Dr. Greg Carr.
Thank you.
Dean, it's a pleasure.
Pleasure to be with you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you so much.
Absolutely.
You're a legendary, you know.
Oh.
No.
I'm just glad to be a first-generation Negro working at an HBCU -- the crown jewel of the HBCUs.
There you go.
Earn my check.
But you coming back not only was major, it completed a cycle that needed to be completed.
This is a very powerful moment.
Thank you for rejoining us.
Well, that's my pleasure.
Yes, ma'am.
So we're having a wonderful celebration next door.
Can you hear it?
Yes.
The African Students Association.
African Students Association.
This is Howard University, and this is how it goes.
There was always something going on.
That's right.
And we've been taping two plays.
Yes.
Two plays from the -- from the early part of the 20th century.
Mm-hmm.
Y-- I've never -- I had never heard of these plays.
But you are putting them on, though.
Well, no.
This is in association with the Lucille Lortel Foundation.
Yes.
I mean, but you're the one who's guiding these young actors through -- putting them through their paces, right?
That's true.
Yes, ma'am.
That's true.
Yeah.
It's been a wonder.
Hmm.
It's been a wonder, first of all, to -- to come across these plays, for me, for the first time, but to see their relevance to today.
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
Well, I mean, I thought about you when you played Aunt Ester and "Gem of the Ocean," particularly with the elder and aftermath, you know.
Ah.
And whereas Aunt Ester had three centuries almost of the momentum of memory, that tension and aftermath between the elder and the children.
Yes.
She's relying on that Bible, but they like, "Look, that Bible's not gon' save you."
That's right.
You know.
Both of them are telling her that.
That's right.
That's right.
In Aftermath.
That's right.
Aftermath, written by Mary Burrill.
Yes.
And Mary Burrill, interestingly enough, of course, that's why I said it's so fortuitous -- Of course, she's a Howard person.
Howard University graduate, D.C. born, teaches at M Street High School, which of course becomes Paul Laurence Dunbar High School.
And among those who she influenced and taught, Willis Richardson.
So, I mean, it's all -- I mean, so you -- to me, it's not even like you discovered these plays.
You have to do these plays because it's part of this genealogy.
I hadn't thought of -- about it like that.
No question.
It's our ancestors.
That's why I said, who better to do it?
It's really been something.
It's been -- It's been something to -- you know, first of all, they seem dated because of language.
Of course.
Of course.
And it's so easy to write off a piece that you think is dated as being simplistic.
Yes.
Yes.
But the more the students have drilled down into it, the more we see.
Do you have any of the students who, when they encountered this language, took to it more quickly than others?
Because I noticed that you're a southerner.
I'm from the Middle South.
I'm Tennessee, but you're a Texan.
So even though the phrasing might initially be unfamiliar, once they get those vowels in their mouths were any just like, "Oh, yeah, I know people who talk somewhat close to this."
I don't know if any of them fell into it.
This has been a very interesting component of this.
Some years ago, I -- I was doing this kind of collective interviewing with actors about August Wilson because we were trying to put together acting August Wilson, the way acting Shakespeare had been put together.
Oh, interesting.
So we were talking amongst ourselves.
"We" meaning actors.
We were talking to actors who had performed the Wilson plays in their first incarnations, and one of those persons was James Earl Jones, of course.
And when I was speaking with James about it, he said that his father... Robert Earl Jones.
There you go.
Yes.
Told him -- because they were from Mississippi, right?
Yes.
[ Laughs ] He said, "Remember this speech.
Remember the way we speak."
He told him this early in his career.
He said, "The time will come when people will have forgotten this speech, and you can't teach it to them."
Increasingly, this is what we see.
That is fascinating.
No, it's fascinating.
Yeah, it's true, too.
Well, see, that's why I said -- because if you didn't tell people you were from Houston, they might not guess it.
That's true.
My mother was born on a pallet in Russell County, Alabama, not too far from Michael Jackson's mother's, where she was born.
But my mother sounded like you.
I mean, in other words, there was there was this kind of commitment to language.
I don't know if it was class or it was this aspirational thing.
But in a moment, you could go back into that thing.
So to hear him say that to his son, "Remember this speech, because it's going to come a time when you can't teach it."
