James L. Hill lecture, "Between Philosophy and Race: Images of Blacks in the Fiction of Frank Yerby," at the University of Iowa, April 9, 1974

Speaker 1: The following was recorded April 9th, 1974, as part of the Black Kaleidoscope for Cultural Series at the University of Iowa. Between Philosophy andRace, Images of Blacks in the Fiction of Frank Yerby is the subject of this presentation by James L. Hill, a Doctoral candidate in the Department of Afro-American Studies at the University of Iowa. James L. Hill: I might say at the outset that I came up in the kind of school system where the teacher was required to talk softly so that the students would hear, to make sure that the students would listen, so that if there are those of you who do not hear me, then would you please raise your hand? My son included. James L. Hill: Aside from his unprecedented achievements as an Afro-American writer, the one thing that Frank Yerby continues to prove consistently each year is that sex, violence, and more sex is a steady cultural diet in America. One could all too easily become engrossed in this aspect of his fiction. However, this evening I would like to try to omit the more delectable aspects of his novels and concentrate my attention on the images of Blacks. James L. Hill: Yerby is one of the most maligned Black novelists writing today. Over the years he has been indicted for sophomoric grammar, melodramatic plotting, comic book characterization, superficial research, perpetuation of stereotypes, and a denial of his racial heritage. James L. Hill: Some of these criticisms perhaps are deserving. However, they are not in any way, I think, a valid measure of the writer. At least they do not explain his continued success as a writer. After a writer has refused for 28 years to make race the central focus of this fiction, and has spent this time writing mostly about tall blonde or red-headed males or ravishing blue or green-eyed white females, it may seem superfluous to some to be talking about the images of Blacks in his fiction. Such, however, is not the case with Frank Yerby. James L. Hill: The question of images of Blacks in his novels has been an ongoing controversy since the mid-'40s. One of the earliest views of his novels was that they reinforced aristocratic traditions of the South and distorted the images of Blacks. James L. Hill: In evaluating Yerby's early novels in the late '40s, for example, Theodore Ward declared, "With one eye fixed upon the almighty dollar, and the other ask answers to the outlook and the role of slaves, Yerby flounders, trips, and in the act of falling, splatters his own people with the mud of white supremacy. By characterizing the slaves as supine or unintelligent, he supports the notion of Negro inferiority, and withal, falsifies history at a time when leading writers of a country are waging a splendid war against just such stereotypes, and when the greatest need is manifest for truthful pictures of the race and its culture." James L. Hill: Critical opinion in this vein has persisted for over two decades. Some few critics have even interpreted the images of Yerby's fiction as an expression of the writer's hatred of Blacks. In more positive evaluations in recent years, however, some critics have examined the images of Blacks in Yerby's fiction more closely and have compared them with those of other writers. For instance, in a survey of American bestsellers, called From Apartheid To Invisibility: Black Americans in Popular Fiction, 1900 to 1960, Donald Baker points to Yerby as one of the few Black novelists who provides positive images of Blacks in the area of popular fiction. Without attempting to minimize the importance of the controversy of a positive or negative images in Yerby's fiction, I submit that there are some of both. James L. Hill: One dimension which is usually overlooked in this controversy, however, is the fact that Yerby, like most Black writers in the '40s, began his career writing protest stories. In fact, it was one of his stories, Health Card, which brought him his initial national recognition, winning a special O'Henry Award for the first published story. There's still some question yet as to how he received this, since he had published a story before that time. James L. Hill: In his early short stories, Yerby concentrates mainly on racial discrimination and oppression. Health Card, so named for the card that prostitutes were required to carry, is a story which is probably based on Yerby's knowledge of the general experiences of Black soldiers stationed at Fort Gordon in Augusta, Georgia. A Black soldier, Johnny Green, has been given special permission to spend time in town when his wife comes to visit him. When she arrives from Detroit, the couple is harassed by MPs, who automatically assume that Lily Green is a prostitute and demand to see her card. Insulted, Green attempts to defend his wife, but she prevents him, fearing he will