07

much of what he sees. he sees

27:09

horrifies him. it is

27:11

hard for him to look

27:13

at young girls in the street

27:15

and not imagine that their

27:17

prostitutes. He is kind of

27:19

of like a phase of

27:21

his career he's he's still

27:23

very much an idealist

27:25

and he thinks that if

27:27

I only describe the

27:29

problem of racism well enough,

27:31

enough gonna be enough to

27:33

change it, to change it. Right. And

27:35

so he thinks science and that

27:38

in particular, is going to

27:40

provide the tools. provide the tools

27:42

to. to illuminate the problems

27:44

of racism and to

27:46

defeat racism. later, he's know,

27:48

a decade later, he's in

27:50

a he's in a radically

27:53

different position. particularly particularly curious about

27:55

the immorality piece of it

27:57

that everything about the people's

27:59

lives. he he's witnessing that maybe associated

28:01

with poverty, maybe just associated with

28:03

a different kind of life than

28:05

he would live, is seen as

28:08

immoral, both by him and by

28:10

white reformers of the times. Why

28:12

is the immorality piece? What does

28:14

the moralism come from? The

28:17

moralism comes from

28:19

this notion that was

28:21

widely shared among

28:23

black thinkers, reformers,

28:26

and progressive intellectuals

28:28

that slavery had

28:30

been utterly damaging,

28:32

and that We

28:34

were, in essence, of like children in

28:36

this. school of moral

28:39

development because families

28:41

had been. broken under

28:43

slavery, there was a sense

28:47

We had to be

28:49

trained to live in

28:52

accordance with those bourgeois

28:54

heteronormative. values, And and

28:56

Du Bois says something

28:58

in the Philadelphia Negro.

29:01

that for me is so important.

29:03

He says, you know, the Negro

29:06

church is an older institution

29:08

than the Black family. And,

29:11

and that's the. of the

29:13

anxiety that we have

29:15

a sociality that has

29:17

a different kind of

29:19

mapping. at this moment,

29:21

mean, I think that

29:24

the expression of sexual

29:26

desire outside of marriage

29:28

is unfathomable to

29:30

the boys because of his

29:32

concerns about a certain kind

29:35

of racial progress. even if

29:37

he's, you know, I mean,

29:39

I, I also say because

29:42

Because that's also so ingrained

29:44

in the black middle

29:46

class. mean, here he is

29:48

a newlywed with his

29:50

wife, and they have a

29:52

very unsatisfying and difficult

29:54

actual life, right? Precisely. because,

29:56

you know, a

29:58

decent girl isn't right. to believe

30:00

that that's something that she should

30:02

want. that even as want. So you know...

30:05

as Nina, you know, will yield

30:07

to to sexuality, it's

30:09

not that she has a

30:11

longing or a hunger. or So

30:13

we So we see him

30:15

really those kind

30:17

of living those then when he when

30:19

he steps into this world

30:21

of of like, people are openly Engaged

30:24

in pleasure, men and men

30:26

and women alike that is shocking. It's

30:29

shocking and I I mean there's

30:31

also this reality of of

30:33

of the, you know, the know

30:35

the absence of male heads household

30:37

simply due to to the death

30:39

rate rate among men. So were

30:42

so many black widows. And

30:44

so then those widows

30:46

would form secondary relationships often

30:48

outside the context of

30:50

legal marriage or people would

30:53

describe themselves as married

30:55

but not having legal status

30:57

but not having legal boys or so

30:59

was a matter of concern

31:02

and a matter to

31:04

be corrected and adjusted. of

31:06

the things you of the things you

31:08

that he can't quite take in is

31:10

the way in which public and

31:12

private space space and intimacy in public and

31:14

private space operates differently than it does

31:16

in middle middle class society. you And you

31:19

write like with such joy, it

31:21

seems like you really quite you the

31:23

way that that space is way that up.

31:25

Can you describe that a little

31:27

bit? you me, a that's

31:29

me, of part of the

31:31

modern. the that encounter and

31:33

proximity of strangers, of

31:35

It's the right? It's the all

31:37

of these of these. boundaries.