It's true.
And I've seen it a lot.
Have you encountered it when you're directing?
Mm-hmm.
Really?
When I'm working with -- when I've auditioned younger actors for certain roles, what I've -- what I've seen is that the rhythm has been trained out of them.
Trained out of them.
Another reason we have to have institutions like Howard.
Another reason.
But yes, I have witnessed this.
I mean, I've seen actors come through the great programs at these predominantly other institutions.
Yes.
You know, and they can't do this.
They can't handle the speech.
They can't work and flow with the speech because the rhythms were trained out of them.
That's fascinating to me.
See, when I came along, I was a theater major in undergrad at Tennessee State.
My directors, W. Dury Cox, H. Devereaux Brady, they were students of T.E.
Poag, the great director, who, of course -- now, you talking about Henry Edmond's father and Florida A&M, all that whole contingent.
So what we had was the speech.
We brought it from home.
And they were sticklers on we had to do the classics.
I played Oedipus, Every Man.
Yes.
So we might sneak a partly victorious in, but what you're describing sounds like a kind of a shift.
There are now generations of students who won't encounter that genealogy of those great directors who helped build on what they brought with them without letting them alienate it, but also teaching the other stuff.
I mean, what do you think is going on in the theater world as it relates to HBCUs in particular?
Are theater programs committed to making sure that that speech is not broken?
I mean, that you can preserve it?
Because kids still come here with it.
Right.
Some do.
Some.
Some.
Right.
Some do.
Some, some.
That's right.
You have to look at where our kids are coming from.
That's a very good point.
You know.
Yes, ma'am.
And look at who's educated them before they come.
Oh, interesting.
You have to look like that.
Okay.
So but to your point -- That's interesting.
Kenny Leon...
Yes.
...seeing this, started the August Wilson competition among high school students.
Oh, yes.
And now it is broad.
It's across the country.
Yes.
Yes.
So now they're engaging with this speech.
Yes.
And it's a good thing.
It is.
I mean, it's got to be.
Because -- you know, it's funny.
When I came to work here, Al Freeman was still around.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, of course.
I mean.
[ Laughs ] Oh, yeah.
And, you know, the students still got that.
And with you here, coming back into a space where it's unbroken, they do that work, but I think about Chad Boseman coming here from South Carolina, for example.
He had it.
Exactly.
Oh, he had it in spades.
[ Laughs ] [ Laughs ] This is what I was saying.
And never had to lose it.
I mean, now here's a space where you can be that, but we're gon' add some other stuff.
So as you're working with these young people through Aftermath, set in South Carolina, you know, that must be fascinating to have worked with that language and have them kind of experiment and play.
It is fascinating, the language and the rhythm.
The rhythm, the rhythm.
The rhythm of speech.
Because you see, as you were pointing out about this effort to speak a certain way because of class and...
Yes, yes, yes.
All right, so the language as is written on the page is a bit exaggerated.
It is.
You know, in the writing.
No, it is.
Yeah, of course.
It is.
Because it was being written for a class of people who didn't speak that way.
Yes?
Right, right.
Right?
Oh, that's interesting.
Oh, you just uncovered a can of worms, Dean.
Seriously, because Burrill here, teaching at M Street, which of course, it was 1870, I think, they started the only high school in the country for Black children, the Colored Preparatory High School, people would literally send their children from all over the country and they would knock on doors in the neighborhood around M Street and Black people would take them in for rent so they could -- address would be local, so they could go there.
That's how Sadie Tanner Alexander, who ended up being a lawyer, and she's at University of Pennsylvania.
Her portrait's in the law school.
That's how she ended up coming from Philly.
They came from all over the country.
But the point is that was considered the school that was going to break the chain of slavery.
These Negroes are going to be the best.
And by the best, we gon' knock that language out of their mouth.
Right.
So how is Mary Burrill staging plays in the 19-teens with this kind of language?
How is Willis Richardson, whose family had to flee North Carolina -- I mean, he was what, maybe about ten years old when the Wilmington race riots took place, 1898.
So they left North Carolina and came to D.C. That's how he ends up going to M Street.
And so -- but that agenda was not the agenda of preserving the speech.