be killed. In response to the anguish and insult he feels, Green declares that he is less than a man. James L. Hill: In Roads Going Down, another story resembling very much Wright's Big Boy Leaves Home, a Black youth named Robert accidentally discovers a white boy and girl swimming naked in a lake. To prevent Robert from telling, Joey the white boy attempts to kill him. Unsuccessful at this, Joey accuses Robert of molesting the girl. Then Joey's father demands that Robert be beaten. Robert's father complies with this in order to teach Robert a lesson in Southern ethics, never contradict whites. Robert runs away from home, feeling sorry for himself and his father. James L. Hill: The Homecoming depicts the plight of Sergeant Willie Jackson, who returning from World War II finds that he cannot readjust to the pattern of behavior expected of Southern Blacks. When he refuses to act like local Blacks, a white mob attempts to teach him his place in Southern society. He is saved only by a Southern colonel, who sympathetically has him committed to an institution for combat fatigue. James L. Hill: In Thunder of God, Yerby presents an account of Blacks who are forced to rebuild the levy of a dam at shotgun point. A different and more complex story is My Brother Went To College. In this story, a rebellious young Black man has chosen to become a drifter instead of attending college like his brother, who becomes a successful Black doctor. Years later, when the drifter visits his brother, he finds himself gravitating towards conformity to the standards of middle class Blacks. James L. Hill: Another story, and the final short story of Frank Yerby, is What Are White Magnolias. It is a prototype of the kind of Black-white confrontations Yerby would write about a few years later in his novels. This story treats the conflict that arises when a Southern white girl, Beth Thomas, invites the daughter of a Black physician to visit her home. The Black girl, Hannah Simmons, is a well-dressed Fisk graduate who became friends with Beth Thomas at an interracial conference. Unable to accept Hannah Simmons on equal terms, Beth's parents try to fit her into one of the convenient stereotypes of Southern Black women. When all else fails, Beth's father tells Hannah, "All the money and all the education in the world won't make a white man out of a nigger. All it does is make the critter miserable." In this story, Yerby anticipates what later becomes a personal conviction of his. That is the improbability of whites and Blacks living together. James L. Hill: Yerby's aims in these stories are clearly aims of protests. Similarly, when he made the transition from protest to popular fiction in 1946, he did not, as some critics have indicated, omit racial protest from his fiction. Despite his literary dictums, some 28 years later, nearly as many bestsellers and over 50 million copies of novels sold, Yerby is still a protest writer. Clearly the nature of his protest has changed. It has become more covert. However, Yerby has not maintained the writer's objectivity that he claims. What he accomplished in the transition from protest to popular fiction was a transmutation of the protest aim. He found in history an intellectual basis for his protest. James L. Hill: Although race and racial conflict are not the central focus of his novels, he treats these issues in each of them. He presents an array of historical, cultural, and contemporary images of Blacks in all of his novels, that is the entire span of his novels, the time span. These images range from the buffoon, the devoted slave, and the Black mammy, to Blacks who are unlettered but dignified, poor, intelligent, professional Blacks. In most instances, he shows how they are oppressed or frustrated in society. James L. Hill: The images of Blacks in his fiction, however, are not just imaginative literary creations of a writer. They have some basis in history. Images of Blacks in Yerby's fiction are factual, stereotypical, and individualized, or they may be popular images culturally indigenous to a particular society. Yerby presents them all. He caustically manipulates both stereotypes and popular images using the protagonist and occasionally a raissoneur to undermine derogatory images that may be present also. He leaves it to the reader to determine the images he wants to accept. James L. Hill: As for his use of well-known stereotypes of Blacks, Yerby consciously employs them. Stereotypes, he says, "Should be treated tenderly. They are not entirely false. A very large proportion of the members of minority groups are exactly what bigots say they are." Any careful reader, however, is able to determine when Yerby treats a Black character sympathetically or when the image is a derogatory image. James L. Hill: The composite of Black images in the fiction of Frank Yerby should not lead one to believe, as some critics have concluded, that Yerby hates Blacks. Yerby sometimes