Ethelene Whitmire, "The Remarkable Life of Reed Peggram" (Viking, 2026)

Summary

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Podcast Summary:

New Books Network – Ethelene Whitmire on "The Remarkable Life of Reed Peggram"
Host: Regan Gillum
Guest: Dr. Ethelene Whitmire
Episode Date: March 15, 2026
Book Discussed: The Remarkable Life of Reed: The Man Who Stared Down World War II in the Name of Love (Viking, 2026)

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Overview

This episode features Dr. Ethelene Whitmire discussing her new book chronicling the extraordinary life of Reed Peggram, a Black American scholar whose journey from humble beginnings in Massachusetts to wartime Europe was shaped by intellectual ambition, love, and resilience. The conversation explores Peggram’s motivations, his experiences abroad—particularly during World War II—his enduring relationship with his grandmother, and the challenges he faced both abroad and upon returning to the United States. Dr. Whitmire also reflects on her research process, her larger project on African Americans in Denmark, and the visual and narrative possibilities of telling such lesser-known histories.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Dr. Whitmire’s Background and Motivations (02:04)

• Whitmire transitioned from Information/LIS studies to African American Studies at University of Wisconsin-Madison.
• She specializes in uncovering “hidden or forgotten figures” in African American history.
• Her interest in Peggram emerged during research on African Americans in Denmark, a seldom-explored topic.

2. Peggram’s Early Life & Family in Dorchester, MA (03:53)

• Raised in a small, tight-knit family guided by matriarch Laura Reed, his grandmother.
• Both his mother and grandmother worked domestic jobs, his grandmother also as a janitor, instilling high aspirations.
• His father’s mental illness post-WWI profoundly affected the family. “His grandmother was like a mother to him.” (05:03)
• His academic excellence was fostered by Laura’s connections and encouragement, leading to Boston Latin School and then Harvard.

3. Harvard Years and Ambitions Abroad (05:33)

• Studied Comparative Literature, especially German and French.
• Despite few Black peers and subtle racism (“They always talked about his race... never without that filter of race” (06:23)), professors respected his talent.
• Cultivated interests in music and poetry; active in cultural clubs.

4. The Drive to Go Abroad (07:08)

• Sought the “perfect gentleman’s” polish, believing living abroad essential.
• Initially denied a place in England once hosts learned of his race; ultimately secured a Rosenwald Fellowship to study in France.
• “He was thrilled and really took advantage of his time there to travel.” (08:12)

5. Peggram’s Letters: A Window into Personality (08:50)

• Letters sent mainly to his grandmother are vivid, humorous, and often introspective.
• He used these letters to share experiences with his grandmother who could not travel.
• “He really did think that he was important, doing important, interesting things… maybe writing a book about his adventures.” (09:15)
• Letters function like diary entries filled with affection and detail.

6. Love and Refusal to Leave Wartime Europe (11:04)

• Met Danish artist Arne Hoffmann in Paris; their romance kept Peggram in Europe despite rising dangers.
• “He couldn’t say explicitly, ‘I’m in love with this man and I don’t want to return’... He came up with other reasons and excuses.” (12:29)
• Friends, Harvard, the Rosenwald Foundation, and his family all tried—unsuccessfully—to bring him home.
• Government and foundation support was strikingly persistent; at times, Peggram was “somewhat rude” in his adamant choice to stay (13:17).

7. Return to the U.S. and Aftermath (16:17)

• Eventually evacuated; postwar life marked by a decline in fortunes.
• “He said he was at a mental institution for four years after World War II was over. He never returned to finishing his PhD.”
• Lived with his mother, never regained earlier ambitions—his candid disclosures about mental health were “very shocking” for the time (17:42).
• Mental health correspondences show surprising compassion for the era.

8. Research Journey & Methodology (18:59)

• Whitmire pieced together Peggram’s story from numerous archives (Harvard, Fisk, Yale, Danish National Archives), despite no consolidated collection.
• “It was really like putting together all these puzzle pieces... there was no one particular archive.” (20:06)
• Enjoys the “detective work” of biography.

9. Why Biography? Hidden Histories and New Perspectives (21:16)

• Whitmire is drawn to “unknown figures,” narrative gaps in African American history.
• Aims to show nuanced portraits, as with Booker T. Washington’s humor when visiting Denmark.
• Biography allows unearthing of “a whole different side of these people.”

