Hoyt Fuller lecture, "The Black Publishing Scene," at the University of Iowa, June 1978

Darwin Turner: Ladies and gentlemen, I'm very pleased to welcome you to this second evening lecture in the Tenth Annual Institute for Afro-American Culture at the University of Iowa. The fifth in succession sponsored through a grant from the National Endowment For The Humanities. It's my pleasure this evening to introduce to you Hoyt Fuller who is Executive Editor of First World. Darwin Turner: Mr. Fuller was reared in Detroit where he earned a Bachelor's from Wayne State University where he also did further study. He served as the Features Editor for the Michigan Chronicle, as the Associate Editor of Ebony for several years. Then as the African correspondent for the [Haagse] Post, as an Assistant Editor of Collier's Encyclopedia. And from 1961 to 1976, he was the Executive Editor of the publication that was then called Negro Digest and later called Black World, one of the most influential in introducing new Black writers, new creative writers and in offering comments on the various aspects of the Black world. Darwin Turner: He's taught at several colleges including Columbia College in Chicago, Northwestern, Indiana University, the University of Wisconsin at Madison, Wayne State, and Atlanta Junior College. He's been the organizer and Chairman of the Organization of Black American Culture, a group of artists, writers, educators in Chicago devoted to the concepts of Black culture. Darwin Turner: Technically he is listed merely as the Vice Chairman of the United States Committee for FESTAC, the Second World Black and African Festival, which was held in Nigeria during the past year in 1977. I say technically he is listed that way because actually Hoyt Fuller was the driving spirit certainly in the United States behind the festival itself. The idea, the concept, I frankly feel that most of the success of the American group should be credited to him. The other aspects that were no successes are not his fault. He was, remember, Vice Chairman. Darwin Turner: He served as a member of the College Language Association, as an Advisor of the Institute of Positive Education in Chicago, a board member of the Kuumba Workshop in Chicago, a member of the African Heritage Studies Association. He's received many honors, among them the Organization of Black American Culture Award in 1968. The African Heritage Studies Association Award, 1975, the Broadside Press Award, 1975, the Institute for the Arts and Humanities Award from Howard University in 1976. The Communiversity Award in 1976, the Organization of Black American Culture Award, again in 1977, and an award from the National Conference of Artists in 1978. He's received a fellowship from John Hay Whitney Opportunity Board. Darwin Turner: His publications are many. One of the better-known is his book, Journey to Africa, published by Third World Press. His works, his poetry, his stories, his articles, are included in many anthologies such as Black Literature in America, Beyond the Angry Black Afro-American Writing Black Expression. His publications have also appeared in such magazines and newspapers as the New Yorker, The Nation, The New Leader, African Forum, Arts in Society, Chicago Defender, The New Republic and many others. It gives me great pleasure this evening to introduce to you Mr. Hoyt Fuller who will be discussing the Black publishing scene. Hoyt Fuller: Thanks very much, Darwin. I hardly recognize myself from all that. It's a pleasure to be back in Iowa City with Darwin, and with some old friends and new ones. I was looking out at the audience, I was looking for the young lady who this afternoon said, "I beg your pardon." Is she here? I don't want to apologize for what I said, but I did want her to know I intended to see her before she left this afternoon to tell her that her response to what I said and the charges and accusations that I made was the kind of response that I like to get when I say things like that. Because what I'm ultimately concerned with is that we act. I am an activist, I'm not an academic. I'm an activist. And I happen to think that it's crucial that we have people out there who see themselves in that light. Hoyt Fuller: I found among my notes this little handwritten sentence; Our scholars fail us. They are off on other voyages when we need them. Desperately need them, to explore the tangle landscape of our being. The precise title of the little paper that I'm going to do tonight, or portions of it, I think that it's really a little too much, is Publishing and the Struggle for Autonomy, A Documentary. Hoyt Fuller: And, I have never done this particular kind of thing before, and I hope it works. But, I want to do it this evening precisely because I am an activist and because I think that as a group Black people are once again in deep and serious trouble, and what we need to do is something. We need to do something. The future of our children depends upon it. The official title of the Conference ... I had it just here. What is it Darwin? I'm sorry. It's- Darwin Turner: The Black Experience from 1950 Hoyt Fuller: Yeah, the 1970. And I wanted to try to keep my references back to 1970, no further than 1971 in any case. But this is going to be a documentary. That is, I think that the problem that we face, the overall problem that we face as Black people in a racist society is cyclical. That we go around and around in circles without ever solving anything, or without ever truly resolving anything, and it may be that we never will. I don't know. I hope that is not the case. The fact that I continue my own efforts at doing something means that I have some measure of confidence that something can be done. Hoyt Fuller: But, we reach levels of hope and then pretty soon we taper off again into despair. And, all too often what happens is because of our identification as Americans, as Black people, Africans who are also Americans. Our inclination is to want to be Americans, free. And that's perfectly natural. But, the circumstances of history and of the political and economic system under which we exist dictates otherwise. And so, what happens is that we lose the thrust that we have at the moment when we seem to arrive at the point where we're going to some power and are going to begin to negotiate. Then our power begins to disburse and ultimately fritter away. And, I'm very concerned about power, and the question of power. Hoyt Fuller: In the City of New York, for example, right this minute, where more Black people live than anywhere else in the country, Black people have virtually no power. Virtually none. There's not even one Black in a top position in the City of New York at this Point, not one. Before the recent elections, at least we had one who was President of the Borough of Manhattan, but we don't even have that now. We do have congressional representatives in Washington from New York. But in New York City itself, no top officials in the government. That's sad. Hoyt Fuller: Publishing and the Struggle for Autonomy, A Documentary. At the American Booksellers Association Convention in Atlanta last week, representatives of two Black publishing houses were among the more than 100 ... well, 200 or so publishing institutions displaying their products in the vast World Congress Center Exhibition Hall. One of the Black publishers, the Johnson Publishing Company of Chicago, offered buyers a range of books from the Lerone Bennett's landmark, Before the Mayflower, published nearly two decades ago, to the companies series of volumes listing successful and accomplished Blacks. Lerone Bennett will have a new book out this summer I understand. Hoyt Fuller: The company's most recent publication has been characterized by one critic as an album of photos and anecdotes about so-called Black society. The Johnson Publishing Company concession was handsomely conceived and comfortably situated among apparently profitable and prestigious mainstream publishing houses. And, it was manned my staffers who had flown in from Chicago for the four-day convention. Hoyt Fuller: The other Black publisher at the convention was Third World Press, also of Chicago. The eleven-year-old house founded by poets Haki Madhubuti, who was then Don L. Lee, Carolyn Rodgers, and Johari Amini. Third World Press had a larger number of books and other publications on display including the latest book by Mr. Madhubuti, All Serious and Some Ponderous. Hoyt Fuller: In contrast to the Johnson Publishing Company, Third World Press' station consisted of a table in the catchall section of the massive hall. And it's one man on duty was frequently absent during the first two days of the convention, and not on hand at all toward the convention's end. Incidentally, he is the resident agent there in the City of Atlanta. Hoyt Fuller: The book publishing division of Johnson Publishing Company launched at the start of the '60s was Lerone Bennett's first book survives today primarily because it is subsidized by the prosperous magazine enterprises of that