Study Guide Contents Director of Community Engagement & Education Joann Yarrow (315) 443-8603

Total Page:16

File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb

Study Guide Contents Director of Community Engagement & Education Joann Yarrow (315) 443-8603 Study Guide Contents Director of Community Engagement & Education Joann Yarrow (315) 443-8603 3.) Production Information Associate Director of Education 4.) Letter from Community Engagement and Education Team Kate Laissle (315) 442-7755 5.) Educational Outreach at Syracuse Stage 6.) Synopsis Group Sales & Student Matinees Tracey White 7.) Meet the Playwright (315) 443-9844 8.) Meet the Director 9.) James Baldwin Box Office (315) 443-3275 11.) Evolution of LaGuardia Airport 12.) Harlem, 1940s To Donate To Our Education Programs: 13.) Paris, 1940s Wendy Rhodes Director of Development 14.) Baldwin and the Civil Rights Movement 315-443-3931 15.) People to Know [email protected] 16.) Baldwin’s Work and Speeches Research and text by J.R. Pierce 17.) Questions for Discussion Designed by Kate Laissle 18.) Elements of Drama 19.) Elements of Design 20.) Sources 2 | SYRACUSE STAGE EDUCATION Dear Educator, The best way of learning is learning while you’re having fun. Live theatre provides the opportunity for us to connect with more than just our own story, it allows us to find ourselves in other people’s lives and grow beyond our own boundaries. While times are different, we still are excited to share with you new theatrical pieces through pre-recorded means. We’re the only species on the planet who makes stories. It is the stories that we leave behind that define us. Giving students the power to watch stories and create their own is part of our lasting impact on the world. And the stories we choose to hear and learn from now are even more vital. Stories bring us together, even when we must stay apart. Stories are our connection to the world and each other. We invite you and your students to engage with the stories we tell as a start- ing point for you and them to create their own. Sincerely, Joann Yarrow and Kate Laissle, Community Engagement and Education Team 2020/2021 EDUCATIONAL OUTREACH SPONSORS Syracuse Stage is committed to providing students with rich theatre experiences that explore and examine what it is to be human. Research shows that children who participate in or are exposed to the arts show higher academic achievement, stronger self-esteem, and improved ability to plan and work toward a future goal. Many students in our community have their first taste of live theatre through Syracuse Stage’s outreach programs. Last season more than 15,500 students from across New York State attended or participated in the Bank of America Children’s Tour, the Young Playwrights Festival, Backstory, Young Adult Council, and/or our Student Matinee Program. We gratefully acknowledge the corporations and foundations who support our commitment to in-depth arts education for our community. SYRACUSE STAGE EDUCATION | 3 Educational Outreach at Syracuse Stage Syracuse Stage is committed to providing students with rich theatre experiences that connect to and reveal what it is to be human. Education Advocacy Board YAC: Young Adult Council The Education Advocacy Board is a group of teachers THE YOUNG ADULT COUNCIL (YAC) at Syracuse Stage from the Central New York region who meet four times a seeks to give teens a voice in the programming designed year with Syracuse Stage to share their ideas and con- for them while exploring how theatre impacts their lives. cerns about current arts education issues. Members work The program focuses on peer led discussion and events in with Education staff at Syracuse Stage to help tailor pro- addition to advocating for theatre and arts participation to gramming to best fit the educators and students served. fellow students. The Syracuse Stage YAC is a group of high This past year topics discussed have included creating school students from the Central New York area that meets more useful study guides, exchanging views on future monthly to create and implement pre-show events that will programming, working towards more effectively engaging help inspire the next generation of theatregoers. YAC mem- young people in the arts, as well as discussing the influ- bers can also take advantage of opportunities to learn from ence of the Common Core on arts education. professional theatre artists at Syracuse Stage and through workshops, internships, and shadow programs. 