31:39

mean another, I remember there's

31:42

one one reformer who says, you know, had

31:44

I known know, had I known people. in

31:46

sleeping in the foyer I on rooftops,

31:48

I would it never but it never

31:50

occurred to me that people would

31:52

do that, or so a decade or

31:54

so later. it becomes fashionable

31:56

among the rich to sleep on

31:58

their rooftops. But it's basically,

32:01

you know, a way to escape

32:03

the the and the confinement of

32:05

the tenement. And

32:07

just to interrupt, I like this part

32:09

of Saidiya's writing so much. I

32:11

actually asked her to read a passage

32:13

from her book in which she

32:15

describes the kind of scene Du Bois

32:18

would have regularly encountered in Philadelphia's

32:20

Seventh Ward. This is right at the

32:22

corner of Seventh and Lombard. Slick,

32:27

fresh -mouthed boys,

32:29

comely, buxom

32:31

girls, policy runners,

32:33

nair duels,

32:35

petty gangsters, domestics,

32:38

longshoremen, and whores. The

32:40

and the striving, the

32:42

old and the dissipated,

32:44

gathered on the corner

32:47

of and Lombard. The

32:49

air was with laughter,

32:51

boast of conquest, lies bigger

32:53

than the men who

32:55

told them. Idlers,

32:58

loud talk one another

33:00

in an orchestrated battle

33:02

of words. Pimps, croon,

33:04

Hey girl, send it on.

33:06

to each and every woman under

33:08

30 who's strolled by. Bull

33:10

daggers undress the pretty ones

33:13

with the glance. Passers

33:15

-by could overhear

33:18

wishful stories shared about the good

33:20

things yet to come. I'm

33:22

hardworking folks and jaded

33:24

pleasure. seekers joked disparate.

33:26

this is the future

33:28

we was waiting for? the

33:32

beautiful anarchy of the corner refused

33:34

no one. It was the

33:36

one place where they could

33:39

quit searching and rest for

33:41

a while and still believe

33:43

they were moving and on

33:45

the way to some place

33:47

better than this. Free association

33:50

was the only rule and

33:52

promiscuous social life its defining

33:54

character. All were permitted to

33:56

stay briefly, catch their breath,

33:59

resist the pull of roaming,

34:01

hustling and searching. Every

34:03

hour someone remarked, I

34:06

gotta go and then lingered.

34:09

Newcomers refreshed the crowd. Strangers

34:13

became intimates. the

34:15

flow of those. arriving and

34:17

departing kept it alive. The

34:21

same folks were always there,

34:23

and yet it always looked different.

34:27

It's just this

34:29

hustle, bustle. It's

34:31

a sensory overload,

34:33

and that sensory

34:35

overload can be

34:37

described by reformers.

34:40

as wretched and that

34:42

sensory overload. is

34:45

also dazzling. I'm

34:57

talking with author and cultural

34:59

historian Hartman. We spoke during Black

35:01

History Month in 2021 about

35:03

the entirely new questions we ask

35:05

if we visit history from

35:07

the perspective of its dazzling street

35:10

corners rather than that of

35:12

its so -called great men. Coming

35:14

up, the cultural revolution that erupted

35:16

in Black neighborhoods at the

35:18

turn of the 20th century and

35:20

the new rules that elites

35:22

created in response. That's next. WNYC

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the the end of the

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year as as long as matching

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funds last. Next time on the New

36:12

Yorker time on the Hour, Einogarten, the

36:14

Barefoot Contessa, takes on takes on

36:16

some of your burning questions.

36:18

I always I always wonder

36:20

whether Bayleaf makes a difference?

36:22

This is called Making Making News. Einogarten

36:24

calls BS on Bay Ina Garten, next

36:27

time on the New Yorker

36:29

Radio. Garden,

36:33

next

36:37

time

36:40

on the

36:43

New It's Notes

36:45

from America. I'm Kai Wright and we

36:47

are revisiting a conversation I had in

36:49

2021 with writer and cultural historian Hour.