company. And because the period books by Mr. Bennett continues to sell moderately well. Third World Press survives because of the sheer tenaciousness of Haki Madhubuti and the [co-do-ry] of people who have worked with him over the years. And because most of the people connected with the press have committed themselves to work, and discipline, and also a pay scale which is on the poverty level. And these two houses are the major Black book publishing concerns in the United States in 1978. Hoyt Fuller: Now, out in Berkeley, California, Ishmael Reed, and Steve Cannon are publishing an occasional book. And although they have published books by Black authors, and have scheduled others, Mr. Reed does not hesitate to make it clear that his own interest lies in the multicultural direction. In Detroit, it was reported a few months ago that a group of community and business leaders had accepted the challenge of reviving Broadside Press that valiant, but ill faded publishing project, which very nearly destroyed the health of Dudley Randall. Hoyt Fuller: And while our pretty much Amazon hall has not been heard from recently in New York discovered, but is that Earl Graves of Black Enterprise has plans to go seriously in the book publishing. He already has in his employee Field Petri, one of the more experienced of the editors who served as tokens for more than one of the mainstream houses during that brief period in the '60s and early '70s, when militant protests in the streets persuaded American private enterprise to open up white jobs to Black people. Hoyt Fuller: There are a few organizations like The East in Brooklyn, and [inaudible] in New Orleans, mostly nationalist or the Pan-African in thrust. Which publish a book, a monograph abroad side Now and Then, and that's about it. A decade after the euphoric promise of the Black consciousness movement, the Black book publishing scene in America is about where it was when all the marching and shouting began. Hoyt Fuller: It's very possible that there is nothing that can be done to alter this situation. The core of the problem is power, and Black people have very little of it, and seem at the moment incapable of acquiring it in any sense that is meaningful for the total community. We are cursed with a double identity, which is a restatement of Du Bois's well as known Double Consciousness Analysis. And we may never reach the general level of group maturity and sophistication necessary to achieve it. Hoyt Fuller: Still the experience of the '60s illustrate what accomplishments in this area are possible when the community is aroused and motivated toward change. Some important steps were made toward reclaiming control of the Black image and providing Black writers and thinkers with platforms for their ideas and creativity. It was not an easy accomplishment. And from the vantage point of the late '70s, the struggle for self determination and expression in books and magazines may seem more benign than it was. Hoyt Fuller: That is to say that unless you were on the inside, or had some particular reason to research or to observe what happened, you may not what happened. So, that the following presentation of documents primarily from Black World magazine are else provoked by that magazine by its editor or by its contributors is intended to eliminate the struggles of the recent past relative to publishing both in books and in magazines in order to hopefully encourage vigilance against a similar situation developing or continuing in the future. Hoyt Fuller: We live in a very political age. The contemporary Black writer understands in his blood, even when it's critics and even some of the older practitioners of his craft do not, that our age is vitally political. He understands that contrary to dogma, his political awareness is not an obstacle to his literary fulfillment, but an added potential. Hoyt Fuller: He knows that the route to exploitation of his potential must lead through a new identity, new definitions, new visions, and new goals. He recognizes that with a new sense of himself, of his history, of his humanity, and of his possibilities in the emerging world, he must reject the old canards and limitations of the literary establishment, which has sought all these generations to enclose him, to imprison him in a strictly European context. Hoyt Fuller: He knows finally that it is his racial duty to carry forward the spirit of the more forceful writers of the Harlem Renaissance, men like Claude McKay and Langston Hughes and to an affirmation and celebration of an aesthetic rooted in the Black experience and sensibility that was written in 1968. This was written three years earlier than that. Hoyt Fuller: The dilemma of the Negro writer concerned with using the raw materials of his own life and experience as a basis of creation is this. Whether to write honestly and truthfully of what he knows, and so risk offending the critics and most of the reading public who are white, or by distorting his angle of vision for the sake of universality deliberately to de-emphasize those elements of reality, which the critics and the reading public find accusatory so that they will be placated or at worst, moderately pricked of conscience. Hoyt Fuller: For in the year 1965, what must surely be the best year yet for books by and about Negroes. And we were using that word then. The reaction already has set in. Critics are calling for a halt to the deluge of such books claiming sometimes it was justification that the new books add nothing to a reader's knowledge, and also that they are largely without literary merit. Hoyt Fuller: It is the practice of the critics to lump all Negro books together, give them a collective notice by comparing them with one another and sigh weirdly that it all has been said before, and better, they frequently suggest back white writers. And yet the more talented and perceptive of the Negro writers feel that America is tangled myth, burden racial past the key to the nation's soul and therefore to its salvation has not yet been truly dealt with. And they doubt that those who hold the power over publication will ever permit Negro writers to deal with that reality. Hoyt Fuller: Consequently, these writers are beginning to turn away from the general reading public, which is manipulated by the critics, and toward that small, but now growing and too long uncultivated Negro readership, which always has been their proper though neglected audience. The deeping estrangement of the Negro writer from the so-called mainstream of American literature was vividly illustrated during the three day Writer's Conference sponsored last April, the 23rd to 25th by the Harlem Writers Guild at the New School for Social Research in New York. Hoyt Fuller: The theme of the conference was the Negro Writer's Vision for America. And as it turned out, that vision diverges sharply from the one apparently held by white Americans. During the course of the three day session, some 50 Negro and white writers and commentators of varying talent and reputation participated in a series of panels on such topics as poetry and preliminary 1965, the Negro woman in American literature, what Negro novelists are saying, image of the Afro American in literature, the responsibility of the Negro writer in the civil rights struggle. Is there a Negro literary tradition, and the mass media and the Negro writer. Hoyt Fuller: With one or two exceptions, which considering the conference's mood was especially notable, the speakers tackled the social economic and cultural conditions under which the Negro writer must live and work. Protests echoed like a nagging refrain throughout the conference. Novelists Paule Marshall and Kristin Hunter were among the few writers who made sustained efforts at confining their thesis to purely literary matters. Hoyt Fuller: The keynote address was delivered by James Baldwin. And all this is Black literary history who was an excellent form. He told us capacity plus audience that the liberation of this country depends on and whether or not we are able to make a real confrontation with our history. That history, Mr. Baldwin said, has been criminally falsified by white Anglo Saxon Americans who now found themselves prisoners of their own false hoods and myths. Hoyt Fuller: Calling America the most hypocritical of all countries, the novelist/essayist cited two options open to all writers, Black or white to be immoral and uphold the status quo, or to be moral and try to change the world. Novelist John O. Killens, who is chairman of the Harlem's Writers Guild had sparked the conference amplified Mr. Baldwins view that Negro writers simply are trying to make Americans face the truth about themselves. Hoyt Fuller: "Negro writers must save America if it is to be saved," he said. Where the history of the 20th century is written, it won't matter who reached them moon first, but that this century was the century of freedom. And poet playwright, LeRoi Jones, he was still calling himself that then, stepped far beyond the limits set by the two