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A
Welcome to the New Books Network.
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For more than a century, the Woodlawn cemetery, opened in 1863, has been the final resting place of many figures of the Harlem Renaissance. This storied era, spanning the 1920s through the mid-1930s, produced a vibrant cultural movement of African American artistic, musical, and literary expression whose influence spread globally. Visitors may easily recognize such iconic names from this period as Duke Ellington, W.C. handy, Burt Williams, and Countee Cullen. Yet beyond its constellation of performing artists and writers, Woodlawn is also the proud steward of a host of other influential but lesser known individuals. These were the many black business leaders, doctors, law lawyers, clergy, journalists, civic organizers, social workers, and others often referred to as race men and women, whose professional vocations underscored the social justice ideals of the Harlem Renaissance long after the era's heyday. But why Woodlawn? What drew black Manhattanites across the Harlem river to bury their loved ones in the Bronx? Here to provide some possible answers, as well as discuss the lives of many of those who made Woodlawn Cemetery their final resting place, is project historian and author of Where Harlem Rests at the Woodlawn Cemetery, a project of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund. Eric K. Washington. Eric, welcome to the podcast. Hi.
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A
Thanks for having me.
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B
So, Eric, how did this project come about?
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A
Well, it came about from a couple of ways. I had some association with the cemetery for a few consecutive Februarys. I would give a black history trolley tour, and I was a friend of the cemetery for having to do with people who I was specifically researching and writing about. But this project, as I understand it, as I'm flattered to understand it, was when, at the time, Susan Olson, who's just retired, she and Executive Director Meg Ventrudo of the Woodlawn Conservancy, said that my book and a' Lelia Bundles's book, biographies of James H. Williams, the chief of the Red Caps at Grand Central Terminal for almost half a century. That was my book, Boss of the Grips, and a' Lelia's book, On Her Own Ground, which was a biography of her great great. I think there's a third great grandmother, Madam C.J. walker, and then more recently, her biography of her great great. You do the math. Grandmother a' Lelia Walker, her namesake, came out, but that hadn't been out yet. So they. They said that our two books at the time really caused them to kind of step back and reevaluate a lot of the African Americans who were buried there who appeared in our books and, you know, going through just the index. And as they were reading through, they wanted to know more about them. So Bourulon has long been famous for having a huge gathering of permanent residents from Harlem, but particularly in the entertainment field. There's even a section. It's a huge cemetery. It's like half the size of Central Park. So there's even a section they refer to as the Jazz Corner where Duke Ellington is buried. And you can literally stand in front of the Duke's grave and point to Miles Davis or Illinois Jacket and what have you. So, as I understand it, when Duke Ellington died, every jazz musician wanted to be in proximity to him. And then there are others who are farther afield. There's another section, so where the protagonist of my biography, Boss of the Grips, James H. Williams, is buried. It also feels like you're in a neighborhood. So just a few feet from him is Bessie Beard and W.C. handy, Brick Top, and who have you. So they knew there were. You know, as. People tend to move to cemeteries the same way they move to neighborhoods. It's. It's like, oh, I have a relative there. You know, I'd like to go here when I pass, or I have a friend here. You're at a funeral, like, oh, this looks great. Here's where I want to be for my eternal rest. But they didn't know as much about a lot of the other figures who were not entertainment stars. And so they wanted to know more. So that's. That was the basic genesis of the project.
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B
So you mentioned doing tours there. And in preparation for this interview, I also went to Woodlawn. I had never. I had never been there before. And so I went. And it's so interesting hearing you, even the vernacular you're choosing to use when you're talking about the cemetery, because I. Look, I'm a. I like cemeteries. Like, I visit cemeteries when I go places. And I always thought I was a little weird. Like, I don't think I ever would have said that out loud before. Oh, yeah, no, I've learned that I've. Since. I've since learned that.
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A
That.
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That I don't need to feel weird about visiting cemeteries. Talk a little bit about before I hit record, you and I had started to talk a little bit about cemeteries as museums, maybe. Can you just say a few words about that?
