>> From The Library of
Congress in Washington, D.C.
>> Well, good afternoon and
welcome to The Library of Congress.
I'm John Cole.
I'm the Director of the Center for
the Book in the Library of Congress,
which is the part of the
library that promotes books,
reading, literacy, and libraries.
We do it through both
promotion activities,
but also we encourage research and
study about the importance of books,
reading, literacy, and
libraries in our culture.
And we operate primarily not only
through programs such as this
at the library, which is our
Books and Beyond speaker series
of new books by authors
who have used Library
of Congress collections, but we
also have two national networks.
There are affiliates in each state,
which promote largely state writers
but also develop projects
that relate
to book fairs and book festivals.
And often where libraries are
the homes, they collect databases
about the writers of the state.
And our second network consists
of nonprofit organizations
that are interested in
promoting books and literacy.
And it's through that network that
we have a couple of big projects.
One is The Library of Congress
Literacy Awards, which are supported
by generous benefactor,
David Rubenstein.
And secondly, through both the
partners and the state affiliates,
we have a major role in the
library's national book festival.
How many people here have
been to the book festival?
I hope you LC employees
all have been.
Some of you may not have been.
This year's festival will be
in the Washington Convention
Center on September 24th.
And we will have around 120
different writers representing
different fields who will speak
and also have book signings.
And it's a wonderful
one-day event that also,
since it's moved off the mall
into the Convention Center,
we have new facilities.
We have air conditioning.
We have beautiful bathrooms.
Some of the other things that
were noted that weren't quite
up to what they might
have been on the mall,
even though it was a great
patriotic experience to be
on the mall for 13 years.
But now we have moved permanently
to the Washington Convention Center.
The Books and Beyond program
not only features that books
that are often books or research
materials from The Library
of Congress, but they're also
cosponsored by those divisions
that have helped make
these books possible.
And in this case, we
have to cosponsors.
One is the manuscript
division, and you'll hear more
about the manuscript
collections from our speaker.
And the second is the Daniel
A.P. Murray Association,
and we're grateful for their
help and support as well.
One of my other halves
is a historian
of The Library of Congress.
And one of the early joys I
had in studying the library,
when it was first in the Capitol,
was learning about Daniel Murray
and his strong association with
the Library of the Congress
and importance in the library's
history as a bibliographer
and as an associate librarian.
So it's entirely appropriate that
we have both the Murray association
and the manuscript division.
All of our programs in the Books
and Beyond series are filmed
for the Library of Congress,
Center for the Book Webcasts
and will be available later.
And for that reason, I ask you to
turn off all things electronic.
The plan of action will be
to introduce our speaker.
You will learn much about
Richard Durham and his career
and our author's perspective.
We also will have a question and
answer period towards the end
of the talk and a book signing which
must start by 1:00, about 1:00 here,
to keep with the Library of
Congress's program and schedule.
So welcome to talk about
our speaker and a little bit
about our manuscript collections.
I'm pleased to introduce
Adrienne Cannon
who is a manuscript historian,
who came to The Library
of Congress, she told me, in 1996.
I talked to her a little bit
earlier because I was reviewing some
of our webcasts and I found
a couple where Adrienne
and I had done this trick
before, where she had talked
about the collections and we were
able to get an author here to talk
about an interesting subject
and an interesting collection.
But let me introduce
Adrienne for our introduction.
Adrienne. Let's give her a round.
[ Applause ]
>> Thank you, John,
and good afternoon.
It is my pleasure to
introduce Sonja D. Williams,
who will discuss her new
biography, Word Warrior;
Richard Durham, Radio and Freedom.
Chicago based Richard Durham was
the most successful black writer
on radio during the 1930s and '40s.
He created the groundbreaking
radio series Destination Freedom,
which dramatized the lives
of black history makers
in a variety of fields.
It aired on NBC station
WMAQ from 1948 to 1950.
Durham later worked in
television as a lead writer
for the acclaimed PBS series
Bird of the Iron Feather.
He served as editor of a
Nation of Islam newspaper,
While Hammett Speaks, and
an investigative reporter
for the Chicago Defender.
In 1975 he wrote Mohammed
Ali's biography;
The Greatest, My Own Story.
His career also included stints as
a labor union writer and organizer,
and speech writer advisor
for Harold Washington,
Chicago's first black mayor.
Durham was posthumously inducted
into the National Radio
Hall of Fame in 2007.
The Root.com selected
Word Warrior as one
of its top 10 nonfiction
books of 2015.
Will Haygood, a former reporter
for The Washington Post and author
of The Butler, A Witness to History,
and a new acclaimed biography
on Thurgood Marshall, wrote, quote,
"The enigmatic life of writer
and radio dramatist Richard
Durham has for many years cried
out for probing and understanding.
Sonja D. Williams has answered
the call with this fiercely smart
and important book," unquote.
Jabari Asim, editor of the NAACP's
Crisis magazine noted, quote,
"Sonja Williams exhaustively
researched biography
of Richard Durham sheds 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 freedom.