insists on presenting Blacks as people of unusual stature and dignity, despite the fact that they may be slaves. In many instances, the popular derogatory images of Blacks, which are culturally indigenous to a particular society, the South here most of all, offset the positive images or vice versa. Such impressionistic images as that burr-headed Black bastard, which is a recurrent image that one finds in the novels of Yerby, should not be viewed as the writer's personal views or personal feelings about Blacks, but rather as the writer's manipulation of popular images. In fact, Yerby has on several occasions used the same expression to describe himself when communicating with whites. James L. Hill: Equally as important in evaluating Yerby's fiction is his philosophical assumptions and convictions about race and racial conflict. Out of his extensive knowledge of history and his own experiences, he has evolved certain philosophical tenets. For example, he maintains, one, that God does not concern himself with the affairs of men, two, that the sins for which one suffers or is punished in life are weakness, defenselessness, and stupidity, three, that justice in life has absolutely nothing to do with morality, ethics, fair play, or the concept of good and evil, and four, that success in life is determined by one's intelligence and strength and one's willingness to use these in a pursuit of one's goals. James L. Hill: In application to race and racial conflict, these philosophical assumptions translate into several theses on race. One, that specific African tribes, [Cremontes], Fante, Asante, and the Dahomeans, were not so successfully enslaved as other tribes, the [Wydas], the [Negos], the [Pawpaws], [Ingullins], Kongos, and Igbos, two, that it was out of defenselessness and weakness that Africans submitted to slavery in the Americas, three, that they should have, as Native American Indians, chosen to die honorably, rather than be enslaved, and four, that the amalgamation of specific groups in a multiracial society is improbable. These convictions are curiously operative in Yerby's characters in his fiction. That is in the characterization of Blacks in his fiction. James L. Hill: Perhaps two other reasons for the persistent controversy of his images in his novels are that some readers have limited their reading to the early novels and that a substantial number of the novels take place during the Civil War, that is the Civil War era, before, during, or after. In each of these novels of this period, there are recurring images of slaves as house servants, field workers, stablemen, and in other activities related to slavery. James L. Hill: There are too incidental images of Blacks which have historical or social significance. Along with these recurrent images, Yerby expresses convictions which apply specifically to this group of Blacks. He feels, one, that they have a kind of second sight, two, that the Black grapevine among them was extremely secretive and a very effective communication system in the South, three, that the revenge of this group of Blacks in slavery came in their enjoyment of complicating the lives of whites, and four, that they in their very limited ways have prearranged and influenced many of the marriage unions of whites in the South. James L. Hill: This group of images is both too many and too repetitive to consider here. However, I shall concern myself briefly with images of Blacks Yerby depicts to offset these and with showing the progressive development in his depiction of Black characters. James L. Hill: Yerby's first novel in 1946, The Foxes of Harrow, established a basic pattern for his successive 25 novels. It deals with the historical period from 1825 to 1865. The Foxes of Harrow is a story of the rise of a young Irish gambler, Stephen Fox, from poverty to wealth in New Orleans. It begins with him being thrown off of a steamboat on the Mississippi River and ends with the destruction of the empire he has built, a plantation called Harrow. Between the years 1825 and 1865, he amasses a fortune from gambling, conniving, cotton, and the hard work of his slaves. He marries into a Creole family, has an affair with Desiree, a free Black, raises his son, and marries his sister-in-law. James L. Hill: Although Foxes of Harrow is usually compared with Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind, Yerby's novel shows a much more sympathetic treatment of Blacks. Achilles, the slave in the Foxes of Harrow, would be just a stereotype of the Black brute, but Yerby depicts him with dignity and nobility. La Belle Sauvage, his wife, would be the rebellious primitive, but for her beauty, nobility, and her refusal to admit inferiority to anyone. Exemplifying Yerby's philosophy, she chooses the honor of death over submission to slavery. Aunt Caleen appears to be a traditional stereotype of the Black mammy. However, Yerby combines [fruitness] and the mysteries of voodoo