Glenn Carrington lecture, "Personal Experiences in Harlem During the Renaissance," at the University of Iowa, August 1970

Speaker 1: The following was recorded at the 1970 Institute of Afro-American Culture, held on the campus of the University of Iowa, August 9th through the 21st. The institute focused on the culture of Black America commonly referred to as the Harlem Renaissance. In this recording, Glenn Carrington, faculty member at the Co-operative College Center, the State University of New York at Mount Vernon reflects on his personal experiences and associations in Harlem during the Renaissance. Glenn Carringto...: I am glad to have this chance to talk with you, and I hope that you will not let me talk to you by interrupting and asking questions. I have no objections to being interrupted at all. In fact, on one of the announcements, it said, "Lecture by Glenn Carrington." But I assure you, this is not a lecture. Because, if I were going to lecture, I would have wanted to prepare something before I left New York when I could have referred to various notes and manuscripts and letters and things that I have in what I call the Carrington Archives. And some of you are going to visit me and see some of those archives, and you will realize that I am about as bad as luck was when it comes to holding on to things, scraps of paper as well as letters and more formal documents. One or two things before I begin. Glenn Carringto...: One is that word seems to have got around that I picked up a rare Paul Laurence Dunbar volume over at Cedar Rapids. Was it Cedar Rapids? No, West Branch. And a couple of our colleagues wanted to see it. So since I'm not sure of the names of those who wanted to see it, I have taken the liberty of bringing it along. The only thing to say is don't begin your collecting of Black material with this. I am sure you won't. Now, it may be that I will not confine myself too strictly to the Renaissance period because there are some peripheral things that I may want to say about the people or the events that have been happening over the last 40 or... how many years has it been since the Renaissance? Well anyway, you know what I mean. Glenn Carringto...: Now, you don't mind if I say one or two things about myself. I was born in Virginia, Richmond Virginia, the capital of the Confederacy in 1904. And once upon a time I hoped sort of to spend the century by living until the year 2000. I'm sure now that I won't for various reasons. My high school work was done in Richmond at what was then known as the Academy of Virginia Union University. In the old days, most southern Black schools had high school departments as well as college departments, and Virginia Union was audacious enough to call itself a university although there were only three departments. The high school department, the college department and the theological department. I should have named them in reverse order because the theological department was the most important I think of all. I was not in the theological department though. Glenn Carringto...: But I did have four very fruitful years in high school there as a day student living at home in Richmond and going everyday back and forth to the university. And I had some rather good teachers too. The old man who taught me public speaking and Bible, I shouldn't have mentioned the public speaking because I still haven't carried out all of the things that he told me to do as a speaker. His name was Dr. Jones, Dr J.E. Jones. He was the father of Eugene Kinckle Jones who was for many years the executive secretary of the National Urban League. But he was a product of Richmond too. He taught at Virginia Union and his wife taught at the Allied School for Girls, called then Hartshorn Memorial College. Hartshorn was later absorbed into Virginia Union. I don't know whether the Hartshorn people would be willing to admit that it was absorbed into in these days of the feminine something about the... what do they call it? Glenn Carringto...: Anyway, Dr Jones was a Fundamentalist Baptist preacher in addition to being a professor at Virginia Union University. A man whom I respected greatly and certainly admired. He of course has been dead many years. I think all of my teachers at Virginia Union have been dead many years. Now, after four years at Virginia Union graduating from the academy, I went on to Washington to Howard University. Now my reason for going to Howard... I hope this isn't too personal a discussion. My reason for going to Howard was that I as a kid was interested in Politics. And I thought if I went to Howard, I'd get a chance to visit the Sessions of Congress and perhaps meet some of the people on Capitol Hill. That turned out to be true. I was in Washington during part of the discussion of the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill and remember seeing James Weldon Johnson sitting in the galleries listening to the debate, representing the NAACP of which he was then the executive secretary. Glenn Carringto...: Incidentally, while I'm mentioning James Weldon Johnson, I might recall an incident that came just a little later. After graduating from Howard in 1925, I came to New York on a fellowship from the Urban League to study social work in what was then the New York School of Social Work. And when I got to New York, I sought residence in International House, an institution which was founded by the Rockefellers, John D. Jr. Who was... his first wife used to visit the house frequently and they were very democratic people and we always had nice conversations