DN19

Saxon as Benefactor & Negroes of National Caliber

[not dated, probably after 1945]  

After Saxon promoted me to the head of the Dillard University Unit of the Writers' Project, he began to use me more and more as a sort of clearinghouse for all of his Negro contacts. In this way I and the members of my staff were brought into contact with Negroes of national caliber. Novelists, writers, poets, artists who came into the orbit of this kindly man could be named by the dozens.

It first began even before I was head when I was named Louisiana editor of all Negro material which was then being sent to Sterling A. Brown, who was then in Washington working on a composite study of the Negro in American life. Later came Roscoe Lewis, then whipping into shape the laudable book, THE NEGRO IN VIRGINIA. Richard Wright having lifted himself by his own bootstraps from Illinois Writers' project to front rank authorship came down and paid us a visit in our office at the University.

And there was J. Mason Brewer, warmly praised and vouched for by J. Frank Dobie, the Texan, who, like Saxon, had exploited his region's book about Texas Negro folklore. And there was Jacob Lawrence and his wife, Gwendolyn, both artists, with whom I became fast friends--Jake with his brown, striped mail-order suit and a portfolio of 11 pages of his pictures in FORTUNE. Or Sterling Brown, swinging his Phi Betta Kappa "jive key" from the end of a pocket chain, who because of his "white man's English" and collegiate personality, unconsciously and unintentionally gave birth to Saxon's posthumous book JOE GILMORE AND HIS FRIENDS.

Or there was the day when Saxon called me into town to meet a young woman who was inquiring into the possibility of getting on our unit. The young woman and I sat together in Saxon's outer office. I was tired at the end of the day. The young woman slightly ill-at-ease. I "took her in," unobserved, from head to feet. Her body was somewhat on the petite side, mouth somewhat large for her face and full-lipped. Saxon finally came to the door of his office and called me in and a few minutes later, called her in. The young woman was Margaret Walker, later winner of the Yale University Prize for Younger Poets.

There were many other prominent Negroes I met either directly or indirectly through Saxon. Owen Dodson, poet and playwright; Arna Bontemps, poet, novelist and writer, and many others.

As usual, Saxon did not confine himself to segregation. He seemed to be firmly of the belief that the more white people of good will met worthy Negroes, just so much would a small stone of prejudice be cast aside from the road of life. This belief he reiterated again and again. When, at last, under my supervision, he became pleased with the work of the Dillard Unit was doing, he became an open press-agent for all us working on the project and for me particularly.  

In speeches at colleges and universities, after telling of his work that his main project was doing he would take time out to praise the vast amount of research material that his Negro unit was piling up. Whites coming to New Orleans in search of Negro material or those on a traveling junket were frequently switched to us out at Dillard or else sent to me at my home.

One Saxon-sent visitor I still remember vividly, a fine-looking handsome young Englishman named Cohn. Particularly because he seemed to have enjoyed so much the tea I made for him and made such pleasing comments about the Kraft cheese I served with jam and brown bread that I prevailed upon him to stick a small carton of it into his pockets along with an Indian arrow-head as souvenir.

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