And those who fought for that right
should be remembered with gratitude.
Ms. Williams conducted some of her
research in the manuscript division,
which is home of approximately 63
million primary source documents
of American History and Culture
spanning the Colonial Period
to the present.
She examined the US Word
Project Administration's records,
Federal Writers Project,
specifically the Negro
Studies Project Files,
and the Illinois State
Study Project Files.
She also conducted research in the
J. Fred McDonald archives housed
in the American Folk Life Center.
Sonja D. Williams is a professor in
a department of media, journalism,
and film at Howard University and
an award-winning radio producer.
She received consecutive,
1994 to 1996, Peabody Awards
for the Smithsonian Public Radio
International Series, Black Radio,
Telling it Like it Was, the
NPR Series, Making the Music,
and the NPR Smithsonian
Series, Wade in the Water,
African American Sacred
Music Traditions.
She is also the recipient of the
Gracie Award from the American Women
in Radio and Television for the
Documentary Series Uncrowned Queens,
Voices of African American
Women, 2009,
which honors extraordinary Black
women community leaders in Buffalo
and western New York, and the
documentary A Woman's Touch, 1996,
which examined the role of
African-American Women in Radio.
Please join me in welcoming
Sonja Williams.
[ Applause ]
>> Good afternoon.
How's everyone?
>> Good, thank you.
>> I see some familiar
faces and some new faces.
So welcome.
Thank you so much for coming.
And since it's so gray outside,
I hope that this presentation
brings some sunshine into the room.
I always kind of ask this.
How many people have
heard of Richard Durham?
Okay, three hands,
four hands, a half.
Okay. I was like you 20 years ago.
You know, when I first heard about
Durham, I'm like Richard who?
You mean Richard Wright?
No. No, Richard Durham.
And he was a phenomenal writer.
He really was.
What I wanted to do before I get
into a lot of details about his life
and his accomplishments, and also
what I was able to gather here
at The Library of Congress, as you
all know this is a great resource.
And I live just down the street.
So many times it was a question of
do I live here or am I in Northeast?
So I would sometimes walk here.
I swim right down the street
at one of the city pools here.
And I would leave the pool, go get
something to eat, and then come here
and spend the rest of the day here.
And folks would say, well,
where were you today?
And I say, well, you
know, Library of Congress.
And it was really, really simulating
and exciting the more
that I found out.
So what I wanted to
do is to start off,
is kind of hopefully let you hear
some of the things that excited me
when I first got into this project.
And I got into it because, as
was mentioned, I was able to work
on a Smithsonian series
that was called Black Radio,
Telling it Like it Was.
It was a 13-part series for
public radio that aired in 1996.
So it aired nationwide, and then
it was repeated several other
years later.
But it looked at the
history of Blacks and radio.
And two of my colleagues at
Howard University said, well,
if you're going to look at the
role or the existence of Blacks
on radio during the 1930s and '40s,
you have to include Richard Durham
and you have to include a series
called Destination Freedom,
which I had never heard of.
And when I heard the tapes,
thank goodness the tapes existed,
and J. Fred McDonald who
was just mentioned in terms
of his collection now being housed
here in The Library Congress.
J. Fred McDonald was able to save
those tapes because they were
at Northwestern University
and they were getting ready
to throw them out.
Said what is this?
We don't really need this.
We need space.
So we're going to throw these out.
And he said no, you can't do that.
I'll take them.
And they are now part of
his archive of collection.
So I was able to hear the tapes.
And I was just blown
away by the lyricism,
the storytelling, the
drama, the comedy.
So what you're seeing here on
the screen is an advertisement
for Destination of Freedom.
Destination Freedom aired from
June 1948 through August 1950,
and it was pretty unique.
If you think about it, in the
'40s, '30s, but definitely even
through the '40s, if you
heard Black voices on radio,
inevitably they were
stereotypical voices.
They were servants.
They were maids.
They were comic relief.
They were stereotypes.
What Durham said, as a
boy growing up in Chicago,
his family was part of
the great migration.
And I'll get into that
a little bit later.
But he said, no, in my neighborhood
I know that there are doctors
and lawyers, and educators and
really dignified African-Americans
who have accomplished a lot.
So what he wanted to do in
the series was to amplify
and dramatize those stories.
So what I want to do is
play one segment of one
of his shows from the series.
This is Denmark Vesey or a
statute of Denmark Vesey.
And one of the shows in the series
looked at the life of Denmark Vesey.
If you know his story, he
was in 1822 a free slave.
He freed himself, actually.
And he led one of the
largest revolts,
although it was pretty much
squashed before it took off.
But in 1822, he organized
about 9,000 African-Americans
to free themselves from slavery
in Charleston, South Carolina.
By the way, Vesey was also the
founder or one of the co-founders
of Emanuel AME Church, the church
which unfortunately just, you know,
had their tragic situation
of the nine parishioners
being killed last summer.
So what I want to do
is play this segment.
