Dorothy Porter lecture, "Bibliography Problems With the Harlem Renaissance and Black Works," at the University of Iowa, August 1970

Speaker 1: The following is a lecture by Dorothy Porter delivered at the 1970 Institute of Afro-American culture held on the campus of the university of Iowa. The Institute held August 9th through the 21st focused on the culture of black America, commonly referred to as the Harlem Renaissance. In this recording, Dorothy Porter, librarian at Howard University in Washington DC speaks on researching the Harlem Renaissance. Introducing Mrs. Porter to the conference is Charles T. Davis, professor of English at Pennsylvania State University. Charles T. Davi...: I'm delighted to have the opportunity to welcome Mrs. Dorothy Porter here. And it moves me to say something about actually what she has done and to say something about the activity that she has devoted her life to as well. I don't know how many of you have thought of this. I do off and on. The activity of scholarship is actually a cooperative venture. What those of us who are critics or biographers or historians do depends very heavily upon the activity of bibliography which precedes these things. Someone needs to collect the materials about which we write to classify them, order them, describe them so that when we come to work say on the 18th century, Afro-American literature, we know where the items are. We know what shape they are in. We are able obviously to save hours and hours of time by a reliance on this kind of information. No one is more important in the field and in this activity then Mrs. Porter. Charles T. Davi...: She is now the librarian of the Negro collection at Howard University. I say collection what I mean, of course and Mrs. Porter will talk about it, collections I mean, in the plural. Because what has happened there is that a number of outstanding collections have been deposited at Howard University. The Arthur B. Spingarn collection of Negro authors, the Jesse Moreland collection of Negro life and history. And for this, Mrs. Porter is developing a catalog so that we can understand of course what we have there. I have in hand a very handsome book published by the Library of Congress published as a matter of fact, just this year. This is the Negro in the United States. This is the most comprehensive bibliography that I have seen. They selected bibliography compiled by Dorothy B. Porter. It is published by the Library of Congress and appearing this year. And it is the very model of a descriptive bibliography. Charles T. Davi...: I say this with some feeling because when I was at Princeton University years ago as an assistant professor and was given a graduate course to teach because I seem to deserve it and had been obviously indicated some aptitude and promise of some sort. The only course that could be given to me was the course in bibliography. And so I taught the course, the graduate course in bibliography then. And though I knew precious little about bibliography when I taught it, by the time I got through, I knew a lot. And so I can tell you what an admirable bibliography is according to Bauer's formula or anybody's formula. And this is a splendid one, a handsome one with all sorts of useful, essential information for the field. Charles T. Davi...: Well, obviously you didn't come to hear me. You came to hear Mrs. Porter. And I wish to say only one other thing, and this is of course once again personal, that when I see Mrs. Porter, I think of Mrs. Porter's husband, who was a distinguished art historian at Howard University from whom we learned a great deal too. And so I introduce her with a sense of my double indebtedness. And I want you to give a warm welcome to Mrs. Porter now. Dorothy Porter: I'm especially pleased to return to Iowa. I was here last summer at your Institute for a few hours. And I really thought last night that I would not be able to make it because United Airlines had me at Chicago for three or four hours waiting around while the flap of the plane was repaired. However during that time, I made a few notes which I hope will be of some interest to you today. I'm very glad to know that you taught a course in bibliography. I don't know whether it was descriptive or critical but this... Charles T. Davi...: [crosstalk] fit that. But I did. Dorothy Porter: This is something which I have hoped would take place in some of our universities and colleges. Of course library schools do teach us librarians something about compiling lists. And all we were able to do is to rather hurriedly and quickly plan some sort of checklist is the one that Mr. Davis spoke about. There will be coming out of Howard University, hopefully before the end of 1970 some extensive bibliographies relating to not only the Afro-American field, but to Africana. I made myself say last year that I'm going to try to complete bibliographies which have been in process for years and years, I ought to say decades and decades, thinking that at one time I would finish something. But as professor Davis knows, no bibliography is ever completed. So we must just stop at sometime. Dorothy Porter: Two summers ago, the first workshop on bibliography and library resources was held at Howard University. At that time, we were not concerned with the problems of bibliographic description but the methods by which they could be solved. Although as a librarian, I have always been aware that we should abide by some sort of descriptive principles which we need to have and which I feel that the lists that are coming out today do not abide by. When I see a list with no pagination, I don't know whether the book contains 10 pages or 210 pages. Also, when I do not know where a copy may be found, whether it is in print or whether there are thousands of copies, I'm a