Speaker 1: Hey, this is Annie and this is Samantha, and welcome
Speaker 1: to stuff. I'm never told your protection of I Heart
Speaker 1: Radios how stuff works. And we're super excited today because
Speaker 1: it's time for another female first. Yes, which means thank you.
Speaker 1: You need quiet, Yes, because we don't have a producer
Speaker 1: with you know, we like to make our own here fair. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is all I can contribute, really perfect, and this
Speaker 1: means that we are once again joined by our friend
Speaker 1: and co workers than to be here. Yes, thank you
Speaker 1: so much for joining us. Eves, Um you can hear
Speaker 1: Eves And I'm sure a lot of you have seven
Speaker 1: days a week on this dand history class and on
Speaker 1: your new show on Popular exciting as such as we record,
Speaker 1: recording times are strange, but as we record debuted today
Speaker 1: and superproducer Andrew was a part of that as well.
Speaker 1: It's really awesome. You want to talk about that briefly, sure,
Speaker 1: I will talk about I'm Popular. So I'm Popular is
Speaker 1: also about history, but the show focuses on one different
Speaker 1: person in every episode, and in each episode we kind
Speaker 1: of chart this path from how they resisted and how
Speaker 1: they rebuild and how they challenge the status quo during
Speaker 1: their time so people like Umalaya Ransom Coutie who stood
Speaker 1: up for women's rights in Nigeria and Nigerian independence and
Speaker 1: anti colonialism, to people like Galileo, who I'm sure a
Speaker 1: lot of us are familiar with his story, but the
Speaker 1: whole Galileo affair and the heliocentric theory of the sun
Speaker 1: being at the center of the universe, and we just
Speaker 1: kind of look at how that can be used to
Speaker 1: think about resistance today and how we think about contrarianism today.
Speaker 1: Samantha's like that might just and UM, that is fitting
Speaker 1: because I think the person that you brought today is
Speaker 1: perfect fits right into that. She does. And you know what,
Speaker 1: you kind of know people's stories and you know that
Speaker 1: they were rebels and you know that they were radical,
Speaker 1: but when you just get deep into their stories and
Speaker 1: you realize how many things they did that were just
Speaker 1: so so challenging and amazing. Yeah, her stories was one
Speaker 1: of those. And I'm talking about Lorraine Hansberry, Yes, and UM.
Speaker 1: As we talked about UM in our first rendition of
Speaker 1: this female first, it is important to keep in mind
Speaker 1: context of when people are accomplishing these these first um
Speaker 1: and what we're talking about today is Broadway Broadway, Yes, so,
Speaker 1: um let's get into it. Can you tell us a
Speaker 1: little bit about Lorraine Handsbury? Sure? So I always to.
Speaker 1: I just want to reiterate your point, because that's something
Speaker 1: I would love to preface this with every time, and
Speaker 1: think how we think about first and Lorraine Handsbury's first
Speaker 1: where that she was the first black playwright and the
Speaker 1: youngest American to win a New York Drama Critics Circle Award,
Speaker 1: And she was also the first black woman to have
Speaker 1: a play produced on Broadway. So those are awesome titles
Speaker 1: and awesome awards, but those didn't give her work anymore, Merritt.
Speaker 1: Her work was already amazing before those things happened. Her
Speaker 1: work stands on its own as a great art. And
Speaker 1: even then, Lorraine did so much more than just her art,
Speaker 1: Like her writing was super important and made a difference
Speaker 1: in the Black community and in arts and drama overall,
Speaker 1: but she also did things outside of it. So those
Speaker 1: are titles that are part of her entire existence. Basically
Speaker 1: getting back to Lorraine, Um, so she I would love
Speaker 1: to start with a quote. So I tried not to
Speaker 1: include a ton of quotes in this, and I just
Speaker 1: love quote. Yeah, I did, so I would love to
Speaker 1: start with then, if that's okay with you any I
Speaker 1: think we need it. So, she said, I was born
Speaker 1: on the South Side of Chicago. I was born black
Speaker 1: and a female. I was born in a depression after
Speaker 1: one World War and came into adolescence during another. While
Speaker 1: I was still in my teens, the first atom bombs
Speaker 1: were dropped on human beings, and by the time I
Speaker 1: was twenty three years old, my government and that of
Speaker 1: the Soviet Union had entered actively into the worst conflict
Speaker 1: of nerves in history, the Cold War. And she said
Speaker 1: this in March of nineteen fifty nine and a speech
Speaker 1: that she gave at the American Society of African Cultures
Speaker 1: First Conference of Negro Writers. And I just wanted to
Speaker 1: start with that quote because I feel like it kind
Speaker 1: of contextualizes the time that she was born in and
Speaker 1: what kind of challenges she and her family faced, and
Speaker 1: like how her ringing could have been. Because I feel
Speaker 1: like it just it helps to frame people's lives in
Speaker 1: that way when we're thinking about the things that they
Speaker 1: faced in what they were up against. Talk about trauma, Yeah,
Speaker 1: very tumultuous period periods, several periods different ones, huge, huge
Speaker 1: homemork periods, right like like you said, she was born
Speaker 1: um in Chicago, or I guess like she said, and
Speaker 1: then you read she was born in Chicago in nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty on May nineteen, and yet she she died January
Speaker 1: very young. Yes, yes, yes, she died very young. And
Speaker 1: I tried not to get in this space because so
Speaker 1: many people who did really important thing that history died early.