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A
You know, when I first went. Not when I first went to Woodlawn, because I have. My grandparents are buried there and some other relatives, but when I first went on a tour, this was in. I think it was 2009, as part of Open House New York. And Susan Olsen, who I mentioned was giving the tour, and she described the cemetery as kind of an open air museum. And it's an interesting way to look at, you know, some people. You know, we naturally feel very sentimental about cemeteries if we have a relative buried there as a sort of a sacred ground. But I often describe cemeteries as parks with footnotes. And indeed our great parks, starting with Central park in New York, they were modeled after these park like cemeteries. You know, in the early 1800s, you know, we didn't have great parks here. This became a project that was inspired by great parks that people had seen in Europe and felt that if New York was going to be a great city, it needs to have a great cemetery. And New York wasn't the first. Brooklyn was a separate city at the time. So I think the first one in America there was Mount Auburn in the Boston area of these sort of garden cemeteries and then in what's currently New York. But it was the city of Brooklyn at the time was Greenwood Cemetery in 1838. And that's when Trinity Church at Wall street and Broadway started looking around for a rural ground to place a cemetery far from the city. Because every. The city was all scrunched downtown and they wanted grounds to be some distance away. And it took them about four years. And then in 1842, they, they purchased Trinity Church Cemetery way up in, in Washington Heights. But these were the models that, for Central park that, that comes, you know, in the 1850s, these rolling landscaped grounds that the cemeteries and people used to also picnic and cemeteries because there were so few places that were green and not ultimate, not, you know, entirely wild. There were no bears and wolves and things like that. But it also made sense because, you know, we still use the phrase, you know, conferring with the dead. But it made sense if you had a loved one and you buried them and you missed them and you didn't really want to part with them and you know, they're buried outside of the city limits. So it's practically, you know, take some time and effort to get there. You know, you do need to eat. And it made sense to kind of, you know, be there with them. I think. I think that's rather wholesome and interesting way to, you know, to look at burials because nowadays, because of the lives that we lead, you know, we bury somebody. If you live in Manhattan, you can't bury anybody in Manhattan except at Trinity Church Cemetery. That's the only active cemetery. And even if it's in the Bronx, you know, time is it ends up being a day trip that not everybody can afford to do. So what ultimately happens is you buried a loved one and you mean to get back, and it might be quite a while before you're able to get there. So I think a lot of those attitudes are changing about our appreciation of cemeteries. The idea of, you know, going on a tour and visiting, you know, your loved ones, neighbors, you know, who are permanent residents who are buried nearby, and particularly if they are famous, you know, if you're in, you know, any of the, you know, the three particular big urban cemeteries in New York, you know, Greenwood, Woodlawn, Trinity, there are a lot of famous people there. Or even if they're not marquee kind of famous, they are connected to some event history of the city that gives you some idea of how the city grew and functioned and, and who made up the city and what were the issues of the time. And people like to have a, a proximity to, you know, to that kind of history. So I think, you know, those kind of attitudes about death and dying are starting to change in a way that was maybe familiar over a century ago when there were, no, there weren't such, there wasn't such an abundance of parks around to go to, to, you know, to retreat to. So I like you, I love, I love cemeteries. I think you learn a lot. But very beautiful. I mean, there's nature there.
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B
Yeah. Well, in the, and the stories, right. Like I, the stories that headstones tell. Even, I think before even you get into the more archival research, which we'll get into, because you did a ton of research for this project, too.
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Yeah, the, you know, what's written on the stones and, you know, there's no set pattern, but you get, you know, usually basic information, the person's name. And in some cases that's not altogether clear because depending on the stone that you pick, you know, I, I, I often tell people, you know, if you have a thing about being remembered forever and ever, you ought to pick your stone wisely. You know, limestone brownstone is going to behave like soap after time. So sometimes you can't even read a name anymore. You can't read a detail like, you know, you know, when they died or some sort of epitaph that's written on there. Sometimes it's, you could make out a few letters and that's it. Sometimes you can't make out anything. But when you can, it's exciting because you can get, you know, information on, you know, people are astounded. Like, oh, my gosh, they lived. You Know, oh, my grandmother was born that year. And it makes this some kind of a connection, or there might be a symbol on there, like a Masonic symbol that gives you an indication that, you know, this person this man belonged to was a Mason or he belonged to some sort of fraternal organization. Little things that help to flesh out the person, you know, and, you know, who they were in life. So it's exciting. And all of a sudden, you know, you start. You almost hear conversations, you know, when you're reading the headstones.