4 | SYRACUSE STAGE EDUCATION Educational Outreach at Syracuse Stage Children’s Tour Backstory Each fall, the Bank of America Children’s Tour brings high-energy, Each winter, the Backstory program brings history to life as pro- interactive, and culturally diverse performances to elementary school fessional actors portray historical figures in classrooms and other audiences. Each performance is fully staged with scenery, costumes, venues. Previous presentations have included historical figures and sound. This year you will be able to experience the performance such as Anne Frank; Ace, a Tuskegee Airman; and Annie Easley, a as a pre-recorded production. Performances include a talkback with human computer for NASA. the actors and our helpful study guide for further classroom explora- tion. Pre- or post-show sessions with our talented teaching artists can be arranged upon request. Virtual Syracuse Stage Education Classes and Workshops Young Playwrights Festival Our program features engaging content for theatre-lovers of all ages. Each spring, Syracuse Stage invites Central New York high school Delve deep into the craft through private classes, group acting cours- students to write original ten-minute plays and other performance es, live virtual classroom experiences, and master classes on a variety pieces for entry in our annual Young Playwrights Festival contest. of subjects. Please note that due to COVID-19, all of our programming Our panel of theatrical and literary professionals evaluates each is virtual. New class workshops for all ages available here: student’s play. Semifinalists are invited to a writing workshop at https://syracusestage.coursestorm.com Syracuse Stage where their plays will be read and critiqued. Finalists will see their plays performed as staged reading by Syracuse University Department of Drama students at the annual Young Playwrights Festival. The festival is free and open to the public. Summer Youth Theatre Experience Our very successful 2020 season was presented as a virtual four Come and play with professional teaching artists of Syracuse Stage night experience on our social media platforms. Having the as we dive into the magical world of creativity and performance. This opporunity to showcase our top 16 virtually helped reach a much year we completed a wonderful 2-week summer virtual theatre larger audience in a fun, new, and safe capacity. program with 32 students, ages 11-14, from 4 different states. SYRACUSE STAGE EDUCATION | 5 Citizen James Meet a 24-yearl-old James Baldwin at LaGuar- dia Airport. Young James is an unknown aspir- ing “Negro” writer whose first novel has yet to be published. He awaits his flight, having just left his family with the news of his decision to flee America for refuge in Paris. He speaks no French. He has a one-way ticket and $40 in his pocket. Witness James Baldwin as he decides he must do something to save himself from the vio- lent reality of racist America in 1948, a deci- sion that sets him on the path to becoming a brilliant, powerful, and prophetic voice of the Civil Rights era and beyond. Photograph by Richard Avedon 6 | SYRACUSE STAGE EDUCATION Meet the Playwright Kyle Bass Kyle Bass is the author of Possessing Harriet, which received its world premiere at Syracuse Stage, was subsequently produced at Franklin Stage Company, and will be produced next year at the East Lynn Theater Company in New Jersey. His new play salt/city/blues will have its world premiere in Syracuse Stage’s 21/22 season. Script consultant on Thoughts of a Colored Man, Kyle is a two-time recipient of the New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship (for fiction in 1998 and playwriting in 2010), a finalist for the Princess Grace Playwriting Award, and Pushcart Prize nominee. His other full-length plays include Tender Rain, Baldwin vs. Buckley: The Faith of Our Fa- thers, Bleecker Street, and Separated, a piece of documentary theatre about the student military veterans at Syracuse University, which was presented at Syracuse Stage and at the Paley Center in New York, directed by Robert Hupp. Kyle is the co-author (with Ping Chong) of Cry for Peace: Voices from the Congo, which had its world premiere at Syracuse Stage and was subsequently produced at La MaMa Experimental Theatre in New York, and the libretto for an opera based on the life and music of legendary folk singer and guitarist Libba Cotten, commissioned by the Society for New Music. As dramaturg, Kyle worked with acclaimed visual artist Carrie Mae Weems on her the- atre piece Grace Notes: Reflections for Now, which had its world premiere at the 2016 Spoleto Festival USA in Charleston, South Carolina, subsequently produced at Yale Rep and the Kennedy Center. As a screenwriter, Kyle is the co-author of the original screenplay for the film Day of Days (Broad Green Pictures, 2017), which stars award- winning veteran actor Tom Skerritt. His plays and other writings have appeared in the journals Callaloo, Folio, and Stone Canoe, among others, and in the essay anthol- ogy Alchemy of the Word: Writers Talk about Writing. Kyle has taught in the Colgate Writers Conference, has been guest lecturer in playwriting at Hobart & William Smith Colleges, was faculty in the M.F.A. Creative Writing program at Goddard College from 2006 to 2018, and from 2005 to 2018 he taught playwriting in Syracuse University’s Department of Drama and theatre courses in the Department of African American Merritt Brenna by photograph Studies, and was the 2019/20 Susan P.
