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- [00:08]
A
This is all of it. I'm Alison Stewart live from the WNYC studios in soho. Thank you for sharing part of your day with us. I'm really grateful that you're here. On today's show, we'll get some tips for handling professional rejection and how to use it as an opportunity. We'll also hear from the original cast of Broadway's Operation Mincemeat, who exit their roles later this month. And we'll check out a Harlem Gallery show featuring the work of two close friends. That's all coming up, but let's get things started with a dive into the archives of Howard University. A new podcast mines the archives of Howard University to tell the stories of the people and movements that shaped history. It's titled on the Yard through photographs, letters, rare books, film, an everyday object. Housed at Howard University's Moreland Spingarn Research center, the center, the show explores the lives of historical figures, their ideas, political and social movements. For example, a recent episode examines what Gordon Park's work reveals about the 20th century black experience. Another episode reflects on the tenure of Howard University's first black president, Mordecai Johnson, as well as an episode on the legacy of student protests. On the Yard is out now. You can listen wherever you get your podcast. Joining us to discuss is Benjamin Taulton, host of on the Yard and executive director of the Moreland Spingarn Research Center. Ben, welcome to all of it.
- [01:51]
B
Thank you, Allison.
- [01:52]
A
And also joining us is Dana Williams, professor of English literature and dean of the Howard University Graduate School, who is featured on the episode of on the Yard podcast about protest. Remember her from her appearance on this show for her excellent book, Tony at Random. Hey, Dana.
- [02:08]
C
Hey, Allison. Nice to be here.
- [02:09]
A
It's nice to talk to you again. So, Ben, the Moreland Spingard Research center at Howard University hosts one of the largest archives in black history in the United States. When you think about the research center, what are some of the most noteworthy items you have just to give people an example?
- [02:27]
B
Well, first of all, let me just say I'm a huge fan of your show. I'm a member of wnyc, Proud New Yorker, so this is an honor. My wife is smiling. Yes, I'm a Howard alum, spent a lot of time as an undergrad at Moreland Spingarn. That setup you did for the podcast was beautiful, by the way. Hopefully we could just crib it and just use it always.
- [02:48]
C
It's yours.
- [02:49]
B
That was absolutely perfect. So the Moreland Spingarn Research center for New Yorkers. We could say is sort of like the Schomburg. That's our sister institution, but at a university. So we're the university's archive. We say we're the largest privately owned repository of books of feminine artifacts on the global black experience, we're proud to say, in the world. So, so many gems. It's hard to pick one or two, but we could say Frederick Douglass was one of the longest serving members of our board of trustees. Iconic abolitionist writer, essays most photographed person of the 19th century. We have some of his papers downstairs. I can go. I'm sitting in my office on campus right now. I can go two stories down and have my hands on handwritten notes from Frederick Douglass. We also have collections from Paul Robeson, Lucy Diggs, Slow, the first African American woman dean of any university in the country, and also organizations like Jack and Jill of America, AKA Sorority Incorporated, Shout Out, Congressional Black Caucus, Trans Africa. You see, I do this for a living, so I can go on and on and on. We have countless gems downstairs in our archive, and I'm very excited to bring some of these treasures to the public through the podcast.
- [03:58]
A
Yeah. Why did you decide this was the right time for the podcast to start?
- [04:05]
B
Good question. I don't have a perfect answer. All I'll say is I'm a historian, and Dan and I have been speaking about this for four years. I'm a historian. I could write a book on Howard's history. Very few people get their history from books written by people like me. And so Dana and I always talk about how do we get Howard's history, Howard's culture, to our students first and foremost, and then to the wider public. So we have a beautiful exhibition on Gordon Parks photographs in our museum. We have the podcast. We have an international Black Writers Festival. We have public speakers who come to campus. So we want to work through a multiplicity of ways and venues to get our materials to the public. So the podcast, I thought students first, but Howard as a window to the global black experience.
- [04:48]
A
Yeah. Dana asks.
- [04:49]
B
The podcasts are popular these days, so let's go for it.
- [04:52]
A
Yeah. Dana, let me ask you, why did you think now was a good time to start a podcast?
