Nonfiction

Next month, my biography of writer Richard Durham will be published and ready for you to enjoy. Talk about excited!

In the following audio sample from Durham’s award-winning Destination Freedom radio series about accomplished African Americans, a Chicago-based doctor named Ulysses Grant Daley (played by actor Fred Pinkard) gets ready to perform an emergency, and at the time rare, open-heart surgery on a patient suffering from a life-threatening heart wound.

As I wrote in Word Warrior’s Prologue (and included in full below), after hearing dramas like this:

I couldn’t move from my chair. I wanted more.

Flipping the cassette tape to side B, I pressed the machine’s play button and sat back. Amazing! I thought when the second show finished. Those episodes from a radio series called Destination Freedom were captivating and surprisingly fresh, even though they had been produced nearly 50 years earlier.

I soon discovered that these and other Destination Freedom episodes proved that however limited, black Americans produced or starred in some fascinating, or as in Durham’s case, downright revolutionary radio broadcasts during the racially segregated and blatantly discriminatory America of the late 1940s and early 1950s.

In fall 1994 I had just started working as a writer/producer for the Smithsonian Institution’s Black Radio: Telling It Like It Was project – a 13-part series exploring the legacy of African Americans in radio. The Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C. housed a unit that produced award-winning radio and television documentaries about the American experience. Black Radio’s production team, headed by series creator Jacquie Gales Webb, hoped to continue the Smithsonian’s record of broadcast excellence.

Starting in January 1996, our weekly half-hour Black Radio programs aired on more than 200 noncommercial radio stations nationwide. Later, XM Satellite Radio carried the series.

Of the five shows on my producing plate, I felt the most trepidation about the one exploring African American contributions during radio’s “theater of the mind” heyday of the 1930s and ‘40s. Blacks were rarely featured in local or national dramatic broadcasts then. So the more information I unearthed about Destination Freedom, the more I was struck by this series’ lyricism, dramatic flair and fiery rhetoric.

African American writer Richard Durham created this series in 1948 and served as its sole scriptwriter. A master storyteller, Durham seductively conjured aural magic, inventively dramatizing the lives of black history makers. And Durham used his desire for universal freedom, justice and equality to inform his storytelling choices.

But just who was Richard Durham?

Durham had died in 1984, so my interviews with his wife Clarice, actor/singer Oscar Brown, Jr. and writer Louis “Studs” Terkel provided salient insights. Durham appeared to have been an astute, Chicago-based writer who employed poetic, hard-hitting prose to entertain, educate and promote positive social change.

He stood behind his convictions, even when the consequences of his actions caused him emotional pain, financial hardship – or both.

Durham’s life was drama itself; full of unexpected twists and turns, of creative invention and reinvention. A few historians, like J. Fred MacDonald and Barbara Savage had explored the significance of Durham’s Destination Freedom dramas. Yet I wondered why no one had written a book-length account about the totality of Durham’s contributions and advocacy.

Dare I write such a book?

Durham’s story certainly fascinated me. His accomplishments reinforced my own belief that the media, in all its incarnations, should serve a higher purpose than just mindless diversion. So after the Black Radio series ended, I planned to work on Durham’s biography. Unfortunately, other documentary projects monopolized my time.

I also continued teaching in my academic home, the Howard University Department of Radio, Television, and Film. Appointment to an administrative position in my department eventually forced me to sandwich research for this book into spring or summer breaks, and other far too fleeting time frames.

Still, a Howard University-sponsored research grant in 2002 enabled me to start immersing myself in Durham’s world. Later, a 2009 Timuel D. Black Short-Term Fellowship in African American Studies sponsored by the Vivian G. Harsh Society enabled me to spend a summer in Chicago. I practically moved into the Woodson Regional Library, home base of the Harsh Research Collection of Afro-American History and Literature where Richard Durham’s papers reside.

Finally, a sabbatical from my university during the 2010-2011 academic year allowed me to make significant progress toward the completion of this book.