Recommended publications
  • James Baldwin As a Writer of Short Fiction: an Evaluation
    JAMES BALDWIN AS A WRITER OF SHORT FICTION: AN EVALUATION dayton G. Holloway A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate School of Bowling Green State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY December 1975 618208 ii Abstract Well known as a brilliant essayist and gifted novelist, James Baldwin has received little critical attention as short story writer. This dissertation analyzes his short fiction, concentrating on character, theme and technique, with some attention to biographical parallels. The first three chapters establish a background for the analysis and criticism sections. Chapter 1 provides a biographi­ cal sketch and places each story in relation to Baldwin's novels, plays and essays. Chapter 2 summarizes the author's theory of fiction and presents his image of the creative writer. Chapter 3 surveys critical opinions to determine Baldwin's reputation as an artist. The survey concludes that the author is a superior essayist, but is uneven as a creator of imaginative literature. Critics, in general, have not judged Baldwin's fiction by his own aesthetic criteria. The next three chapters provide a close thematic analysis of Baldwin's short stories. Chapter 4 discusses "The Rockpile," "The Outing," "Roy's Wound," and "The Death of the Prophet," a Bi 1 dungsroman about the tension and ambivalence between a black minister-father and his sons. In contrast, Chapter 5 treats the theme of affection between white fathers and sons and their ambivalence toward social outcasts—the white homosexual and black demonstrator—in "The Man Child" and "Going to Meet the Man." Chapter 6 explores the theme of escape from the black community and the conseauences of estrangement and identity crises in "Previous Condition," "Sonny's Blues," "Come Out the Wilderness" and "This Morning, This Evening, So Soon." The last chapter attempts to apply Baldwin's aesthetic principles to his short fiction.
    [Show full text]
  • ANTA Theater and the Proposed Designation of the Related Landmark Site (Item No
    Landmarks Preservation Commission August 6, 1985; Designation List 182 l.P-1309 ANTA THFATER (originally Guild Theater, noN Virginia Theater), 243-259 West 52nd Street, Manhattan. Built 1924-25; architects, Crane & Franzheim. Landmark Site: Borough of Manhattan Tax Map Block 1024, Lot 7. On June 14 and 15, 1982, the Landmarks Preservation Commission held a public hearing on the proposed designation as a Landmark of the ANTA Theater and the proposed designation of the related Landmark Site (Item No. 5). The hearing was continued to October 19, 1982. Both hearings had been duly advertised in accordance with the provisions of law. Eighty-three witnesses spoke in favor of designation. Two witnesses spoke in opposition to designation. The owner, with his representatives, appeared at the hearing, and indicated that he had not formulated an opinion regarding designation. The Commission has received many letters and other expressions of support in favor of this designation. DESCRIPTION AND ANALYSIS The ANTA Theater survives today as one of the historic theaters that symbolize American theater for both New York and the nation. Built in the 1924-25, the ANTA was constructed for the Theater Guild as a subscription playhouse, named the Guild Theater. The fourrling Guild members, including actors, playwrights, designers, attorneys and bankers, formed the Theater Guild to present high quality plays which they believed would be artistically superior to the current offerings of the commercial Broadway houses. More than just an auditorium, however, the Guild Theater was designed to be a theater resource center, with classrooms, studios, and a library. The theater also included the rrost up-to-date staging technology.