older writers. America as now constituted and governed is not merely beyond saving, Mr. Jones said, but it is so hopeless that it must be destroyed, and reconstructed. Hoyt Fuller: "That destruction is a task of the Negro artists," he said. And he underlined his statements by reading from a poem dedicated to the late Malcolm X and published the Negro Digest last April. And that poem, those of you who are familiar with his poetry or familiar with Black poetry will know. We are unfair and unfair. We are Black magicians, Black artists. We make in Black labs of the heart, the fair affair and death they white, the day will not save them, and we own the night. Hoyt Fuller: Mr. Jones's extreme edit was echoed less bluntly about Sylvester Leaks, a member the Harlem Writers Guild who addressed the conference on the failure of the Black writer. Said Mr. Leaks, "Society must either be altered radically or dismantle entirely." All of this is taking place 13 years ago. Hoyt Fuller: Panelists included such well known literary figures as Anna Bontemps, who's now dead. Sterling Brown, poet and folklorist and professor of English at Howard university. Samuel Allen, government attorney and linguist who writes distinctive poetry under the name Paul Vesey. Among the other writers participating in the conference were poets Calvin Hernton, Sarah Wright, Gloria Oden, [Wilma Lucas]. Playwrights William Branch, Alice Childress, Lonnie Elder III. The other participants included actors, Douglas Turner, [Frederick O'Neill], Abby Lincoln, communication specialists [Alan Morrison], [George Norford], Ted Poston, and NAACP labor secretary, Herbert Hill, editor John Henrik Clark, Sterling Stuckey. Teachers, Philip Butcher, and the late [David Boroff], historians Herbert Aptheker and Richard Moore. Hoyt Fuller: Perhaps the most unusual panelists was [Marina Banes], who said she was on the staff of the Right Wing National Review, edited by William Buckley. And who attacked James Bowie and the right Baldwin in the rightest absence calling him "a literary prostitute." The most provocative participant in the numerous panels have approved to be Richard Gilman. Drama critic for Newsweek magazine. Hoyt Fuller: Mr. Gilman and Gordon Rogoff drama critic for the Tulane Review were the two white members of the panel on what Negro playwrights is saying. And they sat together at one end of the stage, a rates spatially, as well as, as it turned out, either ideologically against the Negro playwrights Jones, Elder, Branch, Childress and Mitchell. Hoyt Fuller: After listening to several of the Negro panelists catalog their frustrations and seeking to produce that plays, Mr. Rogoff informed the audience that he had come prepared to discuss drama, not charges of racial prejudice. And that he would not serve as effigy for the Negroes assaults on white people. And he thereafter refused to speak. Hoyt Fuller: Mr. Gilman said that he had agreed to appear on the panel for the same reasons as Mr. Rogoff, but he did not join his colleague in silence. On the contrary, reading from an extraordinary paper in which he dismissed is unimportant the work of the late Lorraine Hansberry to whose memory the conference was dedicated. Hoyt Fuller: Mr. Gilman proceeded to say, in effect, that Negro writers are not yet capable of producing good plays. And this is precisely what he said, "Negro playwriting as I see it thus far is in a preliminary stage. It could not be otherwise. It is in the stage of being an arm of Negro awakening, of Negro political action, of Negro insistence, not on rights, but on being. Yet drama as an art can not be concerned with an insistence on the right to be, but on the nature of being. In this, it is totally democratic and totally aristocratic. Any white dramatist is compelled to place his head under the same guillotine when he writes, and it will fall off if what he writes is untrue. Untrue, need I say, in aesthetic terms." Hoyt Fuller: Incredibly only the LeRoi Jones bothered to attempt a response to Mr. Gilman's indictment. And Mr. Jones mostly shrugged off the critics remarks. The poet playwright has for most practical purposes, all but ceased, trying to communicate with white people. And Mr. Gilman's remarks had most eloquently demonstrated his reasons. Hoyt Fuller: It is precisely Mr. Gilman's inference that Negro writers are seeking to establish their right to be rather than considering the nature of being, which brings clearly into focus the chasm separating the Negro writer from the white critic. For Mr. Gilman's feelings about Negro playwrights surely was shared by Mr. Rogoff, and there is no reason to suppose on the basis of the evidence that his sentiments differ to any significant degree from those of most critics. And yet it is impossible to imagine a Negro writer accepting Mr. Gilman's proposition. Hoyt Fuller: Negro writers are just as Negroes are. And they accept their own being. It is not the Negro writer who's insisting on the right to be, but the white critic who, because of his very special attitude and relationship vis-avis Negroes, visualizes a Negro as struggling to become. And become in all probability like white people. Hoyt Fuller: It is Mr. Gilman, the white critic who imagines that Negroes are insisting on the right to be. But the truth is that Negro writers have no doubts at all about their right to be. They are describing in their work the nature of being, the nature of their being. The nature of being as reflected through their eyes and through their experience, which is all any writer ever does. And what Mr. Gilman has done, what many white critics invariably do is to pass judgment on the quality of the being of Negro writers. Hoyt Fuller: He has said in the fact that because Negro writers are involved in the struggle against those forces and the society, which tend to dehumanize their being, they therefore lack the maturity and the artistry to produce drama, which is also art. The nature of being as Negro playwrights must see it, Mr. Gilman has implied inhibits that creating a work of art, and then to heap insult upon his wild slashing wound, Mr. Gilman declared that the best play about Negroes ever written was the work, not of a Negro, but of the Frenchman Jean Genet, The Blacks. A fantastic pageant of mass and symbols, which no Negro anywhere in the world could accept as having relevance to his life in strictly human terms. Hoyt Fuller: The Harlem Writers Guild New School Writers Conference, which ended on a note of hope from [John Oliver Killens]. No Doubt proved an enormous success from the standpoint of popular support and participation, but its overall effect was to throw into sharp relief, two major difficulties facing the Negro writer. Hoyt Fuller: The first of these difficulties has to do with diminishing communication between Black writers and the white critics who play such a decisive role in determining the fate that is the public success or failure of those writers. If the critics continue to react subjectively to the work of Negro writers, as they so often have in the past, then there is not much room for optimism. Much of the work of Negro writers is classified as militant or protests and is possible dismissed. Hoyt Fuller: It makes no difference that some of the world's great writers Dostoevsky, and O'Casey, for example, also wrote works of so-called protest. The difference is that American critics have no reason to identify with the oppression in books not written by Negroes. Some of them are concerned or the critics keep urging Negro writers to move toward "the American literary mainstream," which in translation seems to mean abandoning racial themes, or as the more blunt among them will say, to write about people, not Negroes. Hoyt Fuller: However, Negro writers are not likely to enter the mainstream before Negroes generally are admitted there. And that day does not seem imminent. And if what was said by most of the Negro writers during the conference is any indication Negro writers might be reluctant to merge with that mainstream and its present course in any case. This was before James Baldwin said that Black people did not want to integrate into a burning house that came a little later. Hoyt Fuller: The second difficulty for the Negro writer grows directly out of the first one. If the general reading public loses interest in books and plays by Negroes as has happened in the past, then the Negro writer's dilemma is sharpened. They are already a signs of such declining interest. Some exceptional novels, Catherine Carmier by Ernest Gaines, Sissis by John A. Williams. The People One Knows by Robert Bowls have gone virtually unnoticed by the critics, and the public. Although books by James Baldwin continue to sell reasonably well. Hoyt Fuller: It has been suggested that the end of the line is approaching for Negro writers who follow the tradition of directing that work toward the general that is white audience. If this is so, then these writers have nowhere to go except back to the audience where they can expect to find sympathy, the