little bit concerned. Dorothy Porter: Now last summer or two summers ago at this workshop, we were also concerned with existing bibliographies, what was available to support all the new courses as a black experience. And we also had planned to try to indicate to the persons attending where these collections were and the extent of the material which was available in the collection. They finished demands for guides to the study of the black man in all aspects of his life and history. Of course two years ago and during the last year and as of this year, stimulated all kinds of checklists. I picked up some that have been given to you. Dorothy Porter: However, I am terribly afraid that with the many publications coming out so fast and I've seen some in your library here that I had not seen before, it's just impossible to keep up with them. I assume that this workshop really it was quite knowledgeable about bibliographies and what is available. And I'm certain that bibliographies, as comprehensive as Monroe Works, Bibliography of Retrospective Materials is well known to you all. Professor Davis has mentioned the Library of Congress lists. There are many lists now coming out. I think that the kind of thing that the Iowa state university has just done of its holdings which is in mimeograph form, they don't turn it at least, which I think are especially helpful which professor Davis I suppose has said used with classes here, especially helpful. Dorothy Porter: Now two years ago, we didn't have these lists which help you sort of quickly locate what you can use in your courses. It's a great wonder to me that years ago, there was no bibliographic activity because those of you who are as old as I am know that in the Southern schools, 50 years ago, and in some Northern communities, courses were taught on Negro history, Negro literature, race problems mainly to instill some kind of pride in the black student. Now in this connection, there were libraries and collections, small or large, small maybe at some school and larger as at this and [inaudible] Howard developed. Dorothy Porter: But what happened was that nobody bothered about trying to identify any of the materials or trying to classify or group them under any subject or in any one of the disciplines. And they began to accumulate dust I should think as we became more interested integration and less materials on the courses relating to black awareness were taught. And then of course now, we have this mad race to try to find out where our material is and how quickly we can get to it to more or less try to identify say, black heroes, black this and black the other. What I am worried about mainly is the fact that we still don't know with the bibliographies that are coming out, as I said, the critical evaluation of titles. I think we have these lists but whether they actually contain the books we want to use and whether a knowledgeable person has given any sort of critical evacuation of the titles is one of our problems and needs today. Dorothy Porter: As a librarian, I receive daily many, many requests for the loan of titles relating to the history and literature and whatnot of Black Americans. Sometimes the titles are not identified. But the library and professor just knows that the title exists and they must have it right away. Occasionally a lot of them will come from California with the request of not knowing that the title actually exists in some way in the state of California. And they could have more readily obtained the book in that area, but they do ride all the way East for it or South or whatnot. And this indicates to me a need for local or regional bibliographies to be compiled or what is in the state or what is in the area? I guess two years ago, someone wrote me from the state of Washington and said that within the 30 libraries in the state of Washington, there would be developed a union catalog of all the titles written by blacks in that area. Dorothy Porter: But they didn't know how to do this until I would send them a list of the black writers. And then they would sort of to work trying to identify these people. Well, I grew up in a very integrated area and I never really knew the color of my skin. But when I did go to Washington a number of years ago, I became very much interested in trying to identify what the black man had achieved and what his contribution culturally had been. So I sort of went off on a terrible extreme but in the field of literature, trying to identify black writers as my husband 40 years ago was working in the field of Afro-American art and African art. And I do feel that we had many enjoyable trips to libraries and museums and art galleries because we were sort of working along the same lines of culturally trying to see what had been accomplished by our people. Dorothy Porter: But I think that the [inaudible] catalog of our two main collections the Spingarn collection of, I suppose, I should say black authors now, and the Jesse Moreland collection should be available this spring. And we'll give the contents of our collection up to now exclusive of manuscript material and one or two other special materials. Now I really dread to see it come out in print because I know perfectly well that the request for inter-library loans is going to skyrocket. And I can't always Xerox things and kind of always lend things across the country. We always hope that you will come and visit us because we would rather see you occupy all the seats in our library than to send some of our precious materials out on inter-library loan. Dorothy Porter: I'm not going to talk really about bibliographical age research, I've done this a good bit. And as I said, some things are coming out because I'd like to bring to your attention, something else more closely related to the