in her character, making her courageous, dignified, and intelligent. Desiree would be just another of a countless concubines, but her grace, beauty, and intelligence gives her character. James L. Hill: Probably the most important Black character in the Foxes of Harrow is Inchcliff. He combines the dignity and nobility of his parents with the wisdom of Aunt Caleen. Waiting for the right opportunity, he escapes to the North, where he comes under the influence of abolitionists. He is captured and returned, but at the end of the novel he has become a Black leader. He is Commissioner of Police of the City of New Orleans. Perhaps Yerby's most idealized portrait of a Black character, Inchcliff is almost a paragon of virtue. In the next novel, he becomes an antagonist. James L. Hill: The Vixens, Yerby's second novel, is a sequel to the Foxes of Harrow. It treats what Yerby described as an ignoble victory of the Reconstruction Era, 1866 to 1877. The central character of the Vixens is Laird Fournois, whose love affairs venture into Reconstruction politics and efforts to aid Blacks comprise the basic plot of the novel. A significant subplot, however, is the contrast between Etienne Fox, Stephen Fox's son, and Inchcliff, both of whom are characters in the Foxes of Harrow. Etienne Fox's misfortunes have reduced him to living in an overseers cottage. He has become a local leader of the Knights of the White Camellia. In contrast, Inchcliff has become a respected leader of his people in Reconstruction politics and shows the polish of his European education. To emphasize the contrast between Inchcliff and Etienne Fox, Yerby describes in detail the elegant luxury of Inch's home, his cultural conversation, his library, and the fashionable dress of Desiree, now his wife. James L. Hill: The Vixens also focuses on other significant Black characters, Bobo, a stereotype of a bad nigger, Isaac and Nimrod Robinson, two unlettered by intelligent Blacks, who along with Inchcliff, choose to die nobly, resisting the Knights of the White Camellia, and portraits of historical figures, P.S. Pinchback, the Roudanez brothers of Santo Domingo, and Oscar Don, the incorruptible Black politician of Reconstruction. James L. Hill: In his fifth novel, Floodtide, Yerby again returns to the sudden scene during the Civil War era. This novel traces the life of Ross Pary in his rise from the lower class section of Natchez, Mississippi to prominence among Mississippi planters. During these intervening years, Yerby focuses on the Cuban Revolution and secessionist politics in Mississippi. Important images of Blacks in this novel are those of Brutus and his wife. Like Achilles in the Foxes of Harrow, Brutus is depicted with dignity and nobility. Instead of docile or [inaudible] submission to slavery, as some of the slaves, he is characterized as a slave filled with massive dignity, almost with contempt of his condition. Yerby uses Brutus as a mouthpiece to comment on the happy acceptance of slavery by some Blacks. At a slave auction where he is being sold, Brutus overhears two slaves bragging about the prices their respective owners have paid for them. He is enraged and contemptuously chides them, "Slave niggers bragging about what you cost. Can't buy a man. Ain't no price set on a man. Buy things like you, buy fool beast niggers like you, but not a man." Brutus's wife, Rachel, is described as "Black as night and just as beautiful," a fact which it takes Ross Pary some time to comprehend. In the novel, Pary buys Brutus, and impressed with the dignity of the slave, changes his attitude toward Blacks. James L. Hill: Like Ross Pary, Tyler Meredith, a blockade runner during the Civil War, attempts to help Blacks after he has become convinced of their humanity. At the end of Captain Rebel, Meredith is attempting to build equal schools for Blacks and whites, but he is defeated by the Knights of the White Camellia. Several images of Blacks in the novel support Yerby's contentions about race. Rene Doumier, a rich Creole who owns a large plantation, is a victim of the ideology of white supremacy. Doumier's contempt for his slaves exceeds that of whites, but he is not allowed to join the Confederate Army because he is one eighth Black. Doumier's daughter, Lauriel, is a charming woman who cannot pursue her love affair with Meredith because her father will not permit her to become a backstreet concubine and society forbids their union. Unlike Desiree in the Foxes of Harrow, Lauriel does not become Meredith's concubine, a significant variation in Yerby's treatment of the free Black female. Another important historical figure in the novel is Marie Laveau, who because of her reputation as a voodoo queen, is both respected and feared by the citizenry of New Orleans. James L. Hill: Yerby's next novel, Fairoaks, covers the period from 1832 to 1885. It relates the adventures of Guy Falks as a slaver in Africa and his return to Mississippi as