Speaker 1: So I try not to get in this space when
Speaker 1: I'm reading about their stories and you get to see
Speaker 1: how much they did in such a short period of
Speaker 1: time and say, what would they have done if they
Speaker 1: were they lived past that point? I can really because
Speaker 1: I get really down when I think about that. You
Speaker 1: think about the legacy that they created in a short
Speaker 1: period of time, and then like what if they would
Speaker 1: have done more of those things in the next decade.
Speaker 1: So that is one thing about her story that's very,
Speaker 1: very saddening. I know there's um a book coming out
Speaker 1: about her, and I think the author kept reiterating like
Speaker 1: don't forget like getting there is that mind space and
Speaker 1: you feel like, oh, it's cut so short, but don't
Speaker 1: forget all of this stuff she did do. I'm a
Speaker 1: little bit like self conscient because I'm older than her.
Speaker 1: Damn all the things that she did, and I'm nowhere
Speaker 1: feeling anywhere in that part of my life. And I'm like, well,
Speaker 1: now I feel bad about myself. Something to aspire. And
Speaker 1: I'm like, yeah, well, I'm just gonna go eat Chacolin
Speaker 1: on my couch. Now, you know you shouldn't COMPARI everybody's
Speaker 1: path and journey is different. I want to celebrate her,
Speaker 1: not be about me. But I'm inspire. Yes, you always
Speaker 1: have a nugget of wisdom. Ye keep you around. So
Speaker 1: let's talk about if you if you don't mind um
Speaker 1: kind of her early early history and what led her
Speaker 1: to Broadway. Yeah, so I think a good place to
Speaker 1: start is just her kind of family experience and family
Speaker 1: environment and what it was like to grow up in Chicago.
Speaker 1: So she was the child of Nanny Perry Handsbury and
Speaker 1: Carl Augustus Handsbury, and she was the youngest of four children.
Speaker 1: Her mother was a teacher and award committee woman, and
Speaker 1: her father worked in real estate. He did pretty well
Speaker 1: in real estate. He actually created this small scale kind
Speaker 1: of kitchen net for small apartments that kind of brought
Speaker 1: him that success. In real estate during the Great Depression.
Speaker 1: And her uncle was named William Leo Handsbury and he
Speaker 1: was a professor of African history at Howard University. So
Speaker 1: you kind of see the scholarship and like the kind
Speaker 1: of parentage and the kind of like role models and
Speaker 1: leadership that was in her life. Um So, her father
Speaker 1: was involved in activism. He was involved with the Inn
Speaker 1: Double a c P as well, and he had a
Speaker 1: huge impact on her activism, and so did her uncle,
Speaker 1: whose influence likely helped shape her views on the Black
Speaker 1: liberation movement. So she went to kindergarten and Chicago South
Speaker 1: Side as well. And so as a child, her as
Speaker 1: we know, her parents were involved in activism. So she
Speaker 1: was around artists and activists like Paul Robeson, Walter White,
Speaker 1: Duke Ellington, Langston Hughes, and W. E. B. Dwo Boys.
Speaker 1: Who's going to come back into her her story later on,
Speaker 1: she was she maintained contact with a lot of these people.
Speaker 1: Paul Robeson is back in the picture later on and
Speaker 1: had like a hand in her activism and her involvement
Speaker 1: in the community. Wow. Yeah, names some big name cameos
Speaker 1: in her story. Names um I wish I was that cool, right, right,
Speaker 1: So this is one of the early experiences that kind
Speaker 1: of a big part of her life in her family
Speaker 1: that had to do with that kind of foundation of activism.
Speaker 1: So in nineteen thirty eight, as you know, the family
Speaker 1: was doing pretty well successfully in business, and so they
Speaker 1: bought a house on the south side of Chicago in
Speaker 1: an all white neighborhood. And so there were racially restrictive
Speaker 1: covenants there at the time in the city, and so
Speaker 1: the white residents that were there in the neighborhood and
Speaker 1: attempted to impose that restrictive covenant so they can bar
Speaker 1: them from living there. And so in these restrictive covenants,
Speaker 1: they had white property owners who agreed not to sell
Speaker 1: property to black people, and so that created this thing
Speaker 1: called the Black Belt in the south south of Chicago,
Speaker 1: which is the thing that happens in a lot of cities.
Speaker 1: But her family challenge that restrictive covenant, and so they
Speaker 1: did a test case for integrated housing and they came
Speaker 1: out victorious in the nineteen forty u. S. Supreme Court
Speaker 1: decision in Handsbury versus Lee, And so that decision it
Speaker 1: reversed an earlier decision on a legal technicality, but that
Speaker 1: isn't like that wasn't the end of racially restrictive covenants,
Speaker 1: but it was a step forward basically. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: didn't um like a mob form outside their house and
Speaker 1: somebody threw a brick and it almost hit it did
Speaker 1: significant nineteen forties. That is a huge significance in history.
