New Directions

Volume 6 | Issue 3 Article 4

4-1-1979 Julian Mayfield: Eyewitness to Power Harriet Jackson Scarupa

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Recommended Citation Scarupa, Harriet Jackson (1979) "Julian Mayfield: Eyewitness to Power," New Directions: Vol. 6: Iss. 3, Article 4. Available at: http://dh.howard.edu/newdirections/vol6/iss3/4

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12 Eyewitness of Power heaval over school integration. "Black Black," a short story included in his ~­ Julian By Harriet Jackson Scarupa thology, Ten Times Black (Bantam, 197£ Julian Mayfield, novelist, playwright, jour­ portrays a bittersweet love affair betwee­ nalist, one-time actor, often-times political a Black American singer and an Africc:­ Mayfield activist, has a confession to make: "I have politician in an unnamed African coun • got, I am certain, a sort of power fixation. one whose strong president is surroundoc I am fascinated now and have been for by envious, scheming politicians. (" many years by Black people who wield bitious big fish in small puddles are eCJS1 power-to any extent. " to recognize: There is a certain kind - He is making this confession as he sits glaze over their eyes, a way of pushi ~ in his office on the Howard University out their chests, an unconscious strut -­ campus where he is writer-in-residence their walk.") with the English Department for the 1978- Similarly, his play, "Fount of a Nation. 79 academic year. His presence fills the which was performed in Baltimore, Mc.. tiny room , seems to suffuse it with "a last winter by the Arena Players , focuses liquid, whole blackness" as he wrote of on an Nkrumah-like figure besieged b his character James Lee Cooley in his conflicting personalities and philosophies novel, The Hit. as he struggles to build some measure o"" Mayfield has been in a unique position independence for his country. to view Black people in power. From Mayfield is currently at work on a mem­ 1961-66, he worked in the office of Pres i­ oi r about Black Americans who lived in dent of Ghana, founding Ghana between 1960-66, a mix of fact and and editing The African Review, writing fiction he has titled, Tales of the Lido. (The some of Nkrumah's speeches, accompa­ Lido was a popular nightclub in Accra.) nying him to key international confer­ Next, he wants to write about some of the ences, seNing as chief documentalist for people he has known. "I had the very good the 1962 Accra Assembly, an historic in­ fortune of having known personally most ternational peace conference. " It was a of my heroes," he explains, "W.E.B. Du­ joy to be around a person or group of Bois, , Malcolm X, Nkrumah people who could make decisions over . I lived around the corner from W.E.B. their own lives -which we [Bl ack Ameri­ DuBois and my first wife was one of his cans] cannot do in this country," he says physicians and I was there when he died. of those days. He was further eyewitness Before going to Ghana, I had been part of to Black people in power from 1971 to Paul Robeson 's 'entourage' [he smiles 1974when he worked in as senior wryly] marching around with him under special political assistant to Prime Min­ the pretext he needed our protection. I ister . was with Malcolm X in Ghana and trav­ This fasc ination with power-cemented eled with him to Egypt.' And although I in Ghana, reinforced in Guyana-has in­ didn't have a very important job in Nkru­ evitably affected his writing. His two early mah 's office, I did have an up-close view novels, The Hit (Vang uard, 1957) and The of him. I felt-and still feel-that his dream Long Night (Vanguard , 1958), both set in of a unified Africa is essential. It was a Harlem , are realistic treatments of work­ dream based on reality and , that is, unless ing-class people victimized by poverty Africa is unified it will still be under the and oppression. They reflect his experi­ heel of the large powers. And I believe­ ences growing up in inner-city Washing­ and here's one of those quotable quotes ton. By his th ird novel , The Grand Parade - 'a strong Africa makes for a strong Afro­ (Vanguard , 1961 ), he is exploring the America and vice versa.'" nuances of power politics as he depicts In his recent works, and the ones he a small border town caught up in an up- plans in the future, then , Mayfield has