10. The Role of Visuals and Exhibitions (23:48)

• Committed to visual storytelling—exhibitions of art and photographs augment her research.
• Hopes Peggram’s story could translate into a film or TV series; “Lots of people... think that I’m making up the story... No, it’s a true story.” (25:21)
• Even personally visited places Peggram lived to see the spaces through his eyes.

11. Future Plans (27:09)

• Next book will expand on African Americans in Denmark, blending little-known and famous figures’ stories.
• Will highlight figures outside the Paris-centric narrative, like Billie Holiday and other artists with Danish connections.
• “I want to talk about African Americans who lived there, died there, started families there, et cetera.” (28:22)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Peggram’s Motivation:
  “I believe Reed thought that in order to be the perfect gentleman... he needed that experience of living abroad.” (07:10, Dr. Whitmire)

• On the Letters:
  "You can really get a sense of his personality through the letters, his sense of humor... he really did think that he was important, doing important, interesting things." (08:54, Dr. Whitmire)

• On Refusing to Leave Europe:
  “He couldn’t say explicitly, ‘I’m in love with this man and I don’t want to return to the United States.’ So he came up with all these other reasons and excuses.” (12:29, Dr. Whitmire)

• On Mental Health Stigma:
  "Even to this day, people are not willing to talk about mental health too much. And for him to do that back in the late 40s, 1950 time period, I thought was very, very shocking." (17:42, Dr. Whitmire)

• On Research:
  “It was a labor of love and exciting. I had to come up with timelines to figure out where everything fit in... but I think most of the records that I got were from the Italian records from Harvard, and also from Fisk University.” (20:06, Dr. Whitmire)

• On Visual Storytelling:
  "I just want to be able to tell a story a different way... I hope eventually Reed Pegum's story might be turned into a movie or a TV show. I have a film agent and lots of people... keep saying this sounds like a movie." (24:20, Dr. Whitmire)

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Important Segments (with Timestamps)

• Dr. Whitmire’s Entry into African American Studies: 02:04
• Peggram’s Family Background: 03:53
• Harvard Experience & Racial Context: 05:33
• Desire to Travel Abroad: 07:08
• Nature and Importance of Peggram’s Letters: 08:50
• Romance and Wartime Europe: 11:04
• Return and Life Post-WWII: 16:25
• Research Process and Archives: 18:59
• The Joys and Challenges of Biography: 21:16
• Visual Dimensions and Future Adaptations: 23:48
• Forthcoming Book on African Americans in Denmark: 27:09

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Conclusion

Dr. Ethelene Whitmire’s meticulous research and storytelling bring to light a remarkable, little-known story of love, intellect, and tenacity against great odds—through Reed Peggram, a figure at the intersection of African American history, LGBTQ history, and global wartime experience. This episode provides a compelling preview of the book and highlights the continued importance of uncovering such hidden narratives, both on the page and beyond.

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Transcript

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Welcome to the New Books Network.

[Regan Gillum]

Hello, everyone, and welcome to the New Books Network. I'm your host, Regan Gillum, and today I'm talking to Dr. Etheline Whitmire, who is the author of the book the Remarkable Life of Reed, the man who Stared down World War II in the name of Love, published by Viking. Welcome to the podcast, Dr. Whitmire.

[Dr. Etheline Whitmire]

Thank you so much for having me. I'm very excited to be here.

[Regan Gillum]

Yeah, thank you for coming. I'm really excited to talk about your new book. And just as a question to. To get us started, can you tell us about yourself and how you came to write this book, the Remarkable Life of Reed Pegram?

[Dr. Etheline Whitmire]

Yes. Well, I've been an academic for about 25, 26 years, and I started in the information school or library and information at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. And I started getting into doing research about African American figures. And I switched over to the Department of African American Studies in the spring of 2020, so about five and a half, six years. And I have started writing books about African American figures, often hidden figures or Forgotten people or unknown figures. So that's how I got interested in African American history. And you wanted to know more about how I got into this particular.

[Regan Gillum]

Yeah.

[Dr. Etheline Whitmire]

Yes, about reading. Well, he's. That I did about African Americans in Denmark while I was writing my first book about Regina Anderson Andrews, Harlem Renaissance Librarian. I just went to Denmark on a whim for two months and started hearing stories about African Americans who went to denmark in the 20th century and decided that's what I wanted to write about. And then when I had to figure out how do I know who actually was there? I searched the African American newspapers that are digitized, and I found these fascinating, amazing headlines about a Harvard grad who was stuck in Italy during World War II. And I wanted to know more about him, and I just started doing a lot of research.