Speaker 1: Oh my goodness, right, and so they did. Yeah, they
Speaker 1: threw that brick and it almost hit her, and they
Speaker 1: describe it as being able to have had caused serious
Speaker 1: damage if it had hit her. Um. And there was
Speaker 1: a quote that she wrote about her mom in The
Speaker 1: New York Times saying that her mother was patrolling the
Speaker 1: house all night with the loaded German luger, which is
Speaker 1: a pistol, so which you know, just is kind of
Speaker 1: like gives you the imagery of like what kind of
Speaker 1: experience they had living in an all white neighborhood at
Speaker 1: the time. I mean, and that is just like, I know,
Speaker 1: that's an understatement, like we know how much more that
Speaker 1: they had to deal with going into a place in
Speaker 1: knowing that you're not welcome there point for the right
Speaker 1: to actually live there, right, So yeah, that was her
Speaker 1: experience in the Southside Chicago, so she ended up going
Speaker 1: to Englewood High School, which is also in Chicago. She
Speaker 1: graduated from there in nineteen forty eight, and so after
Speaker 1: she went to the University of Wisconsin for two years
Speaker 1: from nine to nineteen fifty. And while she was there,
Speaker 1: she worked to integrate her dorm um, so she was
Speaker 1: already you know, getting involved in things that had to
Speaker 1: do with social issues. She began participating in student theater,
Speaker 1: and she started studying plays and play rights, and she
Speaker 1: was really inspired by a production of shan O Casey's
Speaker 1: Juno and the Paycock. So that kind of got her
Speaker 1: like spirit going when it came to theater. And in
Speaker 1: her second year when she was at the university, she
Speaker 1: became the campus chairman of the Young Progressives of America
Speaker 1: and she supported Henry Wallace's a progressive Henry Wallace's nineteen
Speaker 1: forty eight candidacy, but it kind of like after his loss,
Speaker 1: she became disaffected with party politics, which is understandable if
Speaker 1: you think about her, like her leadership and like how
Speaker 1: her family thought of a black liberation movement and how
Speaker 1: she was like basically radicalizing. Um, I think that's a
Speaker 1: whole another conversation and thinking about how views can change
Speaker 1: on liberation. Um, just I'm not even gonna go there.
Speaker 1: But as the world continues and as we progress in
Speaker 1: the years, yeah, it changes absolutely because even though we
Speaker 1: are not fighting new things as I'm thinking about it today, Um,
Speaker 1: but yeah, it changes because of the perspectives changes, people change,
Speaker 1: ideas change, You're right, yeah, seven episode of that always.
Speaker 1: So while she was at the university, she was in
Speaker 1: a theater class on set design in her second year,
Speaker 1: and the professor of that class gave her a d
Speaker 1: and said that she excelled in her work, but he
Speaker 1: didn't want to encourage a young black woman to enter
Speaker 1: a white dominated field. Um, was that to hold her
Speaker 1: back or two in his mind protect her. I'm going
Speaker 1: to guess to protect her, And that's how I read it.
Speaker 1: But that's speculation because I'm not exactly sure because I wonder, like,
Speaker 1: was it a malicious intent? Right? But I would say
Speaker 1: in this case, the intent kind of doesn't matter, right, absolutely,
Speaker 1: But that's a fair point to bring up. I just
Speaker 1: think it's so interesting when you look back and what
Speaker 1: people think they should do, what is right is so
Speaker 1: upsurred in hindsight. Yeah, I mean, I mean, but we
Speaker 1: can think about things like that, what our parents do
Speaker 1: for us exactly their intent is there, but like the
Speaker 1: outcome protection or whatever. But then in general it holds
Speaker 1: people back, which is absolutely true. That's still an interesting idea.
Speaker 1: And so after a little bit more schooling and realizing
Speaker 1: she wanted to pursue writing in theater, she moved to
Speaker 1: New York and she began attending the New School for
Speaker 1: Social Research. And so while she was in New York,
Speaker 1: this is the point where she links back up with
Speaker 1: Paul Robeson. So while she was in New York, she
Speaker 1: wrote articles for the Young Progressives of America magazine, and
Speaker 1: she became a reporter for Paul Robeson's radical magazine Freedom
Speaker 1: the Connections Right Um, And she said that at one
Speaker 1: point she said that that would become the Journal of
Speaker 1: Negro Liberations. So she had a lot of faith in
Speaker 1: the journal. And she also did a ton while she
Speaker 1: was at the journal. So she covered the civil rights
Speaker 1: movement and other freedom movements around the world, She covered
Speaker 1: women's issues, social issues in New York, she covered the
Speaker 1: arts as well, and a lot of other things. And
Speaker 1: she traveled on his sign hit around the country and
Speaker 1: at the same time she was really active in the
Speaker 1: fight for black rights, um and she got better at
Speaker 1: journalism during the time. She got better at interviewing, she
Speaker 1: got better at getting to the heart of stories. And
Speaker 1: she worked for thirty one seventy a week. Was trying
Speaker 1: to calculated, trying to get in context and that time frame.
Speaker 1: What's the cost of living? We have none of that
Speaker 1: inflation calculators in our Headne's not a good fatty using
Speaker 1: just like panic right, just fizzled it out, like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you're not going to get it seems low to me.
Speaker 1: Now I would say it's not a living wage right now? Yes, yeah, nope, nope, no,
Speaker 1: if like a day dollar menu and I'm already paid
Speaker 1: off car essentially, yeah, essentially, I don't think the dollar menu.