No.
It was, in fact, the opposite.
We gon' knock this speech out of their mouths.
I wonder, Dean, how do you think they grappled -- these playwrights -- with preserving the speech at the same time that there's this aspirational class thing that's certainly pressing down on them?
This is the New Negro era when they write these plays.
Right, and remember, in the New Negro era, Zora Neale Hurston was at her height.
No question.
No question.
Right here.
And she was about that.
That's right.
That's right.
She took that language and lifted it to academia, right?
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
Right?
Yes.
Fought it.
I mean...
Interesting.
Put it on the stage.
Put it in literature.
Yes, in spite of.
You know... Because of.
No question.
[ Laughs ] Ooh, see?
See?
Okay.
Just only at Howard, not even the other HBCUs.
Only at Howard could this conversation be heading this way because when she gets here, what is that, '20 -- early '20s?
Because she helped found the Zetas, and, you know, after -- A.K.A.
in Alpha Phi Alpha, we won't speak of it.
No.
But anyway, I'm just saying.
But, you know -- but that would have been what, 1919, 1920?
Alain Locke is here.
1919 I think is when Aftermath was written.
It was written -- It was placed in 1919.
I think you're right.
Yes.
Placed in 1919.
Yes, ma'am.
So -- But that's when they have this student revolt on this campus.
Ray Walters wrote a book called The New Negro on Campus.
So the Zora Hurstons of the world, the first thing they said was, "Look, we love the Lord.
He heard our cry, pitied every moment, but I'm not going to chapel if it's mandatory."
So they had a rebellion on this campus.
[ Laughs ] Zora Neale Hurston is in the middle of it.
That's when they started The Hilltop.
Oh, see, now, see, you're telling things.
You're telling things.
But it was a good tension.
It's a great thing to know.
Yeah.
No question.
No question.
Florida A&M, they had an uprising.
Hampton had an uprising.
Dubois' daughter goes to Fisk around '22 or '23.
By 1924, these trustees at Fisk have these young girls going down to downtown Nashville to "entertain" the donors.
Dubois has had enough.
He gives a speech at his -- the year after his daughter's graduation called "Diuturni Silenti" -- "Long Silence."
He said, "I've been quiet enough.
This has to end."
Ran the president off.
But this is the tension between -- like I said, these are the children and the generation who come after enslavement, encountering this kind of aspirational thing, and they're pushing up again-- and they're fighting.
So Zora Hurston is in the middle of a fight, before she ends up at Columbia with Boaz and them.
Of course, now white people have discovered us, so they're interested and fascinated anthropologists.
Oh, yeah.
And Zora's like, "I know these people."
Oh, yes.
[ Laughs ] You know what I'm saying?
I'll take your paper, but you ain't gonna tell me nothing about my mama now.
Right.
Right.
You know?
And somehow, Burrill and Richardson -- you would think Burrill would have written the one about the sisters trying to vote.
This was -- And you had that -- Next thing I was going to say.
She wrote the play about the man, and he wrote the play about the women wanting to vote.
Why do you think?
Why do you think?
That's interesting, huh?
I think it's very interesting.
I think it's very interesting.
She wrote this play, and it's pretty fiery.
Indeed.
When she has this lead character, John, saying in his assessment...
Yes.
You know, "We find trustworthy citizens."
[ Laughs ] Mm-hmm.
That's right.
"Shelling out bombs, handing us guns, chucking us off to die."
My God.
"But nothing when it comes to being handed the rights that we fought for."
That's right.
I'm quoting it badly.
No, no.
Yes, that's it, though.
You know, so -- so this is interesting to me because, if you haven't read this play and you don't know about this play, you think this rhetoric only comes into play in 1960s.
How about that?
If then.
If then.
If then.
I think about James Earl Jones and The River Niger.
It's the same conflict.
He comes home from the war.
"We got to have a revolution," says the son.
You would think that.
Do you find that the students know those plays from the '60s and '70s?
No.
Really?
No.
Our students learn them here, but when they come -- some of them, some of them might.
But there are adults walking around who don't know.
Oh, it's no question about it.
You're right, sadly.
You know?
Sadly, yeah.
So, yeah, 1919.