This is from the beginning
of this episode
where Vesey took part
in a lottery, a gamble.
And he was able to win
like $4,000 in this gamble.
So what does he decide?
He decides he's going to use
that money to free himself.
>> How much am I worth?
Master, how much am I worth?
Ach!
>> It's that talk again.
This freedom is a sickness.
It's unbecoming a slave.
Get it out of your mind!
It's those books you
read that turn your head.
A slave shouldn't read too much.
I've watched you talk
to people in the market.
You tell the slaves
they're born equal.
Ah, that's nonsense!
If you stay with me,
you'll stop this reading
and writing to everybody.
>> Lately, I've stopped reading.
>> But now you're out working in
your spare time for other masters.
Denmark hopes to save
enough to buy Denmark.
You know how long that
would take you?
All your life!
I need money, too.
I know how hard it comes these days.
>> Why don't you sell me?
>> If I could get your price.
>> How much am I worth?
>> I'd say $2,000.
>> Two thousand dollars?
>> You've got 2,000?
>> I've got my release papers.
Will you sign them?
You need the money?
>> Yeah. Yeah.
>> I need my freedom.
>> You'd find a way to escape
if I didn't let you go.
My pen? I feel like I
am releasing a tornado.
What will you do with this freedom?
>> What will you do with this money?
>> I'll use it to help
me and my family.
>> I'll use my freedom to
help others become free.
>> It's strange to have owned
a man's body for 20 years,
yet not know the first
thing about his mind.
You're free.
[ Music ]
>> All right.
When I played pieces of the
Destination Freedom series
for my students, I
had them listen to it.
They're like, that
organ, that's old-timey.
This really dates it.
But it also kind of hits
home that when they listen
to the story, they
really get into it.
This episodes ends when after
Vesey and his co-conspirators,
as they're called, are captured.
And at this trial he makes a
statement, because he's being tried
for treason against the
State of South Carolina.
And basically he says that
the revolution will go
on until all men are free and equal.
Now this was 1948.
To hear a Black character, a
Black man say this on radio
in the 1940s was revolutionary
in and of itself.
But that was a kind
of thing Durham did.
In this next episode he looked
at the life and accomplishments
of Lena Horne, who, by the way,
was born the same year
Durham was born in 1917.
So what he did was he looked at
her development and then some
of the discrimination
that she experienced
and how she dealt with it.
This episode or this
little segment really is
from when she's a young girl and
she's traveling with her mother
from New York, where they lived, to
the south, because her mother had
to move for health reasons.
And they're on the train.
They had just gotten to
Washington, D.C. And because
of Jim Crow segregation, they
had to move from the place
where they were sitting
into the Negro car.
>> You lost something, girl?
>> No, I was looking
for better seats.
Some of these are still empty.
>> Your first trip south on a train?
>> Yes, sir.
>> Oh, why do they leave
me to do the educating?
>> What's the matter?
>> Look around, gal.
What do you see?
>> People.
>> Nah. Nah, you don't
see just people.
You see white people,
only white people.
Go on back up to the colored
people's car where you belong.
It's the law of the land.
>> My mother paid to sit up here.
>> Will you get while
the getting's good?
>> I won't.
>> Oh, yes, you will.
Now, come on.
Now get up.
[Inaudible].
>> Passengers in the aisle.
Passengers jeered, damn right.
A girl light with blonde
hair [inaudible].
I was pulled into the Jim Crow car.
>> [Background Music]
Then I knew my way
to the Golden Clippers
would be rough.
I was a Negro.
I was Cinderella.
My stepsisters were [inaudible]
those who made profit off prejudice.
>> So what he did was
he found creative ways
to tell these men and women's story.
In fact he called this
episode Negro Cinderella.
So he cast Lena Horne as Cinderella
with stepsisters, as you heard.
And then you find out in the end
how she kind of comes out of this.
And once she's a successful and
world renowned singer, actress,
you know, what it meant to stand
up against prejudice
and discrimination.
The last segment I want to play is
Durham's piece on Jackie Robinson.
And so one of the things
about Destination Freedom was
that it dealt with both
historic figures, Harriet Tubman,
Frederick Douglas, Sojourn
Truth, but it also dealt
with contemporary figures.
At the time that this aired,
and this aired in 1949,
Jackie Robinson had in 1947
just integrated baseball.
And so what did was he found a way
to creatively tell Jackie's story.
But I wanted to play
this one short thing,
and I won't be able to
play the whole thing.
But hopefully afterwards,
you can go online
and you can actually listen to it.
One of his fellow actors.
Durham himself was not an actor.
He was a writer.
He was solely a behind-the-scenes
kind of guy.
But he had professional actors,
one of whom was a guy I
think you may have heard of.
His name was Studs Terkel.
And Studs and he had
become friends in the '30s,
which I'll get to in a second.
And so Studs then was trying
his hand out as an actor.
So what he does is he plays this all
seeing, all knowing Dodger's fan.
He's, you know, Mr. Dodger.