Harlem Renaissance. Some people this morning, we had a very nice discussion or question period this morning. And I think I'd much rather be in that little room with a few people who were there just talking informally. Of course, I'm informal right now. But there will come out a bibliography or a list of some 7,000 collections relating to the Negro or to race relations or to manuscripts involved with the black experience. This fall is being published by R.W. Bowker. I haven't actually seen a notice of it but Mr. [Shots] who has been working on it for some years has not only sent out a questionnaire to a number of the collections of black literature but has visited many of these libraries. Dorothy Porter: Now, of course, the problem is the librarians in these collections, never tell everybody what's in all corners. And we are criticized for this. And there are reasons of course for it. But this list will contain so much that perhaps we will be forgiven for not saying everything that we have simply because there has been no time and no staff to process materials. I think this is probably more important from what I gathered today because some of you are concerned with primary source materials. You are concerned with trying to select the titles with new themes and new subject matter for your PhD dissertation. Dorothy Porter: I get a little annoyed when someone comes in to do a dissertation or a master's thesis or write a book. And I suppose somebody just finished working on that. Or somebody did this two years ago. Somebody did this 10 years ago. Get something new. Well in many instances, they don't know what might give them a new point of view or new materials to work with. But I wondered since this was a seminar to both the Harlem Renaissance, how much attention had been paid to Alain LeRoy Locke? Has there been any discussion or a lecture on doctor Locke as the chronicler or the father of the Negro Renaissance. Charles T. Davi...: I gave the general lecture on the Renaissance. And I talked about it in him with detail with a certain amount of respect as a matter of fact. Dorothy Porter: Well, of course, I think he did more to the rise and develop of this whole movement. Charles T. Davi...: He initiate the movement. Dorothy Porter: And I don't know anyone in this audience except one gentleman who I'm very happy to see here who knew doctor Locke or who had studied with him when he taught at Howard University. I was one of his pupils and did know him and came very much to love and to fear him as little as he was. And I worked with him on committees, various kinds where we supervised tremendously a large bibliographical project which was completed in the field of Negro music. A 10,000 card index to musical compositions by black composers and music based on the Negro idiom was compiled. And Sterling Brown, Warner Lawson, who was the Dean of School of Music at Howard, Locke and myself were the four person who supervised this project. And I tell you, we had some really tough times at times because doctor Locke was a person whose, while his opinion was it, you had to buy by it. Dorothy Porter: But Locke I knew as you know was a tremendous collector. And I had with great fear one day gone to lunch with him. And we were joined by another professor who had said to me, "Doctor Locke ought to give his papers to an African university." And I'm a really a timid soul, very timid. And I don't like to approach people. Although Locke wasn't too old then about what's going to happen when you die or lead to this... But I finally at this point decided to just say to him, "What are you going to do with your papers, your collection?" And a Locke was many times evasive. He neither answered you and again, he did answer you. I got no answer at all. I was happy to learn that they did not go to Africa although I was instrumental in helping the Franklin Frazier books, not papers because we have his papers at Howard but his books to get to the University of Legon. I packed the collection up and interviewed [Nkrumah] to see what he'd pay for them. Then getting over across the waters to Accra. Dorothy Porter: And his book collection is in Ghana. But I didn't want this to happen to Alain LeRoy Locke's books, now his papers. Because I felt that as a person who had done so much to make known the cultural achievement of Americans, black Americans, that they should remain at Howard or in this country. I felt that his association of some 40 or 42 years at Howard, his love for Howard, he was a person who did more than any professor to create a great intellectual climate at Howard. He was very critical of everything that was done. He wanted us to have scholarly-wise the best in our students and within our holes. He was the person who would come into the library and sit down for a while and read, and then he would want to borrow all the books he'd used. Dorothy Porter: And he wasn't particular when he got them back to me or not. And in those days, I couldn't... Someone said this morning, "But you don't let your books go out." Well, we've had to do it on a number of cases. And Locke was a person I just had to let him take the books out. And I would just pray that he'd bring them back. But as young as I was in those days, I would say, "You have some books out doctor Locke. You have to bring those back before you get anymore." And he would say, "Don't worry me there. Just get some more, just buy some more." Dorothy Porter: So it happened when his book collection, which I didn't know at that time was coming to Howard else I wouldn't worry about it at all, came. I did find books and I maybe shouldn't tell these stories about him. But books from the Brooklyn Public Library, from the Free Library, Philadelphia books of the Washington Public Library, books from some private