Margaret Walker Alexander reading at the University of Iowa, November 1, 1977

Darwin Turner: Ladies and gentlemen, it's my pleasure to present our featured speaker for this evening in another program of Black Kaleidoscope, the yearlong cultural series presented by the Afro-American Studies Program of the University of Iowa through a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. For most people in this room, I need not introduce Margaret Walker Alexander, but for those of you who may not know the details of her life, her productivity, let me recount them very briefly, so that she will have the majority of the time this evening. Darwin Turner: She is an educator, author, a housewife, and a personable woman. She was born in Birmingham, Alabama, received a Bachelor of Arts from Northwestern University, received a Master of Arts from the University of Iowa in 1940 and at that time, she gained recognition from Black scholars and from white critics of poetry for the publication of a volume, the production of a volume entitled For My People. A volume, which won her the Yale Award for Younger Poets in 1942 and a volume, which was published. Following the Master of Arts degree, she served as a Professor of English in Livingston College in North Carolina, served for two years as a Professor of English at Virginia State College in Institute West Virginia, then returned to Livingston and in 1949 she became Professor of English at Jackson State College in Jackson, Mississippi, a position which she holds to the present. She has added the position of Director of the Institute for the Study of the History, Life, and Culture of Black People. Darwin Turner: In 1965, she received a PhD from the English Department of the University of Iowa and her dissertation, a creative product, was the novel, Jubilee, subsequently published and subsequently a bestseller. It's my understanding that Margaret Walker Alexander is the only individual in the history of the University of Iowa, at least since Paul Engel joined the faculty around 1937, who received not only two degrees based on creative theses, but who produced two award winning, bestselling creative theses in two different forms. Margaret Walker Alexander is also the recipient of a Rosenwald Fellowship for Creative Writing. She's a Ford Fellow from Yale University. She won the Houghton Mifflin Literary Fellowship in 1966. She holds honorary Doctorates from such places as Dennison, Northwestern, Rusk, Morgan. Darwin Turner: Her publications include numerous poems to various publications such as Poetry to which she contributed at the time in which Poetry was the leading journal of poetry in this country. She is the author of For My People, of Jubilee the novel, of Prophets for a New Day, a collection of poems, of How I Wrote Jubilee, October Journey, and Poetic Equation, Conversation with Nikki Giovanni. It gives me great pleasure to introduce to you tonight, to read from her fiction and her poetry, Dr. Margaret Walker Alexander. Margaret Walker...: Thank you, Dr. Turner. I think that he's told me in the very last words how to begin this thing, and I believe I'll read the prose first and then the poetry. I couldn't imagine how I would get the Jubilee things out and where they would fit in the program of reading poetry. But since some except me to read from Jubilee, I'm going to read from the first chapter, Death is a Mystery That Only the Swing Child Knows, only a section, which is known as Brother Zeke's Prayer. Then I want to read from the third section, Ku Klux Klan Don't Like No Coons, and from the last chapter, How It Ended By Honey Boy. Margaret Walker...: Brother Ezekiel held the child down close to her mother's face and said soothingly, "It's your mama, Valerie. Say hello to your mom." The child spoke, "Mama." Then she whimpered. Hetta fell back on her pillows and Ezekiel handed the child to Mammy Suki, who quickly took her outside into the night air. After a moment, Brother Ezekiel spoke again to the dying and exhausted woman. He says, "Hetta, I'm here. Brother Zeke, it's me. Can I do something for you?" "Pray" she rasped, "Pray." He fell on his knees beside the bed and took her hand in his. The night was growing darker despite the full moon outside spilling light through the great oak and magnolia trees. Inside, Granny Tisey had lighted a large tallow candle, it flared up suddenly and eerie shadows searched the corners and crowded the room. Margaret Walker...: Brother Ezekiel began to pray, "Lord God Almighty, you done told us in your word to seek and we shall find, knock and the door be open, ask and it shall be given when your love come twinkling down. Lord, tonight we is a-seeking. Way down here in this here rain-washed world, kneeling here by this bed of affliction pain, your humble servant is a-knocking and asking for your loving mercy and your tender love. This here sister is tired of suffering Lord and she wants to come on home. We ask you to roll down that sweet chariot right here by her bed just like you done for Lychee, so she can step in kind of easy like and ride on home to glory. Margaret Walker...: Gather her in your bosom like you done Father Abraham and give her a rest. She weak Lord, and she weary but her eyes is a fixing for the light on them golden streets of glory and them pearly gates of God. She begging for to sit at your welcome table and feast on milk and honey. She wants to put on them angel wings and wear them crown and them pretty little golden slippers. She done been broke like a straw in the wind, and she ain't got no strength, but she got the faith, Lord and she got the promise of your almighty word. Lead her through this wilderness of sin and tribulation. Give her grace to stand by the river of Jordan and cross her over to hear Gabe blow that horn. Take her home, Lord God, take her home. Margaret Walker...: The next piece is called, Ku Klux Klan Don't Like No Coons. Margaret Walker...: I sit upon a hornet's nest. I