I have strived to faithfully represent Durham’s writing and his life, and I hope that you will be equally as inspired by his compelling story and activism.

To celebrate what will be Richard Durham’s 98th birthday and Word Warrior’s arrival, please come back next month for more book excerpts.

“There are two things I have a right to—liberty or death. One or the other I mean to have. I shall fight for my liberty.”

Sixty-seven years ago, Richard Durham wrote the lines above for his Independence Day script about famed abolitionist and Underground Railroad activist Harriet Tubman.

On July 4, 1948, Chicago-based actors Weslyn Tilden, Oscar Brown Jr., Fred Pinkard and Janice Kingslow breathed life into Durham’s “Railway to Freedom” script for his Destination Freedom radio series. Every Sunday morning from 10-10:30, Durham’s Destination Freedom episodes featured dramas about contemporary and historical African American heroes and heroines in fields as diverse as sports (Jackie Robinson and Jesse Owens), politics (Adam Clayton Powell and Reconstruction-era Congressman Charles Caldwell), education (Mary Church Terrell and Mary McLeod Bethune, and entertainment (Lena Horne and Louis Armstrong).

In “Railway to Freedom,” Durham let his Harriet Tubman character narrate her own story:

Harriet:  (On cue. Listening, intense, with depth, warmth and slight touch of the mystic.)

I’m Harriet Tubman. I lived in the shadows out of sight of

the light of Liberty. I heard their voices call out to me in the

dark. . . They were the voices of slaves. They were the voices

of my people. When I heard them earth moved under me.

Rockets burst in my head. They were the voices of God!

(Quieter.) I—was Moses.

At the beginning of the show, Tubman is a young slave, growing “wild like a weed” on a Maryland plantation. One day a fellow slave runs past her, trying to escape from the plantation. Tubman blocks their owner’s attempt to catch the fleeing slave. The owner threatens to hit her with the heavy iron bar he’s holding if she doesn’t move.

Durham’s Harriet states: “I was afraid, but I wouldn’t move. I wouldn’t move! I saw him lift the iron bar. Then his hand struck down!” Tubman collapses. Ethereal sound effects indicate her semi-conscious thoughts. “The earth moved and rockets burst in my head,” Tubman says. Durham returns often to this earth/rocket metaphor, using it to represent the painful headaches, seizures, and loss of consciousness Tubman endures for the rest of her life because of her owner’s blow.

Once Tubman emerges from her wound-induced coma, she fervently desires freedom. She becomes fascinated with the Underground Railroad, a clandestine network of secular and religious organizations and individuals—black and white—who serve as the railway’s conductors or agents. They secretly provide food, shelter, or financial assistance to escaping slaves—the railroad’s passengers.

Tubman eventually rides the Underground Railroad to freedom. However, she quickly realizes that she wants family members and other slaves to taste the sweetness of liberty. Or as one of Durham’s Underground Railroad conductor characters says to Harriet:

Levi:   Now and then one comes our way who’s got that flame

burning not just for his freedom, but for his brothers,

sisters, friends.You burn that way…you felt you would

fight until the last slave was freed. Slavery is war and you

would have no peace until the war against it is won.

Tubman becomes an Underground Railroad conductor, and her numerous liberation trips back into and out of the South are rife with danger. Tubman and her passengers could be caught and dragged back into slavery at any turn. While the exact number of slaves Tubman spirited away is in dispute, she courageously led many of her people to freedom.

So on this Independence Day, and for the month of July, we celebrate Harriet Tubman’s freedom fighting legacy and Richard Durham’s dramatic tribute to it.

With great sadness, I wanted to write about the profound senselessness, heart-wrenching tragedy, and frightening injustice of the events of the evening of June 17, 2015 in Charleston, South Carolina. On that night, members of the historic Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church were exercising their right, their freedom, to come together to worship God.

The church’s bible study members and their pastor unknowingly welcomed a white stranger with murderous intentions into their midst; a killer apparently motivated by the toxic combination of racial hatred and irrational thought. After worshiping with the church members, the stranger put down his bible and picked up his concealed gun, killing nine African American adults in the process.