1919 was -- [ Laughs ] It was [stammers] it was a terrible time.
Terrible time.
Things was happening.
Happening.
I couldn't find it.
And I'm embarrassed to say -- I'm sure that some theater scholar will be able to track it down.
But Burrill is writing, and as I was reading the play, I'm thinking about real life events that she must have been aware of.
Have you been -- Yeah.
Tell us.
Well, no.
You're gon' tell us, 'cause you -- [ Laughs ] We're having a conversation.
No, no, no, no, no, we're having a conversation.
We're having a conversation.
My colleague.
Dean.
No, no.
We're talking about riots.
That's exactly right.
And massacres that were happening all across the country.
That's exactly right.
And was it two years before, in 1917, in Houston, Texas?
That's right.
Now, I grew up in Houston, Texas, and didn't know that history.
Really?
They didn't teach y'all about the Brownsville raid in 19-- They -- And you went to Jack Yates.
You don't teach that to the people that you've got to keep a handle on.
Very true.
You know what?
That's true.
Dubois went to Hampton in 1906.
He told the faculty there, he said, "The great fear in this country is when the Negro will gather their energy."
And he said, "That's why they create curriculum, and at the core of it is this declaration.
They say, 'Take their eyes off the stars and fasten them in the field.
And if they're young men dreaming dreams, let them be dreams of molasses and cornbread.'"
So, yeah, you can't -- you can't teach -- I mean, but that's -- but that's in the essence of Houston, though.
So you didn't even learn it in the community.
I know maybe not in school.
No, I'm telling you, I did not.
Mm!
I did not.
Now, had I grown up in another ward -- had I grown up in Fourth or Fifth Ward, like Ali Woods did...
Yes.
I might have known.
But you grew up in the shadow of Emancipation Park.
In the shadow?
My father's office was right across the street.
[ Laughter ] Really?
Wow.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It was in the heart of our community.
Oh, my goodness.
You know.
But I guess they wanted something different for y'all, so it wasn't -- it wasn't connect that momentum, I suppose.
The -- It's like training speech out of people, right?
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
Which is a mistake.
That you're correcting now.
Which is a mistake.
These plays are very significant.
Voting rights for women in 1921.
Yes.
And, uh... [ Laughs ] Richardson makes a comedy of it in a way, because the men are so foolish.
[ Laughs ] Absolutely.
You know, and he wrote them that way.
Absolutely.
He wrote them that way.
You know, I thought -- Did you think, "Hmm.
No.
No."
What did you think when you encountered that?
Did you think perhaps he was over-dramatizing it?
Not at all.
Most of these Negroes was like this.
These deacons, these church men.
Well, no, no, you know, people get stuck in their conventions, right?
True.
True.
Come on.
They get stuck in their conventions.
It's true.
It's true.
You know, we want order.
Look, we're having this in this country right now.
Oh, it's no question.
This is why -- This is what's interesting to me.
It's true.
It's [laughs] we got to keep the women in check.
Patriarchy, it's real.
It's real.
It's definitely real.
It's been going on for centuries now.
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
I think it's time for a change.
That change might to be so structural, we wouldn't even recognize the society.
Seriously.
[ Laughs ] I mean, because you're right.
When he's writing it -- Because I'm sitting here, thinking you pass the 15th Amendment.
Gender is not mentioned.
Why do we even need a 19th Amendment as a matter of constitutional law?
But clearly, the patriarchy is so deep.
Now when these Black men get their right to vote, the people who organize against them to suppress them, it isn't just the Klan.
It isn't just the white Southerners.
It's also white women.
Susan B Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, they said, "Do not give the vote to Sambo before you give it to your wives and daughters."
These are white women.
I'm thinking about the hundreds of thousands of white men and women who wouldn't vote for Stacey Abrams in the last election.
They're saying it was Black men didn't vote for her, but no, look at the numbers.
It wasn't Black men and Black women in Atlanta.
It wasn't Black women and men in Macon and in Savannah and in Georgia.
It was white women and men in lockstep, and the white women with the white men.
So what about a woman's right to choose?
What about Medicare expansion, Medicaid expansion?
Somehow, race answered the bell.