dance upon my head. I tie a viper around my neck and then I go to bed. I kneel to the buzzard and I bow to the crow, and every time a wheel about I jump just so. Wheel about and turn about and do just so. Every time I wheel about, I jump Jim Crow. Margaret Walker...: The first morning Randall Well worked in his shop after the expulsion of Negroes from the Georgia legislature, he had a caller. Ed Grimes appeared in the open space where Randall Well was shoeing a horse and said, "Nigger, do you own this land?" Startled Randall Well looked up and caught his breath before answering. "Mister, you are standing on my property, and if you doubt it, you can find the deed recorded in the courthouse." "I didn't ask you for any of your impertinence. I seen the records. Looks like you own nearly all the good land around here. I own a fair share of the land around Dawson, I happen to come by it honestly. You got a piece I want to buy." "Where is it?" Margaret Walker...: Grimes went to the grist mill adjacent to the blacksmithy and he pointed diagonally across the railroad tracks to the land he had in mind. "I'm sorry," said Randall Well, "But it's not for sale." "Nigger, are you telling me no?" "I'm saying, I don't want to sell." "Well, we're just see if we can't find some way to make you change your mind." With that, he turned on his heels and left the place. Randall Well thought no more about the incident as the day has passed and he was busy working in his shop. Margaret Walker...: He learned from Henry Turner that the Negroes were going to appeal to Congress and beg to have Georgia removed again from the union. But Randall Well said he would have to stay near home for a while. His journeyman was afraid to stay on the property alone. It was late October and great masses of the Georgia people were more distracted than ever for with the approaching presidential elections, there was high feeling between the local whites and the Black Republicans. Negroes everywhere being urged to vote the Grant/Colfax ticket for the Republicans, while the conservative Democrats were stumping every section of the state for the Seymour/Blair ticket. Margaret Walker...: Randall Well kept busy at his trade, but on the even of the election at Turner's insistence, he began attending more loyal meetings and working to encourage local Negroes to hold fast to the Republican ticket. Sporadic spurts of violence were erupting around him but since there had been no incidents in his immediate vicinity, Randall Well was caught unaware one night on returning from a political meeting. He heard a crowd of horsemen riding up to his shop. He turned to face them. The white-sheeted callers with their faces covered and saw them throw at his feet, the body of a man. It was Jasper, his journeyman. Pinned across his bloody chest was a piece of foolscap, also stained with his blood and the crudely printed words, dead, damned, and delivered. Margaret Walker...: Jasper had been shot in his right temple, but evidently before they killed him he had been brutally beaten with sticks for his flesh was cut and bleeding and his shirt was bloody and in shreds. Randall Well was alone. He needed someone to help him with the body of poor Jasper. He first made a cry in the streets for help, but nobody came. Then he made a light in his house and went out again to find help. He had to walk about three-quarters of a mile to a Negro community. But when he returned with two men to help him, he found Jasper's body was gone and his shop and the back room serving as his living quarters were in shambles. Margaret Walker...: He thanked the two Colored men who were wide-eyed with terror and he told them he guessed he could manage alone. He would try to put his place to rights. At four o'clock in the morning, the riders came back again. He was again unprepared for violence and he made no attempt to run or try to escape. They grabbed him. Well was a powerful man and he struggled until he felt himself hit on the head with a blow that felt like iron. He lost consciousness. When he came to himself, they had him in the woods. When he opened his eyes, he saw three men standing over him as he was lying on the ground. They came at him with blows about the head and face. Margaret Walker...: Although they were disguised, he though he recognized the voice of one, who kept pounding and yelling, "Nigger, who do you think you are? You think you're good as a white man, don't you? Going to the state house and dressing up like a white man and owning all our good land. Don't you know you ain't nothing but a nigger? We know just what to do with a big, black, ugly baboon like you when you get so uppity you too big for your nigger britches." Margaret Walker...: Randall Well wondered why they did not shoot him and kill him and get it over with. Why were they merely beating him? Did they mean to cut him to death and shoot him afterwards. Then he one whisper, "Why don't we kill him now?" "No, I said no. He got all them papers in the courthouse, ain't he? How we going to get that land if we kill him. Beat him an inch of his goddamn life but don't kill him." Margaret Walker...: It was broad daylight when they rode away on their horses. For a long while, Randall Well lay on the ground, half conscious, bleeding, and so sore he could scarcely move. His lip was cut and he knew there was a bad cut over both eyes and his face was swollen twice its size. He also had a large painful lump on his head and about his back and shoulders they had beaten him with what felt like wooden clubs but were actually stripped branches from the trees. He got to his knees but when he tried to open his eyes the blood ran down his face. He tried to stand and found he could not, so he began to crawl on his hands and knees out of the woods. Margaret Walker...: It was late afternoon when he finally made it into his shop and then he was so exhausted, he fell on his bed to sleep. In the darkness, he awakened and lighted a