Click on the photo below to see a short interview with me on First Coast TV in St. Augustine, Florida about Word Warrior. And please note that for this Black History Month only, you can buy the E-Book version of Word Warrior for around $2.99 at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, KOBO or Goggle Play.
Enjoy!
http://firstcoasttv.wpengine.com/richard-durham-comes-to-life-in-a-new-book/
The Du Bois Theater Guild. Richard Durham.
You may not have heard of either the Guild or Durham, but versatility and activism defined them both.
In Chicago during the mid-1940s, the Du Bois Theater Guild mounted theatrical productions that stood out for their creativity and revolutionary spirit. And as one of the co-founders of the Guild, Richard Durham essentially served as the group’s politically outspoken literary muse.
The Guild’s name reflected the fact that distinguished scholar W. E. B. Du Bois had made it possible for grants to come into the black community to support art and culture during the mid-1940s. Some of the Guild’s theatrical performances, like its interpretation of Clifford Odets’ Waiting for Lefty and John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, plays that shamelessly advocated for social change.
When I interviewed Clarice Durham about her husband, she fondly remembered the Du Bois Theater Guild’s performance of Lonesome Train, a cantata about President Lincoln’s assassination and the train that transported his body to his Springfield, Illinois birthplace. Other Guild productions trumpeted black awareness themes. For example, actor Oscar Brown Jr. told me that the Guild “feted” writer Langston Hughes with an original play about Hughes’ popular Jesse B. Simple character.
The Du Bois Theater Guild staged their plays in available school or library auditoriums. But securing consistent bookings was frustrating and fleeting. So actor Janice Kingslow said that Guild members decided to use radio as a realistic performance alternative for Guild members.
In September 1947, Richard Durham and the Du Bois Theater Guild mounted a series called Here Comes Tomorrow – an all-black radio soap opera. Durham called Here Comes Tomorrow “the first authentic radio serial of an American Negro family,” as told through “the unforgettable story of the Redmonds–of their search for happiness and a new world.”
When black World War II veterans returned home, they faced some of the same oppressive conditions they had risked their lives fighting against in Europe. In Here Comes Tomorrow Richard Durham painted an aural portrait of a complex, nuclear black family of six – a family grappling with issues affecting most African Americans in post–World War II America. Listeners entered the Redmonds’ world every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 10am on WJJD.
However, the soap’s funding dried up and its run ended in early spring 1948. Before then, Durham contacted NBC and officials at the Chicago Defender newspaper, hoping to convince them to sponsor a new radio series. Durham and his Du Bois Theater Guild colleagues called this new show Destination Freedom.
Once NBC and the Defender agreed to sponsor it, Durham’s list of potential program subjects included strong, principled men and women who fought for freedom, justice and equality. They were African Americans like abolitionists Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth, Dr. Daniel Hale Williams and inventor George Washington Carver, educator Mary McLeod Bethune and Black history month creator Carter G. Woodson, athletes Joe Louis and Jackie Robinson, as well as musicians Hazel Scott and Fats Waller.
In Destination Freedom, Durham brought black history, culture and contemporary life to Chicago’s airwaves, making broadcast history in the process.
Have a fantastic Black History Month!
To see my discussion about Richard Durham and historical perspectives of African American journalism click here for the C-SPAN TV recording. Bay Area journalist Wanda Sabir conducted this interview with me at the Museum of the African Diaspora in San Francisco, California last month.
Enjoy!
I can’t wait to share information and connect with new and returning readers as 2016 progresses. So please stay tuned for upcoming new posts…and I wish you all the best in this new year!
As we head into the holiday season and the end of another calendar year, I wanted to feature the section of The Root.com’s article highlighting Word Warrior as one of the ten of the top nonfiction books in 2015 by journalists of color. I am humbled by the recognition.
Please enjoy writer Richard Price’s summary, and all the best to you in 2016!
BY: RICHARD PRINCE, Posted Dec. 13, 2015
Sonja D. Williams, a professor in the Howard University Department of Media, Journalism, and Film, has written “Word Warrior: Richard Durham, Radio, and Freedom” (University of Illinois Press, $95 hardcover; $26 paper; $18.79 Kindle).
Durham was the most prolific and successful black writer on radio during its golden age, becoming one of the few African Americans to write regularly for radio and television dramas in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s.
He co-wrote Muhammad Ali’s 1975 autobiography, “The Greatest: My Own Story,” as well as actor Anthony Quinn’s 1972 autobiography, “The Original Sin: a Self-Portrait.” Durham was the longest-serving editor of the Nation of Islam newspaper, Muhammad Speaks, serving from 1963 to 1970, at a time when the publication moved from being a house organ to aggressively reporting news. He also worked as a special news reporter for the Chicago Defender and as an editor for Ebony magazine.
Dunham’s crowning achievement was the groundbreaking radio series “Destination Freedom,” which aired his scripts from June 27, 1948, until August 1950. Durham wrote this provocative, unprecedented half-hour Sunday feature for Chicago’s CBS-owned WMAQ.
At a time when radio was almost an all-white medium, with blacks chiefly functioning in stereotypical roles, his scripts, acted by such Chicagoans as Oscar Brown Jr. and Studs Terkel, dramatically pleaded for rights denied, through poetically told stories of prominent black people in history.
Jabari Asim, editor of the NAACP’s the Crisis, wrote in a blurb, “Sonja Williams’ exhaustively researched biography of Richard Durham sheds valuable light on an inexcusably neglected historical figure. Throughout his many lives, including activism, writing, and broadcasting, Durham demonstrated the importance of narrative in the struggle for justice. As Williams proves, the right to tell the story is a critical part of the quest for equality and power — and those who fought for that right should be remembered with gratitude.”
Sonja J. Williams with Charles E. Cobb at Duke University: Radio Journalist Richard Durham (video)
Sonja Williams with Kojo Nnamdi, “The Kojo Nnamdi Show,” WAMU-FM, Washington: The Life And Work Of Broadcast Pioneer Richard Durham (audio)