Negro audience. Hoyt Fuller: Mr. Gilman plays Negro playwriting, and in a preliminary stage, in the stage of being an arm of Negro awakening, of Negro political action. But although he grossly insulted Negro playwrights, he showed an awareness of the general Negro mood. Some writers already have turned inward to the Negro community, and interest is escalating in Negro theater and in serious Negro publications. LeRoi Jones, for example, has established The Black Arts Repertory Theater School in Harlem designed to develop and promote Negro playwrights and their work. And similar theaters are operating in Detroit, Chicago and Los Angeles. Hoyt Fuller: And Anna Bontemps certainly not one of the five breathing militants has called for the founding of independent presses for the publishing of work by worthy Negro writers. In the long run, the Negro writers in wood-turning can only be healthy, even if he suffers during the first stages of the new adjustment. Not that the writer needs suffer greatly or indefinitely, for there also exists the potentially limitless audience for Negro writers in Africa, Latin America and Europe. Hoyt Fuller: In any case, the Negro writers problem is all of a piece, and the solution to his problem is inseparable from the solution to the problems of Negroes generally. Once Negro writers are honored in Harlem, then the critics will come to Harlem, bringing with them the general public. But this time around, the critics will have accepted Negro writers on the writers terms, and that will make all the difference. That was 1965. I see that I'm going to have to not deal with some of this. Hoyt Fuller: This was a time when a great deal of energy and money was being spent in Washington with the new national foundation on the arts. When the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the National Endowment for the Arts were being born. And as usual, when these institutions were being considered Black people were either being ignored, were being brought in as tokens. Hoyt Fuller: And, I had in Negro Digest, the magazine that I edited at that time was called Negro Digest. And during that time I had been running a series of editorials questioning and attacking the people who were forming these institutions and dispensing these funds. And so, at one point I was asked to prepare, and to present a paper dealing with anthologies and literature by Afro Americans. And this is that paper. Hoyt Fuller: When I agreed a year or so ago to prepare a paper dealing with the routine exclusion of Black writing from American literary of anthologist, I had recently been involved as editor in what can only accurately be described as a hassle where those responsible for dispersing federal funds to writers through arms of the National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities. Hoyt Fuller: From almost the beginning of the existence of the federal agency, I find myself in conflict with those responsible for making decisions relative to which institutions, organizations, and individuals would receive the public monies. The national foundation people proceeded in what was for them, a perfectly normal manner. They involved respected literary personages and individuals recommended by them, and drawing up lists of writers, advisors, publications, and agencies. Hoyt Fuller: And then they went about the business of making grants to, and providing support for selected writers and publications based on the recommendations of their consultants. The national foundation people took care of to see to it that that group of consultants included a respective literary person whose skin was Black. They are by presumably precluding, any charges of racial bias. Hoyt Fuller: The initial location for my confrontation with the literary section of the National Foundation on the Arts and the humanities came when I learned the plans to provide financial support, to deserving little literary magazines. The list of those magazines, which was released contained not one Black edited or Black oriented publication. Hoyt Fuller: When I brought this fact of a mission to the attention of the appropriate individuals in Washington, I was met with first, indifference, and then later with sarcasm. However, when I sent off letters of protest to Congressman Charles Diggs and John Conyers, both Black and from Michigan and dispatched copies of those letters to my contacts at the National Foundation, the communication from representatives of the National Foundation became more respectful. Hoyt Fuller: I was informed that the list of little magazines, which the National Foundation use for its purposes have been supplied by the coordinating council of literary magazines, a source considered to be authoritative. The suggestion was that unless the CCLM in knew of and approved of our little magazine, it could hardly qualify for inclusion on the National Foundation list. Hoyt Fuller: I wrote my principal contact at the National Foundation and informed her that the National Foundation's apparent position was entirely unacceptable for Black people. I explained that white owned and edited publications, and at this time this was a lonely battle. There was nobody else out there who either knew I was concerned about it enough to raise a voice. Hoyt Fuller: I explained to white-owned and edited publications, whether little or large, rarely included like fiction poetry or criticism, and I emphasize the following two points. One, that white-owned and edited publications whether little or large, rarely included Black fiction poetry or criticism, and two, that the CCLM like most white institutions were not representative of the Black literary community, and could not speak authoritatively for that community. Challenged to provide a list of Black edited publications, which would meet two CCLM's requirements for magazines, which were both little and literary. Hoyt Fuller: I submitted a list of Black magazines, which were published monthly or quarterly, or when funds could be found, but which regularly featured fiction poetry and criticism. The list included since 19 ... Well, this was early. Liberator, Freedomways. Liberator was then a monthly, Freedomways a quarterly. Sold book in Black dialogue, both published when there was money to pay the printer. Hoyt Fuller: The response from Washington was that most of these magazines emphasized politics and civil rights as well as literature, and therefore were ineligible for the National Foundation's list. And when I argued that these publications would have to be included, I also, the governmental agency would effectively be excluding Black writers from participating in this program, I was told that I was demanding special consideration for Black writers. Hoyt Fuller: The second occasion for my confrontation with those connected with the literary section of the National Foundation on the Arts and Humanities came with the establishment of the American Literary Anthology Project. Under the auspices of the National Foundation, and with the cooperation of a group of established publishers, an anthology of literature collected from the little magazines would be published annually. Hoyt Fuller: The editors were George Plimpton and [Peter Ottery]. The project was designed to provide financial aid to writers whose work was selected for the anthologies, as well as to bring that work to a wider audience and the little magazines afforded. With $1,000 going to each author of a chosen essay or story, and $500 to each author of a chosen poem. It proved less than necessary to argue with the editors of American literary anthology about the importance of looking for material beyond the limits of the CCLM's list of approved publications. Hoyt Fuller: However, the editors of American Literary Anthology had introduced the practice, which could be depended upon to exclude Black literature just as effectively, if not even more effectively than omitting Black publications. Each year, the editors of the review named a group of distinguished writers who would assist them by passing judgment on the material appearing in the anthology. And each year until the last year of the project's duration, the group of distinguished writers was all white. Hoyt Fuller: The sole Black writer named to screen the work selected for the anthology A.B. Spellman, the poet and author for Lives In The Bebop Business was asked to serve only after several editorials protesting the complexion of the judges had been published in my magazine. As it developed, the project was discontinued before Mr. Spellman's influences judge was made manifest. Hoyt Fuller: Now, I have dealt here so far only with problems concerning of federally established agents involved in dispensing public funds to citizens. My immediate reasons for having discomfort at some individuals or as my contact in the National Foundation termed [French]. Had to do with making certain that some Black writers shared in the federal bounty. But what the whole recitation underlines a severed very serious problems relative to Black