with them. So one of the features of International House was that on Sunday... every Sunday evening, there was a Sunday supper so called. The only thing you got was beans and bread and coffee, something like that. But we were all very poor in those days and we sort of looked forward to those Sunday suppers and we didn't miss those beans at all. We always went to the Sunday suppers. Glenn Carringto...: There was always a speaker at a Sunday supper at International House and when they invited a Black speaker, they'd have a Black member of the house to say the grace, or the blessing over the food. And we had a sort of professional negro there a fella named [Eugene Corby], the late Eugene Corby. He was West Indian who was studying in New York at the time. And being accepted as the professional negro, he was always usually called on to say the grace. But on this particular night when James Weldon Johnson was to speak at the Sunday supper, he had another engagement. So he knocked on my door and said would you say grace tonight because I've got to go somewhere or other. And I was very happy to do that. Glenn Carringto...: First, it meant that I could sit at the table with James Weldon and Grace Nail Johnson his wife, who's still living by the way. And also, I had managed to buy a copy of The Book of American Negro Poetry so I took that along for him to inscribe and he did it very graciously. Of course, I still have that. I don't have all the book that I had in those days but I have, at least, the things that are as precious as that. I saw Mr. Johnson several times afterwards but that's my most memorable recollection of a real personal contact with him. Now to go back for a moment to Virginia Union, we had chapel in the mornings up there. You had to be there at 9:00 for chapel services, compulsory chapel services by the way, which was true of a good many of the schools in the old days. Even at Howard we had compulsory chapel services but we found a way to get around the compulsory nature of it. So one morning, A. Philip Randolph and his partner Chandler Owen came to speak at our chapel service. Glenn Carringto...: Now I'd mentioned the fact that Virginia Union was really a Fundamentalist Baptist school, and both Owen and Randolph were considered dangerous radicals in those days, dangerous radicals. They were even members of the Socialist Party. And they both gave good talks and that was the first time I'd heard either of them. That was of course before the of the publication of The Messenger magazine which was published in New York for a few years during the 20s. They said such things as... I think it was Owen who said, "There are so many things we learn in college we've got to unlearn after we get out." And of course everybody thought that was a terrible thing to say to college students. But later, both of them mellowed and became less of dangerous radicals than they had been considered back in that day, which was about... oh I should say 1920. But there was a great deal of discussion on the campus about the remarks that they had made at the chapel service. And I, being the son of baptist republican parents, wasn't so sure that I accepted some of the things they said myself. Glenn Carringto...: Later I guess I went further to the "Left" than even Owen and Randolph did. But things like that happened back in the '20s. This is a kind of prelude to the Renaissance of course. For instance, I was at Howard from '21 to '25 and during my senior year at Howard, especially during the spring of '25, there were uprisings of mild, I dare say, at several of the predominantly Black colleges. One was Howard, one was Hampton, and there was one even at Fisk. In fact, we at Howard had a student strike for seven days, it lasted seven days in May 1925. I remember the date very well because the strike began on my birthday which was May the 7th. And we won the strike by the way. I was a member of the student council. One of the things that we did was to pass a resolution of sympathy with the Fisk students who were having lots of trouble down in Nashville, and we sent that resolution down there to them. So you young militants weren't the first people to protest. Our student strike was against certain features of the ROTC which we had at the time. I just mentioned that because I thought I was pretty radical in those days but I think I advanced a little more to the Left even later. I'm not a card carrying member of any party by the way. Glenn Carringto...: Now, one day at Howard... oh yes, Locke used to come to New York almost every weekend during the period when he was preparing the March 1925 issue of the Survey Graphic. And he would always meet interesting people and very often he would tell us, either in class or outside of class about some of the people he had met during his weekends in New York. He was well acquainted with the New York crowd, both the Blacks and the whites. When I speak of the whites I mean the liberal whites like the people at the Theater Arts, Monthly and Survey Graphic and organizations of that sort. I remember one weekend he came back, he had been to a performance by the late Isadora Duncan the great dancer. Glenn Carringto...: You see in Washington in those days, we had complete and I mean complete segregation. Blacks could not go to the theaters downtown that is the white theaters, and they couldn't eat in the restaurants. Locke and his mother lived together until the spring of my freshman year when his mother died. She prepared meals up to her death in their apartment. But later he had to