Black Leaders on Leadership

Conversations with Julian Bond

P. Leffler

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781137342515
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Social History
• Index: History

Drawing on a wealth of oral interviews, Conversations on Black Leadership uses the lives of prominent African Americans to trace the contours of Black leadership in America. Included here are fascinating accounts from a wide variety of figures such as John Lewis, Clarence Thomas, Eleanor Holmes Norton, Angela Davis, Amiri Baraka, and many more.

C H A P T E R 1

Defining Self: Oral History, Storytelling, and Leadership

Se wo were fi na wosankofa a yenkyi—

It is not wrong to go back for that which you have forgotten

[Akan proverb on the search for self and communal knowledge—on how the past illuminates the present]

When Robert Franklin was a young teenager, his beloved Bishop Ford at St. Paul’s Church gave him an unusual role. He asked him to take over as the Sunday school teacher for 13 unruly boys who had been disrupting their classes. Ford rounded up the boys, took them to an isolated part of the church, and put Franklin in charge. It was there that he discovered the power of stories:

“All right, Brother Franklin, you’re now in charge of these young men and you will have your own class, and I don’t want to hear any more about problems and disruptions from you guys.” So there I was, no curriculum, no experience, and sort of with what they all regarded as the most problematic and at-risk kids in the church. So we started slowly and I’m not quite sure where it occurred to me to allow these guys to tell their stories. So part of it was an introduction ritual. And it went on for so long we couldn’t get to all the guys that first hour, hour and fifteen minutes, whatever we had, so the next Sunday we came back and we continued. “All right, you tell us your story. What school do you go to? Neighborhood you live in?”

And one of the things that struck me as we were doing this, these guys had never had that opportunity to even for just sort of five-minute platforms to say, “This is who I am, this is where I’m from,” etc. And so later in life I discover the importance of narrative and storytelling for people to feel part of an organization. So we continued and then we expanded that, because each week we’d come back and, you know, we’d read the Biblical passage that the rest of the Sunday School were discussing, and I’d say a few words about it. But then we’d quickly go to their stories, “How has the week been for you?”

These young guys, these guys are twelve, thirteen years old, are sharing stories about being roughed up by police, about being recruited to gangs, about seeing their mothers brutalized by boyfriends. I thought, “Gee whiz, this is way over my head.” But I realized it was important to allow these guys to talk through some of this stuff. And what I began to see was these guys who were kind of the “bad boys” in the church and in the neighborhood would listen to each other and were anxious to sort of get in and to have their time. And they were really very candid about some of the things that they were struggling with.¹

Robert Franklin

http://blackleadership.virginia.edu/01

Franklin understands the power of storytelling to build community, heal lingering wounds, and understand individuals better. He also chooses a particular story to share about how he began to build his own leadership skills. In the telling of his chosen story, he demonstrates his capacity for empathy, awareness of black youth challenges, commitment to church-based interventions, and evolving leadership strategies. This single story about stories imparts multilayered meanings.

The stories people choose to tell about themselves are constructed on multiple levels. They are first and foremost stories of individual memories and meanings. We are products of intergenerational cultures that have geographic, ethnic, racial, linguistic, and ancestral roots. We also live in specific moments in time, regularly forging connections between the present, past, and future. And we inhabit particular spaces, either voluntarily or involuntarily, which form our reality of possibilities.² The stories we remember and the stories we choose to tell shape our personal consciousness. They also influence how others see us. Our stories impact our leadership potential.

Personal stories, then, have larger meanings. They can be especially helpful in placing grand narratives and national mythologies in context. For those who have been left out of the historical record, they can put more voices in play, illustrating the complex mosaic of how societies function. Telling one’s personal story can also be therapeutic for those who feel marginalized and overlooked. Autobiographical reflections are historiographical acts, and help to create a collective consciousness and purpose.³

Narratives also function as moral tales. It is through such tales that people place themselves as moral beings within communities. Often memories are faulty, and details of specific historical occurrences can be flawed. But the stories that people tell about themselves and others in the present are the bases for the social construction of virtue. This is how people create moral communities and place themselves as moral beings within.⁴

For African Americans, the oral tradition is deeply embedded in culture.

When no other forms of resistance were possible and when enslaved African Americans were forbidden to learn how to write, they passed on their personal stories to the next generations verbally. In so doing, they were following venerable African traditions of oral autobiography.⁵ Slavery unknowingly kept this communication system alive. Many language mechanisms evolved to express and conceal ideas at the same time, rich with irony and nuance.⁶

In West Africa, the griot was the person charged with narrating both his own and his community’s autobiographies, thereby serving as “the memory of mankind.”⁷ Often, his oral chronicles stretched back hundreds or thousands of years, keeping alive cultural knowledge and tribal identity. For traditional African societies, this was often the only means to record survival struggles. In narrating both individual and communal stories for future generations, the griot served as a witness to history. Some scholars even argue that African and African American autobiographers build upon this griot tradition specifically establishing connections between themselves and their communities, rather than focusing on their individual story.⁸ Joanne Braxton sees this as especially prevalent with black women autobiographers, writing that “like the blues singer, the autobiographer incorporates communal values into the performance of the autobiographical act, sometimes rising to function as the ‘point of consciousness’ of her people.”⁹