collections as well as some Howard University. So I spent a good time, a bit of time getting these things back. Now, whether any of the artifacts and the art pieces of African art which we pose in our gallery at Howard University should have gone back to the Brooklyn Art Museum or somewhere else? I don't know. But certainly we can't go and try to find out whether they should have done this, gone anywhere else. Dorothy Porter: But I'm old enough of course to have been at school in Columbia when this business of Harlem Renaissance and Negro Renaissance came about more or less after that. What was it? The Ebony Tower where the literary people used to go. I had dinner there several times with my husband before we married when we're both in school. And we did know persons who were in and out whom I just thought I was in awe of them. But not a poet. I was not a literary critic but I was young enough and beginning to take some interest in these writers. And I will mention a meeting which I attended in Washington just before I heard Langston Hughes tell how he happened to write the Blues, what the Blues meant when he was young. And when I had had a little love affair and I was writing a Blues because this man wasn't paying as much attention to me as it should, but Langston Hughes had an effect on me enough for me to try to do something in the pattern of the Blues. Dorothy Porter: And I see a poet sitting in front of me and I can assure her that I've never published, tried to publish any poetry. And I don't know if there's anybody here old enough, Glenn Carrington, whom I'm very happy to see here knew these people. But this isn't a period which I wish we could have on tape, on film for our young people. I don't think that the Harlem on my mind exhibition did justice to the Negro Renaissance. And in it, you'll see, I think the fall worried from either the survey graphic or the first section of New Negro, reprinted but there's not a seen a picture of Locke in that book. In fact the persons that I would expect to see in an exhibition of that sort, are just not there. So we must sometime rather try to recapture this whole period. Dorothy Porter: We do know that book collectors have been responsible for building our collections, our main collections. Without Schomburg, we would have not had that collection, without Arthur Spingarn or Jesse Moreland, or James Weldon Johnson, there would be no collections. Now, the professors who have had to collect their needs and who have wanted to collect in their particular fields, I don't think have been as careful about rallying or seeing that their papers before they died got into our universities for the most part. Dorothy Porter: So I felt that with the Locke collection coming to Howard, here we had a tremendously large gift which would augment any book collection which we had acquired either through a purchase or through gift. Now I with great reservation mentioned the fact that the Alain LeRoy Locke collection is at Howard because it's been there for a number of years. It has not been neglected. It took me two years to unpack it, just unpack the books and to get the boxes on time and try to re-box roughly the vast amounts of materials that came into the collection. I can tell you a lot of stories about Locke which I will not take the time to do because I would hope that you might have some questions to ask me but I will say that Locke kept every single thing. And I mean, literally everything. Dorothy Porter: Now, if he kept what she did, the X-ray of his chest, what would that mean to Mrs. Crane who is here was interested in the Locke papers as a research into Locke. It means to me that Locke knew his old tickler was going to give out one day and he did die of heart attack. And I guess he just saved his X-rays. I don't save mine. I haven't had many. But I wouldn't think about saving them. Now, what significance? I don't know. This is left to his biographers. And I'm positive many biographies would be written of the man and of various aspects of his collection. But he also saved, for example, the old worn out toys that were on his Christmas tree when he was six years of age. I unpacked those. Dorothy Porter: There were many, many little things and I'm going to mention the organization of the collection, as I see it from having unpacked it and worked a bit with it. I can't describe to the various kinds of things that this one man was able to put aside and not in organized fashion but sort of just an accumulated manner of a day by day saving. If I decided to write a note to you at a concert across the hall and you send a note back to me, I wouldn't keep it. But Locke did. And in his travels to Europe, to Berlin, the train schedules, all kinds of ephemera. But this is all a part of the life of a man. And how can you interpret him as he will be interpreted unless you know every single thing about him. Dorothy Porter: And I talked to one person this morning who said, "I'd like to do a dissertation on such and such a person, but where are his papers?" I said, "I know his granddaughter." His granddaughter, "Said his mother didn't have any. And she threw them out. And I mean, her mother didn't. Nobody knows where his papers are." I have worked on individuals I just can't find anything about them anywhere. I've deeply searched for personal papers. But the persons who want to understand the Harlem Renaissance or the New Negro and Locke in his various aspects, have an opportunity in the future to go through this kind of material and make a study of it. Dorothy Porter: I'm mentioning it because from a point of bibliography and the bibliographical tangles which are there and which I do not have a solution for today, I think it's the kind of thing that we've got to as librarians begin now to seriously look