And in this play, this tension, I'm reading it, thinking there was a time when Black women, not happy about this situation at all, still said, "If you're going to cast a ballot, husband, brother, son, we're going to have a family conversation because until we get the right to vote, your vote is our vote."
And this is something you see in the 1870s, '80s, and then as they dispossess us of the vote completely, this 19th Amendment comes around and an old tension raises its head.
So as I'm reading, I'm thinking about Ida B.
Wells.
Hmm.
I'm thinking about Mary Church Terrell.
I'm thinking about that generation of Black women who said, "We will have the vote."
But make no mistake, Ida B.
Wells said, "I'm a race woman.
"And so she's a suffragist?"
"No, I'm a race woman.
I'm not throwing my husband, I'm not throwing my children out in the street.
I'm not against them.
I'm with them.
But you gon' act right."
So as I'm reading this, I'm thinking, "He captures --" I loved it when his wife -- when their mother said, "Oh, yeah, I'm a member of it, too.
And I'm saying, -- I get their money, your money."
[ Laughter ] I said this is what we talking about.
One of my favorite lines in the play.
Is that your favorite?
[ Laughs ] That's beautiful.
So as you're directing these young actors, do y'all stop and have conversations about the context and meaning as you're going through this?
We do.
What's that like?
Well... [ Chuckles ] We don't have as much time for it as I wish we had.
Oh.
But -- Because we've done this in two weeks.
In less than two weeks, we put this together.
Come on.
That's how good they are.
That's how good you are, too.
That's why you got to have y'all together.
Okay.
No, that's how good they are.
They are good.
They are brilliant.
No question about it.
They're smart.
They're quick.
They're intuitive.
They're committed.
They don't get tired.
And if they do, they just drink some water and keep going.
I wonder where they see that modeled, hm.
Anyway, please go on.
[ Laughs ] No, it's a joy to work with them.
I know.
That's right.
I'm just -- I'm loving it.
And to see them go to the depths that they've gone to in less than two weeks... That's amazing.
It is amazing.
That's amazing.
You know, it is amazing.
Language so different than the language that they they speak normally.
Finding that, finding those rhythms, you know.
Just happy to do it.
Wanting to do it.
Hmm.
Eager to do it.
Hungry to do it.
Yes.
Yes.
It's wonderful.
That's beautiful.
It is wonderful.
Another one of the beautiful things about having these historically Black schools is that you have that faculty.
We're all here, so there's probably nothing that they're encountering that we can't plug in and help surround them with that fill-in material.
Like I said, these two plays by two people who are part of this community, part of Howard University, complicated -- Burrill, of course, with her long relationship with with Lucy Diggs Slowe, of course.
Oh, yes.
Open relationship in the 1920s and '30s!
You know, there were some people who were just never afraid.
Never afraid.
Just unafraid, period.
Yeah, exactly.
And she finds her way into this.
You know, as I was reading, thinking about her again and Aftermath, I'm thinking, there are historical events that are too close to the events in this play for her -- for this to be accidental.
Like, when John comes home with that cross from the French, there was a brother from Albany, New York, who was in the Harlem Hellfighters, the 369th, named Henry Johnson from Albany, New York.
He was a little dude, like 5'4", 130 pounds.
He fought what they call the battle of Henry Johnson.
He had a French-made rifle, got off three shots, then he pulled out his bolo knife, stabbed one German in the head, killed him, disemboweled another.
He killed them all, got across the river, came back here a hero.
As I'm reading Aftermath, I said, "This is Henry Johnson.
John is Henry Johnson."
[ Laughs ] You've got to be -- Is she -- Is she doing Henry Johnson?
And then of course, the 369th, that's the regiment out of New York that had the band, Noble Sissle.
Oh, yes.
Eubie Blake.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Oh, them boys could -- And of course, they were stationed in South Carolina.
Jim Europe sends Noble Sissle to the White Hotel to get the papers because, you know, he's very urbane.
He's a New Yorker.
I got to read the papers.
It's a segregated hotel.
You can't go in there.
He said, "Well, you can go in the newsstand and get the papers."
He comes out, the white soldiers start messing with him.
He comes back to the base.
The brothers is like, [imitates gun cocking], "Wait, where?"