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wandered far from the milieu he explored 13 in his first pub I ished writings. "It's not that I don't think there's any worth any longer in writing about the very poorest sections of society," he exp lains. "But I don't think I have anything new to say about them. Frankly, I haven 't read anything that has gone beyond some of Richard Wright's work produced back in the '30s. "For a long time, some writers felt they weren 't being revo lutionary if they wrote about anything other than the working class. But it wouldn't make sense for me not to write about a person like Nkrumah or other people I have known. And they weren 't all poor. I see some beginning writers who come dead out of the middle class and they want to write about the working class-about which they know nothing. Absolutely nothing 1 They'd get lost walking down 14th Street [in Wash­ ington]- if they made it. " "/ believe ... that all writing is political. Or, if it is not, it ought to be." At a recent Writer's Workshop at Howard, which Mayfield leads with Dr. Eugenia W Collier, he gently chided a student after she read a love poem ending with the words, "Oh lawd , lawd , lawd." "You've spelled it 'lawd ,'" he told her as he stroked his grey goatee and glanced at the yellow note pad in his lap, "but you've pro­ nounced it the way an educated middle­ class person would." Later, when an intense young woman read thefirstchapterofan ambitious novel contrasting the apathy of today's students with the activism of those in the '60s, he warned her about injecting "rhetoric" into her prose. "Some of the phraseology you use, " he said, "tends to be more political than literary." This from a man who has been consid­ ered a vigorous-even dogmatic-advo­ cate of the art-as-a-political-tool point of view. A man who stated unequivocally in a 1971 interview: "I be Ii eve . .. that all writing is political. Or, if it is not, it ought http://dh.howard.edu/newdirections/vol6/iss3/4 NEW DIRECTIONS APRIL 1979 2 Scarupa: Julian Mayfield: Eyewitness to Power

14 to be." A man who has been criticized in terms of my mother and father being there, sciousness was fully aroused. He gravi­ some quarters for "sacrificing" his art to being supportive and all that," he says. tated to the theater and considers hims this very dictum. Has he mellowed? lucky to land a Broadway role in the fi rs:: Changed his mind? Gotten conservative "In ... movies, very often the production of "Lost in the Stars. " As ar as he moves through middle age? (He is writer was the person who actor, he was naturally thrown into the 51.) None of that, he insists~ Such abso­ traveled all over the world, company of writers. He met people like lutist statements, he says, reflected their had all the women ...." Langston Hughes, Lorraine Hansberry times. They were made at the close of John 0. Killens and John Henrik Clarke what he perceived as the siege-like dec­ "But we were also poor although I really and almost immediately found himse - ade of the '60s when Martin Luther King didn't think of it then because everybody caught up in what he calls that "furioLIB Jr., Malcolm X and Medgar Evers were as­ I knew was poor. " Early on, he decided he exchange of ideas" that characterized the sassinated, the cites were burning and he wanted to become a writer. He started out Black intellectual left in the '50s. himself carried a gun for self-defense. writing a poem a day to a favorite ele­ Today, he has more time to reflect on his mentary school teacher who encouraged "I'd never before heard Blacks so ideas and refine them. his I iterary efforts and by the time he was deeply and angrily and sometimes vi o­ Basically, though, he still upholds the 12 or 13 had completed a first novel, an lently concerned about the issues of the view that "to some extent all writing re­ imitation of Lillian Smith's Strange Fruit. day and the world and challenging the flects the political view-or lack of po­ At first he saw writing not as a tool to basic ideas of the American governmen' litical view-that a writer has." "But," he change the world or attack social prob­ and its constitution and all that kind o adds, "I am certainly not asking young lems but as a way to achieve success. As thing," he recalls. "You would have had Black writers to dedicate themselves to he describes his romanticized youthful to be a stone not to be affected in some solving the racial problems of America view of the writer's life, he leans back in way about what they were arguing and through their writing. I'm sorry Richard his chair and shakes his head in amuse­ talking about." Wright ever wrote an essay called "Blue­ ment at the boy he once was. "In some of Mayfield, of course, was not a stone. He print for Negro Writers" because I don't these old movies, very often the writer became involved in the Council of African think writers should have a blueprint. It's was the person who traveled al I over the Affairs, founded by DuBois, wrote for too confining. The richest literatures in world, had all the women, had servants Robeson's newspaper, Freedom, became the world are those which have a broad and always seemed to have money," he a member of the Harlem Writer's Work­ base, scope and variety." remembers. "What I never thought of at shop, appeared in a play about the Scotts­ Then he adds a "but" and it's a big the time was that we never saw him writ­ boro boys called "They Shall Not Die." "but." "A Black writer who is sti 11 in prison ing. We always saw him as 'the author of.' When violence-prone white youths at­ -as he is in the United States-whowrites So for all the wrong reasons , I felt I wanted tempted to close down the play by attack­ about things that don't have anything to to be a writer." ing the actors, each evening the audience do with his confinement would seem to Except for Paul Laurence Dunbar, for waited for the actors to change out of their me not to be going anywhere artistically whom his high school was named, May­ costumes and then escorted them out of because he 's writing about things he does field knew nothing of Black writers when the hostile neighborhood. "Now I'm not not know. So I would expect that most he was growing up. But when he was certain if I would like that kind of living Black writers will continue to be in what about 16 he had a job putting labels on today, but it was a hel I of an exciting thing used to be called 'a protest tradition'. But the back of books at the Library of Con­ to be a part of then," he recalls. "I was in here we are in 1979 with an entirely new gress and came across Richard Wright's good health and felt like I could whip any­ set of problems from those that faced Black Boy. The book caused him to look body. And I didn't want to miss anything." Richard Wright and his co-workers in the at the oppression of Blacks in a new way. 30s, so our writing wi II reflect this" "Of course, everyone was aware of how "Not wanting to miss anything" cou ld, mean white people were but we were Actually, it was a work by Richard in fact, be considered a key theme in taught that if we were clean and trust­ Wright, Black Boy, that Mayfield cites as a Mayfield's I ife. In 1960, he became at­ worthy and kind and all that that they'd key influence in the development of his tracted to the ideas the controversial 'see the light,"' he observes. Black Boy own social consciousness. Robert F. Williams was espousing-and caused him to question this view. practicing- in Monroe, N.C. He went to Mayfield grew up in Washington , D. C., Still, it was not until he went to New York Monroe initially as a reporter and found the son of a chauffeur and a domestic City, following a stint in the army and at in the North Carolina activist's philosophy worker. "I had a very happy childhood in Lincoln University, that his social con- a congruence with his own. "I really had