[Regan Gillum]

Yeah, well, thank you so much. The book was just. Was fascinating. And so I assume the person you found was Reed Pegram. And so can you start by telling us about his early life and his family? Like, what was his family like in Dorchester, Massachusetts?

[Dr. Etheline Whitmire]

Reed came from a very small family. The matriarch is his grandmother, Laura Reed, who came up from Virginia in the late 1800s by herself after she was widowed very young with a daughter who was a toddler. Reed's mother, Mary. And eventually Mary married Reed's father, Harvey Pegram. And so it was just the four of them until Harvey went to World War I to serve when Reid was about 5 years old. And he came back 100% mentally disabled and spent the rest of his life in a mental institution. So in the early years, it was just Reed, his mother and grandmother. His mother eventually remarried and moved to New Jersey and had two. Two other sons and retried to live with his stepfather for a while and then went back to live with his grandmother. So he even said his grandmother was like a mother to him. And she mainly raised him from around the time he was a preteen until he graduated and went to college. And so both his mother and grandmother worked as domestic workers. His grandmother also worked as a janitor. And. And so the family came from a very modest background, but Laura Reed had great aspirations for her grandson. She worked in the homes of some very influential people in Dorchester. Actually, the home that she cleaned is now the Dorchester Historical Society. And I think through that, she saw possibilities for her grandson and encouraged him to apply for Boston Latin School and then eventually to Harvard.

[Regan Gillum]

And so, as you said, Reid eventually went to Harvard University after attending Boston Latin School. And what did he study at Harvard? What was his Time, like there.

[Dr. Etheline Whitmire]

Yeah, he was there. He started in 1931, and he studied comparative literature. He continued studying languages that he started studying at the Boston Latin School, particularly German and French. And we know less about his time at Harvard because we know much about his life through letters he wrote. But because he. He's from Boston, he didn't write letters home. He lived at home for most of the time he was at Harvard. So a lot of what we know about Reed is filtered through how other people saw him at the university and his records at Harvard, even though there were very few black people there, his professors were very impressed by him. They thought he was very intellectual. He eventually graduated Phi Beta Kappa. But in all their letters of recommendation, besides talking about his intellect, they always talked about his race to, you know, like, he's a credit to the race, things like that. So they never looked at him without that filter of race, but they just seemed very impressed by him. He was interested in music and poetry, and he joined clubs like that while he was at Harvard. He. Yeah, so he was interested in those extracurricular things that had to do with culture.

[Regan Gillum]

And it seemed like Reed wanted to go a. Go abroad, like, really badly. And so why did he want to go abroad? And how did he finally manage to study abroad?

[Dr. Etheline Whitmire]

I believe Reed thought that in order to be the perfect gentleman, the educated gentleman that he wanted to become, that he needed that experience of living abroad. And at first, when he was about to graduate from his undergraduate degree at Harvard, he applied to go to England, and his dean wrote a really nice letter for him. And. And Reed wrote a very nice letter back thanking him from the letter. And then the Deeds wrote a second letter where he let the people know in England that Reid was a black American. And even though they said they want to hold it against Reed, he was turned down, though Reid had no idea any of this happened behind his back. So he always wanted to go abroad, but didn't get a chance to do that until he was a doctoral student again back at Harvard. He applied for a Rosenwald Fellowship, which was for African American or black American people. And he was able to go to France to study decadence and 19th century literature, which was the topic of his dissertation at Harvard. And so finally he had the opportunity to go abroad, not to England, but to France. But he was thrilled and really took advantage of his time there to travel.

[Regan Gillum]

Yeah. And it seemed like one of the remarkable things about Reid's life was, of course, his experiences of living abroad and going to Harvard, but also like that, he recorded it, as you said in the letters to his grandmother and to his family, that seems like something that is just very, very uncommon to come across. And the letters, like, they seem like diary entries as well from what I could glean from them. And so what can you tell from the letters about Reid and his personality?

[Dr. Etheline Whitmire]

I loved reading the letters. I loved getting them from his niece who saved the letters and she would send them to me in batches. And you can really get a sense of his personality through the letters, his sense of humor. Even though when he was in war torn Europe, he said it would be interesting to have these experiences. So when he would come back and go to dinner parties, he could say, when I was in Paris during the war. Or even you could also tell how much he really thought about himself. So sometimes he was teasing about his kind of arrogance, but he really did think that he was important, doing important, interesting things. He even talked about maybe writing a book about his adventures. So mainly what I took away from it, you could see a lot about his personality through these letters. Just again his sense of humor and how much fun and joy he was having exploring Europe, at least in the beginning, Pre World War II.

