I've been at the Mayborn Multimedia High School Workshop for the past 6 days. On July 18th i had the privilege of interviewing biographer James McGrath Morris. I'm sure you're asking " why do I care about you interviewing some old white guy?". Well this old white guy wrote the biography of Ethel Payne, a black woman. And not just any black woman. Ethel Payne is also known as the "first lady of the black press". She was one of the most influential activists with her front-line participation in the Montgomery Bus Boycott and 1963 March on Washington along side of the honorable Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Payne also covered presidencies, Vietnam, and frequently traveled to Africa. Surprised we never learned about her in school? I'm not (but that's another rant for a different time). No pitchforks? No riots? Wow, I'm surprised. A white man explaining the struggles and life of a black, female political activist! If that doesn't rile your inner Malcolm X then I don't know what will. I cannot explain how I felt when I received the assignment to interview this man. I mean, he's no Rachel Dolezal but I can't lie. I drew some parallels. Instead of having a "nigga moment" and allowing Morris' skin color to cause me to disregard his message, I did the unthinkable. I... listened. And he was dropping knowledge; not only in the interview but in his presentation prior to it. He addressed what gave him the right to write about Payne, and what made him qualified. And that, my friend, changed what could have been a shit slinging, pro-segregation, argumentative, on-camera debate to a pleasant, insightful interview. Morris did one of the few things Caucasian people fail to do, that pisses so many well-read black people off. He owned his whiteness. He acknowledged his white privilege and lack of experiences similar to that of Ethel Payne. So what did he do? He did not jump into stereotypes and analogies to depict Payne's "hard life". Morris researched everything he could from three main untapped sources: the Library of Congress, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in New York, and Moorland-Spingarn Research Center at Howard University in DC. I gathered that while Morris was at Schomburg and Moorland-Spingard, two major depositories of black archives, he discovered that Payne's papers had not even been processed. The boxes were unopened. This was an invitation for anyone. (So who can we be mad at, my people?) Morris addressed that white people have been (and arguably still are) the oppressors of black people. And because of this, he had to respect black culture before even thinking about publishing a book on one of the most influential leaders. He acknowledged that he, as someone who is not a part of the black diaspora, must make an effort not to appropriate the story and use it to further the goals of the white majority. He in a sense, borrowed the story in order to shed light on a figure that was withheld from our history books. And what color do you have to be to sling facts? Watch my news story here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1pOXHZrxXfCcTY5MWlNQmt1cUE/view?usp=sharing Read full news story written by Joshlyn Thomas here: https://mayborngreatdivide.wordpress.com/2015/07/22/finding-common-ground/ |
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