eat at such places as the Phyllis Wheatley YWCA... some of you know the Phyllis Wheatley YWCA. And the only place downtown which Blacks could be admitted without segregation was the Union Station. And he used to travel down to the Union Station very often to have his dinner when he'd get tired of eating at the YWCA, and that literally was the only place where a Black man could get a meal in the whole city South of the North West area. Glenn Carringto...: One day, there was a strange young man who came into our class and Locke didn't introduce him... into Locke's philosophy class. Locke didn't introduce him but afterwards, some of us were curious to know who he was and we went up and found out that the young man who came into the class was Countee Cullen, whom Locke already knew fairly well, and who was spending I think it was the Easter weekend as Locke's house guest and had wanted to visit one of the classes. Anyway, subsequently, we met Countee Cullen and I remember going down to Locke's house I think it was during that weekend when Locke had invited a young poet, or a poet who was young at that time, Lewis Alexander. He's deceased now. And we had to talk to Locke in the front room because he said the young poets were talking among themselves in the back. But it's been pointed out during our lectures and discussions that Locke did exercise a great influence on the younger writers of that period. If he didn't know them before he heard of them, he would write them and encourage them to let him read their work or to talk with them. Those who lived in New York of course he saw when he would come up here on weekends. Glenn Carringto...: Then came the time at the end of my senior year, 1925, when Locke and few other professors were dismissed from the university. No reason given, just dismissed. The board of trustees or the secretary of the board wrote them letters saying that their contracts were not being renewed. They didn't have tenure in those days and the university thanked them for their services. Well, naturally, Locke being one of the fore and the most brilliant and the best trained of the group was very much horrified at that. He had scheduled a trip to Europe that summer, the summer of '25. He went over almost every summer. He immediately canceled his reservation and decided that we needed new administration. That wasn't the only thing that had been happening at the university. That was however the period during which the last white president of Howard was chosen as executive, it was J. Stanlee Durkee who was also president of a school in Boston called the Curry School of Expression where they taught speech and allied subjects. Glenn Carringto...: Anyway, Durkee later became pastor of the Henry Ward Beecher church in Brooklyn, so he had an out as far as the public was concerned when he later resigned but Locke had a lot to do with his resignation. That's a story in itself and isn't covered fully by the recent book by Rayford Logan on the history of Howard. It does refer to that but it's a long story and we're not here to discuss Howard primarily, we're here to discuss the Renaissance. And I don't think I mentioned the fact that at Howard, Locke was the founder of the literary group there called The Stylus. That was founded in 1916. You see, Locke's tenure at Howard was roughly from 1912 until he retired in 1963. Incidentally I mentioned his dismissal from the university but he was reappointed two years later in 1927 under the new administration of Mordecai Johnson who was the first full-time Black president of the university. Glenn Carringto...: Now, as a result of meeting Countee Cullen through Locke, we set up a sort of correspondence and I still have a few of the letters that I exchanged with Countee Cullen, but when I came to New York later I got to know him much better. In fact, I think I met him down in Atlantic City before I moved to New York because his foster father had a summer home in Pleasantville which is just outside of Atlantic City. And I made it a point to get in touch with him down there and he came to visit me at the house where I was staying. I went down to Atlantic City to work of course because all Black students had to work summers in those days. We didn't have fellowships and scholarships and things that you people have today. You had to struggle for your education, although the tuition at Howard was only $75 a year, the tuition I mean not board, lodging and so forth. We had to do a lot to gather that $75. Glenn Carringto...: I worked during my entire period at Howard. There was a club where they needed waiters for different dinners and banquets and things and I did that as often as they needed somebody. We got a dollar and our meal. I don't think we even got coffee which was as I recall eight cents in those days. Now through Countee Cullen, I met some interesting people in New York. One was Harold Jackman who was referred to during Mrs. Perry's lecture today. And another was Eric Walrond who was living in New York at the time, the author of the short stories called Tropic Death about whom Dr. Davies has lectured. And I met lots of other people. To digress for a moment again, one of the people I met was a fellow living in Harlem named [Eddy Manchester]. Now Eddy Manchester was not a [literatur] at all in any sense of the word but he knew everybody. And one of the people he knew was the late A'Lelia Walker, the adopted daughter of the hair dress queen Madam C.J. Walker, another one of the madams of that period. Glenn Carringto...: A'Lelia Walker was a very tall