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B
So this project, Ware Harlem rests, looks at 25 people that are buried in Woodlawn. Woodlawn Cemetery, which, as we said, is in the Bronx. For listeners who are not familiar with Manhattan geography, this is, you know, via. Via subway between Harlem and the Bronx. 20, 25 minutes.
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A
Right. Or so Manhattan in the Bronx is divided by the Harlem River. It's sort of northeast from Manhattan. The Bronx, if you're not familiar with New York City, you know, it's made up of five boroughs, most of four of which are connected to islands. So Staten island is a complete island. Manhattan is a complete island. And it's the smallest of all of them. But, of course, the most notable of all of them in the most famous. Brooklyn and Queens are part of Long island, and the Bronx is the mainland of the US So it's. I mean, there's a river that goes through it and that's nearby the Bronx river, but it's the mainland.
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And so for this project, how did you settle on these 25 people? Like, why these 25?
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So I settled on the 25 people I put in the booklet. And I'm calling it a booklet now, not a brochure, because.
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Oh, yeah, it's more. This is more than a brochure.
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I felt them. I thought, this is like a booklet.
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This is a booklet.
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Yeah, it's kind of really nice. There's like 35 pages, 36 pages.
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You know, color. Yeah.
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I think of a brochure as being all these folds and everything, which is fine, you know, but I felt. As I said, this is booklet, you
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know,
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but I picked the 25 people at semi random. So some of them I was familiar with who I were included in my book. Some were in Aelia's book. Some I was familiar with from other projects or just. They were names I was familiar with. Which is not to say that I knew their stories completely, but they were, you know, they were names that were, you know, in the. You know, in the constellations of notable black folks, you know, from city that I, that I knew that I'd heard of. And then some others were, were not familiar to me at all. Woodlawn sent me a database of, of the burials there. And so that was fun going down. It's like, yeah, I know you'd, oh, I've heard of you, you know, you're here. Or people who I did know of, you know pretty well, but I didn't know where they were buried and say, oh, you're here. Great, great, great, great. And then there were some that I wanted to be there that I couldn't find. And then, well, actually one in particular, I wanted to be there and I couldn't find him. And then I found him toward the end of the project. And this is somebody who I, Jacob Canty, who's in my book, he was a Pullman porter who in the 1890s was. Started buying land in the Bronx and Wakefield, in Williams Bridge and Wakefield sections of the Bronx. And newspapers were saying that he was, you know, trying to convince blacks to move up to the Bronx. Now this is before blacks had moved up to Harlem. So this must have seemed like crazy talk to a lot of people. Like, you know, Manhattan was like the center of everything, but most of, you know, black Manhattan and white man was all, you know, what we would call downtown, like lower Manhattan. So this must have seemed really far fetched. But my, my point is only that, you know, by the time blacks are really a presence in Harlem, he's already a couple of decades ahead of them. And so I knew about him being in the Bronx and I wanted him to be at Woodlawn. And I, I couldn't find him. And that's that, you know, I can't put him where he's not. And so I spelled his name Canty, which is the way I found it. C A, N, T, Y. And then toward the end, I was looking for somebody else and I must have been in the Cs, and there was Canty. C A, N, T, E, Y. And I went back and I started, you know, searching this name. And there were more entries under that spelling, which it. And it often works out that way. And I thought, yeah, I bumped somebody to put him.
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B
I won't ask you who got bumped.