literature and white entrepreneurs, professors and editors. Hoyt Fuller: First, the first problem, do not by any chance, the most serious one is ignorance. And keeping with a very old tradition in America, white people assume that they and their institutions speak for Blacks people, if indeed Black people were to be spoken for. The second problem has to do with racial manipulation, another old and honored American tradition. If some militant Black attempts to disrupt the racist routine, then the rule is to simply counteract his troublesomeness by elevating to prominence, a more conservative and more manageable Black. Hoyt Fuller: The third problem centers on the question of aesthetics. And this is the crucial problem for all the ignorance and presumptuousness with which white seek to overwhelm and discredit Black literature grow out of the conviction that the only valid aesthetic operative in the world has its roots in Europe. Hoyt Fuller: Now, of course, most of the anthologies of literature used in the public and private schools and the colleges and universities of this country have no direct affiliation with any governmental agencies. These anthologies are organized by literary authorities are entrepreneurs, and they are published by regular trade and textbook publishers, and for profit. What this means simply is that the anthology is the plan to please as many potential purchases as possible. If a minority of purchases is displeased, well tough, the economics of publishing do not permit a sentiment so that minority representatives can protest. But since the publishers are not operating on public funds, they can afford to resist pressures for minority elements in the generally satisfied public. Hoyt Fuller: This they routinely do. And minority protestors find the wall of ignorance surreptitiousness and chauvinism simply too entrenched and formidable to confront. Now, in this particular paper, I went on to list a number of books that had been recently published at that time, which illustrated the problems that I had just isolated here. But I won't take you through that. Some of them were the annual O. Henry award anthologies. The prize stories of 1960 this, 1970 that. And one was called The Best American Short Stories, and one was called How We Live. But, the How We Live one, I do want to mention because it was particularly insidious. Hoyt Fuller: I don't know if you're familiar, you who teach literature may know this book, I don't know. But, I hope you're not using it. The book was published as a $12.50 hardcover by Mellon several years ago and was reissued, I was issued later in a two volume paperback edition. And this was the edition that was most being used in schools at the time. The hardcover edition have 1,000 pages, so it was a big book. Hoyt Fuller: And, in one section, they had a section called In Race; The Visible Negro. And in that section, the editors of the anthology selected the works of six authors. Now, the title of this anthology is how we live, how Americans live. So, they selected ... for the section dealing with us, they selected the work of six authors, and then they wrote this. Only two first rate Negro writers can be named, Ralph Ellison and James Bowen. And the ranks behind them are almost empty. Hoyt Fuller: To mention the names of Ronald Fair, Ernest Gaines, Chester Himes, Claude Brown, Claude Brown never wrote a novel. William Melvin Kelley, Paule Marshall, and John Williams is to stretch and virtually exhaust the list of Negroes from whom we can expect literary fiction of significant interest. It is not the Negroes are not writing or being published, but aside from Ellison and Bowen, they have not yet produced the kind of writing that satisfies the complex contemporary taste and sensibilities. Hoyt Fuller: This is all by way of explaining ... and get this. This is all by way of explaining that two of the stories in this section are by Jewish writers, and one is by a Southern white woman. And so that's their quote, not mine. And so, and anthology designed to provide insight into how Black Americans live features the work of two Jews and a Southern white woman, because, with the exception of Ellison and Bowen, Blacks have not yet produced the kind of writing that satisfies the contemporary tastes and sensibilities. Whose contemporary tastes and sensibilities? Wow. I'll spare you that. Hoyt Fuller: Now, remember I told you this is a documentary, and we're dealing with the documents that give you some insight and some background into this whole struggle relative to the publishing situation. Disappeared in Negro Digest in July, 1968, and it's called On Pressure And an Award. And this was briefer than the other things. Hoyt Fuller: Negro Digest is pleased to report that its efforts in behalf of Afro American artists in general and Black writers in particular having some success, although understandably the magazine has given no official credit for having inspired funding agencies to cast a glance in the direction of the Black community. And, of course, many of the beneficiaries of the magazine's endeavors, also are artists who are extremely critical of the magazine's social consciousness. Hoyt Fuller: One very prominent and very elegant Black writer at the time said of Negro Digest that we were really too polemical. In some cases, the National Foundation in the Arts and Humanities, for example, the funding agencies seek out such critics on whom to bestow awards saying, in effect, that even if they are pressured into recognizing Black artists, they can't be forced to recognize those who proceed from a position of Black consciousness, but so life is. Hoyt Fuller: The coordinating council, the literary magazines recently announced recipients of $27,760 in grants. One of the 22 little magazines favored by a grant is Umbra, edited by David Henderson. The CCLM also announced formation of a special committee to investigate and advise CCLM on the special problems of the Negro literary community. Hoyt Fuller: The Negro Digest would like his readers to know that early in 1968, the editor met in Chicago with three members of the board of directors of CCLM, there was Jules Chametzky, Robie Macauley, and J.R. de la Torre. And we dealt with the problem of the routine exclusion of Black literary or quasi literary magazines from consideration by such groups as the CCLM. Hoyt Fuller: The CCLM incidentally is partly supported by funds from the National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities. And shortly after that meeting, Liberator magazine received a CCLM grant. Members of the special committee to investigate and advise CCLM on the special problems in the Negro literary community, A.B. Spellman, David Henderson, and Michael Thelwell. A talented trio of young Black writers. Hoyt Fuller: This appeared in the November, 1968 issue of Negro Digest. And it was called optimistically, The Critics Will Learn. The critics will learn if Black people stand fast, refuse to compromise their honor, and their vision, they will win out over the critics. See, one of the reasons why I think that going back over this has some relevance, is because you may not be aware, especially the younger people among you may not be aware of what was going on 10 or 12 or 13 years ago. We tend to take things for granted, but it was not easy. Hoyt Fuller: For the critics and mostly pallet sickly creatures spouting the rhetoric and the notions of their masters and establishment. Their political hacks doing the work of the [gentile] races, those men of power in the arts who decide on the basis of their own preferences and prejudices, what is worth praising. Hoyt Fuller: One by one, the critics are forced into publicly revealing that ignorance and wrong headedness. Early in the year, that was Richard Gilman, and I've gone through that with you. In the August Harper's Magazine, the critic Louis Simpson, a man born in the West Indian islands where Black blood flows often unwelcomely in the veins of many whites, did a little backtracking of his own relative to Black writers and writing. Sometime ago, reviewing a volume of Gwendolyn Brooks, his poems for the New York Herald Tribune's book week, Mr. Simpson put down the famous Black poet and Black poetry generally with the following assessment. And this is his quote. "I am not sure it is possible for a Negro to write well without making us aware he is a Negro. On the other hand, if being a Negro is the only subject, the writing is not important." Hoyt Fuller: Well, the times have changed since Mr. Simpson wrote those words. And now, it is not politically expedient to hold that viewpoint toward Black writers and Black writing. The upheaval in the streets have forced the [scions] or the establishment to reconsider their attitudes toward Black people. Naturally then, the critics have taken that cue, Mr. Simpson among them. Hoyt Fuller: In a review of Arnold Adoff anthology of Black poetry, I am the Darker Brother. The West Indian born, Mr. Simpson sounded this and he had gone and gotten religion. "I do not think