woman and she had difficulty finding escorts because most of the men she knew was short but Eddy was taller than A'Lelia so he often escorted her when she went out to nightclubs and places. She was a very... well I don't like to use the word stingy woman but I remember once I was still a student when I met her through Eddy Manchester and went out on two or three of her nightclub excursions and I remember one night that she would never pay the bill and she had much more money than any of us did. And one night, she signaled to me that she wanted some money for the bill. Now she was a millionaire actually. I had $4 in my pocket and change, I think enough for coffee and she said, "Give me $5." Well I just didn't have $5 so I gave her $4 hoping at least there would be enough change left for me to pay a nickel to get home on the subway and I did get home. Glenn Carringto...: Now I'm jumping around again but I did know a good many of the writers in particular some of the artists too. Aaron Douglas was living in New York then, he and his wife had an apartment at 409 Edgecombe Avenue which is up in the area referred to as Sugar Hill. And I remember they used to have very nice gatherings. Someone spoke today about the party that Jessie Fauset and people like that had but the Douglases' had very lovely parties. Interracial things too because the Douglases were widely acquainted downtown as well as uptown. Oh by the way, there was in the old days in the '20s, this organization on 10th street downtown, the Civic Club. Some of you may have heard of it, and it was a liberal organization which permitted Blacks to join. Of course, I was too poor to join it. I don't remember what the fees were but we used to go there for lunch occasionally. The NAACP people went often because they were just around the corner, they were at 14th and 5th Avenue. The Civic Club was 10th Street and near 5th Avenue as I recall. Glenn Carringto...: But a good many of the quite liberals, people like Lewis Mumford and that crowd would go there. They were members and went there for lunch. And a good many of the Black writers would drop in occasionally or be invited there for one affair or another. Now, in 1926, I went to the Soviet Union during the summer as a member of a small student delegation there, only about 10 of us in the delegation, but there naturally, we were questioned about race relations in the United States and about different figures about whom they had heard and that was... it was my first trip abroad and I had a wonderful time. I stayed in Moscow most of the time and even picked up a little Russian. But don't try me out if any of you speak Russian because I've forgotten it now. Glenn Carringto...: That summer, there were quite a few American visitors, one was the late Will Rogers by the way and since the United States did not recognize the Soviet Union at that time, we had to go to London to get our visas. And while in the American embassy, somebody must have pointed out the two Black members of our group to Will Rogers. I do not recall seeing him there at all but in a book which he wrote later about his trip to the Soviet Union, he mentions that there were two Blacks who were probably going to become the Lenin and Trotsky of Birmingham Alabama. Among others in Moscow at the time were Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford. They were happily married at that time and I remember Douglas Fairbanks at the request of some onlooker tried to do his match trick which most of you who've seen the old movies may recall but it just didn't work. Probably because he was anxious to show it off. Glenn Carringto...: I also met some of the Russian leaders of that day. Madam Kamaneva who was at that time head of the Society for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries was there and we got our meal at the offices of the Society for Cultural Relations so I knew her. Her husband was later liquidated I believe in one of the purges. I also met the great theater producer Meyerhold but there was no performance of his theater that summer, they were performing in the provinces I believe. I also met Anatoly Lunacharsky who was the Minister of Culture and Education. He was one of the... well not one of the old style Bolsheviks, he was a very dignified man, reminded me somewhat of Dr. Du Bois in his bearings, his carriage and so forth. He had our group to come to his office and we interviewed him. And I have for a good many years been interested in the works of Alexander Pushkin who you know had at least one recorded Black ancestor. And so during that and subsequent trips to Soviet Union, I have had a chance to visit some of the Pushkin residences and museums and have seen some of the monuments erected to him. Glenn Carringto...: Now I think I should say something about my contact with two or three other people during the Renaissance since I've got so far off field already. I knew Cullen fairly well, I mean I continued my contact with him although there were times when I didn't see him very often. But I was... I remember when he was teaching at P.S. 139... do we have graduates of 139 here? [crosstalk]. Yes, 139 at 139th Street and 7th Avenue where he taught French and a good many people studied under him. [Eddie Atkinson] who was mentioned by Mrs. Perry was one of his pupils at 139 and occasionally when I was doing social work, I had occasion to go 139 to inquire about my charges and I used to drop into Countee's classroom and to chat with him. But he was always very busy. He was called on to read his poems and