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A
I'm so sorry, but, you know, we'll be back. It was important to me to get him in there because it was kind of full circle. There's been a lot of emphasis on the project of it being people associated with the Harlem Renaissance. And I kind of don't want to. Yes, the bulk of Them have this association. But the Harlem Renaissance, to me, is not an era that's in a vacuum. You know, it didn't just kind of sprout up at this certain time. People arrived in Harlem and they were there for, you know, a while, a couple of decades before this thing called, you know, that we recognize as the Harlem Renaissance even occurs. And also, there was another question that the admins at Woodlawn wanted, were hoping I could answer, and that was, why. Why are so many Harlemites and blacks moving to Woodlawn of all places? You know, were there advertisements that the undertakers used or whatever? And I was. I didn't think I'd find a definitive answer, and I did not. I think the undertakers, I. I didn't find any advertisements from undertakers. I think they were used to, you know, if. If you had, you know, a family member pass and you went to the, you know, the undertaker, the funeral director would probably have a lot of options for or suggestions for where you might be buried. So they didn't really need to advertise. And I didn't see any advertisements from Woodlawn saying, you know, colored people welcome, you know, anything like that. They were not segregated. I think people just kind of knew that they were there. And this was part of the why that I think I was able to solve to some degree by not just sticking with people who were part of the Harlem Renaissance, the 1920s, 1930s. So, like, finding Canty and someone else from Adelaide Butler, who was a matron with the Colored Orphan Asylum that was burned to the ground during the draft riots of 1863. So she died in 1878. And I was really excited because I thought, okay, the Colored Orphan Asylum. Every black person in the New York area, you know, knows this name, you know, at the time, whether they know anything about it or not. But it was still, and the organization still existed. But the person who presided over her funeral was a black superstar, Henry Highland Garnett, who, like next to Frederick Douglass, is one of the most famous African Americans of the era. So that combination of a notable institution and a celebrity minister in 1878, I think, helps to ensconce this place, Woodlawn Cemetery, in the minds of black New Yorkers for Decker decades onwards. So I think that answers part of the why blacks went there. Another part of it is, I think. So I had, you know, I had done a lot of research on Trinity Church Cemetery, which is right down the street from me on 153rd Street. And they were segregated. And so they had a separate Colored ground that started in 1853, 10 years after they opened. And then in 1863 when the colored Orphan Asylum burned to the ground when it re established itself 100 blocks north to 143rd street in Manhattan, they were too far away from where they used to bury children and staff from their institution, which used to be in the city of Brooklyn, in Greenwood, you know. So they asked Trinity if they could use some of some of the plots in Trinity's church cemetery, which was nearby. And Trinity consented. So there was the colored orphan ground either next to or one in the same as the already established colored ground. But as I say, it was segregated. And then when they widened Broadway in 1871, so this is what, 18 years later from the first black burials there, the grays get moved and it's supposed to be redispersed elsewhere in the cemetery. And a bridge goes up, a suspension bridge to connect the two halves of the cemetery when the road is widened to create Broadway. And then 40 years later, in 1911, the bridge comes down and they're digging the foundation for the church of the Intercession, which is situated in Trinity Church Cemetery in the easterly division. And they overturn some empty coffins. So the explanation from Trinity was that it was probably 40 years earlier when the workmen disturbed some kaufmet, some graves, and they just put back the coffins to maintain the count there. But we don't know exactly who the coffins belong to, but we do know that none of those names have turned up elsewhere in the cemetery. So unlike Trinity, Woodlawn did not segregate. We don't know exactly how many blacks are there because they don't on any of their registers ask for or identify race. But another part of the why might be, even if Trinity did not explicitly say no blacks, and this is just conjecture, it might have been that there was this kind of a crude feeling of not exactly welcome. They weren't encouraged to go there. And then again, there's the sweep of once you have sufficient number of friends and family who are in a place, you're more likely to go there. So even though it was a bit farther away, it's probably made sense for a lot of people to. Like, we already know people there. You know, I'll be with Aunt Shirley or, or Uncle Bob or whatever.
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B
So you. You talked a bit about. At least some of the. Some of the people were known to you ahead of time through your own research, through your own book, Boss of the Grips, about James H. Williams. But can you talk about your research process. Like you said, you. You got that. You got the cemetery kind of directory that were the roles of who was buried there. But were you doing other archival research or, like, talk about how you. How you did some of this?