    [Show full text]
  • I Am Not Your Negro
    Magnolia Pictures and Amazon Studios Velvet Film, Inc., Velvet Film, Artémis Productions, Close Up Films In coproduction with ARTE France, Independent Television Service (ITVS) with funding provided by Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), RTS Radio Télévision Suisse, RTBF (Télévision belge), Shelter Prod With the support of Centre National du Cinéma et de l’Image Animée, MEDIA Programme of the European Union, Sundance Institute Documentary Film Program, National Black Programming Consortium (NBPC), Cinereach, PROCIREP – Société des Producteurs, ANGOA, Taxshelter.be, ING, Tax Shelter Incentive of the Federal Government of Belgium, Cinéforom, Loterie Romande Presents I AM NOT YOUR NEGRO A film by Raoul Peck From the writings of James Baldwin Cast: Samuel L. Jackson 93 minutes Winner Best Documentary – Los Angeles Film Critics Association Winner Best Writing - IDA Creative Recognition Award Four Festival Audience Awards – Toronto, Hamptons, Philadelphia, Chicago Two IDA Documentary Awards Nominations – Including Best Feature Five Cinema Eye Honors Award Nominations – Including Outstanding Achievement in Nonfiction Feature Filmmaking and Direction Best Documentary Nomination – Film Independent Spirit Awards Best Documentary Nomination – Gotham Awards Distributor Contact: Press Contact NY/Nat’l: Press Contact LA/Nat’l: Arianne Ayers Ryan Werner Rene Ridinger George Nicholis Emilie Spiegel Shelby Kimlick Magnolia Pictures Cinetic Media MPRM Communications (212) 924-6701 phone [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] 49 west 27th street 7th floor new york, ny 10001 tel 212 924 6701 fax 212 924 6742 www.magpictures.com SYNOPSIS In 1979, James Baldwin wrote a letter to his literary agent describing his next project, Remember This House.
    [Show full text]
  • Perched in Potential: Mobility, Liminality, and Blues Aesthetics
    PERCHED IN POTENTIAL: MOBILITY, LIMINALITY, AND BLUES AESTHETICS IN THE WRITINGS OF JAMES BALDWIN by TAREVA LESELLE JOHNSON (Under the Direction of Valerie Babb) ABSTRACT James Baldwin’s mobility and appreciation for African American musical traditions play an integral part in the writer’s crossing of genre and subgenre, his unique style, and his preoccupation with repeated themes. The interplay of music and shifting space in Baldwin’s life and texts create liminal spaces for Baldwin and readers to enter. In these spaces, clearer understandings of the importance of exteriority and interiority, simultaneously, are achieved. This in-betweenness is a place of potential and power. Baldwin’s writing uses this power to chronicle his own growing consciousness and to create, with his collective works, and through them, Baldwininan literary theory that applies to his own works’ use of liminality, the blues and travel. One is able to overhear Baldwin speaking to himself via his texts at multiple points in his nearly forty-year career. INDEX WORDS: James Baldwin, Transatlantic, Liminal, Mobility, Blues, African American, Go Tell It on the Mountain, The Amen Corner, Sonny’s Blues, The Uses of the Blues, Paris, Turkey, Exile PERCHED IN POTENTIAL: MOBILITY, LIMINALITY, AND BLUES AESTHETICS IN THE WRITINGS OF JAMES BALDWIN by TAREVA LESELLE JOHNSON B.A., COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, 2008 A Thesis Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of The University of Georgia in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree MASTER OF ARTS ATHENS, GEORGIA 2012 © 2012 Tareva Leselle Johnson All Rights Reserved PERCHED IN POTENTIAL: MOBILITY, LIMINALITY, AND BLUES AESTHETICS IN THE WRITINGS OF JAMES BALDWIN by TAREVA LESELLE JOHNSON Major Professor: Valerie Babb Committee: Cody Marrs Barbara McCaskill Electronic Version Approved: Maureen Grasso Dean of the Graduate School The University of Georgia May 2012 iv DEDICATION I dedicate this project to my brother, Jerome, and everyone else who makes their way back time and time again.