- [04:58]
C
It was so important, for all of the reasons that Ben mentions. But top of mind for me, too, is we're at a time when opportunities to access our history are shrinking instead of growing. Unless you make them publicly accessible, everyone can't come to Howard's campus, to Moreland Spingar, even as the campus is open. There are people who work in our public service unit who cringe at the fact that the campus is that accessible. But we are excited about it as academics. We want people to come in, but everybody can't come in. But everybody can hear about what's there and learn a lot. My own experience with it, for instance, as I was working on the Tony at Random book, when I went to look for Toni Morrison at Howard from 49 to 53, discovering the James Butcher papers and seeing pictures of her on the stage as an actress, like, literally blew my mind. Had I not been in Moreland Spingarn seeing that, I would not have known, had not an archivist pointed me in that direction. So the podcast gives us the opportunity. Opportunity, really, to say, here are all of the gems that are there and anything that piques your interest. Take a listen and see what you can find.
- [06:03]
A
So, Ben, explain to people why it's called on the Yard.
- [06:08]
B
So on the Yard is a play on. Most universities have a quad, and we have an iconic quad. We call it the Yard. It's right in the middle of campus. The buildings around it were designed by African American architects Albert Cassel, Hilliard Robinson, and it's the central meeting place for students. It's where homecoming takes place, is when sororities and fraternities have their probates when they come out in the spring. This is where they come out and show themselves to the public. So it really is the center of campus. So the idea of on the Yard, we used to say that when we were undergrad, I'm going to meet you on the Yard. Where are you going to be? I'll be on the Yard. Where is it taking place? On the Yard. So the idea is to bring the Yard, which is the center of our campus, to the world.
- [06:48]
A
Dana, what does the Yard mean to you?
- [06:51]
C
All of those things. It's just I'm almost getting goosebumps as I think about it. Like, it's this sacred place. And I'm remembering, too, the year that Kamala Harris was the commencement speaker. Beautiful address, like, incredibly remarkable. Then Eleanor Traylor gives this address where she talks about the Yard and the place goes wild. And it's like this funny moment where Kamala Harris is like, who is this woman? And how did she upstage me? So I thought about that most immediately because all of the things that the Yard means to people, it's the convening space, as Ben said, the sororities and fraternities there on Fridays at noon or Wednesdays, if it's like pretty Wednesday. The Diaspora tree where the Caribbean students are. It's really a global place. And it reminds me too, of that notion that we see in Kwame Ture's Stokely Speaks, where he says that, Howard, you got everything in its opposite in the African world in one place. And on the yard, you see everything and it's opposite. You got students who could play, pay everybody's tuition. You got students who don't know where they're going to make it through the rest of the week. And that's. The yard is a place where all of those folks come together and we get to, like, have ciphers and like, hash out ideas. So you got the swing from conservative to the most radical working out ideas, really the interest of the global black community.
- [08:13]
B
I get goosebumps too. I think about every major figure in America. Well, that's an exaggeration. That's an exaggeration. Many major figures in American history have spoken on the yard, whether literally on the yard. Muhammad Ali when he's protesting Vietnam. Rankin Chapel, which is on the yard. Every Martin Luther King, Kwame Nkrumah, first president of Ghana graduation takes place on the yard if it's not raining. So it's an intersection into all facets of American and global history.
- [08:44]
A
We're talking about a new podcast that delves into the archives of one of America's most prominent black research institutions. Howard University historian and host Benjamin Taulton and Howard University Graduate School dean Dana Williams join us to talk about the history of the institution and their new podcast on the Yard. Ben, when Howard started in 1867, what kind of institution was it?
- [09:08]
B
So Howard was founded by the congregational church in D.C. in 1867, and many what we call HBCUs were founded in this era. So this is post enslavement. Some were founded earlier than that, but many found it. The question of what do we do with the formerly enslaved? And being in Howard, being in Washington, D.C. makes it unique because we're in the capital city and we also are designated by law to exist by congressional act to exist. So one of two universities with Gallaudet to have that designation. And we're founded. And to shorthand, we could say we're founded out of racism because, you know, this is before the 14th Amendment, which allows for birthright citizenship and due process under the law. So what do we do with the formerly enslaved? And so we don't want them in our schools, white schools. So we have to create alternative schools for them. So HBCUs really grow out of white races, to be frank, white. And really, Howard was founded to educate the formerly enslaved to Educate and be nurses, ministers, doctors to lawyers to the formerly enslaved. But as we always say, Howard was founded to educate black people, but not to educate black people about black people. And that's why our episode on Power of Protest, we speak about the second founding of Howard University in the 1960s. When the students are deciding. This is the type of students we want to be, this type of citizenship we want to have, and this type of university we want to have.