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A
So one of the first things I always. I think that most people do, when you catch a name or an event or a place that you want to know more about, you Google something and see what's right on the surface. If anything, you know, then I'll try to go to, you know, if it's a person, I'll see if I can get a. A vital record, like a birth or marriage or death certificate for them. So if they are. If any of those events happen in New York, that's. That's easier because those vital records, many of them are in the holdings of the municipal archives. And New York's municipal archives are wonderful, and a lot of them have been put online. A few Years ago, about 9,000 documents were put online, and they're free for anybody to use. And, you know, if you have insomnia or want insomnia, you could just go online and just. Let's see if so. And so is there.
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B
I spend so much time in the census, the Federal Census, online. Like, so many hours in the Federal
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A
census and the census. That's it. So that's another archive. So, you know, the National Archives censuses, which are accessible like, say, through platforms like Ancestry.com so I'll go to those and I'll try to corroborate, you know, records, you know, from, you know, between vital records and census records, other data records when they're available. Somebody like Rudolph Fisher, I found like, yearbook pages that were. Had been uploaded. That's not always the case, but that was one of the lucky ones. And in that yearbook, there were some photographs as well. So those were some of the archives, you know. You know, I would say that, you know, through The Municipal Archives, Ancestry.com and other platforms like that, but also newspaper databases, because I wanted to get not just the stats, which are important, but connect them to contextual stories, find out who they might be associating with or who they were related to. This was also something like from. I didn't, you know, you don't necessarily use everything. It's not, you know, you know, this is a guidebook, and they're not meant to be, you know, exhaustive profiles. They. My hope is that they'll be. They will inspire other people to get interested. They'll hook people and say, oh, I want to know more about this person. So they'll read more and maybe, you know, if any biographers are out there, they'll say this person needs a biography, you know, and be inspired to do that. But, you know, the newspaper databases were invaluable because you, you see people in action, you know, in, in their day to day lives and you'll, you know, see who they, you know, if they belong to an association, who else maybe may have been, you know, a member or who would have been at a public meeting that they attended, who spoke, what was served, what, what the location was, where the meeting was held, you know, Manhattan Casino or something. Even the vital records, which are pretty straightforward, I would see like, oh, the, the doctor, you know, who pronounced them, the person's death, you know, and, and you know, wrote down what the cause was. That was so and so, as a matter of fact, in one case, you know, he's buried here too. Yeah, this was a case like Dr. Lewis T. Wright, who's in one of my 25, and Rudolph Fisher is one of the 25, Louis D. Wright, his name is on the death certificate of Fisher's. So it's not always like that. And in some cases, you know, some things were like, I'll reserve for another project, like, oh, you know, look who was the, you know, the, you know, the, the, the witnesses for this person's wedding. This guy was an abolitionist minister of, you know, so there are things like that, those. So these were some of the archives that I used, as I say, vital records, census records, you know, when available, you know, book, you know, you know, yearbook records and newspapers. Newspapers probably were the most salient things because, you know, you get a lot of activity from those, you know, and you know, what, what, what else, what other news is going on concurrently that this person is, is, is living within and sometimes is directly connected to.
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B
How did you figure out when you were done with a person? Because as you said, like, these are, I mean, these are very short profiles of the people, many of whom could have entire books written about them that haven't already been written by other people. Right. So like you're kind of talking about them, maybe introducing them in some cases. How do you kind of figure that out?
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A
I, I think it was always hard because when we started out and you know, this Woodlawn hadn't done this kind of project and I wanted to be sure that I wanted some, some, some ground rules so that we both were kind of on the same page. So, you know, I asked like about, about what length are you talking about? I Actually kind of didn't want to do it at first either because I'm working on a couple of other projects, and I knew right away this would be kind of all consuming. But, you know, that's why God invented back burners. So I was hedging, and these things always come at the wrong time. But it was also something I wanted to be attached to. So I was kind of hesitant. So I thought, let's establish how long are we talking about how many people. So I think they had suggested maybe three lines. And I said, no, that's not enough.
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B
A.