    [Show full text]
  • The Cambridge Companion to James Baldwin Edited by Michele Elam Frontmatter More Information
    Cambridge University Press 978-1-107-04303-9 - The Cambridge Companion to James Baldwin Edited by Michele Elam Frontmatter More information The Cambridge Companion to James Baldwin This Companion offers fresh insight into the art and politics of James Baldwin, one of the most important writers and provocative cultural critics of the twentieth century. Black, gay, and gifted, he was hailed as a “spokesman for the race,” although he, at times controversially, eschewed titles and classifi cations of all kinds. Thirteen original essays examine his classic novels and nonfi ction as well as his work across lesser-examined domains: poetry, music, theatre, sermon, photo-text, children’s literature, public media, comedy, and artistic collaboration. In doing so, The Cambridge Companion to James Baldwin captures the power and infl uence of his work during the civil rights era as well as his relevance in the “post-race” transnational twenty-fi rst century, when his prescient questioning of the boundaries of race, sex, love, leadership, and country assumes new urgency. Michele Elam is Professor of English, Olivier Nomellini Family University Bass Fellow in Undergraduate Education, and former Director of African and American Studies at Stanford University. She is the author of Race, Work, and Desire in American Literature, 1860–1930 (2003) and The Souls of Mixed Folk: Race, Politics, and Aesthetics in the New Millennium (2011). A complete list of books in the series is at the back of this book. © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org
    [Show full text]
  • James Baldwin's Radicalism and the Evolution of His Thought on Israel
    ESSAY “The Shape of the Wrath to Come”: James Baldwin’s Radicalism and the Evolution of His Thought on Israel Nadia Alahmed Dickinson College Abstract This article traces the evolution of James Baldwin’s discourse on the Arab–Israeli conflict as connected to his own evolution as a Black thinker, activist, and author. It creates a nuanced trajectory of the transformation of Baldwin’s thought on the Arab–Israeli conflict and Black and Jewish relations in the U.S. This trajectory is created through the lens of Baldwin’s relationship with some of the major radical Black movements and organizations of the twentieth century: Malcolm X, Elijah Muhammad and the Nation of Islam, and, finally, the Black Power movement, espe- cially the Black Panther Party. Using Baldwin as an example, the article displays the Arab–Israeli conflict as a terrain Black radicals used to articulate their visions of the nature of Black oppression in the U.S., strategies of resistance, the meaning of Black liberation, and articulations of Black identity. It argues that the study of Baldwin’s transformation from a supporter of the Zionist project of nation-building to an advocate of Palestinian rights and national aspirations reveals much about the ideological transformations of the larger Black liberation movement. Keywords: James Baldwin, Palestine, Israel, Black radicalism, Malcolm X, Elijah Muhammad, Nation of Islam, Black Power I think black people have always felt this about America, and Americans, and have always seen, spinning above the thoughtless American head, the shape of the wrath to come. James Baldwin, No Name in the Street1 As the state of Israel was established in 1948, James Baldwin felt the urge to flee America.
    [Show full text]
  • T.Me/Booksandyou
    The Mighty Wurlitzer The Mighty Wurlitzer HOW THE CIA PLAYED AMERICA Hugh Wilford HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England Copyright © 2008 by Hugh Wilford All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America First Harvard University Press paperback edition, 2009. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Wilford, Hugh, 1965– The mighty wurlitzer : how the CIA played America / Hugh Wilford. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-674-02681-0 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN 978-0-674-03256-9 (pbk.) 1. United States. Central Intelligence Agency. 2. Intelligence service—United States. 3. Cold War. 4. Political culture—United States—History—20th century. 5. Public-private sector cooperation—United States—History—20th century. 6. United States—Politics and government—1945–1989. I. Title. JK468.I6W45 2008 327.1273009Ј045—dc22 2007021587 For Patty Contents List of Illustrations ix Abbreviations xi Introduction 1 1 Innocents’ Clubs: The Origins of the CIA Front 11 2 Secret Army: Émigrés 29 3 AFL-CIA: Labor 51 4 A Deep Sickness in New York: Intellectuals 70 5 The Cultural Cold War: Writers, Artists, Musicians, Filmmakers 99 6 The CIA on Campus: Students 123 7 The Truth Shall Make You Free: Women 149 8 Saving the World: Catholics 167 9 Into Africa: African Americans 197 10 Things Fall Apart: Journalists 225 Conclusion 249 Notes 257 Acknowledgments 319 Index 321 Illustrations Illustrations follow page 148. Allen Dulles Frank Wisner, 1934 A propaganda balloon release by the National Committee for a Free Europe George Meany and Jay Lovestone Sidney Hook, 1960 Arthur Koestler, Irving Brown, and James Burnham, 1950 Still from film adaptation of Orwell’s Animal Farm Henry Kissinger, 1957 U.S.