a wealthy man. During his slaving adventures in Africa, Falks is befriended by Mongo [Jor], the corrupt African chief of Rio Pongo. Mongo Jor has made a profitable business out of capturing other Africans and selling them into slavery. At the same time, one sees that his own people are oppressed. Although corrupt and excessively indulgent of his own vanities, his portrait is not entirely derogative. He is intelligent and he maintains some semblance of dignity when compared to the white slavers who commit worst cruelties against their slaves. Using Mongo Jor as a mouthpiece, Yerby criticizes the hypocrisy of Americans towards slavery. Mongo, speaking of [Bilgy], a mulatto victim of slavery, tells Falks, "Poor Bilgy's condition is a prime example of a superior morality of a superior race. I bought her from her ex-master, though technically she was freed and could not be sold. Her ex-master is a traitor and an abolitionist." Yerby sows sympathy for Bilgy as he describes her. She is "beautiful, oriental, languid, the dust of tropic night, a python goddess writhing slowly." James L. Hill: A similar victim is [Thibi], a yard child of the Mallory family in Mississippi. She cannot become Guy Falks's mate, because society forbids it. She suffers, as she says, "Because a woman is a lonesome thing, needing a man, and a man ain't a slave. A man can't be bought and sold like a mule, whipped to work in somebody else's field. Critter what can got no right to claim manhood." James L. Hill: Griffin's Way, published in 1962, shows more sophistication in Yerby's depiction of black characters. Another novel of Reconstruction, Griffin's Way presents several positive images, but unlike the idealized depictions of the Foxes of Harrow, their weaknesses and their experience are revealed. The most important Black character is Dr. Bruce Randolph, an idealistic Harvard graduate who comes South to educate his people. Unaware of the conditions of the South, he despairs when he learns of the difficulty of his task. He embezzles money allotted for the education of Blacks and escapes in the luxury he can provide for his family. He regains faith, however, and becomes a dedicated Black leader. When the Klan bombs his home and kills his daughter, he delivers one of Yerby's most vehement diatribes against Anglosaxonism. James L. Hill: Attacking whites who believe in white supremacy, Randolph says, "Holding his paleness to be the be all and end all of existence, he feels no need to bend his energies to aught, but the maintenance of his wasteful, unproductive membership in the mystic brotherhood of white men. Lacking logic, he not only does not see the essential idiocy of basing pride on a virtue and all else upon the accidental color of his hide, but fails to remark the inviolable connection between means and end, using therefore the foulest method that ever disgraced humanity to win what was not worth a kindle in the first place." Dr. Randolph and his family, of course, have to flee the South and are aided in their escape by Paris Griffin and Candace Trevor, sympathetic whites. Significant also in this novel is the treatment of Hector and Roberta, an interracial couple living openly in defiance of Southern society. James L. Hill: In each of these novels dealing with the Civil War and Reconstruction Era, Yerby presents a variety of Black characters. They range from the cringing Black slave or the buffoon to the slave of dignity and nobility to the person of professional background. The percentage of favorable images in his fiction of this period, Yerby would probably argue, correspond to the realities of history. Although the images of Blacks in his novels after Reconstruction are still images of the oppressed, one sees a progressive development in Yerby's updating of characters and different slants in characterization. James L. Hill: A Woman Called Fancy, set in Augusta, Georgia during the period 1880 to 1890, is a story of the rise of Fancy Williamson from a South Carolina hillbilly to a lady of Augusta society. In this novel, socially relevant images can be seen in Yerby's treatment of the Black convict lease system, Blacks in education, and Blacks in developing industries of the South. The novel focuses on Bell, a mulatto victim of Southern society who has three beautiful children for one of the Brantleys, the central family in the book. She is occasionally supported by Field Brantley, the children's father, but he rarely visits her. Significantly, Court Brantley and Fancy visit her and eat dinner in her home, another defiance of Southern tradition. Bell's son Dred is even more of a victim. He hates the antics of the Black boys of his age, but as he says, "If having a white heart makes a body act like white folks do, I hope to Jesus that mine is black as night." James L. Hill: Perhaps the most significant thing about Blacks in A Woman Called Fancy is Yerby's declaration that Blacks cannot live in America in