36:52

Before the break, she explained

36:54

why black intellectuals and white

36:56

progressives at the turn of

36:58

the 20th century the so

37:00

disturbed were so the way poor

37:02

black people in northern cities

37:04

lived and socialized. socialized. Their middle

37:06

class assumptions blinded them to

37:08

the to revolution that was

37:10

erupting amid the chaos and

37:13

the and the urban neighborhoods. of those urban

37:15

Another way way like to think about

37:17

it is as an aesthetic resource when

37:19

I talk about the air shaft, air

37:21

shaft, right? So what those air shafts and

37:24

buildings mean is that, okay, you're in

37:26

the fifth floor, but you can

37:28

hear your neighbors on the third floor

37:30

arguing floor making love of going through

37:32

their drama. through know what the person

37:34

on the second floor is cooking

37:36

for a dinner. floor is

37:38

cooking for know, Duke

37:40

Ellington Duke Ellington and Ethel

37:42

they talk explicitly about the

37:45

air shaft as a site

37:47

of their creative inspiration. At

37:49

the water, say, know, I At

37:51

the argument said, you then I would write

37:53

the lyrics to a song. and

37:56

then I would write the lyrics

37:58

to a song. Duke Ellington

38:01

talks about building

38:03

compositions on that kind

38:05

of beautiful cacophony

38:07

of tenement life. And

38:16

that is, for me, the

38:18

experiment in living otherwise, right?

38:20

It's not. Not simply that

38:22

working class and poor folks

38:24

failed to meet. some bourgeois

38:26

standard that there's another set

38:28

of standards and values that are

38:30

at work, and Reformers

38:33

were - so intent on

38:36

creating a kind of

38:38

visual order that they

38:40

actually misrepresented urban space. So

38:42

we see this in the

38:44

photographs. of the Seventh Ward

38:46

in Philadelphia, even when you

38:48

have communities, You have, like, black

38:50

folks who are living next door

38:53

to Russian Jews, who are living

38:55

down the street from the Italians.

38:57

The caption of the photo will

38:59

say, Negro Even as you see

39:01

the Russian Jewish boys, like, two

39:03

houses away sitting on their steps,

39:05

when they take a picture of

39:07

that community, they gather all the

39:09

Negro. children and take a photo of

39:12

them, and then they gather the

39:14

Jewish children and take a photo

39:16

of them And when I was

39:18

looking through the archive. There's

39:21

one photo where there's a Negro girl

39:23

who's standing on the edge of the

39:25

frame of the photo of the Jewish

39:27

children. and I was like, oh my

39:29

this is literally the same neighborhood, right?

39:32

But they've chosen to like order

39:35

space in that way. Trying

39:37

to impose this new order on

39:39

what was happening organically there.

39:41

That so. You know, there's nothing that's

39:43

natural about segregation as a way of

39:45

living. It's an imposition. It's created

39:47

through law in

39:49

the southern context,

39:51

but places like Philadelphia

39:53

and New York, it

39:55

was largely created. through philanthropists

39:58

were formers

40:00

and committees the

40:03

rich who thought interracial

40:05

sociality was a danger so

40:07

they utilize all of

40:09

these extra means to prevent

40:11

it. To

40:15

understand the extra legal means that

40:17

Saidiah is talking about, we need

40:20

a short detour. In her book,

40:22

Wayward Lives Beautiful Experiments, she uses

40:24

a metaphor of a chorus to

40:26

evoke the voices and perspectives of

40:28

the people who the elite performers

40:30

found just really disturbing and who

40:32

would be targeted with these extra

40:34

-legal means of enforcing middle -class values.

40:37

So I asked Saidiah to read

40:39

a section of her book in

40:41

which she kind of uses on

40:43

the life of the chorus. And

40:45

to first explain why this metaphor is such a

40:47

big deal for her. the

40:49

chorus speaks to the

40:51

multitude that really shapes

40:53

the course of our.

40:56

history, and while we

40:58

often focus on

41:00

the charismatic male

41:03

leader. or the speaker

41:05

at the podium, that That's

41:09

what the movement is, right?

41:11

And that multitude. provides

41:14

the audience for the

41:16

speaker, animates those ideas,

41:18

takes it up. So

41:20

for me, the sense

41:22

of how the multitude

41:24

moves was embodied

41:26

by the figure of the chorus.

41:32

Dancing and singing fuel

41:34

the radical hope of

41:36

living otherwise and in this

41:38

way choreography was just

41:40

another kind of movement

41:42

for freedom, another opportunity

41:44

to escape service, another their

41:47

elaboration of the general strike.