Just like what happened in Houston when the boys was like, "Oh, really?
They're going to mess --" They sent them boys to France.
That's how they ended up leaving South Carolina and going into active duty.
And I'm saying, Mary Burrill is capturing that tension when he comes back and said, "They did what?
They did what?
Hey, man, get them guns."
Which like you said, is right there with the Bible was.
All the narratives are right there.
"Here's one for you.
Let's go, bro."
I'm thinking this is that energy that was in World War I.
Those Black soldiers are like Charles Hamilton Houston, another Dunbar graduate, Dean of Howard Law School, Vice Dean.
He said he wouldn't be Dean.
He didn't want the title.
He just wanted to do the work.
He came back from World War I.
He said, "I saw so much death there, I promised that I would come back here and spend the rest of my life making sure that this system would not be one I'd have to live in to defend the way I just defended it."
That's why they call him the man who killed Jim Crow.
But it's all there in this play, in a one-act play.
Now, that's genius.
That's just genius.
And here we can surround students with all those little tidbits so as they grow, they leave here saying, "This is a play, I'm rooted, I'm helping people come in the emotion.
And as you're coming in, I'm going to reconnect you to that momentum of memory that our generations didn't get because our parents in many ways and grandparents wanted to shield us, not realizing we need that speech in our mouths, as you said."
Oh, yes.
You know?
Oh, yes.
Yes, ma'am.
One day, my son told me...
He said, "There were things you all just didn't tell us."
My son said this to me.
Hm.
"There were things you all just didn't tell us."
Well, you know, coming out of the civil rights era, right?
Um... Voting rights bill.
Brown versus the Board of Education.
All the sit-ins in the south.
Yes.
Coming through that period in the '60s where there was all that slaughter and all of -- It was -- I was a teenager at the time, and I remember, and I remember, and I remember what it was like in the evenings to watch the evening news.
And I remember America's embarrassment after the bombing of the church in Birmingham.
My God.
That was the thing that turned... That was a real embarrassment.
Yes.
To see those children in Alabama, first of all, uh... confronting those fire hoses and dogs because all the adults had been arrested.
That's right.
And they were the only soldiers left.
That's right.
And those little children, young children went out there, protesting segregation.
Hmm.
I mean, we don't even know their names.
Mm-mm.
We don't even know where they are today.
Mm-mm.
But their sacrifice was -- it was immeasurable.
You can't -- you can't put a measurement on that.
That's true.
That's true.
That's true.
And the tensions, even in our communities, like you said, whether it be Aftermath and the intergenerational tension, whether it be when you have the deacon confronting his children, his wife, and then being moved out of that, those internal battles we often don't see because they're hidden behind the shield of Jim Crow at the time.
Because as you're describing it, you know, it's so funny, two things come to mind, one of which you told us one time.
This is a few years ago.
You came and spoke at -- I think was opening convocation or charter day.
And you'll remember this story, and I'm-a ask you about it because I tell that story at lot.
I said, "This is what Dean Rashad said, and I love it."
But anyway, but the first thing that comes to mind is this tension.
And we see it in the '60s.
Condoleezza Rice is from Birmingham.
Her daddy worked at the same school.
Colin Powell's wife, Alma's, daddy worked at.
It was a Black school.
They were Republicans because they wouldn't let them register as Democrats.
They said, "Well, I can vote if I'm a Republican, right?"
They said, "No problem."
"Okay, I'm-a swing Republican."
Freeman Hrabowski, who's president at the University of Maryland at Baltimore County, he was a little boy, like you said.
He wanted to protest, and when a couple of his friends -- I don't know if it was Denise McNair or Addie Mae Collins or Cynthia Wesley, which are the girls that were killed in this church, but he wanted to go to the funeral.
He said, "My principal said, you can go."
He said, and his principal took off his tie and said, "Take that clip off on.
A man should have a tie."
And tied that tie around his neck, sent him as a little boy to the funeral.
I'm saying all that to say that you can grow up in the same community, but depending on how your parents are trying to -- Because, Dr. Rice knew some of those girls, too, and the two boys that got killed that day, Virgil Ware, Johnny Robinson got killed in the streets.