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A
Everybody, you know, should have more than that. But also, you have to do a. A lot of research, you know, pretty much the same amount of research, you know. You know, to do a few pages as you have to boil it down to, like, just a few lines. So that's just too exhausting for no, you know, reward. So I said, what if we say about, you know, 200 to 250 words? So I tried to keep it at that. Now everybody's different. Some people you kind of lean into more, or they're just more available, readily available. And some people you have to scratch more, you know, to find out about. And some people have such varied, you know, accomplishments or things that, you know, you're trying to get everything in but not just sound like you're making lists. So knowing when to stop was kind of difficult because I would, you know, on your, you know, on the computer screen, you can say, you know, what's the word count here? And it's like, oh, okay. So I'm the one that suggested, like, 250. And here I am at, like, you know, 425. Something's gotta go. So it was kind of intuitive. But by the same token, I thought. I think we are maybe loosey goosey enough that there's, you know, there's. You're. They're not going to scream if there's like 275 words instead of 250. And nobody screamed, you know, and there might have been one or two that were only, you know, 175, you know, which means you can make the picture bigger, you know, but it felt. It felt complete. Yeah, I think the first one I did was. Who's the first one I did? I think it was Thelma Burlach Boozer. And I think she might be the shortest one. And I was feeling very disciplined. Like I, you know, I stuck to my word count that I proposed, you know, and then as you start working, it's just like, you Got start getting comfortable and you find it getting longer and longer and longer. I would go back and I said, okay, let's, you know, back to the model. So it's a great question you have. You know, how do you know when to stop? I don't think you, I don't think you always do know when to stop. I think you just have to say to yourself, okay, you've, you know, it's time. Let's, let's wind this up neatly. And, and, and you also don't fall in love with everything, you know, you understand as you're writing. You know, the best writing is rewriting. So you understand that you may love it at the moment, but, you know, one of you sentences or descriptions or something may have to go. We'll pick you up in another project.
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B
Some along the way, you, you mentioned, you mentioned photographs. And almost everyone, almost all 25 have a photo. Have. Well, there are photographs attached to every person. Almost all of them have photographs of themselves. Some of them are, are not. We don't have photographs of the people themselves. But talk about the photo, talk about the photograph, like the photo research or, you know, how did, how did the photographs get in here where they found most of those?
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A
Also, one of the Woodlawn team, Jessie, she identified a few photographs. And I was excited by that, that other people were getting excited by the project. So as I was going along, I wanted to focus more on the stories. In a few cases, I knew if there were people I was familiar with, I, I knew that there were some photos out there. We wanted to stick with things that were in the public domain so we wouldn't have to go through a whole process of applying for them and, or in some cases, having to pay for them. You know, so for the most part, that was not so difficult. I just, you know, curated the images to be used. All of them have, you know, a photograph of a current photograph of the marker. And in some cases they don't have a marker. You know, some people are, do not have identified grave sites. They just know where they are. And you can see a lot of the markers are embedded in snow because it was like February when we were getting down to the images and we were going to go around and shoot them. And we had that huge note, that blizzard that left like two, two feet of snow. And matter of fact, we were supposed to do the first trolley tour for, you know, it was Black History Month. And I didn't really think about that. You know, we travel along the roads. They have roads through the cemetery. But I forgot, like, you know, the grounds themselves, where the, the plots are, that doesn't get mowed.
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B
So.
