Song of My Life by Carolyn J. Brown

Author:Carolyn J. Brown
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University Press of Mississippi
Published: 2014-03-04T16:00:00+00:00

Margaret Walker with Alleane Currie, her assistant at the institute, in the Jacob L. Reddix Campus Union Building, Jackson State University, November 1973.

Unfortunately Biondi—or her publisher—reinforces gender bias with the photos that are included in the book. Only one features a black woman, Eva Jefferson (later Eva Jefferson Patterson) of Northwestern University, speaking at a rally in Chicago. Perhaps no other pictures were available, but it would have been useful to see some pictures of the “women behind the scenes” who are often rendered invisible.

Walker was hardly invisible; with the publication of Jubilee in 1966 and the establishment of the institute in 1968, she was very much on the frontlines of the revolution. She delivered the keynote address at the opening of the institute entitled “Critical Approaches to the Study of African American Literature,” explicitly stating what she saw as the “controversial issues” confronting new students and scholars of African American literature. She raises important questions that she insisted had to be answered before moving forward:

Not the least of these is the name given to the literature. Having begun as Negro literature, is it Afro-American literature, Black literature, or African American literature? Why not American literature? What is the historical context in which the literature should be read? Must it be approached from the sociological or ideological viewpoint rather than always from the critical imperative of analysis and synthesis? Is there a separate and distinctly black American tradition or African American tradition as distinguished from an Anglo-American or Anglo-Saxon tradition? Does this literature pose different aesthetic problems for the creative artist and critic from any other literature? Do black writers develop their literature from a different kind of ethos and mythological background than the white writer? Which world does this literature represent and why?

What Walker is providing is the blueprint for her institute and all other future black studies departments—the questions scholars must answer as they proceed further in their quest to establish their own centers of learning.

The Institute for the Study of the History, Life, and Culture of Black People, now known as the Margaret Walker Alexander National Research Center, is “dedicated to the preservation, interpretation, and dissemination of African-American history and culture.” In the early days of the institute, Margaret accomplished this mission by going out on the road and speaking at meetings and conferences all over the country. The same year she founded the institute, she published “Religion, Poetry, and History: Foundations for a New Educational System” in Vital Speeches of the Day, calling for a new educational system out of the black protest movement:

Our young people seem to be seething in a boiling caldron of discontent. Like the youth of every generation, they want to know, and they demand to be heard. Like youth in every age, they are the vanguard of our revolutionary age. They are the natural leaders of revolution, whether that revolution be of race, class or caste; whether it is sexual or academic; whether it is political or intellectual. Today, the revolution we are witnessing encompasses all of these .

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