Depending on where you were and the decisions your parents made, it would affect how you moved through the world, even though everybody wanted the same thing.
So the second one is the story you told us about when y'all came here.
See, I wouldn't have a job.
There wouldn't be a Department of African American Studies at Howard University if y'all hadn't had them protests in '67, '68.
And y'all -- you told a story about your daddy coming up here looking for y'all.
Do you remember that story?
Please tell it.
He said -- He called up the dorm.
He said, "Where's Deborah?
That's my sister.
She's younger.
"Where is she?
I saw that little redheaded heifer.
I saw her on CBS News.
You go over there to that administration building and get that little red headed heifer and bring her back to the dorm."
Oh, my God!
In the same household.
Y'all go over to say, one in the field and the other one got to go over there and get her.
This is the thing.
He's in -- I know it.
I know it.
I know it.
He said, "I know it.
I know what I said."
"I know it."
Lord have mercy.
And it probably was Debbie.
It was standing room only.
You cracked us up.
You said, "I saw on her CBS."
That's what he said.
[ Laughs ] And yet we're here because of all of those conversations pouring into these young people.
That's something.
That's not -- It ain't nothing.
That's a major -- Willis Richardson once said, "I wanted to capture in my plays the soul of our people."
And so bringing these plays alive, it revives our souls.
That's the craft.
I'm grateful for you for that, and for these young people.
So probably the next step is to go back and get some more of these plays and actually stage them, because what we've been taping is a staged reading.
Okay.
Yeah, actually stage them.
Because in our rehearsals, we talk about what would be happening if we were staging this play.
Yes, of course.
Of course.
What would that moment be like when John comes through the door?
What would happen, Lonnie, when you come rushing in and bolt the door behind you because you've been dodging -- you've been dodging a mob.
My God.
And you turn around, and there he is.
Yes.
Yes.
So our students are bringing those sensibilities just through reading it.
No question.
And this is really a wonderful opportunity for them and for me.
Yes.
Because the purpose of a reading of a play is to hear the play.
Yes.
Yes.
Yeah.
To actually hear it.
And the other night, there were some people who were here.
There was some family members of the cast who were here.
And I was really gratified to see how connected they were to the story.
When Miss Hawkins comes in and says what she has to say and says what she shouldn't say.
Right.
The audience said, "Oh."
There was a groan.
And I said, "Oh, connected.
They're connected."
That meant that our students had done their job well.
No question.
They had told the story and told it well.
No question.
And such a well story to tell because frankly, as I was reading it -- which is why I can't wait to hear it -- I just knew it was going to go somewhere else because we know that dread.
These young people may not know that period.
Right.
But they know about navigating these streets.
You got to keep your head on a swivel.
So when he comes in and says, "Why are you so late?"
"I had to go around.
You know what they did to Pop."
You out in these streets, I promise you, just about every Black person I know always knows where the police is.
You're driving down the street, you know.
"Oh, wait.
Here he come.
Okay.
Let me see.
What am I gon' do?"
I mean, Jules Harrell, who was one of our colleagues in the psychology department, he talks about the impacts of stress on the body.
He says, for Black people, every time those dome lights go on in your rearview mirror or somebody -- he says, that little joke to your heart takes a few seconds off the end of your life.
When you put it that way, that language in that play, as that tension is building, I'm saying, "Are they going to lynch him?
Wait, -- Where's --" I mean, because you don't know.
So, yeah, to hear that, I can't even imagine.
Yeah, maybe.
I don't know this time period, but I know these feelings.
Yeah.
And some of our students, you know, they know other kinds of stresses and tensions.
That's right.
That's right.
And not these.
Our young people today live with another kind of stress that is... Eh.
You know?
Do you think they would believe you?
Because they assume that you grew up in ag-- in a degree where our lives were threatened daily.
You know, you in the segregation?
No, the community was a little different then.
The community was very, very different.
No question.
The community was very different.
We laughed.
We loved.
We celebrated.
No question.
We did.
No question.
We did.
My sister lives in Missouri City.
Every time I go to Houston, I think about all those rituals y'all had -- them Juneteenth parades, and ain't none of that new to y'all.
So, yeah, there's a different kind of... [ Laughs ] You know?