there has been a conspiracy to keep the Negro out of poetry in America," Mr. Simpson wrote answering an unasked question. But there has been indifference to the poetry of the Negro, which is just as bad. Notice that Mr. Simpson nevertheless, takes no credit for his own contribution to the indifference to Black poetry. Hoyt Fuller: He admitted that he had not read half the poet's represented in Mr. Adoff's anthology. And he went on to lavish praise on Robert Hayden and Conrad Kent Rivers, and too keeping in line with the establishment's creed, lament, "a streak of hatred" in the works of LeRoi Jones that will destroy his talent if he cannot control it. And true to form, Mr. Simpson ended his observations with a stop paragraph of condescension. Hoyt Fuller: "There are a number of poems by Negroes who have used the language and forms of traditional verse," he wrote. "They would have gotten better, they would have written better had they written less carefully." The anthology ranges from original living speech to literary imitation, but it is all valuable for all the poems tell something of Negro history and culture. And Mr. Simpson's review is valuable because it tells something of the state of criticism in America. Black writers, Mr. Simpson should know much prefer him in his former role as denigrator playing politics with Black poetry is a dangerous game. Hoyt Fuller: This was written a year later in November, 1969. Black images and white critics, "to manipulate an image is to control a peoplehood." The above is a quote lifted out of a perceptive and urgently important article by Carolyn Fowler Gerald, which appeared in the January 1969 issue of Negro Digest. The title of the article was The Black Writer and His Role, with the subtitle shaping an image for ourselves. Hoyt Fuller: And in the article, Mrs. Gerald dealt with the Black white struggle for the control of image, and where the responsibility of the Black writer to destroy the zero and the negative image myths of ourselves by turning them inside out. As Mrs. Gerald went on to say in her article, the Black consciousness school of writers have set out to destroy in the minds of Black people the white images, which the American educational and cultural institutions have implanted and sanctified. Hoyt Fuller: These writers are concerned with deliberately projecting a Black image upon the universe, thereby liberating Black people from the psychological hangups to which they are subject in the white world. Black writers across the country now are encouraging the development of Black critics and some excellent ones are coming forth. Addison Gayle Jr., Cecil Brown, Stanley Crouch, and Mrs. Gerald among them. Hoyt Fuller: These critics shared with the writers whose works they evaluate, a general world of experience and an angle of vision. They have no need to undergo a transformation or perspective in order to follow the author's vision, nor do they need to Mount a defense against implicit accusations of complicity in crimes against the human spirit. They are free to accept the new Black literature on its own terms, and to judge it on those terms. Hoyt Fuller: But the white literary establishment is not willing to release the stranglehold on Black literature. It has been traditional, of course, that white critics decided what was valuable and valid in Black literature. Robert Bone, for one, has been floating along for years on a reputation as the leading authority on Black literature, on the basis of his book, the Negro Novel in America. Hoyt Fuller: In most academic circles, Mr. Bone cannot be challenged by a Black writer, or a critic. His judgment is final, his taste infallible. The other white experts on Black literature include Edward Margolies, and Herbert Hill. The later drawing down a salary as labor secretary for the NAACP, but who not unexpectedly qualifies among white editors and publishers as a Black spokesman on just about everything. These white expert that is true, and that is also one of the things that was happening during this period that was so insidious. Because Herbert Hill and Edward Margolies and these people could go to the publishers in New York and get advances and contracts to do books and anthologies on Black literature, and Black authors and Black writers and Black editors could not do that. It was a very insidious thing. Hoyt Fuller: These white experts on Black literature say to Black writers, what in effect whites have always said to Blacks, that Black people approach wholeness as human beings to the extent to which they approximate whiteness. Black literature approaches the standards of genuine literature to the degree that it reflects the American literary mainstream. Hoyt Fuller: Well, most Black writers have rejected the presumptions of the American literary mainstream just as Black people increasingly are given the back of that behinds to American cultural values, no matter. The white literary establishment with this Black lack is, and they will always be there bowing and scraping and pasturing as patricians persistent trying to impose its standards and strictures upon Black writers, seeking to force Black perceptions into a white mold. Black writing must pass the inspection or the white judges before it is admitted into the hallowed halls of American literature. Fiction must have universal read white. Hoyt Fuller: Themes and display excellence and technique control and imagery and uniqueness of styling language, and the white sensibility will sift the fiction to determine whether it meets these qualifications. The latest ploy of the literary establishment is to seek to capitalize on the new Black literary movement while also trying to co-opt it. For example, a move is underway down at a branch of the university of Virginia called Mary Washington College to publish an authoritative journal of Black literature to be called Studies In Black Literature. Hoyt Fuller: The editors of this little journal have been lining up advisory editors, and two or three Blacks have been approached. However, most of the advisory editors on the editor's preliminary list were white, and prominent among them were Edward Margolies who recently published a couple of books about Black writers, and Herbert Hill. Others were Daniel [Dervan], and [Sidney Mitchell], Earl Rovit, [Brent Linford], Robert Corrigan and Leslie Fiedler. Hoyt Fuller: What is most interesting about this projected new journal is its editor in chief. Well, now at this stage in the struggle, Black writers and critics of Black consciousness persuasion clearly have the duty to stand clear of such a journal. At a time when Black people are concerned with controlling their own images, it is inconceivable that committed Black writers and critics would involve themselves with a journal of Black literature edited and published by white or non-Black people. Hoyt Fuller: For Black writers and critics who feel that ignoring such a journal would deprive them about less for that work than it is worth noting that at least two new Black literary journals are being planned for 1970. John A. Williams the novelists and Charles Harris, the editor are bringing out a journal designed as a university literature supplement. And Mel Watkins, the editor is organizing a similar journal. One was the Amistad Review, and the other was ... I forgotten what Watkins called his, but they were both actually brought into existence. Hoyt Fuller: A number of Black journals are already on existence, CLA journal and Nathan Hare's Black Scholar. That was before the changes at the Black scholar, among them. In all probability, the projected journal at Mary Washington college is being funded by one of the major foundations. If so, the foundation ought to know that there are a number of Black educational institutions with competent editors who would welcome the opportunity of establishing a major journal of Black literature, which would be truly authoritative. Incidentally, this college had up to this point, never even enrolled Blacks on the campus. Hoyt Fuller: The Black American Writer, this was published in April, 1970. Nearly two years ago, a professor at a University in Wales named C.W.E. Bigsby wrote to me asking that I write an article for a book he was preparing on Black literature in America. My assumption was that the book would be published in Britain, primarily for a British audience. And I thought it would be useful to do such an article for that reason. Being busy, I failed to meet the deadline. It was when professor Bigsby suggested that I make a final effort to get my piece written and turn it over directly to the publisher in the United States that I became concerned. Hoyt Fuller: The American publisher turned out was a Florida based firm called Everett Edwards. I wrote Mr. Bigsby with some heat. And this bit of information that this bit of information, which had not been conveyed to me from the beginning, put another color on his entire project. I told him that I would not write a piece for a book to be edited by a white man in Wales