41:50

Joining the chorus, encompass

41:52

much more than the sequence of

41:54

steps or the arrangement of dances

41:57

on the stage of a music hall

41:59

or the... floor of a cabaret. Like

42:01

the the flight from the

42:03

plantation, the the escape from

42:06

slavery, the the migration from

42:08

the south, the the rush

42:10

into the city, or the

42:12

stroll down Lennox Avenue, was

42:15

an art. art, a practice

42:17

of moving, even when there was

42:19

nowhere else to go, else to

42:21

place left. left to run. It

42:23

was an arrangement of the

42:25

body to body to allude effort

42:27

to make the to make the

42:30

uninhabitable, escape the

42:32

confinement of a confinement

42:34

of a a tight,

42:36

airless room. whirl, a tight,

42:38

airless room, upheaval,

42:40

flight. flight. It was

42:42

the articulation. of living of living

42:44

free, at the very least,

42:47

trying to. to. It

42:49

was the way to

42:51

insist, I am am unavailable

42:53

for servitude. it. This idea

42:55

it. in

42:57

the ways in which this refusal

43:00

led young black interested in the

43:02

ways in which this these new racial

43:04

young black women who were

43:06

living inside these new racial

43:08

ghettos. to start making

43:10

radically different life choices than those

43:12

of mainstream society. And

43:14

she's also interested in the ways that

43:16

liberal reformers, white and black alike, alike,

43:19

came up with new ways to police those

43:21

life choices. life of which is

43:23

still with us today, is the idea

43:25

of a status crime. of a

43:27

A status crime is something that

43:29

is, it is only a

43:31

crime when certain people do it.

43:33

certain people not again against

43:36

the law to have sex. the law

43:38

to have sex, but if you're

43:40

under age, then being being

43:43

sexually active. can can become

43:45

a status crime, right? So right? It's

43:47

a a crime depending on what

43:49

your status is. If you are

43:51

a poor person in Harlem drinking

43:53

a bottle of wine on the

43:55

corner, you can be arrested by

43:57

the police. the police. If you're sitting outside on

43:59

the of a restaurant, drinking bottles

44:01

of champagne, you won't be

44:03

arrested, right? So And that's a way

44:06

in which we think about like, oh, it's

44:08

the same behavior. drinking

44:10

wine, but one is a violation

44:12

because of the conditions and

44:14

the status. of the person who's

44:16

doing it. So there were

44:18

a range of these status

44:20

offenses which directed young women.

44:22

into the reformatory and

44:24

because they weren't accused

44:26

of real crimes, the

44:28

magistrate judges had lots

44:31

of flexibility in sentencing

44:33

and they were without

44:35

the norms of due

44:37

process because technically they

44:39

hadn't committed crimes, right? They

44:42

were status offenses. The idea

44:44

was, oh, if we can actually

44:46

reform them at this early age,

44:48

they will avoid the later

44:50

pitfalls of criminality that await them,

44:52

you know, seemingly, just because they're

44:54

sexual and desiring subjects in the

44:56

world. So to illustrate

44:58

the point, this idea tells me the

45:01

story of Harriet Powell. Harriet

45:03

Powell is a

45:05

very smart, unrepented, too

45:07

loud black girl.

45:09

And she falls in

45:12

with a young man,

45:14

Charlie Hudson, and

45:16

they fall for each other. Can

45:18

you just describe their of days

45:20

together a little bit? Basically, they

45:23

meet at a dance hall,

45:25

they have a sexual encounter, and

45:27

then they decided, oh, let's

45:29

hook up again. And at this

45:31

going point, you know, Harriet's

45:33

family is upset that she's

45:35

out at the dance hall

45:38

and carrying on. So they

45:40

say, oh, you know, daughter

45:42

is missing. And she's on

45:44

the dance floor, and a

45:46

police officer comes over to

45:49

her as she's dancing, and

45:51

she's arrested for being incorrigible.

45:53

So here she is, she's,

45:55

you know, how it's working. She's

45:57

out, she stayed out overnight. with

46:00

her lover and she's on

46:02

the dance floor and she's

46:04

arrested. And so a young

46:06

woman like Harriet who was

46:08

arrested in this way would

46:10

be sent to the women's

46:12

court. So what was the

46:14

women's court? What was that?

46:16

So the woman's court was

46:18

a court that was specifically

46:20

created. to, quote, quote, protect

46:22

women and to prevent the

46:24

kind of leering and voyeurism

46:26

of women being charged with

46:28

prostitution and all these crimes

46:30

in an open court. So

46:33

it was, you know, founded

46:35

as a kind of reform

46:37

of the criminal justice system.

46:39

So these are like progressive

46:41

reformers trying to, they thought

46:43

that they were creating something

46:45

like. a boutique sentencing structure.