lamp. He began to care for the cuts and bruises on his face and head when he heard such a loud commotion in the streets. He looked out and saw riders coming again. This time, he would not wait. He quickly put out the lamp and ran into his grist mill. There he made his way to the great wheel that pulled the mill by water power and lowering himself quickly, he dropped down into the water while holding to the rim of the half submerged mill wheel. He was not a minute too soon. Margaret Walker...: He heard their voices and knew they were in his shop and house again. They ransacked the place again and began yelling and cursing and calling him name. "I told you we ought to killed that black bastard. We got to teach him a permanent lesson. How long can we waste time here looking for him. He ain't going nowhere. We can come back and get him later on." And they left. But Randall Well, now deathly afraid, waited another full hour before he came out of his gristmill after hiding under the water and holding onto the great wheel that ran the mill. Margaret Walker...: Early the next morning he had another caller. This time he would not answer and he peeked out stealthily to see who it was. It was old Doc and he was banging on the door. "Let me in, it's only me, Doc. Let me in Well, I know you're in there." Randall Well let the doctor in. At first, the Black man glared at the white doctor. His swollen face and lip and half closed eyes making him look like some half mutilated animal. The blood was still on his head and face and his body ached from the terrible beating. Margaret Walker...: "It look like you had an accident." "Yeah, I reckon so. Accident strictly on purpose." "Well, you better let me take a look at you. You need a doctor." "Is that why you came here, to offer me your doctoring services?" "Why not? I'm a doctor am I not? And I don't think there's another one for miles around." "Are you sure you weren't sent?" "Well, what difference would that make? You still need the doctor, don't you?" Randall Well grudgingly admitted that he did. Margaret Walker...: The doctor went to work on his face and his head and he flinched under the probing of his sore and cut places. At first, Old Doc was strictly professional. "Hmm, that's a bad one. You took a mighty bad beating." "Didn't I though. Wonder why they didn't kill me." "Oh, you know that answer as well as I do." "On account of the land?" "Yes, are you willing to sell now?" "Do you think I've got any choice?" "Not if you want to live and continue working here." "And if I don't sell?" "I'd advise you to leave, but you would be a fool to leave everything you got just because of a little piece of land. Sell the land. You'll get a fair price." Margaret Walker...: Randall Well snorted with a bitter sounding grunt. The doctor worked a while longer in silence. "And when I sell this piece, they'll want another and a bigger piece and that will keep on until I don't have any left." "Oh, I don't know about that. There's a limit to most people's greed." "For money or for land? For votes or for power?" "Now, you might as well give up the idea of power and voting. You are going to get yourself absolutely killed if you don't quit all political activity." "I thought you came to bring me a message." "I can carry your answer back if you desire." "And if my answer is not what they like?" Margaret Walker...: "Well, I couldn't say what might happen. You might have night visitors again and this time you might end up like your journeyman, Jasper. It's not necessary to go that far unless you don't value your life and property." "More than my liberty?" "More than your liberty." "Well, I guess I had forgotten your rule on the Dutton Plantation, you are a really humanitarian, Doctor." "At your service anytime. Shall I tell them you will sell?" "I need some time to think about it. "They won't be giving you much time." "Yes, damn them yes. Tell them I'll sell. Tell them I'll leave. Tell them I'll leave off politicking. Tell them to save my miserable neck. I'll cease resisting and desisting. Tell the hellish rebels I say yes." And he burst into a fit of [inaudible]. He put his head down in his hands, and when his shoulders had ceased shaking, he looked up and found the doctor was gone. Margaret Walker...: The last piece from Jubilee is only a section of Howdy and Goodbye. Margaret Walker...: Oh, come and go with me to my father's house, to my father's house, to my father's house. Oh, come and go with me to my father's house. There is joy, joy, joy. Valerie was moving around quietly in Jim's room hoping not to disturb him but then she felt her eyes on her and saw he was awake. "Ma?" "Yes, Jim." "I sure hates to leave you, but I sure is glad to go to school." "I knows, and I'm glad for you. I've been praying for a way to send you to school. It wasn't going to be easy to send you to town to school this winter and your Pa needing you here on the farm. I knows. And he was saying he wasn't going to spend the money. Yeah, but he's going to miss you just them same. Much as he grumble, it's going to be worser when he ain't got nobody to help him." "Yes, ma'am." Margaret Walker...: "I want you to promise me you is going to study hard and make us proud. Your daddy say he going to make a teacher out of you. That's going to make me proud." "I know Ma, and I'm gonna study real hard. I miss Minna and Harry too, and I don't know when I'm gonna see all of y'all again." "If it's the Lord's will, it won't seem long before you is home in again." "Yes, ma'am." Margaret Walker...: "And Jim, I want you to be good and try to get along. Mind your manners and make friends with peoples, friends and good manners will carry you where money won't go. You is born lucky and it's better to be born lucky, than born rich because if you is lucky, you can get rich. But if you is born rich and you ain't lucky, you is liable to lose all you got. But you gotta use mother along with education as you won't be nothing but