    [Show full text]
  • 2018 Fall and Winter CONTENTS
    2018 Fall and Winter CONTENTS GENERAL INTEREST AMERICAN STUDIES GAY/LESBIAN/QUEER/BI/ See It Feelingly Savarese 1 Violence Work Seigel 29 TRANS STUDIES Little Man, Little Man Mobile Subjects Aizura 42 Baldwin and Cazac 2 INDIGENOUS AND NATIVE STUDIES Going Stealth Beauchamp 42 Essential Essays Hall 4 Paradoxes of Hawaiian Sovereignty Trans Exploits Chen 43 The Blue Clerk Brand 5 Kauanui 29 Trans*historicities DeVun and Tortorici 43 Comfort Measures Only Campo 6 Unsustainable Empire Saranillio 30 The Queer Commons Gunslinger Dorn 7 Butt and Millner-Larsen 44 Written in Stone Levinson 7 AFRICAN STUDIES Queer about Comics Scott and Fawaz 44 My Butch Career Newton 8 The Fetish Revisited Matory 30 Female Masculinity Halberstam 9 Fugitive Modernities Krug 31 FILM/TV Exile within Exiles Green 9 Making Sex Public, and Other RELIGION The Brazil Reader Green, Langland, Cinematic Fantasies Young 45 An Intimate Rebuke Grillo 31 and Moritz Schwarcz 10 The Apartment Complex Wojcik 45 Passages and Afterworlds Plan Colombia Lindsay-Poland 11 Forde and Hume 32 Is It Still Good to Ya? Christgau 12 LATIN AMERICAN STUDIES Laughing at the Devil Hall 13 Channeling the State Schiller 46 SOUTH ASIAN STUDIES Vexy Thing Perry 14 1968 Mexico Draper 46 Indian Migration and Empire Mongia 32 Jezebel Unhinged Lomax 15 Seeking Rights from the Left Friedman 47 Latinx Lives in Hemsipheric Context Empowered Banet-Weiser 15 ANTHROPOLOGY Windell and Alemán 47 Straight A’s Yano and Akatsuka 16 A World of Many Worlds Racial Melancholia, Racial Dissociation de la Cadena and
    [Show full text]
  • James Baldwin and James Cone: God, Man, and the Redeeming Relationship
    Obsculta Volume 8 Issue 1 Article 3 5-22-2015 James Baldwin and James Cone: God, Man, and the Redeeming Relationship Rea McDonnell S.S.N.D. College of Saint Benedict/Saint John's University Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.csbsju.edu/obsculta Part of the Christianity Commons, Race and Ethnicity Commons, and the Religious Thought, Theology and Philosophy of Religion Commons ISSN: 2472-2596 (print) ISSN: 2472-260X (online) Recommended Citation McDonnell, Rea S.S.N.D.. 2015. James Baldwin and James Cone: God, Man, and the Redeeming Relationship. Obsculta 8, (1) : 13-54. https://digitalcommons.csbsju.edu/obsculta/vol8/iss1/3. This Article is brought to you for free and open access by DigitalCommons@CSB/SJU. It has been accepted for inclusion in Obsculta by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@CSB/SJU. For more information, please contact [email protected]. OBSCVLTA J AMES B ALDWIN AND J AMES C ONE : G OD , M AN , AND THE R EDEEMIN G R ELATIONSHI P Sister Rea McDonnell, S.S.N.D. (1972) Abstract - Pope Francis calls us to live among the wounded and marginalized, letting them heal us and free us. How very cur- rent that makes this article, written as a Master’s thesis in 1972. Apart from anachronisms such as writing about God as “man” (instead of men/women), about redeeming (when I meant sav- ing), what is so apropos is the good news proclaimed by both James Cone and James Baldwin. James Cone wrote ground- breaking books on liberation theology. James Baldwin, as an author, expresses Black theology through his characters.