And he goes to a Dodger's
game at Edwards Field
and this is what you'll find.
Let's see, okay.
>> It was a sight to
see [inaudible].
You can hear about
10 miles [inaudible]
when a ball was called
that missed the plate.
Ball two! When he was right,
we get the ump his due.
>> Yea, Ump!
Yea, Ump!
[ Cheering ]
>> You guys.
What a bunch of [inaudible].
>> Lovely, lovely, lovely.
But when the ump called it wrong.
>> Strike three!
>> We had another song.
[ Crowd Booing ]
[ Inaudible Speakers ]
>> Lovely, lovely, lovely.
[Inaudible].
It starts when this new
Dodger comes to the plate.
>> Hey, batter [inaudible].
Jackie Robinson.
>> There was umpires,
umpires everywhere.
And the pitcher hadn't
thrown a ball.
But when this [inaudible]
the umpire calls.
>> Strike two.
>> Did you hear it?
Did you hear it?
>> Yeah, I heard it.
>> But you didn't say nothing.
It was quiet [inaudible].
Here was the umpire
calling two strikes
on a man before he gets to bat.
>> So you get the sense that
he used this as a device.
And basically the whole idea
of that, Jackie Robinson,
simply because he was black.
Not because he didn't have
the skill or the talent,
that anytime he stepped up to the
plate he already had two strikes
against him.
And he used that until he got
to the end when, you know,
Jackie Robinson is accepted by his
team and becomes a major player.
So just as an example of the kind
of writing, the kind of drama
that Durham used in his radio work.
And I want to get to how did he
become such a skilled dramatist
and writer, and then
also his journalism work.
He was born in Mississippi.
And the highlighted section there
is the county that he was from,
Hines County, Mississippi.
He was born right just south
of Jackson, the state capitol.
And his family, his
mother and father and his,
at the time, five siblings.
But there were eight children, seven
of who survived into adulthood.
They became part of the Great
Migration and they literally moved
in 1921 when he was about 5.
They moved to Chicago.
This is his mother and father.
The thing that I say in the book,
and really I was able to find a lot
of details both here and in
Chicago, where his papers reside,
was that his family was all about
education, his mother and father.
His father had two years of
college at Alcorn State University,
what was then Alcorn University.
And his mother was more or less
self taught, but she was all
about education and she knew
that that was the ticket
to a better life for her children.
So this was the house that
they moved to in Chicago,
on the south side, what
is now Brownsville.
It is still in the
Durham family today.
So it's pretty unique.
This is Durham in his 20s.
Now at this point, he is a
child of depression as well.
And so he's in Chicago.
The depression hits.
The family, like everyone else
in the country, is struggling.
And what he does as a 21-year-old
is he decides that luckily
because there's something called the
WPA, Works Progress Administration,
and the Illinois Writers
Project, he decides he's going
to apply and he's able to get in.
So he becomes one of the writers
who works on the Writers Project.
Before I get into the
Writers Project though,
what you're seeing here
is what enabled Durham
to become the writer that he became.
Somewhere in his teens,
his family members told me.
They didn't know exactly
when he started writing.
But he started out as a poet, and
literally his lyricism carried him
through the rest of his life.
But he was a poet.
One of his mentors
was Langston Hughes.
Langston and he became friends,
because he had the audacity
to send Langston his poems.
Langston actually critiqued
them and sent them back
and said you have talent,
you need to keep writing.
And as a result they
became lifelong friends
until Langston died in the '60s.
This is from a book that Ana
Vantomps [phonetic] compiled,
an Anthology of Writing for
Young People, Negro poets.
And you'll notice amazingly
enough or erratically enough
that Richard Durham's name,
or his home is right next
to Langston Hughes in
this particular anthology.
This is actually a photograph
of Langston Hughes on the left
and Ana Vontomps on the
right, on the right left.
So that what happened
was when he was accepted
into the Illinois Writers
Project, he becomes a writer
who is documenting life
in depression era Chicago.
And Ana is his supervisor.
There are Negro in Illinois
Studies and there's also a study
about the Negro Press in Chicago.
And so Durham becomes one
of the writers on that,
but Ana is his supervisor.
What Ana does write about
says that he, Durham,
and one of the other younger
Black writers got enthralled
with this unit that met every week
at the Illinois Writers Project.
And it was called the
Radio Division,
the Illinois Writers Division.
And so every week this men and women
would sit around a conference table
and they would write scripts that
were literally going to be broadcast
on Chicago stations
each and every week.
His colleague, who he meets
at this time, is Studs Terkel.
Studs Terkel is also
one of the writers.
He's maybe four or five
years older than Durham,
but they become fast friends
and again remain friends
through the rest of their lives.
And the thing that was unique
about this Radio Division is they're
writing these 15-minute dramas,
original dramas and
adaptations of works
by Anton Chekhov and Edgar Alan Poe.
This is one of Durham's earlier
scripts, at least that I could find,
which is here in the manuscript
division of The Library of Congress.