to speak, to help younger writers and things of that sort so I didn't see too much of him in his last few years but I did know Langston Hughes much better and saw Hughes more frequently. Glenn Carringto...: I even went to the hospital the day of his death but I couldn't see him because he was too sick to be seen and in a way I'm glad I didn't because they say he had tubes in his nose and throat and things of that sort which often happens when one is on his death bed. But I had many happy evenings at the house on 107th Street where Langston lived on the top floor. And I have been collecting Hughes' material for a dozen or so years. I had been before he died and when he found out that I was collecting him seriously, he would then give me things. Not only copies of books often translated into foreign languages but also copies of manuscripts, typewritten copies of manuscripts, some of... I should mention one of them. The posthumous volume called the Panther and the Lash? Well I guess you call it the title poem Backlash Blues which is in that volume. Several months before he died, he gave me 16 versions of that poem and I have mentioned that when some young poets show you a piece of verse and say, "What do you think of this poem?" Expected to say, "Wonderful." I usually say, "Have you been over it?" Glenn Carringto...: And recall the fact that he was Langston Hughes, a seasoned poet who did at least 16 versions of Backlash Blues before he was satisfied with it and he may not have been satisfied with it even then. I knew Zora Hurston because she was at Howard during part of my undergraduate stay there and then I saw her later at New York and as I mentioned to was it Miss [Sato] today in inscribing one of my volumes of her work, she placed a very flattering little inscription which is not apropos to our discussion now. No it was not naughty I can tell you that. Zora was capable of being very naughty but this one was not. Yeah she was what I call a grand gal and enjoyed every minute I ever spent with her. In fact, I have a picture I took of Zora at Howard. We had every spring of every year [Frivolity Day] maybe you have them up here I don't know. When the seniors are very frivolous and dress up in crazy costumes and things and of course the next day they put on caps and gowns and pretend that they are very highfalutin. Glenn Carringto...: But I remember Zora has a cap pulled down on the side of her head and her whole attitude during that Frivolity Day day was quite nice one. Well of course being in New York during the period of the '20s, you naturally met people connected with Renaissance, the young poets and the writers. Dr. Du Bois started a little theater group up there called the Krigwa Players and I never attended any of their meetings. Harold Jackmanwas the secretary of that group and I think I told somebody that I have a card that Harold sent me back during the late '20s inviting me to one of the meetings of the Krigwa Players which I for some reason or other couldn't attend. Glenn Carringto...: Now, I would like to say just a little more about Hughes. He was a very generous person, very, very human. And he came to my house several times. I have several photographs I made of him in my house and I also photographed him in his house on 127th Street. He always had interest in people up there. If you dropped in... you didn't have to make an appointment to visit Langston, you just rang the bell and if he was home, "Come on up, come on up." He was just that democratic. Anyway, he had a party one night when Peter Abrahams was in town, the Black South African writer who now lives in the West Indies I believe. And on occasions like that, I would take along my books by the person who was going to be there to get them inscribed, those that I hadn't had inscribed at other times or other places. Glenn Carringto...: And then he had a party for George Lamming, the other Black writer whom some of you may know from his work. I'm sure Dr. Davies knows Lamming. And let's see, who else should I... Oh yeah Claude McKay He was at my house once during which I got him to inscribe Spring in New Hampshire and something else. What was it? But you always got the idea that Claude was a sort of wanting to thumb his nose at you. I never had any controversy with him, I had no reason, not being a literary person myself, I had no reason to have a controversy with him but whenever I would meet him on the street, we'd always stop and talk. The night he was at my house I think was the time when I showed him a book which I thought was pretty rare, it was a one volume edition of Bruce's Travels in Africa so he, who knew [Sean Berg] even better than I did told Sean Berg about it so the next time I say Sean Berg in the library, Sean Berg took out a five volume... series of books by Bruce that he had collected. Glenn Carringto...: But in line with his vagabondage about which much has been said here, he liked to know the people on the streets and he met lots of them just quite casually. And he would hɒbnɒb with them or have a drink with them or take a walk with them and in fact, the way he came to my house was that he knew one of my school mates from Richmond. I never knew how they met and it didn't matter but this former schoolmate of mine was the one who brought him up to visit me and of course I was very happy to have him. Now, I knew Wallace Thurman not too well, not intimately but I knew him and I think I told one of our colleagues that I am supposed to be a character in one of his novels. I think I'd better not say what the