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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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