a fool. Get up in the morning early and say your prayers. Early bird catches the worm. And don't you be mean and ugly in your heart toward nobody. Remember sweet ways is just like sugar candy and it catches more flies than vinegar. I'm praying for you to be somebody. I want you to be good and make a real man out of yourself. You is got a great big chance now, don't mess it up. Margaret Walker...: "I'm sorry you ain't got no more fitting clothes, but your daddy say he going to buy you some more in Montgomery on to what you call that place?" "Selma." "I never heard tell of it before. But we has been trying to get to Montgomery ever since we left Georgia. I reckon this morning, you is going to be there." Margaret Walker...: I never know when I stand up to read what I'm going to read, what's coming first. But I think I want to start with an Epitaph for my Father. I wrote this poem here in Iowa City, one Sunday afternoon in 1963 and I wrote it on the typewriter, and when I got through, I had done the entire poem. I think it was about 10 typewritten pages. I haven't done much revision or much changing of it, maybe a word or two here and there. Margaret Walker...: Jamaica is an island full of bays like jeweled tourmaline set in the sea. The Caribbean coasts are washed with dazzling sand, so blinding white the sunlight flashes by and trade winds lash against the palm strewn shore. Born near Buff Bay, my father loved to play among the inlets. Shouting over waves and wading through the sands would wish to go out where the winds would often part the sea. And as a Hebrew child of long ago, he crossed dry land while waters rose congealed until afternoon when once again, the winds would bring the walls together meltingly and send the naked children screaming home from play or catch the luckless souls upon the open sea. Margaret Walker...: Those bluest, sparkling waters of the bays. Montego, Orange, Buff where many times at play he watched the ships sail into port of call and laden with their cargo, their fruit and golden haul, banana, plantain, palm, palmetto, hemp would go again to sea beyond the distances where only God knew where. But carefree boys would stop their play and longingly gaze far out where the ships would disappear from sight. As the setting sun would light the sky with flaming rays descending on the sea as twilight traveled from the thin horizons line casting its light to where the mountains stood like giants in the night, dark, high, and still. Margaret Walker...: So homeward they drag their listless feet still thinking of the ships that sail to foreign shores. He longed to know the lot of those adventuring who joined the ocean's fleet and sail into the dusk. He must have been a very thoughtful lad, loving his aging mother at her handiwork. Artful with needle and breathing piety, so full of dreams and ideals for her youngest son. His father, quite the other salt could mix his tavern keeping with his Lord's days task at church and read the lesson as a layman should. Margaret Walker...: All his household loved their books. His brothers' full of gibberish and foreign words fit for his work, her majesty's interpreter. Of all that came from far off India or Germany and France and Spain and even England's farthest empired land. And thus this little boy, the last of seven would dream of going where the languages his brother Ben interpreted were known. But most of all, he longed to go to school in England and at Cambridge and there to be a man of learning until once again at home where all who knew and loved him would be proud, especially his mother, bowed and growing old. But then she died and bereft of all her love disconsolate with grief considered more and more the soonest he could go out where the ships plowed through a stormy sea. Margaret Walker...: My father came to this new land instead. His dreams of Cambridge roughly put aside where opportunity and expediency, a roundabout long journey carried him before he touched the soil at Mobile Bay. But still he hoped to study, then return to make his mark at home. His papers drawn allowed him only rights of visitors, a visa stated when hoped to finish here. He never left. When all the scholars honors he could heap into a pile were won, he saw my mother's face and turned aside briefly to gaze upon the honor, charm, and grace in which he spoke and smiled and played. Her fingers dancing over ivory keys. So they were wed. Margaret Walker...: His child bride all too young from Pensacola's Bay dashed starry-eyed away with this strange son come from a foreign land, an older sadder soul. Ambitious, proud, and quite removed from life's realities and practicalities. A dreamer, quiet, seriously withdrawn from enmities and hates yet hurt by them and startled by the strange ironic turn of epithets. You monkey chaser, you nigger, you I mean. Thus, they came to live in Birmingham. Margaret Walker...: When I was very young and still quite small, my father used to take me on his knee and say to me, "My little one, I wish that you could see the land where I was born, so beautiful with fruit so sweet and land so rich, where Black men too, are free. Star apples grow and breadfruit trees, the mangoes and the coconuts, date palms, and yams and green banana trees, cassava, pumpkins, okra too, just like the okra here, and alligator pear. And flowers, oh the blossoms there that grow so wild and so profuse in every color of the rainbow only brighter and bolder and richer in their hue. More blue, more red, more orange than the rind of melons that we grow." Margaret Walker...: "And Black men too, live side by side with yellow, white, and brown. And they have not this craziness of Jim Crow and race prejudice. I never thought this place could be so full of bitterness." And yet, he never went back home again. He took his papers out to be a citizen. Yet all his life, he talked about his home and going to that island in the sea. When I was five, his father died and there