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15 ever agreed and do not agree with the When Nkrumah was overthrown by the at Howard. He is also writing his Ghana passive resistance approach to America's army in 1966, Mayfield was in Spain try­ memoir and scripts for public television. racial problems and I certainly did agree ing to finish a book, but he says the coup These days he lives quietly in a College with the self-defense philosophy which didn't surprise him. "It was as if you 'd Park, Md . apartment with his wife, Joan rul ed Monroe," he explains. The same been watching someone you knew die of Cambridge, a writer from Guyana who is year, he went to with Williams and cancer over a long period of time and working on a book about her country for riters Harold Cruse and lmamu Amiri finally one day he is dead." a New York pub I isher. (He has two sons Baraka [then LeRoi Jones] to personally by his previous marriage, Rafaelito and Mayfield returned to the U.S. in 1968. itness the infancy of the Cuban revolu­ Emiliano.) ··on. He taught at and Cor­ nell University and starred-with Ruby In 1961 , Williams was accused of kid­ Dee- in the film "Up Tight," for which they "Right at this point I don't :-lapping a white couple during a racial helped director write the want any more excitement • areup in Monroe and fled into exile. Be­ cause the FBI assumed Mayfield knew screenplay. In it, Mayfield gave a highly­ in my life . ..." praised performance as an informer who ill iams' whereabouts, Mayfield felt com­ betrays fellow members of a Black mili­ After traveling all over the world, Julian nelled to leave the country. His destina­ Mayfield is back home and teaching at a - n: Ghana. tant organization and atones for his guilt with his life. predominantly-Black university for the Once there, he immediately became Despite the momentary ego boost de­ first time. That, in a sense, is another kind :::aught up in the excitement of building a rived from starring in the fi Im, he felt rest­ of homecoming. "I feel more comfortable strong , independent African nation and less in the U.S. "When you come back here than at any other place I've taught," vorking to create bonds of African unity. from working on the level I worked on in he remarks. "There are so many distin­ ith only a few years of newspaper expe­ Ghana and find yourself just wandering guished people on th is campus. I'm using ·ence behind him, he soon found himself around earning a living and talking to one of Arthur P. Davis' books in one of my ~l ding one of the top journalistic jobs in quite ordinary people like yourself, you classes and he's right down the hall. ...:ihana. "Nkrumah had a very positive atti- start thinking , maybe it's time to move on ," Sterling Brown is within throwing range. de toward Afro-Americans," Mayfield he confesses. "I've never been a leader These are people who are part of living illl:p lains, "and there was a need in the but I'm sure there 's a Iittle ego involved in history, really, so you feel a part of a :x>untry for people with even the limited my wanting to be where I have something community." experience I had." to do with power." But despite all this, one can't help but .Gf've never been a leader but So he went to the South American coun­ wonder if he doesn't find his current life try of Guyana for a job interview and was I'm sure there's a little ego dull compared to his previous experi­ hired first as an adviser to a cabinet min­ ences-toting guns in Monroe, N.C., jetting involved in my wanting to be ister, and then to the Prime Minister. Why off to Egypt to consult on Pan-Africanism where I have something to Guyana? "It seemed to me that the gov­ and acting on Broadway or in Hollywood. do with power." ernment was dedicated to building so­ "No," Mayfield says, with a vigorous shake cialism and it was also the only govern­ of his head. "Right at this point I don'twant Mayfield considers his days in Ghana ment in the world controlled by a Black any more excitement in my Iife ... because e best days of his life. "Ain 't no question minority," he answers. "I felt helping to that's one of the reasons it's been so long =

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