[Regan Gillum]

And it seemed like too they were so descriptive. And I wondered, is it. It seemed like he was trying to like let his grandmother see what, what he was experiencing, maybe knowing that she would not have that experience would do. Would you agree with that or.

[Dr. Etheline Whitmire]

Exactly. I got that impression. The first letters that I got were, were when he went to New York City for the one year when he was working on his doctorate before he went back to Harvard. And he was just explaining things to his grandmother, what life was like in New York City and the various people he encountered. And that's what I thought too. He's clearly trying to share this life, this interesting things that are happening to him with his grandmother who did not have the opportunity to go abroad. And, and he wrote many letters, sometimes several letters per month to his grandmother and then sometimes to his, his mother. But I think 90% of the letters were to his grandmother.

[Regan Gillum]

They were amazing to read. And as World War II began to rev up in Europe, Reid like refused to return home. And it seemed like there was like a concerted effort to bring him back to the United States. Can you talk about this and why he wouldn't leave?

[Dr. Etheline Whitmire]

Yeah. At the end of his first year living in Paris, one of his friends introduced him to a Danish artist, Arne Hoffman, and he basically, he fell in love with Arna. Even so it was just a short time period they were together in Paris before Arne went back to Copenhagen. Reit was enthralled and he actually followed Arne to Copenhagen in August of 39. And then of course, the war started in September of 39 and he was stuck there. Arit remained for seven months along with Arna Hoffman. They were trying to decide what to do. And then they went to Italy, where Reid actually stayed with Arna for five years. Almost the entire European war during World War II. He could have left during. Actually, when Reed arrived in Paris, the United States government was already telling Americans in 1938 to return. But Reed was just so excited to finally have the opportunity to go to France. So he stayed. And then once he fell in love with Erna, he didn't want to leave without him. But once they got to Italy, they found out how almost impossible it was for someone who was not an American to come to United States. And while they waited to get a visa, lots of people tried to get him back. Even Harvard tried to get him back. The Rosenwald Foundation. Initially they said he should have returned at the end of the year, but they weren't really responsible for him. But they did decide to go out of their way. And I was just shocked by looking at the archives and looking at the voluminous records that they had, how much they really tried to help Reed, providing funds for transportation and everything. And Reid refused to go. He couldn't say explicitly, I'm in love with this man and I don't want to return to the United States. So he came up with all these other reasons and excuses. Even his mother and grandmother got frustrated. They contacted the State Department asking them if they could intervene. And even the Italian government wanted to know why was Reid still there even though he had an opportunity to leave? Yeah, I don't think I even covered as much of the letters in the book that I had because it was so repetitive. But so many people tried to help him out. And he was somewhat rude sometimes even to the Rosenwald Foundation. When they offered him money, he said, just give me the money and I'll decide when I return. And it's weird. I could feel the rage coming from then, decades later, almost 80 something years later, because they were just so frustrated and they just didn't understand. But I could tell in at least one letter towards the end how the grandmother knew really what was going on. And she hinted at that, that he was in love.

[Regan Gillum]

Wow.

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[Regan Gillum]

was surprised by the by the back and forth. I just, I was shocked that even with the Rosenwald foundation when he was out of his scholarship money and he was asking them for money still, and they gave it to him.

[Dr. Etheline Whitmire]

And I thought, wow, I like that. He's very bold and. Yeah. And was willing to just, you know, risk it all for. For the love.

[Regan Gillum]

Yeah. And then eventually he was evacuated and he made it back to the United States. And so what was his life like after that?

[Dr. Etheline Whitmire]

Well, it was sad. And it's interesting when you do this kind of research. I knew in the beginning from finding the newspaper articles that there was this man of a great intellect and talent and who was rescued. And then I also knew the end because Harvard gave me his like 25th anniversary class of 1935 entry. And I knew his life had gone downhill, but I didn't know what happened in between. And then you start filling in these pieces. And even eventually I got the class of 35, 5 year or 10 year anniversary and found out that he said he was at a mental institution for four years after World War II was over. And he never returned to finishing his PhD. He never returned to school. He lived with his mother in a two family home in Boston. His brother and his brother's family lived downstairs. And he listened to classical music and things like that. But he never returned to the heights that he started with and what could seem like a really positive trajectory in his life. And so it kind of went downhill.

[Regan Gillum]

Yeah, yeah. He was very candid in those, in those Harvard updates for grads. I thought.