Speaker 1: That's a tangent. We don't need to die because of
Speaker 1: her failure. Yes, yes, that one. This is also a tangent.
Speaker 1: But wasn't there a guy who ate like McDonald's burgers
Speaker 1: for like a long term and super supersize me and
Speaker 1: he almost like any health problems. Yeah? So um w.
Speaker 1: New Boys also articles for the paper, and he taught
Speaker 1: hands very African history at the Jefferson School of Social Science,
Speaker 1: which was a Marxist school that was shut down by
Speaker 1: the U S government during the McCarthy era, and she
Speaker 1: wrote a paper Lorandeer wrote a paper for his course
Speaker 1: on the Belgian Congo. So these ideas of anti colonialism
Speaker 1: were brewing at the time. She also wrote one of
Speaker 1: her first reports at the magazine was covered over a
Speaker 1: hundred pro communist black women who were called the Sojournerous
Speaker 1: for Truth and Justice, who were convened in Washington by
Speaker 1: Mary Church gerrel Um. And she also covered the case
Speaker 1: of Willie McGee, a black man who was sentenced to
Speaker 1: death for raping a white woman. And so after she
Speaker 1: joined Freedom and this part is understandable. So this is
Speaker 1: where the FBI comes in because it was a woman
Speaker 1: that she's not really a threat exactly. And this is
Speaker 1: still the big kind of the beginning of her story.
Speaker 1: Like we know, her story was kind of cut short.
Speaker 1: But this is before we get to one of the
Speaker 1: biggest things she was known for, which is a raised
Speaker 1: in the sun, which we'll get too later. So after
Speaker 1: she joined the magazine and she went to a peace
Speaker 1: conference in monte Video, Uruguay, the FBI started tracking her
Speaker 1: and they felt the need to determine whether A Raisin
Speaker 1: in the Sun had any kind of communist bent. So
Speaker 1: even before it went to Broadway, they had agents watching
Speaker 1: it saying like this is what one ag is it.
Speaker 1: The play contains no comments of any nature about communism
Speaker 1: as such, but deals essentially with Negro aspirations, the problems
Speaker 1: inherent in their efforts to advance themselves and varied attempts
Speaker 1: at arriving at solutions, arriving as solutions. But the but
Speaker 1: that means still dangerous, yeah, meaning that they actually have
Speaker 1: the answer to get a quality they're dangerous doing. Wow,
Speaker 1: I think this is a good place to pass for
Speaker 1: an ad break. But we have a lot more for you,
Speaker 1: So stick around, don't go away, and we're back. Thank you, sponsor.
Speaker 1: So we've got an appearance by the FBI, um investigating
Speaker 1: this this work that that we're I think we're getting
Speaker 1: close to discussing. Yes, we are getting very close. Um.
Speaker 1: But the FBI, they stayed on her. So she was
Speaker 1: on the list. She was on the list was essentially yeah,
Speaker 1: so yeah, basically yeah, her father was one thousand and
Speaker 1: twenty pages. Oh my god. Um, so that's like a
Speaker 1: little merit for her, like yeah, yeah, that is kind
Speaker 1: of strange way, like you were saying, it's kind of impressive.
Speaker 1: It is. There's probably a list somewhere are there have
Speaker 1: been a list of all the names of people in
Speaker 1: like ranks of how many FBI like how many pages
Speaker 1: was in their FBI foul. I think James Followin was
Speaker 1: a one thousand, eight hundred and something. I think Malcolm
Speaker 1: X was like twice that. Um So, I don't know
Speaker 1: if those are backing rights to look like this one
Speaker 1: person is a threat. That's phenomenal in a great way. Yeah,
Speaker 1: phenomenal and terrible the thing depending on pleas. Please don't
Speaker 1: add papers online. I'm a circumspect person. I'm a cautious person,
Speaker 1: but I'm not a paranoid person, is what I like
Speaker 1: to say. But um yeah, so they kept they kept
Speaker 1: following her throughout her life, like through a raising in
Speaker 1: the Sun, through her fundraising that you did on behalf
Speaker 1: of snick, and there's civil rights related doings. Um she
Speaker 1: called for abolition of the House of an American Activities
Speaker 1: Committee and through her second play on Broadway. So basically
Speaker 1: up from that point until her death or later death.
Speaker 1: So back to the magazine though by now nineteen fifty three,
Speaker 1: she was an editor at Freedom, but that same year
Speaker 1: she resigned from her post at Freedom to further pursue playwriting.
Speaker 1: And then she married Robert Nimrov, who was a writer
Speaker 1: and a graduate student at New York University at that time.
Speaker 1: And so the two of them kind of like hit
Speaker 1: the streets together, like they picketed, and they went to
Speaker 1: vigils for a desegregation, and so they were like similar,
Speaker 1: they were vibing, um had similar ideals in like practices,
Speaker 1: and Freedom as a Note went bankrupt in nineteen fifty five,
Speaker 1: which was after she left, but they kind of like
Speaker 1: fizzled like a lot of other radical magazines have done.