were was no one left to take him back. The final tie was gone. I saw the letter and his unshed tears. Margaret Walker...: The earliest memories I have are seeing all my father's hours spent in toil. From teaching daily, preaching Sundays, tailoring at night to give us bread. In summer, wintertime, and fall his days were all the same. No time in fun. Relaxing by the fire, he fell asleep and snored and mama cried annoyed, "Get up and go to bed." Margaret Walker...: In the night how often could I hear both whispering of future plans for us. For buying shoes and clothes and sending us to school, always to keep a roof above our heads. Sometimes I would hear my father say, "Let's buy a car." And Mama said, "We can't afford it now." Or else he'd want a bigger house with stairs and Mama horrified would cry, "Not now." Margaret Walker...: But he would buy her pretty dresses and say, "Surprise." She would say, "I have to hold your father down. He thinks that all his family should dress in golden wings." I liked it when my father went to down and bought our clothes. No hand me down made over things. He bought the best and struggled hard to pay and tried to keep in check his great desire for books. Margaret Walker...: Two times we moved from Birmingham. The first to Haven in Meridian and back again and then to New Orleans. At first, my mother was a wraith, a frail and walking ghost with babies in her arms. Many nights I dreamed that she would die and dying past beside my bed. I screamed to wake her, went to touch her arm. Sometimes not sure, would crawl beside her, feeling safer there. But time relentlessly moved on the years and from that twilight time when first I saw her bending down above her dying sister's bed and Daddy writing, please come home again. Everything here is going to [inaudible]. Margaret Walker...: On the train that carried us away from home and friends until past the blue dim past of years in New Orleans and Mardi Gras with nights of bitter cold when Daddy took us out to see parades. My father summers off at summer school and figs and biscuits and water were all we had to eat. Until my graduation days, then off at college, hearing ominous reports. Depression and no salary checks at home. Letters from my mother, don't do this or that, wear your green dress, don't sit up late, stay off Chicago streets at night. Margaret Walker...: My father seemed so far away, his letters seldom. Yet when I read the few lines many times, I thought with pride, how well he writes. But conversations late at night with him were best for now he ventured out and said what reading I should do for depth. His favorites were mine, the Greeks and Romans and from the bible all the words of Paul, the sage of Konigsberg, the [inaudible] and Schopenhauer, Whitehead, the English classics, poetry and mystics and the wine of all the ancient east, Buddha, Confucius, Laozi, Legita, then Gandhi's way. Margaret Walker...: When he said, "I wish your verse were more religious," I said, "It can't be what I'm not." And wished I'd cut my tongue out. Only then my lips were always in a pout rebelliously. If I had been a man, I might have followed in his every step, had preached from pulpits, bound my life as his, and wandered too as he, an alien on the earth. But female and feline, I could not stand alone through love and hate and truth and still remain my own. He was himself, his own man all his life. I belong to all the people I have met and part of them am molded by the throng, caught in the tide of compromise and grown chameleon for camouflage. Margaret Walker...: Yet, I have known a noble prince-like man for all my life. For he was humble in his dignity, composed and calm in every storm of life. Harsh poverty could not debase, demean his deep integrity. He rose above the fray. When at last my children came, his joy was indescribable. I only wish they had not come so late in life for me. Now traveling everywhere about this land, the golden years descended on his head and with my mother he saw the promised land of California, Boston and New York, Nebraska, Philadelphia. Margaret Walker...: Then when suddenly the shades of night began to fall, the ship at sea was tossed and buffeted. He stood and watched the light that beckons every pilot to his harbor's home. In resignation to the will and fate of providence, the destiny of men. In dreams, I stood beside him heard him say, "I came to tell you, I'm about to go away. I'm going to a church meeting, very great. My name is on the program. I want to look my best." And pointed to the undertaker's suit. I begged him not to go. But then he smiled, "Child, don't you understand? I'm going to be promoted," and sadly waved at me. Margaret Walker...: That day I sat as in a dream and heard the preacher echoing familiar words. We spend our years as a tale that is told. We the days of our years are three score years and 10. I glanced through windows, saw the sun peep from the clouds in one bright blaze of gold lighting the casket where he lay so cold. Then I knew that he would never die, not on the earth or in the sky or sea. He did not leave a fortune made with gold nor lands in wealth of human hands, but all the deep recesses of our minds and hears were filled with plunder from the ages old. The way to great a stranger and the guest. The love to bear a friend and how to pray in deep compassion for an enemy. The courage and the faith to face all life. The willingness to learn new lessons every day. Humility and truth and deep integrity, this is the epitaph that I would write for him. Margaret Walker...: When I first came out to Iowa, I carried on a running dialogue, feud, fuss, argument, anything you want to call it with Paul Engle. We fussed and fought every day and he said, "All that stuff you have written is so bitter and so solemn and no funny anything. Why don't you write something funny?" I didn't like what he wanted me to write something funny about, but I told him I would write