dignity. As Yerby's mouthpiece [inaudible] says, "I have to admit that Blacks and whites can't really live together, not now, not ever. A negro is just too damned physically, visibly different from a white man. Notice how I said physically. I've known Black boys who were in the first rank intellectually. What do you think it does to a bright boy to know it would cost him his life if he ever reared up on his haunches and acted like a man?" In accordance with this conviction, Yerby voluntarily exiled himself from America in 1952, the year following the publication of A Woman Called Fancy. James L. Hill: As in A Woman Called Fancy, the updating of socially relevant images may be seen in Benton's Row also. The novel follows the history of four generations of the Benton family, from 1842 to 1920. Using his familiar technique of parallels, Yerby depicts Black characters which correspond to each male successor in the Benton family. Caleb is Tom Benton's slave. Buford, Caleb's son, sharecrops for Wade Benton and dies when the Knights of White Camellia burn the Black school. Buford's son dies with Nat Benton in the Spanish American War, and his son, Buck, fights with Roland Benton in World War I. In these images, Yerby emphasizes the plight of the freed slave and the patriotism of the Black soldier. James L. Hill: Another Yerby novel, The Girl from Storyville, relates the lurid, sadistic self-destruction of the heroine Fannie Turner. Set in the 1890s, this novel provides two views of the Black woman. Emphasizing the wit and intelligence of these characters, Yerby varies the stereotypes. Eliza, the Turners' maid, is the recurrent image of a Black matriarch, but she is funny. For example, when Detective Turner tells her he broke into a house and caught his wife and another man in flagrante, she has to translate it. She says, "Then I reckon it mean [inaudible] naked in bed making bed spring music." [Louella], a raisonneur in the novel, is the most significant female character. When she leaves the New Orleans prostitute house where she is a maid, she goes to a farm where she shares her knowledge of dress and beauty aids with the other Black women on the farm. James L. Hill: In The Serpent and the Staff, Yerby presents another fully developed character. Paralleling the life and the career of Duncan Childers, the protagonist of the novel, is that of Mose Johnson, a Black physician. In the juxtaposition of the lives of these two doctors, however, Yerby reveals the plight of the Johnson family. Mose Johnson's sister is pregnant for a white Jim Vance. Mack Johnson, the father, is Black and proud, and he is prevented from avenging this injustice. Preferring to be dead than live with shame, he starves himself to death. Ironically, Mose Johnson, the doctor, is willing to sacrifice his pride if he can help his people, but when he performs a tracheotomy on a little white girl dying of diphtheria, a white mob attempts to lynch him. Only the intervention of Duncan Childers saves him. While these images are positive, Yerby does not fail to indicate the oppression of Blacks during the early 20th century. James L. Hill: One of Yerby's three contemporary novels, Speak Now, presents his only Afro-American protagonist. As the title suggests, the novel takes its title from the traditional wedding ceremony, and therefore deals with the questions surrounding the love affair between Harry Forbes, a Black jazz musician, and Cathy Nichols, a Southern bigot. Similar to the protagonist in Himes's The Primitive, bitter ex-patriot Harry Forbes torments Cathy with every conceivable aspect of the racial issue. He also torments her with subtle niceties. He buys her food, pays her rent, offers to marry her to provide a name for her unborn child, but he at first refuses to go to bed with her. Inevitably, however, they both fall in love and are married. More than the characters in the early protest stories, Harry Forbes expresses Yerby's convictions on the racial situation. In fact, this novel becomes something of a platform for Yerby's final say on the race question. He reiterates his conviction that Blacks and whites cannot live together, except that in this novel he extends it to include the entire world. He criticizes the treatment of Blacks in America. However, he does not absolve Blacks of all responsibility for their conditions. He blames Afro-American ancestors for submitting to slavery. Likewise, he criticizes Africans first of all for allowing whites to invade Africa and then letting a handful of whites rule it. James L. Hill: The Dahomean is a more extensive examination of Yerby's charge against Africans. Perhaps his best novel, The Dahomean is a more detailed recreation of 19th century Dahomean culture. The novel depicts the life of [Nyasanu], son of the African chief of the village. It recounts his rise to position of governor of the province, his effort to maintain rule over distant factions in the province