And this actually was from a
series called Legends of Illinois
and it looked at the life of
Mormon Leader, Joseph Smith.
And so one of the things
that was interesting,
and this was just the actual script.
The other one was a cover page.
And this is actually from another
script where he looks at the life
of Winslow Homer, the painter,
that he wasn't just dealing with.
In fact, in the Illinois
Writers Project he didn't deal
with Black issues, per se.
He dealt with writing for the
ear and learning how to do that.
And the wonderful resource about
being able to come to this library
and sit down and touch and
read these documents is
that you see the growth.
From that Joseph Smith script to his
later WPA scripts, he really grew.
His first ones were terrible.
And as a radio writer
myself, I know the pain.
The first scripts were long and
they had these long soliloquies.
It's like this is not.
You're not writing for the stage.
You're writing for the ear.
So we have to have some movement.
You have to identify
who the characters are.
He had a gazillion
characters in 15 minutes.
So you didn't know who was talking.
But again because the scripts
still exist and they're right here,
I could see the development
and the growth and the progress
and he really fine tuned.
He stays with the Illinois
Writers Project until it ends
in the early '40s, and
then is struggling.
But he's freelancing.
He's staying in radio.
He decides I'm going to
work as a writer in radio.
And then he eventually moves into
or gets the opportunity to move
into working as a reporter
for the Chicago Defender.
You'll notice that the headline
under the banner was the
World's Greatest Weekly.
And they took that on a play as what
the Chicago Tribune called itself,
the World's Greatest Daily.
So this is kind of a play on that.
But he becomes a reporter.
He had no reporting experience,
but he was a storyteller.
And he knew what telling
good stories was about,
whether they're factual stories or
stories that, you know, he made up.
And he moves into this
sphere of being a journalist.
One of his first articles they sent
him back to the south, to Memphis.
And I don't know if you've
heard the name of Edward Crump,
but Crump was a major
power player in Memphis.
He kind of ran the city, even
though he was not the mayor.
But he had that kind of power.
And so Durham was tasked to go down
to interview Crump and asked him
about the situation of
African-Americans in that city,
whether they were being
treated fairly,
what Jim Crow discrimination meant
and all, and then the whole idea
of the Poll Tax that prevented
many African-Americans from voting.
And this was the resulting article.
One of the things that
happened though,
is that as he again developed his
journalist skills it was clear
that he was a fantastic storyteller
and he had great investigative
and astute analytical skills.
So he became an investigative
reporter as opposed to, you know,
deadline, you know, shooting out
the latest, greatest right then.
And this is just another article
that I found while I was here
at the library doing research
through Pro Quest that he wrote
about Thomas Dewey, who in 1944
was the republican challenger
to Roosevelt in the
presidential election.
And this got him in
a bit of hot water,
because what happened is he went
to Thomas Dewey's mother's
house to interview her.
And so the thing was he talks
about how the town was lily white.
It was one of those towns
where it was a sundown town.
I don't know if you've
heard that phrase.
But it was one of those
towns where they said, okay,
if you're Black you have to be
gone by the time the sun goes down.
And if you're not, you'll
[inaudible] or worse.
So that he went to talk this
woman and to get a broader picture
of the kind of place that
Thomas Dewey grew up in.
But what happened is, toward the end
of the interview Ms. Dewey made
some anti-semantic statements.
So when that was printed
in the Chicago Defender
and it was then reported in
New York, a mess broke loose.
And they were like wait a minute.
Did she say this?
And, of course, she denied it.
And he said no, I have
proof she did say it.
I'm quoting her directly.
So that brought him a
little bit of notoriety.
This is Durham.
I'm going to fast forward some.
That was in the mid
'40s, because he worked
at The Defender during
the World War II years.
And then he got back into radio.
And in radio, he again decided
that there are ways to really kind
of deal with some creative more
dignified images of Black Americans.
And this is him in his home.
We call it office, but it
was really his dining table
in his small apartment.
And this is where he wrote the
scripts for Destination Freedom
and the other shows
that led up to it.
And this is some of
the cast members.
You'll see here, because
this was [inaudible],
they focused on the
Black cast members.
Including down at the bottom left is
Oscar Brown, Junior, who, you know,
continued to act and sing be
a really fine entertainer.
But the thing that was also unique
about Destination Freedom is
that it was a multiracial cast.
And at that time, that
was not the norm.
Or again, if you heard
a black voice,
inevitably a white actor was
portraying that Black character.
This is in WMAQ's studio, the NBC
studios in Chicago, a table read.
And at the top of the table
in the back is Homer Heck,
who was the director of
the show, an NBC employee.
And there you see the
multiracial quality of the cast.
Oscar Brown, Junior is on the left.
Weslyn Tilden [phonetic] is in
the middle, and Fred Pinkert.
They were the regulars.
And the organ that you hear,
here's the organist along
with Homer Heck who is the director.
And this is finally, in 1949, the
first anniversary of the show.
The cast had a party and this is
the entire crew at that point.
One of the things that
happened was it won all kind
of awards, both local and national.