at. We've had all kinds of personal papers. And this primary source material is what must not only be made available, it's got to be preserved because it is deteriorating. You don't know how rapidly papers deteriorate when they are kept in bundles or are in boxes. And this is what has had to be done for many years. In fact, Locke's collection was packed in storage boxes and stored in a basement of a residence. How long? I don't know. Many things as I opened them, although they had been some examination of a good many of the boxes before they came to me. But it worried me that over the years, this man had not had a good secretary or several secretaries or a bibliographer living with him who could have been eventually his literary executor or could have organized constantly day by day. Dorothy Porter: But it may have been that nobody would really realize that he was accumulating, he was collecting the kind of material and the vast amount of material that he did collect. Now, books no problems, pamphlets no problems, periodicals had no problems. But as I went through the collection and unpacking it, I realized that there was a large amount of correspondence which I can feel or say it was primarily literary as different from his personal correspondence and as different from institutional organizational correspondence. Locke was connected with many organizations, with many institutions. There were many facets in his life in which he developed substantial boxes or groups of correspondence. For example, he was interested in adult education of a whole body material that had to do with the publication of the March, 1925 survey graphic on Harlem which I imagine you've had here at this workshop for reading, as well as the correspondence relating to the Negro Renaissance and the body material which made up the New Negro. Dorothy Porter: Strange to say, a lot of this is all scrambled in with everything. And for several years, we have been trying to actually separate the kinds of correspondence that came in. I think almost every important young writer, the writers that were featured in Opportunity magazine and who received the literary awards wrote to Locke. There was not a great deal of publishing activity in the part of black writers during his time but yet manuscripts were sent to him. Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, [The Galleys] were sent to Locke. I think he received many manuscripts of some of the African writers like Nnamdi Azikiwe, who did a book on African folk law, which was never published. But it was sent to Locke I suppose for approval. Biographical sketches, mentors are scheduled to be published in encyclopedias on the Negro which were to come out and which Locke himself had envisioned would one day be published, word send, or word typed. They began to be accumulated and remained as a material about which there was a good bit of correspondence. Dorothy Porter: The various speeches of Locke himself, his speeches, his addresses, his book reviews, his reactions to many things, his considerable body of material there. Now I'm trying to indicate aspects of this collection that would take maybe three or four bibliographers, perhaps graduate students, perhaps persons who really love this kind of drudgery who could attack and do something about not just the whole thing, just a bibliography of books and pamphlets about Locke and his periodical articles, but all of these various aspects of the man which in most instance is manuscript material. But we've got the calendar, the manuscript material, we've got to describe the manuscript material for the benefit of researchers. Dorothy Porter: Now of course, Locke received many honors and many awards. And I think he had a little bit of a superiority complex. I think he felt that he was a very important person. I think he felt that one day biographies would be written about him. And so he kept of course all of his awards and all of his honors and everything that would illustrate how he had been honored. And this becomes a problem because when you... Bronze plaques weigh a little something and when you're struggling to find a place to put them and lift them up and down after boxing, they do get little heavy. But nevertheless his honorary degree is of course could be put in this category. Now, I don't know whether extensive bibliography could be made of Locke's awards, and honors and degrees but we're certain other kinds of memorabilia. I can see whether this would be a bibliographical aspect of this man. Dorothy Porter: Now of course I think he was a handsome man. He was photographed. Most of you I think have seen a picture of him. But he liked to pose and he kept the pictures of himself. And he was published in many of the magazines and articles from the time he was very young because he was very active from the time he was young till the time he died. So there is an extensive collection of photographs of himself, of his friends, of I suppose most of the writers of the period of which you're interested at the moment. In addition to that, he was involved with the WPA art projects. And I think nearly all of the artists who were working with the WPA at the time, What'd you call that... Speaker 4: Federal Writers. Dorothy Porter: Federal Writers Project. That's right. Yes. Did send their photographs of their work to Locke. And someone has recently, well they're working, I think it's probably about completed now, a listing of all of this kind of material, what was done by the artists on this project. But Locke carefully accumulated all these photographs. Along with this kind of photograph, he was also acquiring photographs of African art. The photographs in his book on Negro art of course he kept several copies of each one of those. So I would hope that not only