and published by a white firm in Florida. Hoyt Fuller: The Black literary community, I informed Mr. Bigsby, did not need white editors anthologizing, interpreting and organizing their material. In fact, I told him that that was a growing objection to the practice of white editors and anthologists and entrepreneuring Black literary work, and also dissatisfaction with the fact that profits from such work invariably went into the pockets of white publishers. Hoyt Fuller: Mr. Bigsby was somewhat upset by all this, and duly professed his sympathy for Black literature in his pureness of motives and seeking to anthologizing. There was even a letter from the publisher himself, a Richard E. Langford describing his labors in the vineyards of racial understanding, and regretting my attitude toward the publishing venture. Since he apparently needed the article I had promised in order to complete his roaster, Mr. Bigsby asked if I would not consent to permit the reprinting of an article I had written several years earlier. Hoyt Fuller: The article, Contemporary Negro Fiction had appeared in the Southwest Review in 1965. I saw no reason why the article should not be reprinted, and so I granted permission. Also, I lived to regret it. In late January, the two volumes of Mr. Bigsby's project arrived from Florida, and I was appalled at the hodgepodge unfocused character of the collection of material thrown in among the insights of such knowledgeable people as Larry Neal and James Baldwin. Our apologies for white supremacy and criticism by Black, all Black literature by Richard Gilman and someone named James W. [inaudible]. Hoyt Fuller: He has a perfectly silly bit of ranting by Paul Breman, the Dutch born editor, and an expert on Black poetry who speaks with unbridled authority and supreme ignorance on the entire Black literary scene in America. The collection is a disaster, but it should serve the Black literary community, including this writer, as a warning. The time is over when we should permit our work to be manipulated by editors and anthologist who do not understand it, and who must by virtue of that distance, psychological and spiritual from us seek to minimize its value and to destroy its power. Hoyt Fuller: How long have I been talking? Well, a little longer. Just a little longer. Because that was the struggle, and I want you to get some sense of it. All right. This is called the Invisible Black Presence. And I may have made allusions to this a little back. But, anyway, the book Prize Stories 1971, the O. Henry awards crossed our desk. We thumbed through it, the token Black author represented in this yearly collection of best short stories is Eldridge Cleaver. His story, The Flashlight from Playboy magazine, December, 1969. Hoyt Fuller: The editor, a William Abrahams apparently consulted the total of 92 magazines to select the 17 short stories in the 1971 collection. The 92 magazines are listed in the back of the book. Of the 92 only one, Phylon, has any direct association with Black people. Phylon is a quarterly journal, which officially terms itself, a review of race and culture. Hoyt Fuller: It is published at Atlanta University, rarely does fiction appear in its pages. Of the 91 other magazines consulted in the selection of distinguished stories for the annual prize stories magazine magazines. Magazines that widely circulated is the New Yorker, and magazines as obscure as the Moonlight Review are included. Many of the magazines consulted published no more than one or two copies a year. And some of the magazines listed are already defunct by the time the list is published. Hoyt Fuller: Stories in the 1971 anthology were published between the summer of 1969 and the summer of 1970. That puts it in within the period that Darwin is considering here. Now, the O. Henry Awards and Double Day publishes an annual anthology and William Abrahams, the editor were all white, and nobody pretends that the annual publishing event is anything other than a white thing. We make that clear at once. Hoyt Fuller: At the same time, we want to make it crystal clear the bar and image that we are not here complaining about the fact that Black World, Liberator, Freedomways, Black Dialogue, Soul Book, The Black Scholar, and the dozens of new or Black published journals are not represented on Mr. Abrahams' list of consultant magazines. Hoyt Fuller: The point we wish to make, and to underline and to hold up to the moderate Black academics, and to those who aspire to that posture lies in another direction. There are several annual anthologies of best fiction published in the United States, and all of them proceed in more or less the same fashion as Mr. Abrahams and Double Day. The judgment of these men has then forced it off on high school and college instructors who use the books in their classrooms as examples of the best fiction published yearly. Hoyt Fuller: Hundreds of thousands of Black children are subjected to the presumption that the best fiction is being written by whites about whites reflecting the white style sense of beauty, values, prejudices and preferences. Black children are being systematically indoctrinated into a white worldview through the fiction they are taught to respect and accept, and the values that fiction holds up to them. They are being indoctrinated into self degrading whiteness, even by instructors with Black faces who consider themselves just human beings, not Black or white, and who therefore adopt the white attitude and the white aesthetic. Hoyt Fuller: Black world does not wish to be included in the list of 92 magazines consulted by the editor of Prize World, Prize store is 1971. That is not the thrust of this commentary. Black world wants Black people to open their eyes, to confront the insidious designs of the educators and the image makers, and to reject those maneuvers, which serve to perpetuate the assumption of superiority of all things white, and the degradation of all things Black. Black people should stand vigilant against the use of such books as prior stories in the schools attended by their children. Black people should insist that their children be exposed to literature which springs from the experiences, and which presents an image of Black people they can identify with and respect. Hoyt Fuller: We do not need to make the point that the editor of Prize Stories cannot pretend objectivity and honesty and seeking out the best stories published in the year between the summer of 1969 and summer. Dozens of stories by Black writers were published in magazines during that period, Black World, a Negro Digest alone published at least 19 short stories between June, 1969 and June, 1970, and probably more. However, we do not need to make the point over and over again, endlessly, we do need to make the point over and over again, endlessly that Black people have the responsibility of remaining vigilant and militant against the unceasing efforts of mainstream American institutions and agents to obliterate the always unsettling Black presence from the American psyche. Hoyt Fuller: Now, that particular editorial, again, had some national impact. In the issue of Publishers Weekly of August, the second, 1971, in Publishers Weekly, you may know, some of you may know, is the Bible of the publishing industry. And they did an editorial based on what you just heard. An editorial said this. Publication of an annual anthology of best short stories has brought on yet another charge that book publishing that's practiced in America is racist. The source of the charge is hateful managing editor of Black world. Hoyt Fuller: The occasion for the charge is a publication, My Double Day of Prize Stories1971 edited by William Abrahams. Writing on editorial page in the September issue of Black World, Mr. Fuller finds his anthology is one story about Black authors and urges that Cleaver's story, first published in Playboy is racial tokenism. Hoyt Fuller: He finds even greater tokenism in the published list of magazines for judges to say, they're scanned in order to select the old hinders entrance. He finds that just about the entire Black press publications with any direct association with Black people is systematically excluded from the selection process. These are magazines, which regularly published fiction. We see O. Henry judges could have been consulted, but evidently didn't. Hoyt Fuller: At this point in the argument, it might be thought that Mr. Fuller and other like-minded critics would be satisfied if the Black press was systematically included in establishment literary prize givings. But the thrust of the argument goes much deeper. They don't want to be included. They have abandoned thoughts of literary integration if they ever had any. They look on the O. Henry and similar prize anthologies as strictly white establishment affairs. And they would like to have these anthologies excluded from the Black consciousness, especially in classroom situations. Hoyt Fuller: Mr. Fuller writes, you just heard what I wrote. He quotes the bit about hundreds of