46:47

So there was an indeterminate

46:49

sentencing because ideally the reformatory

46:51

would be able to gauge

46:53

when a young girl was

46:55

ready to return to her

46:57

life in the world. But

46:59

what that meant in practice

47:01

was that everyone received a

47:03

maximum sentence of three years.

47:05

Ultimately, these young women are

47:07

criminalized for their... for their

47:09

sexuality. They're criminalized for having

47:11

intimate lives outside of marriage.

47:13

And that's what the struggle

47:15

is about. It's really a

47:18

struggle about values. And I

47:20

think that when we think

47:22

of like the revolution before

47:24

Gatsby, so when an educated

47:26

elite enacts the same forms

47:28

of practice, well then it

47:30

is a sexual revolution, then

47:32

it is a revolution in

47:34

values, right? When young working

47:36

class black and immigrant women

47:38

are doing the same thing.

47:40

It's a matter of moral

47:42

failure and criminality. Who can

47:44

be a radical agent of

47:46

change? It's easy to imagine

47:48

that educated elites could do

47:50

that, but is it, are

47:52

people able to imagine that

47:54

poor black girls were as

47:56

devoted to forging another path

47:58

for themselves? You

48:02

write about the story of of Billy

48:04

Holiday, got arrested for one

48:06

of these crimes as a young

48:08

woman and responded to it

48:10

with a savvy and responded to it

48:13

with a savvy take. Can you

48:15

tell that story? Yeah, so

48:17

Billy Holiday is arrested

48:19

because, know, the know, the

48:21

police are, you know,

48:24

targeting Harlem and black neighborhoods.