Last week’s tragedy was not the first time that this AME church experienced adversity. Back in 1822, white Charleston residents burned the church down because of their anger over a foiled slave revolt organized and led by Denmark Vesey, one of the leaders of the church. Vesey was a former slave who paid for his freedom after winning money in a lottery.  Rather than moving north, Vesey stayed in Charleston and slowly but doggedly organized a revolt that reportedly involved nine thousand co-conspirators – men and women intent on fashioning their own path to freedom from the prison of American slavery.

The revolt was compromised before it could be implemented.

But as writer Richard Durham found while digging through the records that survived Vesey’s lengthy trial, Vesey remained committed to freedom even as he was sentenced to death for his revolutionary actions (see my April post). And perhaps in light of the deaths in Emanuel AME Church this month, Vesey’s declaration “until all men are free the revolution continues” resonates today with a slight variation;

Until all men and women can live free of the tyranny of racial and religious hatred, the fight for justice and the need for compassion for all humanity must continue.

Once again, it’s time to dance, sing-a-long and savor black music. And you’ll have a whole month to do it.

Dating back to the late 1970s, music industry insiders Kenny Gamble, Ed Wright and Dyana Williams came up with the idea to set aside one month to honor the cultural importance and influence of black music and musicians.

June became that month. And there’s little doubt that if he were alive today, writer Richard Durham would have led the celebration charge.

In this photo, Richard Durham (smiling on the right) enjoys great music and good company in the popular Chicago South Side nightclub, Club DeLisa, in 1942. From left to right are Phyllis Peltz, Durham’s younger brother Earl and Durham’s wife Clarice, along with Phyllis’ husband and fellow scriptwriter, David Peltz.

Durham loved music. In his Chicago home Durham played, repeatedly, the records of the African American musicians he revered. And this love often fed his creative writing efforts.

For example, in his award-winning Destination Freedom radio drama series about black heroes and heroines (WMAQ, 1948-1950), Durham dramatized the lives of musicians as varied as composer/bandleader Duke Ellington, contralto Marian Anderson, and pianist Fats Waller. In addition, Durham explored the formative years of trumpeter/singer Louis Armstrong, organist Hazel Scott, and pianist/singer Nat King Cole.

In one Destination Freedom episode, Durham’s inventively revealed how prolific composer/arranger W.C. Handy came to be known as the father of the blues. Durham’s September 12, 1948 script began by presenting Handy as a naive teenager fascinated by the blues. Working as a water boy for a prison chain gang, Handy carried water to a prisoner named Lemon—Durham’s salute to the great blues singer/guitarist, Blind Lemon Jefferson.

Young Handy asked Lemon what the blues was all about. Lemon replied:

Lemon:  Blues, Water Boy, is your heart. It’s a train callin’ you.

It’s a woman minus a man. It’s talk turned into music.

It’s music that gets down to the rocky bottom.

Sometimes it’s a sad song.

Handy:  Then why you sing it?

Lemon:  The blues regenerates a man, Water Boy.

Handy:   Will it regenerate me?

Lemon:  (Laughs.) Get yourself a good guitar. Maybe I’ll teach

you to see for yourself.

Handy saved his earnings and purchased a guitar. But Handy’s religious mother and father discouraged his blues infatuation. In a clever turn, Durham’s narrator stated:

Narrator:   Mrs. Handy called in Professor Bach, a doctor of music, who examined

the patient from bass to treble clef and diagnosed his ailment.

Professor Bach found that young Handy suffered from “a severe dis-temperment of the pentatonic scales,” with “an overgrowth of the minor chords tending towards dissonance”— Durham’s creative description of the musical elements that make up the blues. Professor Bach recommended that Handy study music’s “proper,” translate classical, elements.