character is because I didn't think it was a good picture of me at all Speaker 3: Did you know Rudolph Fisher by the way- Glenn Carringto...: I did know Rudolph Fisher and I know his sister and his widow who live in 409 still. Rudolph Fisher, whom we knew as Bud Fisher after graduating from... was it Brown? I think it was Brown yes. After graduating from Brown he entered the Howard Medical School and graduated from the medical school. Then he came to New York and went into medical practice. He also was one of the founders of a hospital, a small private hospital called the International Hospital which was located on 7th Avenue around 138th Street I believe. It didn't last too long, I think maybe a couple of years because they just couldn't get it properly financed. And of course not too long after that, Bud Fisher died at a very young age. Glenn Carringto...: He had a son who died just about... I think the boy's dead now about 3 years. I think it's always such a pity that people who have knowledge of medicine very often can't save themselves. But he was a rather popular student at Howard, Fisher was, and he and Locke were very close friends and are said to have enjoyed each other's company especially when it was doing nothing more than telling off-colored jokes. He was Phi Beta Kappa man from Brown I believe and a member of one or two other honorary societies. An ordinary looking person, not particularly stunning, good conversationalist, and as I say I didn't know him intimately. I probably was in his company only 4 or 5 times although when he founded this International Hospital, I was working as a reporter for the Amsterdam News and one of my assignments was to go over and interview him about it and I wrote a little article about the hospital for the paper. Glenn Carringto...: Oh yes, now that I mention my connection with the Amsterdam News, I might as well tell you about one other incident that doesn't have any relation to the Renaissance, any direct relationship to the Renaissance. Once during my service there which was roughly from September 1930 until March '31, one of the people who came to town was the late George Washington Carver who didn't go to the Theresa Hotel or anywhere like that, he took a room in the YMCA which was quite typical. Glenn Carringto...: He was a very plain and plain spoken man who wore ascot ties and cap when he walked around the street. So I went over to interview Dr. Carver we ended up spending almost all the afternoon with him. He was just that sort of person. He's glad to talk to people and after I wrote up the interview for the paper and after he had departed for Tuskegee, I thought it would be nice to send him a copy of it which I did. And so, one of my proud possessions is a fairly lengthy letter from Carver, typewritten by his secretary but with two or three lines written in by pen and of course signed by him. Glenn Carringto...: But, yeah, I just wanted to say one or two things about this matter of building up collections of books about Black people for your libraries or as well as for your personal collections. I have said that collecting is a sort of incurable disease. Once a collector, always a collector. Glenn Carringto...: When I first began gathering material on Black people I had no idea that I'd build it up to such an extent that I can hardly get into my apartment because I have to step over boxes and packages and all matter of stuff. People have asked me how many books I have. I don't know. Because, in addition to the books, I have a lot of pamphlets, I have several hundred pamphlets, some of them dating back to the slavery... the abolition era, which you pick up once in a while accidentally in a second hand bookshop. And then as I said, Langston gave me so many things. If I ever do dispose of my collection before bequeathing it to some school library, I certainly don't want to dispose of anything as important to me as the Langston Hughes things. For instance, perhaps the rarest of all his books is that little privately printed thing called Dear Lovely Death, which the Spingarn's printed at their hand-press up in Amenia, New York. Glenn Carringto...: That was published in only 100 copies or 99 copies or something like that. So I [inaudible] he had an extra copy, said he thought he did, he probably had one down in the cellar. But he didn't find it in the cellar. He had a lot of things down in the cellar. But he did find what he considered a defective copy of it upstairs that's handmade paper and there're a couple of splotches in the paper but that makes it distinctive to me and I don't mind the fact that I have perhaps the only copy with the splotches on the pages. It's like people collecting stamps, if the airplane is upside down, that makes it more valuable to them. But anyway, that brings me to Howdy, Honey, Howdy. Glenn Carringto...: In West Branch the other day after going through the library and museum in the Hoover grounds, I decided to walk downtown and I met two people from the institute who had been in second hand shops and museum and places, they pointed out a little antique shop and said they have some good material in here. So I went in not thinking that they had... Oh I first asked the man, "Do you have any Black material?" And he thought a minute and said he didn't think he had and said, "Oh yes I do have one thing." So he went back in a room that wasn't open to the public and here was Paul Laurence Dunbar's Howdy, Honey, Howdy, one of the very rare books of Dunbar's, and only $3.75. If he had asked $15 for it I would probably have