And so while it was in danger
of being taken off the air several
times because of lack of sponsorship
or protests or whatever, it
was so popular in Chicago
and you could only
hear it in Chicago,
that WMAQ decided to keep it on.
But Durham wanted national
distribution.
He wanted this to do
what Amos and Andy did.
And Amos and Andy, by the
way, was on the same station
that his program was one.
But NBC decided no, we're not
going to do that because guess
who wouldn't pick up
this particular series?
Southern affiliates.
They were like no, we're not playing
that kind of show on our station.
So he kept pushing and pushing.
And finally by 1950 said, okay,
I'm not going to beat my head
against the wall anymore.
I'm going to go ahead and
take this out and do it myself
and find sponsors who
will allow me to air it.
But then a few months after
he left, August of 1950,
a few months later WMAQ started
airing this award winning show,
the return of this award winning
show called Destination Freedom,
but this time it was about
all white characters.
And Durham said, no, not
having it, and he sued.
Now if you're a Black man
and you're going to sue,
you're going to be the
David and you're going
to sue this major Goliath
in the media industry,
you pretty much are crazy or
will be seen as being crazy.
But he sued and his lawsuit
kind of wound its way through.
But as a result of that, he could
obviously no longer work in radio.
So he moves into organizing,
working for a labor union.
And then by the '60s, he is now
approached by members of the Nation
of Islam who were then trying to
establish this national newspaper
that they're going to call or
they're calling Mohammad Speaks.
And he considers it and,
you know, kind of mulls it
around with his wife and friends.
And then he decides, you
know, this is just another way
to reach another audience
and to talk about images
of Black people not just in this
country, but internationally.
So he becomes the editor
of Mohammad Speaks.
And as a result of that,
again I was able to track
down all of the episodes.
Not episodes.
The copies of the Mohammad
Speaks newspapers here
in The Library of Congress.
So you can see that he talks
about issues of lynching
and discrimination here
in the United States,
about what's happening in
southern Odesia, today's Zimbabwe,
and of course what's going
on in Vietnam as it relates
to Black GIs and Black people.
So he does that.
And as a result of that, he becomes,
I don't want to say friends,
but he's acquainted with and
really likes this fine specimen
of man here.
I think you all know who he is.
And, if not, then this is
Mohammad Ali in his prime.
Mohammad Ali had joined the
Nation of Islam in the early '60s,
and that was of course as a
result of Durham being the editor
of the national newspaper.
They developed the relationship so
that when he could no longer fight,
one of the things they decided
was, well, maybe one of the ways
that Mohammad Ali can make a living
is by writing his autobiography.
Well, Mohammad is an
excellent talker or crazy guy,
you would think, but is he a writer?
Not so much.
So they turned to Durham and
say would you be willing to work
with Ali, to write this book?
And he said yes.
And so for the next five years
almost, four and a half, five years,
he travels everywhere with Ali.
Once Ali is able to fight
again, he's at every fight.
He talks to family members.
He talks to friends.
He talks to other boxers.
And they travel the world.
And then finally The Greatest,
My Own Story comes out in 1975.
But it comes out in all
languages, including German.
I was able to track it down.
It was out of print when I
started this progress, process,
but it does exist here in The
Library of Congress's archives.
And I was able to then kind of
see some of the versions of it.
His wife actually has
this German edition.
But it came out then, and
he was actively involved
in helping to push it.
Well, as a result of that, he
then decided that he was going
to try to do some other things.
He didn't get back into radio.
He did do some television,
as was mentioned earlier.
But he also had connections
politically with the politics
of Chicago and the politicians.
And he was good friends with this
gentleman here, whose head is down.
And Durham's in the back
of him writing on the pad.
And that was Harold Washington.
Their friendship dated
back to the 1940s.
But Washington, when he decided to
run for the mayor position in 1982,
he decided that he needed obviously
a crew of people who would help him.
And everybody around him said,
well, if you're going to do this
and you need somebody to
help you craft your message
to write the speeches and make
sure that you're on track,
Richard Durham is the man.
And so Richard, almost every morning
on the campaign trail, would follow,
would go with Harold Washington as
they made their way around the city.
And, of course, he wrote his
acceptance speech the night before
the actual election
because he was confident
that Harold Washington
was going to win.
And he did, with 51
percent of the vote.
So as a result of that,
everyone thought that, okay,
Richard Durham is now going to move
into Harold Washington's
administration
and probably do something
with the press.
But he decided he wanted
to do some other things.
And unfortunately, a
year later, he was gone.
He died of a heart attack.
But the thing is, one
of the things that kind
of [inaudible] line
forward to Durham is
that you could use the media,
and you could use your
words, as weapons.
Weapons against injustice.
Weapons against inequality.
And that the way you
do that should vary,
based on whatever that medium is.
So if you're writing for the
ear, it may be one thing.
You can use drama, and drama
and comedy can draw people in.
You can do it for print,
whether it's newspapers or books,
and you can do it on television,
the visual and the audio.