thousands of Black children are subjected to the ... that's important. And he says that I urge it that Black people have the responsibility to remaining vigilant and militant against the unceasing offense of mainstream American institutions and agents to obliterate the always unsettling Black presence from the American psyche. Hoyt Fuller: The resumption of the racist charge against publishing may be a good occasion to repeat the suggestion made before in Publisher's Weekly's pages that minority group publishes need and deserve establishment support in order for them to do their own thing. The unsettling Black presence, like, any unsettling presence in society needs its own voice to be heard on an equal basis. Hoyt Fuller: With all the advantages and risks with such equality implies with society's other voices in the media field, a coexistence of integrated channels, and those that are separate but equal. Certainly those hundreds of thousands of Black children cited by Mr. Fuller are going to get a strange view of their world. If that classrooms have only one short story collection, white or Black, and one which moreover carries the misleading label of best. Hoyt Fuller: Inclusion rather than exclusion would seem a desirable principle in selecting classroom materials together, perhaps with a little more specificity in labeling. Many of the books and other materials to sustain the invisible presence of Blacks and other minority groups will come from an already owned and managed publishing firms, those now in existence, and those yet to be formed. Hoyt Fuller: The publishing establishments record of helping such firms is not yet a notable one until that record improves attacks on publishing for racism, such as Mr. Fuller's timely editorial can be expected to continue. I'm not going to hold you much longer. I just want to give you a little sidelight on that. As a consequence of that whole thing, one publisher who is Black, did get a grant from the Association of American Publishers. A substantial grant, over half a million dollars to start a publishing firm, which he did. Hoyt Fuller: However, I'm afraid I have to be specific. I have to be specific because the grant went to Joseph Okpaku of The Third Press who was Africa, who's Nigerian. And, I want to make it clear. At the time that this happened, none of the Blacks who were out there trying to start publishing houses they're all American Blacks, they're trying to stop publishing houses of their own made any objection, whatever to this grant going to Mr. Okpaku. That was no attack at all on Mr. Okpaku of the grant. However, even though Black people did not speak out, there was considerable anger in the Black community because of Mr. Okpaku's position, because, he maintained that there was no need for him to concentrate solely on the Black scene, and the Black publishing scene. Hoyt Fuller: Well, the Black publishers understood very well that they could not compete with the white publishers. They had no intention of trying to compete with the white publishers. They saw a need, and were trying to fulfill that need. Well, I think that at least some of you know, what ultimately happened to the Third Press. It went out, and went out with some scandal attached to it, and all of that money went with it. But the two or three of the Black publishing houses that were started before that are still struggling along, they're still there. They haven't reached their potential, but they're still there. Hoyt Fuller: They asked me in New York to come to a little conference that they were having on this question in the offices of Publishers Weekly, and I went. And when I saw that apparently what was going on was some effort to get the American publishers to do what they eventually did for Mr. Okpaku, it seemed to me that I had better let them know why I was there, and get it on record. So, I borrowed a pen from ... a piece of paper rather, from somebody and wrote this, which they quickly typed up for me, and circulated it among everybody at the meeting. Hoyt Fuller: This is my statement. The first thing I would like to make clear is that I am not present at this racism and book publishing press conference, either to plead for financial support from establishment publishers, for Black publishing firms, nor to be more on the prevailing racism among establishment publishers, which serves to discourage, if not to throttle the efforts of Black publishing firms. I agree with the Chicago book publisher who wrote Publishers Weekly a response to Bradford Chamber's initial article in Publishers Weekly on racism and publishing. Hoyt Fuller: That it is simply ridiculous to expect this by established publishers to underwrite their own competition. That is like asking the United States to finance Russia's exploration of the moon. Whatever the myths of book publishing in America, the fact is that book publishing is a capitalistic competitive endeavor, organized to make money for entrepreneurs, managers and investor. Book publishers, like other businessmen, are concerned about problems of minorities only when those problems, in some way, overflow the ethnic enclaves and threaten the accepted order of things. Hoyt Fuller: Nor do I waste my time or anybody else's chatting established publishers about their racist attitudes and practices. America is a racist society, racist attitudes, and practices under the other norm. I know of no reason why book publishers should be expected to be less racist than say a razor blade manufacturer, or the United States state department. Hoyt Fuller: I am here because I am a Black man who is deeply engaged in the struggle to seize control of the Black image from those who have never respected it, and to place that image in the hands of Black people, where it belongs. For far too many centuries now, the Black image has been imprisoned and manipulated by white men. And, of course, a key instrument of that imprisonment and exploitation has been depressed. The publishing industry, the Black image has been systematically defamed, Black history has been distorted, Black literature has been crippled and maimed by being forced into a form designed for other races, cultures and colors. And the Black experience has been degraded, so that its degraders would not have to deal with the monstrousness and guilt of the white experience. Hoyt Fuller: I am here to take advantage of the opportunity of a press conference staged by the most influential organ of the American book publishing industry, to say that Black people will no longer meekly submit to the benevolent paternalism and sly opportunism inherent in the recently inaugurated practice of employing a token or two Black editorial staffers, as proof of absence of racism. Black people are not deceived. Hoyt Fuller: As one of the Black book publishers has pointed out, Black people are at the very least 25 million strong in this country, constituting a nation far greater and infinitely more able than many formal nations in the world. And more than a half dozen of the major cities in America, Black people make up more than a half the total population. And in even more cities, the percentage of Black children in the schools exceeds that of any other ethnic group. Hoyt Fuller: In those cities where Black children are in the majority, it is fair to say that the days of Dick and Jane are numbered as the subjects of stories and tech books. Black children in Detroit, and Atlanta and Harlem are going to read about little Leroy and Edna May. Stories written by Black authors, illustrated by Black artists, and books published by Black firms. Black people are going to control their own image. Hoyt Fuller: Now, in stating the above, I want it known that I am fully aware of the practical considerations involved in transferring the power of image from white to Black hands. I know that I am talking about snatching millions of dollars out of the pockets of white people, and transferring that money to Black people. And I know very well that white people do not take lightly to the prospect of losing money, particularly the Black people. Hoyt Fuller: I know full well that the struggle to affect this transformation will be long, unjust and dangerous. And that even some influential Black people will be enlisted against Black forces in the struggle. That is the way it goes. But as a Black man engaged in the struggle for Black autonomy and survival, I know that there is no alternative. Hoyt Fuller: I am here because I think the book publishing industry should know that the few integrations, Black publishers not withstanding, dedicated Black publishers are determined that whatever the obstacles, they are going to rest control of the Black image from his manipulators and return it to its rightful owners. Those were very brave words. Wow. There's a lot more, but we've been going on now for well over an hour. And, at least you see the drift. And so, I won't persecute you any longer with any of this. And, I'll throw the floor over open for you to ask whatever questions you want. Thank you.