48:26

And they have these things called warrants,

48:28

which I like to point out

48:30

are exactly like the kind

48:32

of the kind of no that resulted

48:34

in Breonna Taylor's death in that

48:36

they could actually We death,

48:38

so that they house

48:40

without just enter a house without

48:42

any kind of warrant. So she's lies

48:44

about her age about her she

48:46

says, oh, says, they think I'm

48:49

an adult. I'm an It's

48:51

only only days, or

48:53

90 days Blackwell's Island as opposed

48:55

to or or three years. at

48:57

the And let me let me

48:59

just interrupt the conversation here because

49:01

there's a beat in the story the

49:03

story tells me here me made me

49:06

love Lady even more than I

49:08

already do. do. The The magistrate who

49:10

sentenced her was famous because she

49:12

was the first woman to have

49:14

that job in New York in New York

49:16

City, and thought. thought that That was a

49:18

missed opportunity for herself. herself. And she

49:20

says, you know, bad she bad she

49:23

a lesbian because if she she had then

49:25

I I probably would have gotten

49:27

like have at all. no sentence

49:29

at all. so. is so convinced of

49:31

her feminine, you know, charms and

49:33

her But yeah, to

49:35

seduce. knows exactly how

49:38

the system works. And And

49:40

even when she's imprisoned,

49:42

on Blackwell's she wins the

49:44

affection of a

49:46

lesbian guard who her all

49:48

these kinds of kinds of

49:51

favors. So those who are who are

49:53

experienced do that. but for but

49:55

Powell, then it is

49:57

the beginning of a

49:59

decade. decade. long entanglement

50:01

with the the police in these correctional

50:03

facilities, right? Because then if you

50:05

come out out you're on probation on

50:07

you have of a violation, you then

50:10

he can be sent back you can be

50:12

that regard, I think that regard, I

50:14

think it's very much like the

50:16

quote unquote. school -prison pipeline that we are

50:18

seeing today. And so there's all these

50:20

ways in which some of these laws

50:22

in particular echo in today. but I

50:24

But I also wonder about the ways

50:26

in which these ideas echo into

50:28

today. today. So I just keep hearing, as

50:30

I read, I kept hearing the phrase

50:32

at risk that we throw around

50:34

today. around today. And I wonder how

50:36

you feel about the way these ideas

50:38

have carried into the way we way we think

50:41

about blackness. I mean, mean, Unfortunately I

50:43

think that they have totally totally. carried

50:45

into the way we think about we

50:47

today, and they continue to shape social

50:49

policy. to I mean, we see it

50:51

under, I you know, we see it under,

50:53

you know, these marriage initiatives

50:55

marriage the poor and

50:57

those who are in

51:00

welfare. are in welfare. We see

51:02

it in terms of

51:04

the totally demonizing discourse

51:06

around teenage mothers this this

51:08

seemingly interminable discourse about

51:10

the crisis of the

51:12

black family. in spite poverty. of

51:14

evidence to the contrary. Sydea

51:17

Hartman is author of Wayward

51:19

is author of wayward

51:21

lives, beautiful experiments, intimate

51:23

histories of riotous black girls,

51:25

troublesome women, and queer radicals. and

51:28

queer radicals. We initially

51:31

We initially aired this conversation in

51:33

2021. at I said at the

51:35

outset this week that I'm sharing

51:37

it now as our final episode,

51:39

not as a conclusion, but but

51:41

more as an illustration of what

51:43

I'm thinking about. I'm I'm

51:45

thinking about the personal stories

51:47

of progress that get buried

51:49

in reactionary and and political

51:51

moments like the one we've entered.

51:53

entered. I'm thinking about people

51:55

like like May Enoch Harriet Powell Powell and

51:57

Billy Holiday. Did you catch the

51:59

phrase? that Hartman used to describe

52:01

them, she called them people

52:03

who choose to live otherwise.

52:06

People whose very existence challenges

52:08

power by defying whatever

52:11

false narrative about ourselves, the

52:13

power wants us to

52:15

embrace. I'm asked

52:17

often now what I'm going to

52:19

do next and I got no

52:21

idea, but I know it's going

52:23

to involve seeking out the stories

52:25

of people who live otherwise today

52:27

and throughout our history. I

52:30

think I've got a lot to learn from such people. I

52:32

think we all do. So that's what I'm

52:34

going to be up to. Notes

52:36

America has been a production

52:38

of WNYC Studios And I want

52:40

to thank all my colleagues

52:42

there, past and present, who supported

52:44

this show in its many

52:46

variations, from quirky reporting project to

52:48

narrative podcast to live call -in

52:50

radio. And thanks to the

52:52

incredible team who make this show

52:54

in its current form. You've

52:56

heard me tick off their names

52:58

in the credits, but let

53:00

me be more specific this time.

53:02

The talented Jared Paul wrote

53:04

and partly performed the theme you're

53:06

hearing right now. I've always

53:09

felt like making audio is kind

53:11

of a magic trick where

53:13

we dump all these voices and

53:15

ideas into a hat and

53:17

somebody waves their hand over it

53:19

and it comes out sounding

53:21

beautiful. That somebody in my life

53:24

is Jared Paul. Thanks Jared.

53:26

And when we are live, there's

53:28

another technical magician at work.

53:30

Matthew Morando makes the wonderful chaos

53:32

of live radio sound like

53:34

a John Coltrane composition. And

53:36

he's got a partner in the

53:38

control room with our director,

53:41

Katarina Barton. Matthew and Katarina, thanks

53:43

for making it feel easy.

53:45

Our producers are Regina Suzanne Gabber

53:47

Siona Petros. The conceit of

53:49

audio is a special relationship and

53:52

it's real between me, the

53:54

host, and you, the listener. But

53:56

there is no host friends

53:58

without producers. curiosities

54:01

industry drive everything we do.

54:03

we do. So, thanks gang. Lindsay Foster Thomas is

54:05

is our executive producer,

54:07

which is a fancy way

54:09

of saying the person that

54:11

makes all the the above

54:13

possible. It's It's probably the

54:15

most thankless job in

54:17

journalism and not also the most

54:19

indispensable. Thank you, Lindsay,

54:21

for each and every unnamed sacrifice

54:24

you made. So we each got

54:26

a chance to do our best

54:28

work. work. And finally, I'd be I'd be

54:30

remiss if I did not thank

54:32

my friend, Frilman. She's happily retired now,

54:34

I but I wouldn't be here

54:36

to talk to you without her. years

54:39

ago, Karen years ago, Karen and I

54:41

started asking questions together about American

54:43

political culture. At At some point, we

54:45

we turned those questions into a

54:47

narrative podcast and then and a

54:49

live radio show. show, and I just

54:51

hope we will never stop thinking

54:54

together. Thanks, Karen. And I say it I

54:56

say it every week, but one

54:58

last time, thanks to all of spending

55:00

spending time with us. is the Time

55:02

is the most valuable resource you've

55:04

got and I'm humbled I'm gave

55:07

us some of it. us some I'm it.

55:09

I'm Be Be well.