photographs would be identified but also thousands of postcards which not only illustrated the Sudan or Africa or Berlin or England, wherever he was but many of them have pictures of individuals on them. Dorothy Porter: When I was in Nigeria for a year, I was very careful to collect postcards with pictures of the chiefs and the government people and the writers. And now I know we would be able to find some of these pictures. I don't think in this country, we put our pictures on postcards with the exception of the Harlem show. They did go back to the old pictures of Cullen and some groups and sold them. But in Africa and Europe, a number of places, outstanding persons pictures have appeared on photographs. Now I've made no attempt to do anything but just keep photographs and send. Some photographs, I would buy personally to friends that they were collecting library buildings. Of course all the buildings that had to do with our colleges or universities or summer vacation spots, I would put in my own collection and copies of postcards on which say... [inaudible] would send me a poem. I would always be careful to keep that kind of thing or Marie Frazier, the wife of Franklin Frazier would write a poem, put on a Christmas card. Dorothy Porter: We had many Christmas cards that have original poetry on them that I've received over the years that I have saved which I think may have some historical value. Well, Locke did the same thing. And I think there's kind of a souvenir I will call it, might be worth something in addition to the man or woman studying Locke but to the bibliographer. Locke loved music. I have sat beside him at several concerts at Howard and we've talked between the numbers and he was a great lover particularly of classical music. I never knew whether he understood or knew anything about jazz. I think other people would know better than I did. But he did collect all kinds of music and taped some concerts that were related to black music. But in his collection, here is another bibliographical problem of trying to see what there is of the older phonograph recordings, as well as sheet music. Not just a sheet music of compositions by black composers, but all kinds of scores and albums of sheet music. Dorothy Porter: I think that his own family records are important. He must have greatly loved his mother and his father because he was very careful to preserve the manuscript letters written between them. And here again is an interesting story that could be told. One thing that worried me about the Locke collection was that Locke had a habit of putting in a book, clippings from which he might've torn from a newspaper without any date. He put in a book, original manuscript letters from the person. He put it in the same book, his own book review if he had reviewed it. He put everything. Stuffed them literally into a single volume. Now, what does a librarian do if you don't want to take the things out, but you know if circulate the book, they're going to go. Dorothy Porter: And, yeah. It's very well to keep this body of material together because it does help with the searching. But in the case of course of letters from Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen and McKay, I did barely even in those books. But this was his habit. And I have been very careful to put aside the books which had manuscript notes in them. I remember one man who wrote, Earl Conrad who wrote I think a book on Harriet Tubman said in one of them, "Now I've been reading your stuff all along. Now, you read some of my stuff." When he sent a book to Locke. Of course, some of the autographs Langston Hughes are prices because I went to an auction in April at the Park Bernay and bid on a couple of autograph copies of books of Langston Hughes which sold for $250 to $450 a piece. Dorothy Porter: So if you have any autographed copies of Langston Hughes, you better hold on to them. But the books themselves become very valuable because they are autographed. Locke had two designs of a book plate which to me are little art treasures. He had enough book plates that had never been used to put in books which had not been plated. But he had his own book design as you may know, by Aaron Douglas and James Lesesne Wells. And he used two different plates. I'm not certain why he had two different plates. I don't know why the two different ones in design. I don't think I'll ever get an opportunity to really open examine the bulky, bulky scrapbooks that Locke accumulated during his Harvard days or during his Oxford days or during his days as a Rhodes Scholar. And he was the first and I believe the only black Rhodes Scholar we've had. Charles T. Davi...: We've had a couple later, just recently. Dorothy Porter: I'm out of time. Sorry. But anyway, he was the first. I think I'm safe in saying he was the first. Yes. The first. Charles T. Davi...: [inaudible]. Dorothy Porter: Yeah. Well he has these scrapbooks and not in very good condition. And this is a problem of using this material. You sometimes put something up and it falls apart. And I think that the researchers who come and I have been mentioning Locke off and on hoping that some foundation or some administrative high will say, "I'll give her some money and people to go do something about the collection." And well, something is being done now. But the fact that they are in a condition that the cards will fall out. The clippings will fall out. The pictures will fall out. You just can't. And you've made no summary of what is in there or you've made no... Dorothy Porter: Well, I think they'd really need to rebound. This has to be done. We have had one or two persons who have been writing fairly seriously on Locke to use some of this material. But here's another kind of type of material in this one collection which I