- [10:35]
A
It's interesting, Howard did not have its first black president until 1926. Dana. It was Mordecai Wyatt Johnson. What were his priorities as a leader?
- [10:46]
C
Really, a lot of the things that are still emblematic of the place now, excellence across multiple academic disciplines. Wanted to continue the range. So Howard is one of the few in the city, found it as a university to begin with, not as a college, because they wanted the range of different disciplinary specificities. A med school, a dental school, a law school, a theology school, and then liberal arts education. I think the kind of classical training that Mordecai Johnson had received himself is the expectation for the training that he wanted for students at Howard. Academic excellence, yes, but then operational excellence as well. I think there was also an impulse to ensure that Howard could serve the needs of the communities that it served and was in community with. And then I think we also see the first turn towards the global under Mordecai Wyatt accident.
- [11:43]
A
That's very interesting. Let's listen to a clip from the podcast. This is Dr. Krista Johnson, professor and director of Howard center for African Studies, describing Johnson's influence on the university's curriculum. This is from on the Yard.
- [11:57]
C
I mean, I think the history of the institution. It's important to recognize and understand that the founders of Howard University, they weren't progressive in the sense that they believed that black people had any history worth teaching or that this was gonna be a place where we could educate blacks about their own culture. So that wasn't kind of part of the initial agenda. And it was really only until Mordecai Johnson came in as president that you built up the kind of a critical mass of faculty. Also discipline, certainly in the social sciences, where the black experience was put on the agenda as an intellectual kind of site of study, but also a source of knowledge for the black community and for academia broadly.
- [12:43]
A
So, Ben, where did Mordecai Johnson look for talent for faculty members?
- [12:50]
B
One of the issues that we had in second. Well, he's mid 20th century into the 1960s, is that many African American intellectuals didn't have anywhere else they can go. Except for black universities, they couldn't teach at white universities. And so Howard being the most well endowed private being in Washington D.C. we benefited from the location to attract these talents on here. Not to say that there weren't already very talented people here, but he almost tripled the size of the university, quadrupled the size of the budget really, as Dana's saying, made it an international, purposely made it an international institution. He was very deliberate about Howard being the center for the Study of Gandhi's Nonviolence. And he's going to build that up through hiring Benjamin Mays to be dean of the School of Religion and Howard Thurman to be Dean of Rank and Java. These are all folks who are global in mindset, very Pan Africanist, but also have a validation of what Gandhi's doing in India as a model for what African Americans are going to do in the 1960s. In fact, talking about on the yard before Mordecai. Well, no, this is during Mordecai. The first lunch counter sit ins were launched from the yard. This is a group of women, mostly freshmen, members of the NAACP chapter here on campus marched down to U Street in the neighborhood of Shaw, which is predominantly African American, but the lunch counters were still segregated. And this is in 1943, so 17 years ahead of Greensboro. And this is under Mordecai. They're taking him seriously. He's saying we're the center for the Study of Gandhi's Nonviolence. Well, let's put that into action. But then we run into tension because we get federal appropriations. So you have these young ladies on U Street protesting segregation, screaming equality. And then members of Congress don't like that too much. That becomes a problem for Johnson, but he handles it very sad. He doesn't cut it, he doesn't shut it down. But he just gives advice that, you know, let's protest, but let's not put the university's funding in jeopardy. So it's a complicated space that he had to occupy. Yeah.
- [14:48]
A
Let's talk about your episode on protest, which was excellent and it's interesting because we have a call on line one. And James went to Howard in the 60s. James, do you want to start us off telling us about your experience at Howard? James, are you there? Are you there? No, James is not there. James will be there in a second. And James is going to go, hey, James. We're having, we're having difficulty with our board.
- [15:21]
B
I would love to hear from James if he was on campus in the 60s.