And I think that the
thing with Durham is
that he was a real dedicated
and accomplished wordsmith,
but he also really was the
epitome of using your words
for a positive cause or
a positive social change
for your justice and equality.
So, thank you.
[ Applause ]
So is time for?
>> Yes, time for questions.
Yes.
>> Okay, time for questions.
Any questions?
Yes, ma'am?
>> How was he received at NBC?
I was kind of surprised that they
even went along with his idea
to have a multiracial
cast on the show
and they supported these
positive images of Black people?
Was that difficult for him
to get the show on the air?
>> So, anyway, you
separate the question?
>> Okay, the question was how was he
received at NBC, and how was he able
to get the show on the air.
Because we're talking about 1948,
for one, he had a track record.
So he wasn't just coming
out of nowhere.
He had worked in radio by that
point for about ten, 12 years.
So he had a track record.
And the other thing was, I was
going to say Irna Phillips.
Oh, lord, is it Irna Phillips?
Yes. No. Okay, let me back up.
The woman who was Judith Waller.
Not Irna Phillips.
Judith Waller was the
director of education
of programs at NBC, at WMAQ.
And she was the one who
actually brought Amos and Andy
to WMAQ and/or suggested that NBC
taking and distributed it nationwide
and it became the top show.
When he approached NBC, and
he actually approached NBC
with the idea, they actually
said, well, this could work.
We don't know how it's going to
work, and we're not even sure
that it will work, but
we'll take a chance.
And it was about taking a chance.
When they saw that the response in
the Black community was phenomenal,
but also the response in
the broader community.
So it wasn't just Black
people listening
to this half-hour show
every Sunday morning at 10.
It was a larger community.
So then they decided, okay, well,
this maybe has some currency.
We'll keep it going.
So that was some of it.
In terms of the multiracial
aspect, Studs Terkel told me.
Now Destination Freedom was recorded
live in the studio every week.
So this was not a prerecorded
kind of thing.
They actually did it live.
And they would show up on
Sunday morning about 7,
go through a rehearsal,
several rehearsals,
and then by 10:00 they
were on the air.
And they said when they first got
there, some of the NBC employees
who were all white would look
at them and say who are these?
What are they doing here?
But then again, it was
about telling stories.
And he found inventive ways.
It was not a cookie
cutter kind of thing
where every story had
the same approach.
Every week there was something
different, and I think they came
to respect and highly regard that.
So, yeah, good question.
Any other questions?
Yes, sir?
>> I was just curious
when you mentioned
about the $250,000
lawsuit against NBC.
You mentioned David and Goliath.
If anybody knows about the
feel of the story, David wins.
What happened in that lawsuit
and how did it affect his career?
>> Good question.
In terms of the outcome,
you've got to read the book.
>> Will you summarize?
[Laughter].
>> Okay, Director Cole
asked me to summarize it.
And that's basically, your question
was, if you know the story of David
and Goliath, David
actually wins in the end.
So what happened with Durham?
>> That particular
[inaudible] lawsuit.
Were they thrown out of court?
>> Yes, okay.
I'm not going to say,
because I think
that you'll find out in the book.
And also in the book, what I
do, is I kind of tease you,
say this happened and
then this happened.
Because it was about a
five-, six-year journey.
It was not, you know, a quick end.
It didn't have a quick end.
But the thing was that, yes,
it did affect his career.
Because think about it.
NBC. You're going to sue a
national broadcast company?
And you're a single individual.
He didn't have a company
or a group behind him.
So he could no longer work in radio.
And the thing was, this
was 1950; 1950, 1951.
So what was the medium was
then becoming the new kid
on the block at that point?
Television.
And he saw taking Destination
Freedom and the dramatizations
from radio to television,
and then really being able
to reach a much, much
broader audience.
Well, again NBC was also
television and radio.
So he couldn't do it.
And he knew that his broadcast
career was either going
to be totally dead or
he'd have to put it
on hold, which is what he did.
So in the '50s he didn't work.
Well, yeah, he didn't work in
radio or television at all,
although I did find some evidence
that he did some freelance work.
But he probably didn't use his name.
So there was no way to really kind
of track exactly what shows he
worked on, other than what he said,
because given his status
he couldn't do it.
Yeah. But in terms of what
happened, yes, it's in the book.
Other questions or thoughts?
Yes, sir?
>> You mentioned a
little bit about his work
with the Illinois Writers Project.
What kind of writing?
He was employed for a
while, a couple years.
>> Yeah. Oh, no, no.
No, it was more than a couple years.
He started at the Illinois
Writers Project.
>> It would have been
the end of '39, probably.
>> It was in '39.
He applied in '38 and he was hired
in '39, and he stayed until 1942ish.
>> Do you know whether he worked on
the Guide Book for Illinois or not?
>> He did not.
He did not.
But what he did was, before he got
into the radio division he worked.
They had him looking at various
aspects of life in Chicago.