- [33:55]
A
And a lot of the stones are, are flat or flattish and the stone particularly high. So there wasn't even access, you know, visually to the stone. So we ended up doing it as a, as, as a, an illustrated lecture in February. And then we followed up in, in when was it in April, March or April with a trolley tour where we were actually able to see things. But anyway, that was the part of the process for the images, and I felt good about that. It's always frustrating with folks in, you know, 19th century, early 20th century when you can't find a visual of their face, particularly if they were prominent. You know, they're often in the papers all the time. And I want to say, you know, a lot of these, the purpose of this was to kind of reclaim a lot of forgotten figures. I don't like to say obscure. They're, they may be obscure to us now, but these, many of these figures were prominent in their day. Everybody knew who they were. And then as time passed, they were just forgotten, you know. And, you know, the road to, you know, being forgotten is often if you haven't cut a record or something, you know, it's. That happens, it happens to showbiz people as well. If they didn't record, you know, the music has changed and, you know, so all that's left are descriptions of what they sounded like. So that was frustrating not being able to find some images of, of people who were in the news quite often and, you know, down the road, you know, maybe film will crop up and if they, you know, reprint these again, they may be able to, you know, fit those images in. I remember that Bessie Haynes was a figure and her brother and sister in law are buried there. Dr. George Haynes and Elizabeth Roth Haynes. But she was less known and I wanted to put her in because the men are always outnumbering the women, for one thing. But she was also quite interesting and much esteemed for her work at Lincoln House in San Juan Hill. And so she was there in an important time when blacks are starting to make that transition from San Juan Hill up to Harlem, as she herself was about to do. And she stopped working at Lincoln House and then she was going to head the YWCA in Harlem. And then she died. I think she, you know, you know, bought a house on Strivers Row, and then she passed. But finding an image of her was hard. There was one image in a newspaper article. It was an obituary and it was just grainy. And I, you know, I couldn't find the original image at all. And then at the last minute, I found an image in Crisis magazine of her. So we ended. We used that. And it's. It's not the greatest image, but you can see what she looks like, so I'm happy with that. Page 10.
- [36:52]
B
Yeah. Well, and it's. I'm looking at it now, and it's. It is one of the images that if I saw it, if I just sort of saw it independent of this, I would think it was contemporary. I mean, not the quality necessarily, but the, you know, she. She looks contemporary.
- [37:08]
A
The hair. Yeah.
- [37:10]
B
And you talked about her being in. In San Juan Hill again, for. For people maybe that don't live in New York City, but have been to New York City. That is Lincoln center, right.
- [37:22]
A
It's now area, you know, west of Columbus Circle. And she was there actually during a. A period when. Because San Juan Hill had such a. An infamous reputation because it was a black community, but it was not exclusively black. There were other. There were poor Irish there. So it was a mixed community. And what they had in common was that it was kind of lower middle class, although there were a lot of businesses there as well. But because of this infamous reputation, there was a movement among blacks to have it renamed Columbus Hill because of its proximity to Columbus Circle. And this is before Columbus had the controversy that it has today. But it's, you know, it's an important history. And again, while the focus, the anchor of the project was Harlem. Harlem is not, you know, a neighborhood in a vacuum, you know, so San Juan Hill is part of Harlem history, you know, so I thought it was important that she be there, you know, so I'm.
- [38:25]
B
You are an independent historian. You know, you are not employed by a university. And so. And it's. Again, I mean, this is. And this is certainly. You're a public historian as well, and this is a. Certainly a public. A public project. I'm curious about how you think about your role as an independent public historian, both in general and especially, you know, today, given, you know, political climate and those kinds of things.
- [38:56]
A
I think it's important. And there are, you know, there are a lot of public historians out there. I think it's important that we have people who are interested in. In history, you know, and our sharing this in some way, whether it's through, you know, a. A platform on YouTube or Instagram, on social media, or as a tour guide giving, you know, walking tours. And I say walking day. I mean, you can't do this as well. If, if you're giving bus tours, it's a different kind of tourism, you know, but those who are giving, you know, walks of neighborhoods and cemeteries where you were able to stop in front of an address or a stone and really kind of unfold, you know, who that person was, you know, the, the era that they were connected to or the event that they were connected to, why it's important, why, what it correlates to in today's world that, you know, that that's familiar. And I think that, you know, in this day and age, with all that's going on, where there is this concerted effort to rewrite American history and black history, which is American history, and to, you know, to. To vocalize it, I think it's important that there are independent historians out there who are delving into corners of history that say a lot of academic affiliated historians are doing or can't do because they have a curriculum, you know, that they are tied to or they're focusing on a lot of areas. And this, this. This is, you know, this is a good thing, you know, that are iconic periods in time, and this is ground that. That needs to be covered, and they're covering that. And I think a lot of independent historians who don't have to answer to a dean who can go off on their own projects are sometimes able to come up with things that plug into those. Those other, you know, syllabuses, syllabi in a nice. In a nice way that broadens them that, you know, that. That breaks them open in a way that they. They wouldn't. That, you know, helps them to shed light on corners of history that they wouldn't necessarily see if it weren't for, you know, independents out there, you know, kind of scrounging around, you know, you know, some other corner of the. Of that event or that person's life or that locale.