- [15:24]
A
Yeah, he said he, he was there during the time of the demonstrations. And he remembered how it was handled much better than the Columbia demonstrations at the time. Dana? Yeah. Would you, Dana or Ben, would you explain what happened during the 1960s demonstrations?
- [15:40]
B
You take that, Dana.
- [15:42]
C
Well, it was a battle for the soul of the university in some ways, where the students were reflecting what was happening in the country, where you saw what some people tried to depict as these stark divisions. I would argue that they never were as stark as sncc, the young folks and the elders. I think everyone was clear that you had to have people on both sides. It was a good cop, bad cop situation. But the students insisted they wanted a black university, which meant that they had to study topics that were of relevance to what was happening in the world. As African countries are declaring their independence and throwing off imperialism, what does it look like to continue to be in a colonialist model of education on paper or formally? And to be clear, it was always happening in both places on campus. One of the things I've done with some things from Moreland Spingar, for instance, with the med school, as I think about medical humanities work, is how we foreshadowed some of the disciplinary so called innovations because we didn't have a choice. Textbooks for medicine would talk about what happens when your skin turns pink. Well, black people's skin doesn't turn pink. So in the space, or at least some shades right of us don't. But what we would see happening is we would follow the traditional textbook. But then we also had like the external thing that was happening. Part of what the students were asking for in that protest is we don't want that thing to be on the periphery. We want to be the center of the space. I also think about it in the context of the way Du Bois described it, where you're the center of the world, that doesn't mean anybody else is on the periphery. It just means your home space should be valued and completely privileged. And faculty were supportive, administrators were supportive. But you also had to figure out how to do the thing that Ben mentioned before. How do you navigate that in a world that's on fire and expecting you to follow the line, to toe the line? And students said, we don't want to toe the line. And what administrators and faculty were able to do is to say, this is your university. At the end of the day, you have to make it. We have to make it what we want it to be a little bit different from the Columbia moment in the sense that I think you had administrators who were either publicly or Secretly supporting and ensuring that the moral conscious stayed at the center. There was never an equivocation around, no, we will not be this. It was, how do we negotiate being that thing that we want?
- [18:07]
A
Actually got Ben back. Not Ben back, we got James back.
- [18:10]
C
James?
- [18:11]
A
James, are you there?
- [18:13]
D
Yes, I am. All right, so I went to Howard in 67. I started in 67. And we had a campus takeover by the students in 1968 at the same time, if not before, Columbia University. And one of the triggers for taking over, besides the black historical perspective, was that there was mandatory ROTC Reserve Officer Training Corps for all black males on campus. And we didn't mind having the option of participating in military training. But to make it mandatory right at the time of the Vietnam War was a trigger for many of the young men who may not have been very articulate with regard to black history in itself. And what I liked about our takeover, I worked on the switchboard, was that as opposed to Columbia, where there was a decimation of the campus itself, we strove to keep the campus unharmed. We didn't break windows. We tried to upkeep the buildings that we had taken over. And it was very enlightening in that environment in Washington D.C. taking over the university for those legitimate reasons.
- [19:16]
A
Thank you so much for calling in, James. Yeah, Ben, what's your response?
- [19:19]
B
Just a little context. Thank you, James, for that. But for context, we're in the James neighborhood year. So this is the first. This is the second black president we're talking about. Mordecai Johnson, first Black president in 60. He leaves and James Nabert comes in as the second Black president. But what James points to, and I've heard different iterations of this, is just how well organized these protests were. People had roles, they had meetings, they had study groups and they had trainings. But also makes me think of, and also the idea that so much respect for the campus, not to break windows, not to do graffiti on buildings. Right when they put up a sign on the building, black University, they were declaring, we're renaming this Howard University Black University. It was a declarative statement. But also the different forms that these protests took, it wasn't just 67, 68. Dana could speak better on this than I can. But going back, first of all, Howard, as I alluded to it, Pauli Murray Co. Howard has a long traditional protest on the yard, but we think about the two year campaign to get a homecoming queen that was allowed to wear her unpermed hair. Robin Gregory in. What was that? 66. Dana and that was a two year campaign. I believe by law students. You think just wearing your natural God given hair was a form of protest. Also some of the classes that professors were offering, we're the first university to consistently teach African history as a class. Leo Hansberry, the professor who taught this class, got pushback from the university, but the students demanded it. Students were enrolling in it. So the protest that Lister said, so it's a 30 year process. It's taken all sorts of forms. It's not just taking over buildings. It is that, it's teaching classes. It's. It's wearing the clothes that you want to wear and the hair that God gave you out of your head.