say has all kinds of bibliographical problems. Of course, newspapers you couldn't maybe handle those a little different except where he had them folded and they've stayed folded for a long time. They're difficult to unfold. Now, I would hope that we could get responsible and I mean, responsible persons who would be able to work in some of this material because of the political opinions expressed in much of the collection and because of many things that are in there, we have to be very careful about servicing it. Dorothy Porter: Because in this day of time, so much may get into print part of irresponsible persons which would actually embarrass living persons as well as Howard University. And we have not said we will put a date before any papers can be opened of 25 or 50 years as is very often done with a person of Locke statue whose collections have gone into libraries. But we've tried to make some of the material available as persons have come to use aspects of it. Now I've been trying and talking to Glenn Carrington here who I haven't seen for many years who is a very prodigious collector himself. And if you don't know him, he is sitting over there who knew Locke and who has had interest in this period of the Renaissance and in these literary persons to say, "Come on down to Washington and spend some time and see if you cannot calendar this material." Dorothy Porter: And since he knew so much of the period and the man, the kind of help he could give me or that I would want would be really a godsend, but he won't retire. And I think with him is a case of just saying, "Well, I'm going to come, I'm going to come." And he never does. I don't know a whole lot about him. I have known him over the years and he was a former student at Howard. And I know at one time I used to send him programs and various things. I haven't done it recently because he has not bugged me. But there are persons who knew Locke and I think who would be very sensitive to his materials. And I would like personally to hope that some of these persons would come. Because as I see it, I will not live long enough, if I lived another 50 years to see this collection really made available as I would like to see it made available or to see it calendared. Dorothy Porter: But hopefully for those persons who are here and say, "Well, I want to get the Zora Neale Hurston letters. I want to get the [Toomer] letters. And the McKay letters." Since February this year, I have had some staff who's helping to process the material. And I have gotten a lot of money, although money is never enough, to begin to concentrate on our manuscripts. Three people I've been working on one collection since June just trying to sort some snap the lock, but 75 boxes. It just seems to me an possible task. But you scholars are so impatient and I don't blame you because I am too. And I would say if some of you would come and say, "Stay there longer." It's hard when you're going to come for two weeks or one week or two days to pull out things and try to put them back. But if young people could be given scholarships who would come and stay and study and work in one aspect of the man, I think something very valuable could come out of the papers. Dorothy Porter: Now I don't know where to stop or how to continue on. I do hope that before another year that we will have a number of calendars of some of these series which I mentioned, particularly the literary series. I boxed thousands in a range of letters of Locke correspondence in the 40s and 50s with index cards. But there is a problem for example, I know there's the pseudonym that George Padmore use when he was student at Howard who associated Marcus Garvey, which my staff, the younger people do not know. They don't know who Eric Williams was, who signs his name as Eric. Well, I know. And I did not have time to really identify all of these except occasionally. Dorothy Porter: And unfortunately, so many letters in the correspondence, Locke never kept any copies. This is something that's got to be done. Where are the copies or did he always write in hand letters that may be at Yale if somebody's collection is at Yale or Fisk to who Locke wrote. Because with rare exception did he make a carbon of his own answer to persons? I don't know whether this was a question of time or not. I've had a hard time putting my husband's correspondence which was at the office, the letters and the answers were home. Because he typed them at home and never got them together half the time. And it may be some peculiarity of the person of that period. Dorothy Porter: But I have a feeling that Locke can be collected outside of Howard University. Whether anything was done with the author faucets move to create a memorial collection or a fund to not only memorialize Locke but to actually collect his papers. I don't know how many of you all working in other areas have seen the letters written to Locke? I don't know. I think Locke himself tried to get back as many letters that he had sent to his mother in school or to his... I don't know whether he wrote to his father, but he did have extensive corresponds with his mother. And also the correspondence to Mrs. [Osgood]. But whether or not there are collections around, that would fill in gaps and let us know what Locke himself had said. This is another aspect of bibliography. Dorothy Porter: Now, I'm going to do something in a minute then I probably will ask you if you have any questions because I don't want to just keep going on and on. But I looked at your program and somebody is going to talk about Langston Hughes. Langston Hughes was at school with my brother and came home to Jersey on holidays. And I just took him as a friend of my brother, never paid much attention to him. But later years we did become rather good friends. And