and factions at home and his betrayal and being sold into slavery. In Yerby's recreation, one sees the beauty, intelligence, and artistic skill of Dahomeans. In this culture it is the white skin which is an oddity. Before invasions, whites to the Dahomeans are "those hideous skinless people beyond the sea." The emphasis on the Dahomean standards of male and female beauty, ethics, morality in the novel reveal an implied comparison between the standards of African and Western cultures. On the other hand, Yerby does not fail to point out African failures. He reveals that there were vain men in Dahomey, that they plotted against each other, and that African rulers were monarchs who oppressed their own people. King [Getso], for example, is very much like Mongo Jor in Fairoaks. James L. Hill: To complete the panorama of historical and socially relevant images of Blacks in Yerby's fiction, one would have to examine a host of other novels. For instance, the Black cowboy in Garfield Honor, Africans in the Golden Hawk, the villainess Beulah Land in Gideon, the image of Crispus Attucks in the Bride of Liberty, the black woman in An Odor of Sanctity, and eunuchs in several of Yerby's novels. For the historical or contemporary, however, they all seem to reflect his philosophical assumptions or convictions about race. James L. Hill: The array of images in the fiction of Frank Yerby represent the historical, the cultural, and the contemporary. His 26 novels provide the beginnings of a history of Blacks in cultures across the world. Out of this history and his own experiences, he has recreated these images. For him, these images represent what we have done, what has been done to us, but more importantly, what we have allowed to be done to us. Whether or not one agrees with Yerby, it is probably more comfortable, I agree, to try to ignore what he has to say. Thank you. Speaker 3: We have a few minutes if you do have any questions. Speaker 4: When Yerby started writing his historical romantic novel, did he do this purely for money or did he decide that this was also [inaudible] way of slipping in his project and more people would read him and it would get the message across in a more indirect manner? James L. Hill: I would have to answer that question this way. I don't think that one can avoid the obvious answer of yes, economics, yes. I think he did want very much to be a successful author. He did want very much to be read. Popular fiction of course provides the backbone of many commercial publishing companies across the country. That aspect is very real in terms of the whole issue. However, Yerby got into popular fiction, according to him, in an attempt to write a parody of what he calls the historical novel, which was a parody of a historical novel, the new vogue of historical novels which started in the 1930s. Speaker 4: Even that now the [inaudible]. You have mentioned that he has a Black protagonist now. Do you find a change in the style or is he writing stylistically the same way [inaudible]? James L. Hill: I think that he's pretty much writing stylistically about the same. I think that there may be some reasons for this over and beyond whether or not he's capable of writing any better. When one is a novelist of the nature of Yerby, one has to confront publishers who cut and suggest and that kind of thing, so that one is not really able to determine, but picking up one of his books stylistically is pretty much the same as picking up the other one. Speaker 5: [inaudible]. For me I think it's too easy to [inaudible]. I find it difficult to be serious as a writer and to accept that some of the rather kind intentions that Black American [inaudible] and I find that it is very, very sympathetic. Is there any particular reason why [inaudible] or is it an attempt by the new Afro-American movement to embrace anybody who comes within, no matter what kind of criticism he makes and how he [inaudible]? James L. Hill: I don't understand your question. Speaker 5: How do you explain the deliberate move to embrace Frank Yerby when in fact he doesn't seem to ... He describes all these things, but he doesn't do anything about it. As long as he is a successful person [inaudible]. James L. Hill: I think that that's probably the personal charge that he makes, which one might read as a cop-out. However, I don't think that that puts the amount of commission as far as making judgments on what's going on. Speaker 6: Another part of that question though was whether my treatment and Jim Hill's treatment would reflect a new way. I say to quite the contrary, if one is looking at the Black arts critics, they would be the ones most inclined to ignore Yerby. If Mr. Hill wanted, he could probably trace the history of the critical attention to Frank Yerby. He was identified first, quite enthusiastically, by Black critics who were quite anxious to find a writer who would gain fame through popularity. Then as the dollars