I hear people talking about Juneteenth and I just look at them.
[ Laughs ] Do you even know what you're even talking about?
You have to go out to the Stevenson Ranch out on Alameda.
Hmm!
Come on now.
Hello.
Come on now.
Because, you know.
[ Laughs ] You talk about empire.
I know it's legendary.
I ain't never been, but of course I heard about it.
Legendary.
Oh, man.
And there's a museum there.
Molly Stevenson still has that thing going.
Yes.
I grew up knowing that family.
See?
This is the opportunity to help connect that.
Connect.
Connect because the young people -- Ooh, it isn't their fault.
No.
Oh, no, no, no.
This is not a question of blame.
No question.
No, no, no, no, no.
Our young people are very special and they're very great.
But all of this, this technology, this social media, man.
No question.
Whoa.
No question.
Ooh, that thing.
That thing is not -- hmm.
So you know what I just casually say, and I do say it very casually, and it came to me another way today.
You know, the people who developed these things don't give them to their children.
How about that?
And you know why?
Can't be human if you're looking in the palm of your hand.
Yeah.
You won't be creative.
That's exactly right.
You won't be a thinker.
That's right.
That's right.
They want their children to be thinkers.
That's right.
They want their children to be creative.
I want our children to be thinkers and creative, too.
That's why you got them doing language.
There's a page.
There's us.
Let's work.
That's a beautiful thing.
No moving images.
Now, we gon' make this magic.
So then you're talking about going back into archive and staging some of these plays, huh?
Well, you know, it would be very interesting.
No question.
And especially, I mean, I think conversations with you, though, would be very helpful because just hearing you talk just now, the things that you've shared about the era, the people is very enlightening, very enlightening.
It makes a thing live.
Yes, ma'am.
There's one thing when you read something on a piece of paper... No question.
...but when you hear a human voice relay it to you...
Yes.
Yes.
...with understanding, experience, and authority...
Yes.
...that's a different matter altogether.
Another reason we have these places, because you and I, we're all here for the same reason.
We all bring our little brick and we build it.
And as what's the brother?
James Farmer's daddy, James Farmer Sr., when he was working at Wiley and Bishop and all those schools in Texas -- as Jacob Carruthers, one of my old teachers used to say, who was born in East Texas -- He grew up in Austin and eventually went to Houston-Tillotson.
He said that the farmer used to say the reward for good work is more work.
So when I saw Denzel Washington, when he did "The Great Debaters" and Forest Whitaker played James Farmer Sr., I said, "That's the man that taught my teacher.
That's James Farmer."
He said, "The reward for good work is more work."
And all those plays are there.
Willis Richardson did two volumes.
Carter G. Woodson, again, he was at Howard for a year and a half.
Taught at Armstrong, where Mary Burrill had been for a time.
He goes to Willis Richardson and said, "Hey, man, why don't you put these plays in an anthology?"
So I guess it was, what, 1932 or 3?
He publishes an anthology of Richardson's plays, then turns around and publishes a second volume with May Miller.
May Miller, of course, is Kelly Miller's daughter.
Kelly Miller was the founding dean of the College of Liberal Arts.
Dean Miller was the one who went to Mordecai Johnson and said, "We need to name this new dorm for Lucy Diggs Slowe," and they wouldn't do it.
It took them years later on, you know.
And of course, the one we have now is condos, but they got a street sign, so I guess that's cool.
But Kelly Miller -- [ Laughter ] Kelly Miller's daughter, May, was a playwright.
Mary Burrill trained her.
She went to Dunbar.
This whole thing is a Howard story.
It's a Dunbar story.
So if you gon' stage these plays -- when you stage these plays and we're all here in this audience watching these young people apply their craft, this is not only a necessary thing, it's a directive.
These ancestors are waiting for you to bring them back.
They put it there for us to get.
[ Cheering in distance ] You hear the celebration?
[ Laughs ] They agree with what you're saying.
That's true.
That's right.
From the motherland.
Thank you so much.
Dean, it's a pleasure.
Thank you.
I'm so glad you were here.
Thank you.
This is a real pleasure.
Thank you for joining us.
Of course.
Pleasure.
Thank you.
Yes, ma'am.
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