Speaker 1: So this is the point where we kind of get
Speaker 1: to her artistry picking up. And so in nineteen fifty six,
Speaker 1: her husband, Robert was a writer on the song Cindy
Speaker 1: of Cindy, and he made a lot of money from that,
Speaker 1: and so the two of them, he and Lorraine, were
Speaker 1: able to use that money to kind of fund their writing,
Speaker 1: and they were able to devote all their time to
Speaker 1: that essentially, So she began a play that she called
Speaker 1: The Crystal Stare, and that turned into a Raisin in
Speaker 1: the Sun, which is the play that she got all
Speaker 1: those awards from and is her best remembered work of art, right,
Speaker 1: really significant in the film world. Very Sydney Party won
Speaker 1: award for that Academy Awards, all right, I think so
Speaker 1: well Sydney Party, he did. He did get a lot
Speaker 1: more acclaim after the movie came out, And that movie
Speaker 1: came out in nineteen sixty one, after the few years
Speaker 1: after the play itself came out. So in nineteen fifty
Speaker 1: seven was when she completed the manuscript for a Raisin
Speaker 1: in the Sun. The play is about a black family
Speaker 1: that lives in South South Chicago in the nineteen fifties.
Speaker 1: It kind of mirrors her own experience and living in
Speaker 1: a white neighborhood and having to deal with those kind
Speaker 1: of struggles. Had themes of black idea entity and black liberation.
Speaker 1: So in March nineteen fifty nine, that's when the play
Speaker 1: opened on Broadway at the Ethel Barrymore Theater, making her
Speaker 1: the first black woman to have a play produced on Broadway.
Speaker 1: And so the play ran for five hundred and thirty performances,
Speaker 1: and like you said earlier, put Sydney Pottier later the
Speaker 1: when the movie came out that put Sindy Pointier in
Speaker 1: the spotlight, and the play itself got her national recognition.
Speaker 1: So James Baldwin said the following about raising here I
Speaker 1: go with the quotes. I had never in my life
Speaker 1: seen so many black people in the theater. And the
Speaker 1: reason was that never before in the entire history of
Speaker 1: the American theater had so much of the truth of
Speaker 1: black people's lives been seen on the stage. Black people
Speaker 1: had ignored the theater because the theater had always ignored them.
Speaker 1: So I think it's interesting to think that this was
Speaker 1: not that long ago, Like this is nineteen sixteen, and
Speaker 1: he's saying, like nobody had ever seen this on the stage,
Speaker 1: and it's like all these black people were around creating art.
Speaker 1: So it just kind of like a dissonance there of
Speaker 1: like thinking about how many black people were creating art
Speaker 1: and making plays and writing, um, and you know this
Speaker 1: is that it took this long. Um. So yeah, that's
Speaker 1: just I like that quote because it kind of like
Speaker 1: gave a little bit of context and insight to how
Speaker 1: people at the time who were going to see the
Speaker 1: plays and who were writing about it. The critics we
Speaker 1: were writing about it, and people who are reading about
Speaker 1: it felt about it, right, Yeah, again with the the
Speaker 1: importance of context and why this is a very importance.
Speaker 1: They felt represented, and you know what, that's kind of
Speaker 1: even though when it's still an argument right now for
Speaker 1: black people of people of color to be represented in
Speaker 1: the industry in itself and it's still slow rolling after
Speaker 1: all of that, even Yeah, and I did want to
Speaker 1: say just because uh, I think it's amazing. She's twenty
Speaker 1: nine when this bappeared on Broadway, I know, and like
Speaker 1: we kind of alluded to, the critics really liked it
Speaker 1: as well. Yeah they did. Um, they really loved a
Speaker 1: raise it in the sun and it's like it's classroom
Speaker 1: reading material, you know now, like a lot of students
Speaker 1: read them in high school. Yeah, I won the New
Speaker 1: York Drama Critics Circle Award. Um. It ran for nineteen months,
Speaker 1: translated into thirty five languages, and like you're saying, um.
Speaker 1: In ninety sixty one, the film version got a special
Speaker 1: word at the Cannon Film because Yeah, that's phenomenal. It is.
Speaker 1: The ball just kept on ruling basically like it's just
Speaker 1: really cool that that could be turned into a film
Speaker 1: and still do well and just a testament to the
Speaker 1: how good the content in the art was and how
Speaker 1: good of a playwright and writer she was. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: still of standard in the movie industry, is one of
Speaker 1: the best, and even in the like entertainment industry is
Speaker 1: one of the most. Over thinking yeah um material. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and the people she was competing against are that the
Speaker 1: play was competing against. In UM the New York Critics
Speaker 1: Circle Award was like Eugene O'Neill and Kinnessee Williams. So
Speaker 1: so not only was she one of the first the
Speaker 1: first person, she was one of the earliest women. That
Speaker 1: double whammy. I think there were five or four women
Speaker 1: who wanted before her, so not that many. That's so significant.
Speaker 1: So she also wrote other plays, and those plays didn't
Speaker 1: do quite as well. One was The Sign in Sydney
Speaker 1: Bruce Steam's Window. That one the last performance of that
Speaker 1: was the day she died. Um. But that one received
Speaker 1: mixed reviews. Basically people weren't really feeling it, definitely not
Speaker 1: feeling it as much as they felt e Raised in
Speaker 1: the Sun. And then she had another one called That
Speaker 1: One was staged after her death. Um, and that one
Speaker 1: wasn't well received kind of at all. Her work was
Speaker 1: radical like it wasn't really there was a lot of
Speaker 1: people who didn't accept her work. Essentially, so when NBC
Speaker 1: commissioned her to write a TV drama about slavery for
Speaker 1: a commemoration of the Civil War, her resulting work was
Speaker 1: The Drinking Gourd, and they deemed it too controversial and
Speaker 1: they discontinued it. So so, as I mentioned earlier, she
Speaker 1: raised funds for the Student Non Violent Coordinating Committee or SNICK,
Speaker 1: and she wrote the text for a snake photo book
Speaker 1: that was called The Movement Documentary of a Struggle for Equality.