And he looked at coverage of
censorship issues in the press,
in newspapers and magazines,
and then he wrote about that.
And he also talked about life on
the south side, which is also what,
by the way, Richard
Wright was a member
of the Illinois Writers Project.
And again here at The
Library of Congress,
it was really just wonderful
to be able to go and sit
with the federal writers
on projects' documents
and to see Richard
Wright's writing from 1940,
1941 about what life was
like on the south side.
So you had these Black
writers, white writers.
And the other thing that was
really kind of phenomenal
about the Writers Project,
which again you can see here
in these archives in the manuscript
division, is that you had men
and women who would go on to be some
major figures in the literary world.
Saul Bellow was a member
of the Writers Project.
Of course, Ana Vontomps,
Richard Wright, Margaret Walker,
Nelson Aldrin, Studs Terkel.
So you had these men and
women at various points
in their career working on
documenting life in Illinois,
in Chicago in particular, and then
using that as a stepping stone
for other ways that they would then
take their writing in the future.
But, yeah, so before he got
into the radio division,
he worked on various
kinds of things.
And he was one of Ana
Vontomp's writers who looked
at the Negro press in Chicago.
So he did a chapter in that
study, which was never published
but it does exist downstairs.
The other thing though, is that
once we got into the radio division,
that was it, and he stayed in that
division the whole time he was
with the Writers Project.
Yes, sir?
>> [Inaudible] politics, or
in terms of finding employment
in the early '50s, that
he would be accused
of being a Communist [inaudible].
>> Yes, he was, and he was.
So he was accused and he was.
He joined the Communist party
sometime in the late '30s.
He was really impressed with the
way that the Communist party stood
up for human rights, looked
at issues around housing
and restrictive covenants, and
employment discrimination and all.
So he was, as a young man, and
we're talking about him being
like 21, 22 at this point.
He really got involved.
But as he kind of went
through the party,
he didn't like by the time we get
into the '40s, the
World War II years.
He didn't like the way that the
Communist party saw the response
to what was still happening
in America.
The whole idea of that
in the Black community,
there was this double V campaign.
Victory abroad, victory at
home, end of discrimination.
End of, you know, fascism
and Nazism.
So the fact that for
his vantage point,
the Communist party just said,
well, you know we got to concentrate
on getting rid of, you know, the
injustice overseas in Europe.
And he didn't feel that there
was the kind of same fervor
by that point here
in the United States.
So he left the Communist
party at some point,
but his leftist sensibilities
were always there.
And I couldn't find evidence
that he was ever blacklisted,
but his friends were.
Langston Hughes was accused of
being, you know, in the party,
and several of his other friends.
I think that what happened was
both his audaciousness of suing,
you know, NBC, and his leftist
sensibilities forced him
to do some things that again
he didn't get credit for.
So he worked in television as early
as the mid 1950s, maybe even late,
but he didn't get credit
for it until the '60s
when he worked on the
PBS series, yeah.
>> Time for one more question.
Well, yes, please.
One more.
>> Did you say that we can
listened to the series online?
>> Yes. Yes.
Again in my book, but
before you get it,
if you Google Destination
Freedom there is an archive.
There's an online audio archive.
And about 40 of the 90 plus
shows in the series are
on there including the Lena Horne,
the Denmark Vesey,
and several others.
Jackie Robinson.
Yeah, the Jackie Robinson's
story's there, too.
So, yeah.
>> Okay, well, thank you very much.
Join me in thanking Sonja.
[ Applause ]
You really did a wonderful job
of explaining the period
as well as Mr. Durham.
I'm assuming this is the
first biography of him.
>> Yes.
>> Well, good for you and good for
The Library of Congress for helping
to support it with
those collections.
I know a little bit about the
WPA Writers Project archive
and the manuscript division.
And back in 1991, we actually
had a symposium about all
of the WPA materials, the multimedia
materials throughout the library.
And the manuscript
division participated,
but it was the Writers Project
that really brought
part of this together.
But the radio side is new to me.
That you use those archives, I
think, is really another reason
to have these resources be
made more widely available.
I had one question in
my mind, not for you.
And that is that The
Library of Congress,
when Archibald McCleesh [phonetic]
was librarian between 1939 and 1944,
he helped bring the WPA collections
to the library at the time
when those projects
folded, when Congress got
after the theater project and
suddenly everything collapsed.
But McCleesh got money for The
Library of Congress Radio Project
that only lasted two years.
But I just wonder, since he had
the WPA connection, I mean he knew
about it, and the fact that maybe he
picked up on the radio part of this,
and I would be wonderful
to know whether McCleesh
ever knew Richard Durham.
I wouldn't know either.
At any rate, we're about
to have the book signing.
Sonja will sign books over here.
They're for sale at a
10 percent discount,
The Library of Congress
staff discount.
So please buy a copy
and get it signed,
and enjoy continuing
our conversation.
Let's have a final round of
applause for Sonja Williams.
[ Applause ]
>> This has been a presentation
of The Library of Congress.
Visit us at loc.gov.