some ballads. He said, "Just like that, you're going to write ballads?" I said, "Just like that I'm going to write ballads." He said, "Write one with a refrain." He had a twinkle in his eye when he said it, as if to say, let's see if you can really do that thing they say is the hardest ballad to write, a ballad with a refrain. This is the first ballad I wrote called Molly Means. And you'd see it has a refrain, Mr. Paul Engal. Margaret Walker...: Old Molly Means was a hag and a witch, child of the devil, the dark and fits. Her heavy hair hung think in ropes and her blazen eyes was black as pitch. Imp at three and wench at 11, she counted her husbands to the number seven. Old Molly, Molly, Molly Means. There goes the ghost of Molly Means. Margaret Walker...: Some say she was born with a veil on her face so she could look through a natural face, through the future and through the past and charm a body on evil place and every man could well despise the evil look in her cold black eyes. Old Molly, Molly, Molly Means dark is the ghost of Molly Means. Margaret Walker...: When the tale begun to spread of evil and of holy dread, her black hand arts and her evil powers, how she cast her spells and called the dead. The youguns was afraid at night and the farmers feared the crops would blight. Old Molly, Molly, Molly Means, cold is the ghost of Molly Means. Margaret Walker...: Then one dark day, she put a spell on a young gal bride just come to dwell in the lane, right down from Molly's shack. When her husband come riding back, his wife was barking like a dog and on all fours like a common hog. Old Molly, Molly, Molly Means, where is the ghost of Molly Means? Margaret Walker...: The neighbors come and they went away and said she'd die before break of day, but her husband held her in her arms and so he break the wicked charms. He'd search all up and down the land and turn the spell on Molly's hand. Old Molly, Molly, Molly Means, show up is the ghost of Molly Means. Margaret Walker...: So he rode all day and he rode all night and at the dawn he come in sight of a man who said he could move the spell and calls the awful thing to dwell on Molly Means to bark and bleed until she died at the hands of her evil deed. Old Molly, Molly, Molly Means, this is the ghost of Molly Means. Margaret Walker...: Sometimes at night through the shadowy trees, she rides along on a winter breeze. You can hear her holler and whine and cry, her voice is thin and her moan is high and her cackling laugh or her barking cold bring terror to the young and old. Old Molly, Molly, Molly Means, means the ghost of Molly Means. Margaret Walker...: Toughest gal I ever did see was a gal by the name of Kissy Lee. The toughest gal God ever made and she drew a dirty, wicked blade. This here gal wasn't always tough. Nobody dreamed she'd turn out rough. But her Grandma Mamie had the name of being the town's sin and shame. Margaret Walker...: When Kissy Lee was young and good, didn't nobody treat her like they should. All is getting beat by no good shine and all is quick to cry and whine until her grandma said, "Now listen to me. I'm tired of your whining, Kissy Lee. People don't never treat you right and you all is scrapping or in a fight. When I was a gal, wasn't no soul could do me wrong and still stay whole. I got me a razor to talk for me and after that they let me be." Margaret Walker...: Well, Kissy Lee took her advice, and after that she didn't speak twice. Because when she learned to stab and run, she got herself a little gun. From that time that gal was mean, meanest mama you ever seen. She could hold her liquor and hold her man and she went through life just raising sin. Margaret Walker...: One night she walked in Jim's Saloon and seen a guy what spoke too soon. He done her dirt long time ago when she was good and feeling low. Kissy bought her drink and she paid her dime watching this guy what beat her time. And he was making for the outside door when Kissy shot him to the floor. Not a word she spoke, but she switched her blade and flashing little old baby paid. Every living guy got out of her way because Kissy Lee was drawing her pay. Margaret Walker...: She could shoot glass doors off of the hinges. She could take herself on the wildest binges. And she died with her boots switching blades on Talladega Mountain in the liquor raids. Margaret Walker...: During the 1960s ... I want to read one more of those poems, probably the latest and this is really African juju here. This is not just street talking salty stuff, salty, salty dog stuff. If you don't understand, I didn't understand all of it myself. There's an article written by Paula Giddings called, A Shoulder Hunched Against a Sharp Concern, in which she explains the Nigerian background, which you can also in Frazer's Golden Bough. If you know anything about African juju, you may perhaps understand this poem. It's called Ballad of the Happy Toad. I started it in 1943 and I finished it in 1963. I found it one day, a little old yellow piece of paper that I had thrown away and I decided it might make a poem after all. Margaret Walker...: Ain't been on market street for nothing with my regular washing load when the Saturday crowd when stomping down the Johnny jumping road. Seen Sally Jones come running with a razor at her throat. Seen Deacon's daughter lurching like a drunken alley goat. Margaret Walker...: But the biggest for my money and the saddest for my throw was the night I seen the goofah man throw dust around my door. Come sneaking round my doorway in a stovepipe hat and coat. Come sneaking round my doorway to drop the evil note. Margaret Walker...: I run down to Sis Avery's and told her what I seen. "Root work is out to get me. What you reckon that there mean?" Sis Avery, she done told me, "Now, honey. Go on back. I knows just what will hex him and that old goofah sack." Margaret Walker...: I done burned the candles until I seen the face of Jim and I done been to church and