    [Show full text]
  • The Mighty Wurlitzer: How the CIA Played America
    The Mighty Wurlitzer The Mighty Wurlitzer HOW THE CIA PLAYED AMERICA Hugh Wilford HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England Copyright © 2008 by Hugh Wilford All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America First Harvard University Press paperback edition, 2009. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Wilford, Hugh, 1965– The mighty wurlitzer : how the CIA played America / Hugh Wilford. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-674-02681-0 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN 978-0-674-03256-9 (pbk.) 1. United States. Central Intelligence Agency. 2. Intelligence service—United States. 3. Cold War. 4. Political culture—United States—History—20th century. 5. Public-private sector cooperation—United States—History—20th century. 6. United States—Politics and government—1945–1989. I. Title. JK468.I6W45 2008 327.1273009Ј045—dc22 2007021587 For Patty Contents List of Illustrations ix Abbreviations xi Introduction 1 1 Innocents’ Clubs: The Origins of the CIA Front 11 2 Secret Army: Émigrés 29 3 AFL-CIA: Labor 51 4 A Deep Sickness in New York: Intellectuals 70 5 The Cultural Cold War: Writers, Artists, Musicians, Filmmakers 99 6 The CIA on Campus: Students 123 7 The Truth Shall Make You Free: Women 149 8 Saving the World: Catholics 167 9 Into Africa: African Americans 197 10 Things Fall Apart: Journalists 225 Conclusion 249 Notes 257 Acknowledgments 319 Index 321 Illustrations Illustrations follow page 148. Allen Dulles Frank Wisner, 1934 A propaganda balloon release by the National Committee for a Free Europe George Meany and Jay Lovestone Sidney Hook, 1960 Arthur Koestler, Irving Brown, and James Burnham, 1950 Still from film adaptation of Orwell’s Animal Farm Henry Kissinger, 1957 U.S.
    [Show full text]
  • “He Gave Me the Words”: an Interview with Raoul Peck
    INTERVIEW “He Gave Me the Words”: An Interview with Raoul Peck Leah Mirakhor Yale University Abstract I Am Not Your Negro (2016) takes its direction from the notes for a book enti- tled “Remember this House” that James Baldwin left unfinished, a book about his three friends—Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King Jr.— their murders, and their intertwining legacies. The film examines the prophetic shadow Baldwin’s work casts on twentieth- and twenty-first-century American politics and culture. Peck compiles archival material from Baldwin’s interviews on The Dick Cavett Show, his 1965 Cambridge lecture, and a series of banal images indexing the American dream. Juxtaposed against this mythology is footage of Dorothy Counts walking to school, the assassination of black leaders and activists, KKK rallies, and the different formations of the contemporary carceral state. Our conversation examines Peck’s role as a filmmaker and his relationship with the Baldwin estate. Additionally, we discussed a series of aesthetic choices he fought to include in the film’s final cut, directing Samuel L. Jackson as the voice for the film, the similarities and shifts he wanted to document in American culture since the 1960s, and some of the criticism he has received for not emphasizing more Baldwin’s sexuality. Keywords: James Baldwin, Gloria Baldwin Karefa-Smart, race, film, America, The Devil Finds Work, “Remember this House,” violence, sexuality, Patrice Lumumba, film I Am Not Your Negro (2016) is a work that has been a lifetime in the making for Raoul Peck. Before he met James Baldwin’s younger sister, Gloria Baldwin Karefa-Smart, a decade ago at her home in Washington D.C.
    [Show full text]
  • Beauford Delaney & James Baldwin
    BEAUFORD DELANEY & JAMES BALDWIN: THROUGH THE UNUSUAL DOOR selected timeline Beauford Delaney 1940 Meets Delaney for the first time 1961 While traveling by boat across 1970 Buys a home at Saint-Paul-de- James Baldwin at the artist’s 181 Greene Street studio. the Mediterranean to Greece, jumps Vence, in the South of France. 1941 Spends Christmas with his fam- overboard in a suicide attempt and is 1971 Travels to London to appear with 1901 Born Knoxville, Tennessee, ily in Knoxville. Appears in Delaney’s rescued by a fisherman. Friends pay poet/activist Nikki Giovanni on the on December 30 to Delia Johnson art for the first time in Dark Rapture for his return to Paris and hospitaliza- television program Soul. At his new Delaney and the Reverend John Samuel (James Baldwin). tion. Second essay collection, Nobody home, he is visited frequently by an Delaney, 815 East Vine Avenue. Knows My Name, published by Dial. 1942 Graduates from DeWitt Clinton increasingly unstable Delaney, who 1919 Father dies on April 30. Rioting Makes first trip to Istanbul, where he High School. sees Baldwin’s home as a refuge. breaks out in August after an African finishes writing his third novel, Another 1972 Publishes No Name in the Street, American man, Maurice Franklin Mays, 1943 Stepfather David Baldwin dies. Country. his fourth book of non-fiction, and is accused of murdering a white woman 1944 Appears in Delaney’s pastel 1962 Moves to 53 Rue Vercingetorix dedicates it to Delaney. in what would later become known as Portrait of James Baldwin. in Montparnasse.
    [Show full text]