Speaker 1: So more of these ways that we see that she
Speaker 1: was participating in activism. And so Nina Simone, who if
Speaker 1: you don't know, is an amazing singer, musician and activists.
Speaker 1: And she said that there were buddies so she was
Speaker 1: just cool. Like, yes, she said the following about Lorraine.
Speaker 1: We never talked about men or clothes or other such
Speaker 1: inconsequential things when we got together. It was always marks,
Speaker 1: linen and revolution real girls. Oh yes, yes, that's awesome.
Speaker 1: So something that was often glossed over about her life
Speaker 1: was how she identified as lesbian. Her queerness was glossed
Speaker 1: over her her story was kind of straight washed, as
Speaker 1: it's been called. So she supported the lesbian liberation movement.
Speaker 1: She wrote about radical feminism, misogyny, and homophobia, and she
Speaker 1: often linked homophobia with sexism and racism, and so she
Speaker 1: kind of took what we call now intersectionality into account
Speaker 1: before it was being termed. So in a letter to
Speaker 1: the latter, which was a subscription based lesbian magazine, she
Speaker 1: used a pen name, and she said, I wanted to
Speaker 1: leap into the questions raised on heterosexually married lesbians. I
Speaker 1: am one of those. How could we ever begin to
Speaker 1: guess the numbers of women who are not prepared to
Speaker 1: risk a life alien to what they have been taught
Speaker 1: all their lives to believe their natural destiny. So a
Speaker 1: lot of biographies are a lot of like text on
Speaker 1: her don't really I mean now it's better, but like,
Speaker 1: don't really mention or haven't mentioned that part of her life.
Speaker 1: But she also kept it very private. There weren't many
Speaker 1: people who knew about it. Only some people in her
Speaker 1: life knew about her sexuality. And it's also an understatement
Speaker 1: to say that, like, it wasn't that easy to be
Speaker 1: a black gay woman at the time. I was gonna
Speaker 1: say it's already has the struggle of being a black
Speaker 1: woman in that time frame. And then on top of
Speaker 1: that awareness on edge, she's like, it's gonna be harder
Speaker 1: for me to communicate all the things because one thing
Speaker 1: could be a blot for one person as it can
Speaker 1: still be this that way this day, but obviously it's
Speaker 1: more significant when it was completely considered as a deviant behavior, right,
Speaker 1: And she did kind of like she really struggled with
Speaker 1: that kind of balance, and she did talk about like
Speaker 1: the respectability of like when it comes to appearance when
Speaker 1: trying to me, it's those identities. UM. So that's a
Speaker 1: conversation that I'm sure she had a lot. She thought
Speaker 1: a lot about it herself in conversations she had with herself, um,
Speaker 1: in terms of that balance. And so she also kept
Speaker 1: in contact with one of the first lesbian organizations in
Speaker 1: the country, which was the Daughters of Beldis, And she
Speaker 1: also subscribed to the magazine one UM and she corresponded
Speaker 1: with women who she had close relationships with. So there
Speaker 1: were these lists that she wrote of her likes, her dislikes,
Speaker 1: her regrets, her prides that she did for several years, UM,
Speaker 1: which are I wish I could quote them, but like
Speaker 1: it's just there's two. There's there's too many. I mean,
Speaker 1: if you want to go read them, I would highly
Speaker 1: recommend you going to read their like her likes and
Speaker 1: dislikes and all those those lists that she wrote because
Speaker 1: they're just so personal, you know, like they're just I
Speaker 1: love that kind of insights, so honest. It's cool to
Speaker 1: know that we know about all her accomplishments and her achievements,
Speaker 1: but she had her own felt about it. Yeah, how
Speaker 1: she felt about it, Like we know her her struggles,
Speaker 1: and she mentions her homosexuality, Like in one of them,
Speaker 1: she said, she puts under her dislikes my homosexuality. So
Speaker 1: you just kind of get that insight into Like a
Speaker 1: person is a person, and at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: even though they have this public persona and presence and
Speaker 1: all this public work, doesn't mean that they're perfect and
Speaker 1: that they're not struggling with their own personal things in
Speaker 1: addition to all the social issues she was thinking about.