prayed, but can't get rid of him. Don't want to burn his picture, don't want to dig his grave, just want to have my peace of mind and make that dog behave. Margaret Walker...: Was running through the fields one day, Sis Avery is chopping corn. Big horse come stomping after me. I knowed then I was gone. Sis Avery grabbed that horse's mane and not one minute late because trembling down behind her, I seen my ugly fate. She hollered to that to whoa. "I gotcha hoppy toad." Margaret Walker...: Yonder come the goofah man a-running down the road. She hollered to that horse to whoa. And what you want to think? Great God Almighty, that there horse begun to sweat and shrink. He shrunk up to a teeny horse. He shrunk up to a toad. And yonder come the goofah man, still running down the road. Margaret Walker...: She hollered to that horse to whoa. She said, "I'm killing him. Now you just watch this hoppy toad and you'll be rid of Jim." The goofah man was hollering, "Don't kill that hoppy toad." Sis Avery, she said, "Honey, you're about to lose your load." Margaret Walker...: That hoppy toad was dying, right there in the road and goofah man was screaming, don't kill that hoppy toad. The hoppy toad shook one more time and then he up and died. Old goofah man fell dying too. "Oh, hoppy toad," he cried. Margaret Walker...: During the '60s, I wrote a lot of poems that were called my civil rights poems. I think I wrote about everything that I thought was important in the period. I got the idea that the civil rights leaders could be equated to the prophets of the eighth century, before Christ. Obviously, Martin Luther King was Amos whom he quoted all the time. Medgar Evers was Micah. Benny Mays was Jeremiah. Roy Wilkins was Isaiah. James Farmer was Hosea and John Lewis was Joel. I'd like to read that set of poems. Am I running over the time? There's a prologue to it called Prophets for a New Day. These are my modern day prophets. The first poem is a kind of prologue and then I will read the prophets. As I read them, you will recall which civil rights leader I have named an old testament prophet. Margaret Walker...: As the word came to prophets of old, as the burning bush spoke to Moses, and the fiery coals cleansed the lips of Isaiah, as the wheeling cloud in the sky clothed the message of Ezekiel, so the word of fire burns today on the lips of our prophets in an evil age our soothsayers and doom tellers and doers of the word. Margaret Walker...: So the word of the Lord stirs again these passionate people toward deliverance as Amos shepherd of Tekoa spoke to the captive children preaching to the dispossessed and the poor, so today in the pulpits and the jails on the highways and in the byways a fearless shepherd speaks at last to his suffering weary sheep. Margaret Walker...: So, kneeling by the riverbank comes the vision to a valley of believers. So inflaming flags of stars in the sky and in the breaking dawn of a blinding sun, the lamp of truth is lighted in the temple and the oil of devotion is burning at midnight. So, the glittering sensor in the temple trembles in the presence of the priest and the pillars of the doorpost move and the incense arises in smoke and the dark faces of the sufferers gleam in the new morning. The complaining voices and faces glow and the winds of freedom begin to blow while the wildwood descends on the waiting world below. Margaret Walker...: A beast is among us. His mark is on our land. His horns and his hands and his lips are gory with our blood. He is war and famine and pestilence. He is death and destruction and trouble and he walks in our houses at noonday and devours our defenders at midnight. He is the demon who drives us with whips of fear and in his cowardice, he cries out against liberty. He cries out against humanity, against all dignity of green valleys and high hills, against clean winds blowing through our living, against the broken bodies of our brothers. He has crushed them with a stone. He drinks our tears for water and he drinks our blood for wine. He eats our flesh like a ravenous lion and he drives us out of the city to be stabbed on a lonely hill. Margaret Walker...: Jeremiah, prophet of Jerusalem, is now a man whose name is Benjamin. Brooding over city called Atlanta, preaching the doom of [inaudible] upon this land. The land of his native land of Georgia. Preaching the downfall of a cursed system. Margaret Walker...: Preaching to the righteous of all creeds and his words are wonderfully wrought like the powerful prophets of old. Yet I say unto you verily, not one of these stones shall remain, not one rock of this rock of hatred shall remain. This city destroyed by fire 100 years ago, rising like a phoenix bird from ashes to build a mountain of materialism to mamam, this city must pay and pay and pay. Margaret Walker...: For the horsemen of this city shall be our gods. My god, we are still here. We are still down here, Lord working for a kingdom of thy love. We weep for this city and for this land. We weep for all the doomed people of this land. We weep for Judah and beloved Jerusalem. Oh Georgia, where shall you stand in the judgment. Margaret Walker...: Isaiah was a man of the court who lived in the city and walked with kings. Isaiah was a cup bearer for the king. He was a royal man and he went in and out among the people speaking his mind to the great. For the fiery coal on his lips was a word of fire from the Lord in the oldest Black man's court. With its lawyers and judges and money and men sits our northern Isaiah in the city of New York. There the sorrow of the prophet marks his word and his action and his thought. Sorrow sits upon his saddened face and declares his destiny. Margaret Walker...: In all our seeking after justice from the law and in the courts, Isaiah is our leader and our man. The words of this city man, this Black leader of Black people, his words go forth into the world carrying to the ends of the earth over waves of light and sound