[Dr. Etheline Whitmire]

I thought it was very frank. Even to this day, people are not willing to talk about mental health too much. And for him to do that back in the late 40s, 1950 time period, I thought was very, very shocking. But I was also shocked by some of the letters from the mental health practitioners in terms of how nice they were about Reid and his mother. Though I started to question, did they know he was a black man when they were talking about him. But they assured her that they were taking care of him and that they would keep in touch with her about his treatment and if there were any problems. And I thought that that was very kind and also, again, very shocking at that time period, how good they were in terms of communicating with his mother and also taking care of Reid.

[Regan Gillum]

And so as you were researching the book, it appeared that you then went on your own journey in trying to uncover all the evidence that you could find about his life. And I noticed that you visited archives at ut, Austin, at Fisk, Yale, Harvard, and I'm sure there's more. Can you talk about your research journey? Was there anything particularly challenging or surprising as you were going on this journey to uncover this information?

[Dr. Etheline Whitmire]

Well, what's interesting is a friend who also does biography, she wrote an article about writing about someone who doesn't have an archive, like a dedicated archive, And I realized I don't have that either. But I never felt like it was a detriment to my research. So I didn't physically go to any of the archives that you listed, but contacted all of them to send me information. And. And also I. I did go to. The only archive I actually went to is Danish National Archives, because Reid was part of the project. And I went and got his file physically from there. But I also contacted French archives and Italian archives, and they all sent these things to me. What was interesting was just trying to piece all of this stuff together. I searched a database called Archive Grid, where I found out he also had letters from Ezra Pound and letters to an editor that were at Yale. At first I thought they wouldn't be of interest, but he wrote those from Florence, and he talked personally about his life and not just about these journal articles that he was working on.

[Regan Gillum]

And.

[Dr. Etheline Whitmire]

And so this is just part of what I love. You know, I've always liked mystery as a kid. I liked doing puzzles as a kid. And it's just piecing together stuff from all these disparate archives, including the letters that he had. It was. It was a labor of love and exciting. I had to come up with timelines to figure out where everything fit in. But it was really like putting together all these puzzle pieces, because, again, there was no one particular archive that was available. But I think most of the records that I got were from the Italian records from Harvard, and also from Fisk University when they had the Rosenwald Foundation. There were voluminous amounts of records to go through.

[Regan Gillum]

And so you've written now two books, it seems, that focus on the life of an individual. And as you said previously, like, your previous book is called Regina Anderson Andrews, Harlem Renaissance Librarian. And then, of course, this current book that we're talking about focuses on Reed Pegram. And so is there anything particular that draws you to writing about individual lives or anything particular that you think that they shed light on?

[Dr. Etheline Whitmire]

Well, what's interesting is I'm not trained as a historian. I never took any classes as a historian in college. But I was working on a different project, an ethnography of a library in Los Angeles. I did some background research about services to African Americans and libraries and discovered a little bit of a story about Regina Anderson Andrews. There wasn't much written about her. And then I just took off in a whole new direction in my career, in my life, in terms of wanting to write this book about her, even though I've never been trained to write a book. And I just ended up reading a lot of other biographies, taking courses on creative nonfiction. And besides doing the Regina book, which I just loved and never thought I could find another compelling character like that, I ended up, as I mentioned, going into African American studies and finding this whole story about African Americans in Denmark and then finding Reid's story and wanting to tell their story. I didn't want to talk about people that we've heard about or. Or there's a lot of stuff that's been published about certain people, certain figures. I was really interested in these unusual, unknown figures. And I hope to continue with my next book still about African Americans in Denmark. Some people are famous. Like, I start with Booker T. Washington, and some people were kind of famous during their time period where they lived and have been forgotten in history. Some of the people in the study have never been known, like, I would say Ola and Eddie, the couple that were in Copenhagen when Veep was in Copenhagen. And so I want to tell stories about people who are known or unknown like. Or known like Booker T. Washington. But the Denmark study shows a whole different side of him, shows his sense of humor. He wrote a hilarious travel narrative. I never think of Booker T. Washington as being hilarious, but just showing a different side of these people. And so I think there's so much hidden, again, African American history that hasn't been explored.

[Regan Gillum]

And.

[Dr. Etheline Whitmire]

And I just want to tell part of that story.

[Regan Gillum]

Yeah, thank you for that. And so I have one more question, but I wanted to ask you too, that how the, like, the visual focuses in your work, because I actually had the opportunity to go to your exhibition in New York City that had some of the artists, I think, that were in Denmark. It showed some of their work. And I think that work was also in a Seattle museum. And so I wondered if you could just talk about that aspect of the work, the. Like, the exhibitions that you've curated as part of this project.