- [41:39]
B
So Additions to the Archive Podcast is, of course, affiliated with the New Books Network. And so I want to close this out talking about books. And can you provide listeners some recommendations if they've been interested at all, in this universe of things that you've been talking about today? Can you recommend some books for people to check out? And I hope your book is on that list.
- [42:05]
A
Mine's the first. And that's. That was it. Because I say a lot of the people who were. A number of the people who were in the booklet I was familiar with, because they're in my book, not necessarily in depth, but sometimes they get a, you know, it might just be a paragraph or it might be a couple of pages. So I would say, certainly, James Williams, because that opens up a whole world of black labor in that, you know, it's connected to the railroads. My book addresses lawyer J. Frank Wheaton, Wilhelmina Adams, Herbert Cummings, the florist, which is a whole other fascinating story.
- [42:47]
B
He was one of my favorites in the. In the booklet, by the way.
- [42:51]
A
Yeah, mine too. When he passed, he kind of disappeared for a while. And then when he passed, it turns out he was living like a. Just like, practically across the street from. From Woodlawn Cemetery. So I'd be. I'd be interested to see, you know, if there were any funerals that were associated with his services as a florist. Certainly a' Lelia's book for the same reason. Both books, Joy Goddess, a' Lelia Walker and the Harlem Renaissance, and On Her Own Ground, the life of Madam C.J. walker. Hubert H. Harrison, who's in the booklet. There are two biographies of him that I'm aware of. One is Hubert Harrison, the Voice of Harlem Radicalism, 1883-1918 by Jeffrey B. Perry. And there's Hubert Harrison, Forbidden Genius of Black Radicalism, 1883-1927 by Brian Kwoba, which I think just came out, like, a few weeks ago last year.
- [43:56]
B
I think it came out last year. It may be on its way to paperback. Yeah, it's on my bookshelf. It's. Yeah, it's behind my shoulder. Yeah, Brian. Brian. Brian Kwoba's bit. He's been. We're gonna have to get him on the pod, too.
- [44:08]
A
So. So there's somebody who has, you know, a figure who has, you know, at least two biographies about him. And then there's, you know, in. In fiction. So there's Rudolph Fisher. There is a biography in progress that my colleague Kevin McGruder, who I had a session with this past Sunday at Woodlawn. He's working on a biography. And he was a Rollin Fellow of the biographers International Organization 2 years ago towards writing this biography of Rudolph Fisher. But Fisher wrote a number of works, but two of his novels, the Walls of Jericho and Conjure Man Dies, certainly give you an ambient view of Harlem during this period of the 20s. You know, he dies. Fisher died in 1934. So, you know, this is the period of the Harlem Renaissance. And then sort of an overview that's neither biography or fiction. Black Manhattan is a favorite of mine by James Weldon Johnson that was written in 1930, and when Harlem was in Vogue by David Levering Lewis that, you know, focuses on on the period of Harlem's the Harlem Renaissance. So, you know, there are many books that are written about or during the period, but I think those are some, you know, that, you know, your listeners might easily grab and enjoy.
- [45:35]
B
Fantastic. And I'm going to link all of those on Substack as well so people can go back and see the books and see links to those. This project is where Harlem rests at the Woodlawn Cemetery. You can find more information about it as well as upcoming tours given by Eric and others at the Woodlawn website, which is linked in the show Notes. And you can find Eric online@ekwashington.com and he's on Instagram at two spots at Erick K. Washington and taggingthepast. You've been listening to Additions to the Archive with Sullivan Summer, a new books Network podcast, and I am your host, Sullivan Summer. If you like what you heard like, follow and drop us a rating on your favorite podcast. Appreciate we're on Instagram Ditions to the Archive and we're free over on Substack, where you can find more great author interviews as well as Eric's recommended reading list. Thank you for listening to Additions to the Archive.