Durham’s script then noted that during the next twenty years, Handy mastered those musical elements. But the draw of the music of his people remained strong, pushing Handy to search for a “good, rich music that’s got a language and body.” One cool evening, Handy landed in St. Louis and heard a woman humming “an odd tune.” Handy asked about the tune and she said that because of her troubles with her man, “I hate to see the evenin’ sun go down.”

This line opens “The St. Louis Blues,” the tune most associated with W. C. Handy. Durham’s narrator ends the episode indicating that Handy, the former water boy:

Narrator:   Put down the words of blues from Memphis to Mobile, New Orleans

and Texas, and soon he had a whole world singing blues. He had set down on

paper a new American music.

According to Durham’s longtime friend and fellow writer Studs Terkel, “Dick had this talent of capturing the idiom, not just the African American, [but also] the American idiom. He was just gifted.”

As were the musicians Durham wrote about and cherished.

So during Black Music Month 2015, let’s all celebrate the host of African American women and men who create musical magic, enriching our lives and touching our souls.

Each year around the world, May Day (also known as International Workers Day) or May 1^st, is celebrated as a day to honor workers and spring. During his lifetime (1917-1984), Richard Durham surely made time to herald the day.  He was committed to and involved in labor unions that championed the rights of working men and women.

During the 1950s, one of Durham’s most significant associations was with the Chicago-based United Packinghouse Workers of America (UPWA). Considered to be one of city’s more progressive unions, the UPWA fought to protect the rights of the thousands of people who toiled in the industries that produced meat and its byproducts.

Undoubtedly, Durham appreciated the union’s logo. A black and a white hand clasped in a handshake went along with the UPWA’s slogan, “Negro and White, Unite and Fight!” ‘

And there was plenty to fight about regarding working conditions in meatpacking plants. The plants’ slaughter assembly lines, for example, were dangerous, blood-soaked environments. Some meatpacking companies didn’t provide insurance to protect injured employees, and workers on some fast-moving assembly lines were treated like prisoners.

In 1952, Durham landed a contract with the union. The organization needed a writer who could translate studies, conducted by Fisk University scholars, about the UPWA’s antidiscrimination activities into a digestible brochure for the rank and file.

Durham eventually produced a twenty-one-page brochure titled Action against Jim Crow: UPWA’s Fight for Equal Rights. The brochure married photos of union members with Durham’s attention-grabbing writing:

At daybreak on November 30, 1950, a young Negro mother left her three children with their grandmother and hurried out into the cold Chicago dawn to catch a street-car.

She was Mrs. Pauline Wilson and she needed a job.

She was an experienced packinghouse worker and she knew they were hiring at Swift and Company.

Swift—like the Wilson, Armour, and Cudahy companies—operated America’s largest meat processing plants. Durham went on to write:

At 7 a.m. [Mrs. Wilson] was rushing unnoticed down the crowded, cobblestone streets of the world’s biggest packing center, and at 7:30 a.m. she was inside the employment office of the biggest packer.

It was the third anxious morning she had raced to be among the first to apply.

“Oh-h-h-h you’re just a little bit too late,” one of the clerks shook a sad head. “We’re not hiring anymore women. Just men.”

Durham then introduced Ruth Merson, a white job seeker who rushed down the same cobblestone streets to the same company on that same November morning. Yet Merson was directed to a back office and hired with every other white woman who applied that day.

Swift foreman Bill Cummings encouraged Merson to send her friends because he thought she “looked like a good worker.” Durham conceded, “He was right. She was even better than he thought. He had hired a field representative of UPWA on assignment for its Anti-Discrimination Department, a symbol of the Negro and white unity which has made the UPWA-CIO, the most important packinghouse union in the world.”

An arbitrator eventually ruled that Mrs. Wilson and twelve other black women “were entitled to reach into Mr. Swift’s pockets for $2,600 in back pay,” Durham wrote. Additionally, Swift had to hire those women with a year’s worth of seniority.

Richard Durham continued working with the UPWA, helping the union organize its workers to support various civil rights struggles – including Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

Hope that you had a great May Day – and whatever work you are passionate about, have a productive month!