I have a couple of manuscript poems. He wrote to [Darcy], I hope I know where they are. Dorothy Porter: But I attended in 1925, November, the meeting held in Washington by the literature lovers to launch the New Negro and Locke was there. He was the Master of Ceremonies. And in 1925, I was a little younger than I am now. And it was a very thrilling evening to me at that time. I haven't been in Washington and Locke started out with, "This is the Negro Renaissance." And E.C. Williams, who was a very scholarly librarian at Howard, he said, "Well, it may be Negro Renaissance but it's not going to last more than 15 minutes. Nothing ever does that's any good." And then Langston Hughes who was the speaker or the reader of his poem of the evening was there as a very young man. Dorothy Porter: Now what I did, I didn't have time to prepare a formal paper. I think I had a paper last year. And I've talked quite at random. But what I did back in that early time was to come home that night and write out something that Langston Hughes said. And although I'm sure everything you said, you know now, but I thought that since you're going to devote some time to him as a friend of a close friend of Lockes that you would like to hear what I wrote in 1925 about Langston Hughes and what he said. So it's rather short. And probably is from an old notebook and I don't even know whether I could read my writing at that time. Dorothy Porter: But as I said, I was trying to write some blues myself having read magazines to [inaudible] poems. I said, "His poems as has been said before, show his restlessness. Tonight in making an effort to explain the source of his poems, Mr. Hughes said, they came all from some experiences I have had, something I have done, somewhere I have been. He did not finish explaining before there was an outburst of laughter from the listeners. One would not appreciate this joke unless they were familiar with his poems but particularly those of cabaret life and his life with women keep warm when he was cold in Paris and whatnot. Well, I imagine I call him Mr. Hughes. Mr. Hughes has had a wide and varied experience for one so young, I believe just 23. Dorothy Porter: He has lived in Mexico where he taught English, spent two years at sea, worked in cabarets in Paris and Rome through Italy and North Africa. In spite of this, he is clean, pure, and hot, modest lad. He expresses everything poetically, sees beauty in everything. In reading some of his blues tonight, he said he did not believe most of the people gathered there would enjoy them. But they were his latest. And because your last poem was better than the one before, you wrote a new one. Therefore these were his best. Anyway, he said, I liked them and they are my best. [Miller] asked him, what do you mean by the term blues? LH said, he would say what he meant by blues. Blues he said are like spirituals. They are Negro folk songs. Only the spirituals deal with celestial and heavenly things. And the blues deal with the earthly things. He next explained the manner in which the blues were written. Two lines the same and a third line to rhyme with it. The theme is yours he said, hard luck, lost love, et cetera. When he read a poem, the effect was a quick laughter." Dorothy Porter: This was from a audience largely of social women in Washington. "He explained the blue is sad but the reading has a laughing effect on people hearing it which is just exactly opposite of what it should do. He explained blues were hard to read as all of them should really be sang. Mr. Hughes said he would not read many of them because most of the people in there, they would just believe their noses. One called the Bad Man was particularly striking. He was so bad. He did not want to be good. And he would not go to heaven if he could." I guess you all know that one. "His sea poems I thought were particularly charming. He explained that it was not that sailors like to see so much as it was the port homes, where there was wine women and song. But then he said there was a term in the sea that sailors couldn't understand. Dorothy Porter: He spoke with caller of the sea, never being the same longer than one hour or so at a time. Sunset to him was particularly striking. He said sunset at sea especially in the Southern sea was more than beautiful. It was really terrible. And I think this thought, as I had noted, was explained in his Caribbean Sea. One of his poems which he read was in four parts. It was called the tower of something." My writing wasn't clear enough for me to rapidly copy this. "Four parts, rain, sun, moon, and wind." Do you know that poem? I didn't have time to look it up. "He said he didn't understand it when he wrote it and asked if anyone knew what he meant, he'd be glad to have their opinion." I got to look that up. Charles T. Davi...: I'll look at that later. Dorothy Porter: All right. "And then he said, you, I, she, yellow, white and red must have been companions of the same soul, who when they were seeking women were alike. But when they were back in town were different. Mr. Hughes leaves next week to finish his college work at Lincoln University. All of this additionally he said the [inaudible] has left the printers and is in circulation. And this was done just eight days after it left the press." I suppose he meant eight days after it left the press it was out and about. So I just thought I wanted to share that with you. I could get [inaudible]. Speaker 1: That was Dorothy Porter, librarian at Howard University with a lecture on researching the Harlem Renaissance. This presentation was delivered at the 1970 Institute of Afro-American culture held on the campus of the University of Iowa, August 9th through the 21st and was recorded by the broadcasting service so the University of Iowa.