- [21:05]
A
Has working on this podcast challenged your thinking about anything? In thinking about the school and thinking about the curriculum, have you had to like, stop and think like, wait a minute, let me rethink that, Dana?
- [21:19]
C
I'll say yes. It has changed me in two ways. So as an administrator, I struggle to really walk that line. Fundamentally, I'm probably more radical than even my parents would be excited about, would have been excited about trying to find ways to support the students, but also being mindful of what our limitations are. A big part of it for me in terms of the change is I move towards transparency and as much information gathering and say, let's get the best folks in the room and let's find a solution. That's my disposition. The other part of it that changed me is I am challenging myself to stop the dodges. And here's what I mean. One of those classes that came out of the 67, 68 protests was an intro to humanities course where we read the great books. And the great books did not include any books outside of traditional Western culture. So they reorient the syllabus to say, we're going to make sure that the great books also include other books from other traditions. And to be clear, it's never just black. It was like we have to have native cultures, we want to have Asian cultures, we want to have African cultures included. So the move, for me, the thing that has challenged me is to gain some content mastery over those things as well, so that I don't have to do dodges like, well, we can't read everything we can and we can't know everything we can. We can at the very least do something other than gesture towards something like, oh, well, we borrow this from South Asia, South Asian cultures, or we see reflections of this story from beginning to end. I'm challenging myself now to read more of that literature. So I can be a better teacher so that students aren't just saying or hearing me talk rhetorically, but they understand what it means to have that information in their arsenal.
- [23:08]
A
How has it changed you, Ben?
- [23:10]
B
It's really made me appreciate. I'm a historian already, but it really made me appreciate Howard's history. But I've grown frustrated with coming up with ways to get that out there. I wish history was part of the fabric of this university. It's not. But in these conversations, more and more administrators and faculty and even students. I was just meeting with a group of students just before we went on, are really trying to grapple with this history and bring it more to the fore. So just raising that awareness of that you think about what happens to an institution if it's not aware of its path, even an individual. So just grappling with the different ways in which we can get this information out there and remind them how important it is. These two students were in here and Dana, you would love this because they want to celebrate 68. They did not know I was coming on this show today because I have interns and they have to do an end of year project. And their project is going to be a black university. And to what extent are we living the legacy of 68? How successful have we been and how much farther do we have to go?
- [24:10]
A
And.
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B
And I said, that's wonderful.
- [24:12]
C
Nice.
- [24:12]
B
So even in my frustrations, the students are everything.
- [24:15]
C
Our job is done.
- [24:17]
B
Our job is done for the moment.
- [24:19]
C
For the moment. That's another thing, Allison, that I think is a part of the commitment to faculty at Howard is jokingly, we will say, our job is done and it's for the day. That's it. Because we can't just hand this off to students and say, we did our part, good luck. No, we're in community with them. We're walking, trying to improve the world with them.
- [24:38]
A
Well, is it Howard or Jason?
- [24:40]
B
I'm sorry.
- [24:40]
A
No, go ahead.
- [24:41]
B
I'm sorry. But just again, how do we bring this history to foreign and show its importance? Just walking around this campus. People come to D.C. and they'll do a black D.C. tour, but Howard's not on it. And Howard, I would say, along with the Frederick Douglass House, is at the center of not just black history, but American history. So our goal is not just with this podcast and these exhibits that we do in the museum is to really mark out the campus as historic spaces. The buildings, the iconic yard, and the individuals that were there. I mean, five of the divine nine sororities and fraternities were founded at Howard University. So we need to celebrate that history not just on the days of the founding, but 365 days a year.
- [25:21]
A
I was saying as a Howard adjacent person, I'm so excited for this podcast. Congratulations on it. My guests have been Benjamin Tilton and Dean Dana Williams. Thanks for joining us.
- [25:34]
B
Thanks, Allan.
- [25:35]
C
That's Allison. And you're Howard family. You're not Howard adjacent. Come on through.
- [25:39]
B
Come on, Bison.
- [25:40]
C
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B
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C
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