Speaker 1: It's not just like I'm the strong, passionate woman who
Speaker 1: is a figure to be reckoned with, but I also
Speaker 1: have these securities and anxieties. It's much like everyone else,
Speaker 1: So that that's really encouraging to be like, oh, good,
Speaker 1: I can do things right, all these regrets right, but wow,
Speaker 1: that yeah, that is so personal and so opening, Like
Speaker 1: I wonder her mindset and how open she had to
Speaker 1: be in honest with herself even to be like, this
Speaker 1: is what I have problems with myself. And this is
Speaker 1: where I really love myself because either one of those
Speaker 1: are hard to talk about, definitely, you know, and to
Speaker 1: now for them to be on display, right, right? Which
Speaker 1: did she mean to? I don't want to display. I
Speaker 1: don't think she meant to put them on display, but
Speaker 1: they were in an exhibition, and honestly, that's this is
Speaker 1: a tangent too. But this is one thing that I
Speaker 1: am concerned about. I do not want my diary, right,
Speaker 1: That's what I'm thinking to like, Oh, I have so
Speaker 1: many embarrassing things in my old diaries, and I would
Speaker 1: love to have the sort of prominence to where people
Speaker 1: want to know these things about me, But I don't
Speaker 1: want them to know myself. Were talking about how he
Speaker 1: wrote poetry way back in the day, and she was like,
Speaker 1: we're gonna we would read these. I was like, no,
Speaker 1: that's gonna be something I really kind of wish it
Speaker 1: was gone. I used to do what I called a
Speaker 1: purge at the end of every year, and I had
Speaker 1: a bucket, a metal bucket, and I would burn all
Speaker 1: everything I wrote. And now I actually really regret it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was gonna say I couldn't do that. Is that
Speaker 1: because you would want to read them again? Or because
Speaker 1: you want people to share them? I would want I
Speaker 1: want to read that four hundred and fifty book I
Speaker 1: wrote you burn y pages. I'm sure it was terrible
Speaker 1: for but I wrote it. But that's your words and
Speaker 1: your efforts and your time. But yeah, that's kind of heartbreaking.
Speaker 1: You just want to know what middle school and he
Speaker 1: thought she had for about that would be a deep
Speaker 1: insight for sure. Anyway, this isn't about any regrets, I understand.
Speaker 1: I understand where you're cover from THANKT Bonus episode. Everybody
Speaker 1: writes regrets and talk about it in the studio. Then
Speaker 1: we're fired again. Anyways, all of the network getting picked out,
Speaker 1: and then we're double fired. Oh no, well, well we'll
Speaker 1: pause here for one more break for a word from
Speaker 1: our sponsor, and we're back. Thank you sponsor. So I
Speaker 1: feel like we're we're coming too close here on on
Speaker 1: UM Lorraine's story. There are a couple of things that
Speaker 1: I would like to touch on it. I feel like
Speaker 1: you probably have some more that you would like to
Speaker 1: touch on a little bit. All right, this is like
Speaker 1: a negotiation. You go first, I'll go first, concede. So
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty three, she was part of a group
Speaker 1: of prominent black people UM, including folks like James Baldwin
Speaker 1: and Harry Bella Fonte, who met with Attorney General Robert
Speaker 1: Kennedy to get him to help protect civil rights in
Speaker 1: the South. And so when the group said that the
Speaker 1: federal government wasn't doing enough to protect black civil rights,
Speaker 1: Kennedy didn't agree, and Lorraine ended up leaving the room.
Speaker 1: There's a story that James Baldwyn tells about Lorraine, like
Speaker 1: walking out protests. Yeah. Yeah. But then after that President
Speaker 1: Kennedy dimped stuff with civil rights and so had a
Speaker 1: meeting in nineteen sixty four. She also called for the
Speaker 1: white liberal to stop being a liberal and become an
Speaker 1: amor a kin radical, which I feel like relates to
Speaker 1: so many conversations that we're having today. So that's more
Speaker 1: of the things that she did in terms of being
Speaker 1: involved in activism in her community. So she died of
Speaker 1: pancreatic cancer in ve she was thirty four. Over seven
Speaker 1: hundred people attended her funeral. Some stood outside in the
Speaker 1: suite and uh, she had previously criticized Um. Again, she
Speaker 1: had all these cool friends, right, she had. Malcolm X
Speaker 1: had previously criticized her for having a white husband, and
Speaker 1: she was like, not there for it. And he apologized
Speaker 1: and he came to her funeral even when he was
Speaker 1: under a public death threat. And Nina Simone sung at
Speaker 1: her funeral, and to be Young Gifted in Black was
Speaker 1: a tribute to her. And that's an amazing song as well.
Speaker 1: On the list to correctly. Yeah. Yeah, she was diagnosed
Speaker 1: to night sixty three. She was struggling with that cancer
Speaker 1: for a couple of years, and she divorced her husband
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty four, but they have been separated for
Speaker 1: a while at that point. Um. But even after they
Speaker 1: had separated, they continue to collaborate professionally. This is another
Speaker 1: thing and thinking about how she thought about herself and
Speaker 1: the work that she did. Even after all of her
Speaker 1: activism and her journalism and all of the art that
Speaker 1: she did, she still kind of questioned her contributions and
Speaker 1: her worthiness. She said, do I remain a revolutionary intellectually
Speaker 1: without a doubt? But am I prepared to give my
Speaker 1: body to the struggle or even my comforts? This is
Speaker 1: what I puzzle about. And she went on to say
Speaker 1: a little bit later, when I get my health back,
Speaker 1: I think I'll shall have to go into the South
Speaker 1: to find out what kind of revolutionary I am. And
Speaker 1: that that quote really got to me because just thinking
Speaker 1: about how much Black people put their bodies on the line,
Speaker 1: and different people have different roles in the movement and
Speaker 1: the struggle, and the fact that she was this she
Speaker 1: was still young at this point, like right before she died. Um,
Speaker 1: because this very young and she was this is she
Speaker 1: was saying. To set the point where she was struggling
Speaker 1: with cancer at the end of her years and questioning
Speaker 1: all of the work that she did to reverse national
Speaker 1: ideas about race, to reverse racism, to to think about
Speaker 1: homophobia too, to say, oh, am I revolutionary, I have
Speaker 1: to go. I have to go put my body on
Speaker 1: the line, you know, very interesting more I could do.