In antebellum and postbellum America, oral transmission of culture and values remained a powerful means to create continuity between generations and resist the master narrative.¹⁰ Rhetoric and public speaking, whether in churches or communal organizations, was a form of public dialogue. Through such dialogue, African Americans yearned for freedom and equality; they exposed the failure to adhere to American and Judeo-Christian ideals. Through such dialogue, they exhorted others to live up to their own highest ideals. In the process, they instilled black pride.¹¹

The black leaders in this study participate in a rich oral autobiographical tradition. In narrating their personal stories, they too serve as witnesses to history. We learn about their neighborhoods, communities, and regions. They speak for themselves; they speak for their communities of origin; they speak about racial realities in America today; and they speak about future possibilities. Narratives become linked to future goals as part of a wider human discourse about culture and values. They operate both as arsenals and as battlegrounds for building authentic and vibrant communities.¹² Hearing their voices—incorporating at times passion, anger, reflection, sadness, and hope—not only connects these individuals to the oratorical traditions of black America, but also deepens our understanding of their individual and shared experiences.

Many interviewees have also written their life stories, available as published autobiographies. When accessible, these too are part of this larger study of black leadership. Sharing in the tradition of Maya Angelou, Malcolm X, and Zora Neale Hurston—among many others—their autobiographies hold a mirror to the experience of being black in America.

The “will to write” and by extension the will to speak out was often the will to challenge the supremacist power structure. The “shaping of a black self in words” has a long history in America as a means to bear witness to a collective race history.¹³ Through their writings, black leaders link themselves to a rich African American intellectual tradition that often challenges America’s perception of itself.¹⁴ Through their insights into their interior lives—both its ordinariness and its extraordinariness—we come to appreciate shared cultural challenges and sensibilities. The autobiographical methodology, either oral or written, addresses both what is unique about “blackness” in America and what is shared in common with whites.

For African Americans, coming to terms with one’s own personal history is often a way to counter the historical degradation of racism.¹⁵ Talking or writing about one’s self inevitably constructs a “dialectic between what you wish to become and what society has determined you are.”¹⁶ Within African American culture, such storytelling has also been the means to break down the barriers between the “I” and the “you.” The “self” is always part of the “people.”¹⁷

There are pitfalls of oral history—its potential for partial truths, the dangers of recast stories, the need to compensate for trauma or pain too great to share, and/or the possibility of self-aggrandizement.¹⁸ Living histories are not always accurate accounts. Individuals remember events selectively. We hold on to specific moments, forget others, and process incidents and experiences in ways unique to our personalities and needs. Some remember names and dates in exquisite detail; others recall conversations with mentors or adversaries. How the interviewer asks the questions invariably influences the nature of the responses. The relationship between interviewer and interviewee is also a factor.

Nonetheless, memory is a highly significant component of self-identity. Much can be learned from what people choose to reveal, by what they remember, and by how they reconstruct the narratives of their lives. These stories are critically important for understanding how leaders emerge and how people build successful lives. They are also fundamental for comprehending the black experience in America.

The Stories Revealed

Through the voices of black leaders we receive the unique and powerful gift of personal narrative. Their individual stories intersect with some of the biggest and most difficult questions facing the African American community and American society as a whole today. Their personal stories allow us to learn not just what is important to them, but provide insight into how they think about these moments in their lives. Understanding why and how is often more valuable than learning about who and when. Through the former, we develop insight into attitudes, cultural assumptions, social values, and personal opinions that account for why things happen as they do.¹⁹ These stories bear witness to the collective experiences of black Americans. They establish a link between language, memory, history, and the self.²⁰

Listening to individuals talk about their remembered pasts creates an intimate and vibrant opening into their lives. You can hear Carol Moseley Braun’s laugh, observe Robert Franklin’s calming demeanor, catch the dry tone of Earl Graves’s wit, listen to the enthusiasm of Elaine Jones, take note of Amiri Baraka’s anger, and reflect on the silences and inflections as the interview subjects relate the ups and downs of their paths to leadership. To listen directly to these powerful people is to share their life experiences, and perhaps also to begin to internalize the lessons offered. The analyses within this chapter and the chapters that follow have been informed by an ability to listen for intensity, intonation, passion, and reflection, as well as sadness, hope, and joy divulged through this conversational mode.

Taken as a whole, the interviews are more than individual stories about how leaders emerge and continue to hold on to leadership despite setbacks. These collective interviews reveal larger truths about the transmission of a cultural history and cultural memory. Through their conversational oral testimonies, three related patterns emerge that help us to see the value of the oral approach.

First, interviewees demonstrate how the personal, cultural, and national are intertwined. Public and personal space become integrated. In this process, they reveal themselves in very human terms. They transition from public representatives of a particular office or positi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• INTRODUCTION Black Leadership: A Collective Biography
• CHAPTER 1 Defining Self: Oral history, Storytelling, and Leadership
• CHAPTER 2 Families: Extended and Fictive Kin, Racial Socialization, Diligence
• CHAPTER 3 Education: Caring Communities
• CHAPTER 4 Networks: Role Models, Mentors, Organizations
• CHAPTER 5 Law and Social Change: Catalyst for Leadership
• CHAPTER 6 The Civil Rights Movement: Grassroots Leadership— Living “in struggle”
• CHAPTER 7 Leadership Lessons
• Appendix A: Interview Questions
• Appendix B: Glossary
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index