[Dr. Etheline Whitmire]

I'm always trying to find photographs or artwork or show. I know not everyone wants to read a book, but they might want to tell a story or see the story in a different way. And so the exhibitions that you mentioned that were in Seattle, also at the University of Wisconsin, and then to the American Scandinavian foundation, they were telling the story about African Americans and the Nordic countries, predominantly Denmark, since that's my Research area, but also in Sweden and Finland and we. And during this, this time period, during my research, I was collecting videos of. Of about African Americans in these spaces artwork or just following artists who were doing this kind of who were in these spaces, photographs. And I just want to be able to tell a story a different way. And so when I was doing the Repegram book, I was also looking for photographs. The family had some personal photographs, but then in your books, they also had photographs of him along with other. Other people when he was in group settings. But also when he was in Paris, artists did a portrait of him. He talked about it in the letter. And then I was able to track down the artist and their archive and find this. And so I feel like visuals are very important and I like to tell again, the story in a different way. And I hope eventually Reed Pegum's story might be turned into a movie or a TV show. I have a film agent and lots of people, it's interesting, keep saying this sounds like a movie. They actually think that I'm making up the story at some point. Some people did. I said, no, it's a true story. So I think there's many possibilities besides the book, in order to tell a story visually, hopefully as a TV series or as a movie too.

[Regan Gillum]

I actually had that. I was wondering about that. I was wondering if you were thinking about either a documentary or a TV show or something with the book, because the story is so compelling and even the images in the book were. In the Reed Pagan book were the pictures of him at the Boston Latin so school and, and all of. And the way that he would style himself in his photographs, it was so interesting.

[Dr. Etheline Whitmire]

I wish I had more. And in a way, I wish we. He lived in the age of social media. So just see him in Paris, see him with Arna. But then we wouldn't have the letters, right? He wouldn't be writing letters home. You. He would just have an Instagram page or Facebook. But I, yeah, I wish I could capture some of those things. So I. So even though I didn't go to archives, I physically went to the places where Reed lived. I lived in the hotels where he lived. Paris did that for two weeks. I, I saw the spaces in Copenhagen, went to Florence to see, Went to New York City, Boston to see all of these spaces, to try to capture that also in the book, just to see what did he see? What was it like in Paris, what was around the corner from him. And same thing in Copenhagen. So I did travel to do those

[Regan Gillum]

kinds of Things that is fascinating. And so. So you just talked about the. The project in Denmark. I had the question that now that the remarkable life of Reed Pegram is out in the world, what are you working on now, or what are you thinking about for the future?

[Dr. Etheline Whitmire]

Yeah. Well, I first wanted to write a book about African Americans in Denmark. And when I got a literary agent, she told me, based on this writing sample that I submitted about Reed Pegram, that that's the story to tell. But I have about 500 pages written on the book about African Americans in Denmark. I'm reconceptualizing how to tell it in a more interesting way. I a. A method. And I've already been all over the country walking in the footsteps of people like Marin Anderson, who sang in a prison, and her pianist wrote about this experience. And the prison archivist gave me letters that the prisoners wrote about her performance. So I know I have things like that. There was a pianist who befriended Karen Blixen, the Out of Africa writer, and he performed at this mansion or castle that's now a hotel. So I went there, too. So, anyway, that's going to be the book that I'm going to write about these African Americans who were there in the 20th century. They're just many fascinating stories. Billie Holiday was her first time abroad. She went to Copenhagen. She happened to land there first, and she wrote about it, and Lady Sings the Blues and somebody wrote a play about it. And so I'm going to talk. Yeah, that's what I want to work on next is definitely about African Americans in Denmark because, again, a lot of people know about black people in Paris, like James Baldwin and Josephine Baker. But I don't think many people know the stories of African Americans who had significant experience who lived in Denmark, who lived there, died there, started families there, et cetera.

[Regan Gillum]

Thank you so much for that. And so we'll look out for that book as well, and maybe we can have you on the podcast again to talk about it.

[Dr. Etheline Whitmire]

I would love it.

[Regan Gillum]

So thank you so much for telling us about Reed Pegram. I'm Regan Gillum. I've been speaking with Dr. Etheling Whitmire, who is the author of the book the Remarkable Life of Reed, the man who Stared down World War II in the name of Love, published by Viking. Thank you so much for writing this book, and thank you for sharing it with us on the podcast.

[Dr. Etheline Whitmire]

Thank you for having me.

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