bought it. Thing is if I couldn't afford it myself, I could always resell it. But that was a real find and there have been other finds over the years that I have run into. Glenn Carringto...: For instance, once in looking at a table with maybe 200 second hand books, just thumbing through the pile, I picked up a book with a green cover that I have never seen before and I didn't even know whether it was Black or white but very often when you see something like that that doesn't have the title on the outside, you open it to the printer's piece and see what it is. And the printer's piece was a picture of a Black man who was the author of the book. He was a poet around the turn of the century, a man named James Madison Bell. I don't think he's been mentioned here during the discussions. He was a minister and had a sort of varied career but he was also a poet. Not a good poet of course but he wouldn't measure up to Dr. Davies' standards for good poetry of course. But I paid I think a quarter for it and I've never seen it since. I presume it's in the Schomburg Collection in Yale and the Library of Congress but I have never run into it on a second hand table again. Glenn Carringto...: And that has happened very often over the years. So at least be on the look out for these things if you're interested. And if you don't want them yourselves, your college libraries may be just something that they need you see. And if you are a collector, naturally you're glad to get a real find. Then Van Vechten. The Black people are divided in their attitude toward Van Vechten but I always found him a very warm friend, a person I am so happy to have known. Somebody mentioned the Kellner book about Van Vechten today, Carl Van Vechten and the Irreverent Decades it's called and it's a most illuminating book and has a lot of Black material in it. It should be in every library that collects Black material certainly. Glenn Carringto...: Anyway, I met Van Vechten in a strange way. I had seen some photos he had made of Ethel Waters and I had been an Ethel Waters fan for many many decades, So I thought it would be nice to have some one or two of his photos of Ethel in my collection. Incidentally, Ethel had been to my house once but that was about 20 years ago. Glenn Carringto...: Because I have practically all of her records. There are two or three that are missing of the old '78s. None of the LPs are missing from my collection I'm glad to say. You can still get a few of them by the way. Incidentally... well let me finish what I'm saying about Ethel and Van Vechten. So I didn't hear anything from Van Vechten for a couple of weeks and I thought maybe he forgot about it. And then one night I went to town hall on 43rd street to some entertainment and then somebody said, "Do you know who is here?" And I said, "Who?" "Carl Van Vechten". So I said, "Oh well, will you introduce me?" So this person, who I don't really remember who it was did introduce me to him. He said, "You're getting a package of 30 photos of Ethel Waters in the mail." And sure enough, just like that. He didn't know me from Adam. All he knew was that I was interested in Ethel Waters so I had these 30 photos and a couple of others that he took that I acquired subsequently. Glenn Carringto...: Then later after I'd known him a while, there was a dinner given by some Black woman's organization honoring Ethel Waters and Carl or Carlo as he liked for his friends to call him was the principal speaker. So he wrote me and said his list of Ethel Waters recordings had gone to Yale along with the recordings themselves. Would I kindly make out a list of my Ethel Waters recordings he wanted to refer to them in the speech he was going to make. So I did. I made this list, two or three typewritten pages and sent it to him and sure enough in the speech that he made, he did refer to one or two things... let's see. One of them was You Can't Do What My Last Man Did. That was one of the recordings that he wanted to mention. Anyway, yeah I had many contacts with Carlo for one reason or another. Glenn Carringto...: I was at the dedication of the James Weldon Johnson Collection at Yale on his invitation. That was a memorable occasion too. The late [Muriel Ron] sang that day and Langston was there, a good many people from the Renaissance period attended the ceremonies up at Yale. Then they had another ceremony later with an exhibit from his collection. He has an immense of material up there that is good for exhibition purposes. I've exhibited some of my materials at libraries in New York and places of that sort and it's a lot of fun to assemble material for an exhibit because it... in the first place, you review what you have and select what you think is appropriate. And you always have to cut down, that is if you're a real collector you always have to cut down the things you can exhibit because of the limitation of space in cases that are closed and locked. By all means if you exhibit things, make sure that the cases are locked. And also, most libraries in New York, public library for example insures material if you let them have it for exhibit purposes. I have a whole sheaf of letters from Van Vechten which are going to be among my papers when they go to whatever school they are going to. Speaker 1: That was Glenn Carrington, faculty member of the Co-operative College Center at the State University of New York at Mount Vernon with a personal look at Harlem and the Renaissance. These comments were recorded 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 of the University of Iowa.