continue to come in for Mr. Yerby and no greater attention seemed to be given to the race issue or working with race, there was less enthusiasm among most of the Black critics, and again, a kind of silence. There is still I think one fact that Hill emphasized. There is for me the question of whether a writer should be ignored, because in his personal life, he has chosen a particular path. Richard Wright also went abroad, and quite honestly, it does seem that every Black writer of the 1940s and early '50s who could get enough money to get out of this country got out and tried to come back as infrequently as possible. I think many who stayed behind merely said they found a way to survive. There's not been that kind of attack on Yerby, has been based on what he has written, rather than on his willingness to live in the States. Speaker 4: What bothers me is that is it not possible for these writers to have make sure that in [inaudible]. James L. Hill: I think that you're dealing with something that's very spurious, again. I think that Yerby would probably say that very little has been done in terms of making those kind of securities real to this point. That is not to say that in the future something cannot be done. I think that as far as Yerby's concerned, the man is 57 years old and he doesn't have that much time left to get into that kind of thing. Speaker 3: Your presentation raises another question which serious writers and critics often ignore. That is the value of popular literature. I wonder if you would like to make a general comment using Yerby as a basis and say that it has been necessary for the Black South in this country, for Black people to be presented in all the popular soap operas, all the advertisements and so on, so that Black people are able to be, they exist like anybody else, that that is something necessary and quite apart from the serious writing. James L. Hill: What you get into with that when you start dealing with the popular literature of other writers is that basically there are derogatory stereotypes. One of the questions about Yerby is whether he was continuing or perpetuating that kind of stereotype or whether he was in fact showing some difference in the treatments of Blacks. This is one of the questions that I tried to get at. I think it is necessary for Blacks to be visible. However, I do not think that it has been necessary for Blacks to be visible as they have been visible in the stereotypes of popular white writers of the past. From that point of view, I could not agree that Yerby's being a popular novelist would give Blacks visibility, no. Yerby's case is very unique, I think in that he was successful as a Black writer going into the popular market and has continued to be successful over the years. There are other Blacks writing in popular fiction, but their identity is as guarded as the secrets of the ages, so one doesn't really know. Speaker 7: Do you know whether or not Yerby was influenced at all by the work of [inaudible]. James L. Hill: No. I would doubt it very seriously. I think basically he came under the influence of, that is in terms of novels, under the influence of the new vogue of historical novels that began in the '30s. Take the Foxes of Harrow for example. It's very similar in some respects to Gone With the Wind. I think that the kind of influence that one finds with the new vogue of historical novels in the '30s was a kind of influence that Yerby comes under generally. Now specifically writers that he has been influenced by, I don't know all of them. Shaw is one of them. Surprisingly, Shakespeare. In his works there are numerous writers alluded to, but one really doesn't know the specific tutelage under which it came. Speaker 8: [inaudible]. Do you consider him an existential writer or [inaudible]? James L. Hill: Yes, one could see him as an existentialist. What he does basically is attempt to show an individual pitting his skills against a hostile universe. This is pretty similar to the existential situation. Speaker 9: Is he a rebel? Is the protagonist a rebel [inaudible]? James L. Hill: The protagonist of the novel is what I would call a rebel victim. That is he seeks to conform and actually becomes a victim of his society, to which he seeks to conform, and at the same time, in many instances, remains alienated from that society. I don't think that he is the rebel, the total rebel in the sense of the existentialist. I think that the positions are similar. Speaker 10: I'd like to thank Mr. Hill for the presentation and encourage you to take advantage of yet another presentation of Black Kaleidoscope that is being shown simultaneously in the lounge of the Memorial Union. There are prints and paintings, collages, by William Henderson, a Black artist. I would like to invite you to return to this room on April 22nd when there will be a lecture on Black Southern novelists' views of the South by Australia Henderson. Thank you.