the message of our messenger. Condemning the guilty and violent. Threatening the complacent. Criticizing the kings seated on thrones and promising deliverance to a remnant of his people. Isaiah is a city man with a quiet word, the word of the Lord that demand to be heard. Margaret Walker...: Amos is a shepherd of suffering sheep. A pastor preaching in the depths of Alabama. Preaching social justice to the southland. Preaching to the poor a new gospel of love with the words of a god and the dreams of a man. Amos is our loving shepherd of the sheep, crying out to the stricken lamb, you have sold the righteous for silver and the poor for a pair of shoes. Margaret Walker...: My god is a mighty avenger and he shall come with his rod in his hand preaching to the persecuted and the disinherited millions. Preaching love and justice to the solid southern land. Amos is a prophet with a vision of brotherly love, with a vision and a dream of the red hills of Georgia. When justice shall roll down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream. Margaret Walker...: Amos is our shepherd standing in the shadow of our god, tending his flocks all over the hills of Albany and the seething streets of Selma and a bitter Birmingham. From Montgomery to Memphis, he marches. He stands on the threshold of tomorrow. He breaks the bars of iron and they remove the signs. He opens the gates of our prisons, he speaks to the captive hearts of America, he bears raw their conscience. He is a man of peace for the people. Amos is a prophet of the Lord. Amos speaks through eternity, the glorious word of the Lord. Margaret Walker...: Micah was a young man of the people who came up from the streets of Mississippi and cried out his vision to his people who stood fearless before the waiting throng like an astronaut shooting into space. Micah was a man who spoke against oppression, crying woe to you workers of iniquity, crying woe to you doers of violence, crying woe to you breakers of the peace, crying woe to you my enemy. Margaret Walker...: For when I fall, I shall rise in deathless dedication. When I stagger under the wound of your paid assassins, I shall be whole again in deathless triumph. For your rich men are full of violence and your mayors of your cities speak lies. They are full of deceit. We do not fear them. They shall not enter the city of good will. We shall dwell under our own vine and fig tree in peace and they shall not be remembered in the book of life for Micah was a man. Darwin Turner: Margaret Walker was counting the years more accurately than I care to remember this afternoon and indicating that we've known each other for 20 years. Margaret Walker...: Or more. Darwin Turner: Or more. This is the first evening that I've had an opportunity to hear Margaret Walker read poetry. I've known her as an educator and I've known her through print. She's not heard me read poetry ever but this evening she has paid me perhaps the greatest tribute that a poet can pay to another individual. She has agreed to let me read her signature poem. In tribute to Margaret Walker, I'd like to conclude the program with this, For My People Everywhere. Darwin Turner: Singing their slave songs repeatedly, their dirges and their ditties, and their blues and jubilees. Praying their prayers nightly to an unknown god, bending their knees humbly to an unseen power. For my people. Darwin Turner: Lending their strength to the years, to the gone years and the now years and the maybe years. Washing, ironing, cooking, scrubbing, sewing, mending, hoeing, plowing, digging, planting, pruning, patching, dragging home. Never gaining, never reaping, never knowing and never understanding. Darwin Turner: For my playmates in the clay and dust and sand of Alabama backyards, playing baptizing and preaching and doctor and jail and soldier and school and mama and cooking in playhouse and concert in store and hair and Miss Trumby and company. Darwin Turner: For the cramp bewildered years we went to school to learn to know the reasons why and the answers to and the people who and the places where and the days when. In memory of the bitter hours when we discovered we were Black and poor and small and different. And nobody cared and nobody wondered and nobody understood. Darwin Turner: For the boys and girls who grew in spite of those things to be man and woman, to laugh and dance and sing and play and drink their wine in religion and success, to marry their playmates and bear children and then die of consumption and anemia and lynching. Darwin Turner: For my people thronging 47th Street in Chicago and Lenox Avenue in New York and Rampart Street in New Orleans, lost, disinherited, dispossessed and happy people. Filling the cabarets and taverns and other people's pockets needing bread and shoes and mild and land and money and something, some thing all our own. Darwin Turner: For my people walking blindly, spreading joy, losing time being lazy, sleeping when hungry, shouting when burdened, drinking when hopeless. Tied and shackled and tangled among ourselves by the unseen creatures who tower over us omnisciently and laugh. Darwin Turner: For my people standing, staring, trying to fashion a better way from confusion, from hypocrisy and misunderstanding. Trying to fashion a world that will hold all the people, all the faces, all the Adams and Eves and their countless generations. Darwin Turner: For my people, let a new earth rise. Let another world be born. Let a blood peace be written in the sky. Let a second generation full of courage issue forth, let a people loving freedom come to growth, let a beauty full of healing and a strength of final clenching be the pulsing in our spirits, in our blood, let the marshal songs be written, let the dirges disappear. Let a race of men now rise and take control. Darwin Turner: Thank you for joining with us. We hope that you will join us for the next Black Kaleidoscope program. Thank you very much. Thank you, Margaret.