Speaker 1: And then possibly a little bit of imposter syndrome right there.
Speaker 1: I mean again, that's comforting know that the strong Powerhouse
Speaker 1: as some of the same figures that we do. So
Speaker 1: she was writing it's very sad, but she was writing
Speaker 1: about her diminishing health, and she noted that things just
Speaker 1: weren't looking good at the end of her life. And
Speaker 1: she said like she she felt like she was being
Speaker 1: sucked away and that she wouldn't mind something drastic like
Speaker 1: death is what she said. It's like, I don't mean operation,
Speaker 1: I mean death. So that hit me, that hit me hard.
Speaker 1: But the like Annie said, she died in nineteen sixty
Speaker 1: five and her ex husband became the executive her the
Speaker 1: executor of her literary estate. And there's a lot of
Speaker 1: controversy in terms of the influence that he had over
Speaker 1: her literary works and how he changed them, and like
Speaker 1: what he kept secret, like putting the lock lockbox, and
Speaker 1: like was it made only made available to certain people,
Speaker 1: things like that. Um, So that's all the things that
Speaker 1: happened posthumously, that he did posthumously, or that they did,
Speaker 1: because I think he and his family did afterward kind
Speaker 1: of owned that a state. Um is a huge point
Speaker 1: of contention. So in thinking about all the things that
Speaker 1: Lorraine didn't wasn't able to get to but did obviously.
Speaker 1: As we all know in here as creators, we write
Speaker 1: a lot of things down and maybe don't finish them.
Speaker 1: I just sit back and look at I can already
Speaker 1: tell you it's not bad. So she was working on
Speaker 1: a bunch of projects that remained unfinished at the time
Speaker 1: of her death, including an epic opera about to startlo Mature,
Speaker 1: and an idle biographical novel called All the Dark and
Speaker 1: Beautiful Warriors It's a Great Time. She also had written
Speaker 1: down ideas for other plays, including one about the faraka
Speaker 1: Naton and another one on an eighteenth century writer Mary
Speaker 1: Woolstone Kraft, and another one on Native Americans called Laughing Boy,
Speaker 1: and one on the fiction writer Charles Chestnut's novel The
Speaker 1: Marrow of Tradition. So she had a lot of works
Speaker 1: that weren't done um and maybe she was, you know,
Speaker 1: hoping to finish them, but unfortunately she died it thirty four. M. Yeah,
Speaker 1: all of those I sound amazing. I really wish I
Speaker 1: get a hand on some of these non existent words. M.
Speaker 1: I was able to finish that. The person I was
Speaker 1: talking about earlier, who was writing the book A Monty Perry.
Speaker 1: She she wrote Looking for Lorraine, The Radiant and Radical
Speaker 1: Life of Loraine Handsbury, and she said of Lorraine, she
Speaker 1: was a feminist before the feminist movement. She identified as
Speaker 1: a lesbian and thought about LGBTQ organizing before there was
Speaker 1: gay rights movement. She was an anti colonialist before independences
Speaker 1: had been one in Africa and the Caribbean. So she
Speaker 1: was really but it's it's important. A lot of this
Speaker 1: stuff is important to us. Owl. So UM, I always
Speaker 1: want to ask you, like, why did you choose this person?
Speaker 1: And I feel this was a very timely and excellent choice,
Speaker 1: But why did you choose this was the one? I
Speaker 1: like that inflection you put on one. Um. So her
Speaker 1: birthday was not that long ago, May night, May nineteenth,
Speaker 1: so we did an episode on her for this day
Speaker 1: in history class, and being selfish again, I wanted to.
Speaker 1: I just want to spend more time with her story.
Speaker 1: And she is just so inspirational. So, like you said,
Speaker 1: a lot of her work is relevant today. I'm always
Speaker 1: partial to artists, so there's that. But it's just worth
Speaker 1: learning more about her, and it's worth hearing more about her,
Speaker 1: and it's always worth of lifting stories like hers. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: um and we're so glad that. I'm personally very glad
Speaker 1: you chose this because I thought it's fascinating. Questions was
Speaker 1: give me all that? Give me all that? Yeah, we're
Speaker 1: so glad that you you took the time and joined
Speaker 1: does Is there anything else you wanted to add before
Speaker 1: we close up here? No? I think that's all. Okay,
Speaker 1: evil wonderful. You are wonderful, wonderful. Thank you so much
Speaker 1: for joining us. Awhere can the listeners find you so
Speaker 1: you can look up this day in History class on
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Speaker 1: Thank you, and you can if it wasn't clear, these
Speaker 1: are podcasts that you can listen to and that you
Speaker 1: should listen. Thank you again, you for joining us, Thank
Speaker 1: you for having me, both of you and um. You
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Speaker 1: Come at Me. Thanks as always to our super producer
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