>> From the Library of
Congress in Washington, DC. >> Gigi Dixon: Good
afternoon everyone. [ Music ] Thank you. It's a pleasure to be
here with you today to celebrate books and
the joy of reading. I'm Gig Dixon, Senior Vice
President and Director of Strategic Partnerships
for Wells Fargo. Wells Fargo is a proud, very
proud sponsor and we're proud to have been here for six
years as a charter sponsor of the National Book Festival. As in years past, we have fun
exhibits for you to experience. So if you haven't been there yet, please make your way
to the exhibits. Please be sure to check out
our Let's Read America Pavilion where we're featuring hands-on
history offering the opportunity to pan for gold and, yes, lasso
a pony as well as the chance to tell your personal story
in the My Untold exhibit and the opportunity to climb
into a Wells Fargo stage coach. Wells Fargo is committed to making
a real difference in education by maintaining an active involvement
in our public education system, arguably the most important
institution in our country. We believe financial success begins
with a foundation of strong reading and math skills in early education. Jackie Kennedy, a former
first lady said it will. There are many little ways to
enlarge your child's world, love of books is best of all. It is now my pleasure to
introduce to you Marcia Davis, Editor of the Washington
Post Magazine. Thank you. [ Applause ] >> Marcia Davis: So welcome everyone to this wonderful afternoon
with Margo Jefferson. Let me start by saying I'm not
the editor of the magazine, but I am an articles editor
of the magazine, one of three. And I'm very happy to be here. No, no, that's fine. People do that all the time. And I'm just so excited to
be here for many reasons and we have a very joyous afternoon
because today is the opening day of the National Museum of African
American History and Culture. [ Applause ] And that day is made
far more bountiful by spending the afternoon
with Ms. Jefferson. Oh, you can't? I thought-- >> Your mic is turned on? >> Marcia Davis: Hello. Can you hear me now? I feel like the Verizon
guy whose like switched to Sprint or something right now. So Ms. Jefferson is
the wonderful author of the 2015 memoir "Negroland". And she is also a former arts critic
for the New York Times and Newsweek and is also now the
writing instructor at Columbia University
School of the Arts. She is, you may know also, a
Pulitzer Prize winning author for her criticism and you
may also know the author of a very interesting piece
of work about Michael Jackson who in my pre-teen years was my
adorable handsome fantasy man. He was singing to me, only
me when he was crooning. So we're very happy to be here
and to welcome Margo Jefferson. [ Applause ] So the way this will work is we
will talk for about 25 minutes or so and then there'll be
time for the audience to jump in and to ask questions. And why don't we just start. I'd like to start by
talking about the Museum of African American
History and Culture. I know you haven't seen it. >> Margo Jefferson:
From the outside. >> Marcia Davis: Except
from the outside. But what is that-- do you think that this museum will make a
difference in this country? >> Margo Jefferson: Oh, sure. Can you all hear me? >> [Simultaneously] No. >> Margo Jefferson: No. All right. You know, it's easy that
my microphone isn't on. Let's see. I do not know what to do here. Ah! Wait a minute. Power on now can-- ah. Bliss, all right. Bliss wasn't in that
dawn to be alive. All right. It's-- This represents and
entirely new stage platform world for African American history. There are so many stages. They just, in my life, I believe
through my parents who are born in the early 20th century,
1908 and 1916. They were of the generation of
the association for the study of Negro life and history. Founded by Carter G. Woodson,
it was very meticulous and scrupulous groundbreaking
history. W. E. B. Du Bois was part of it. It was segregated history. Meaning, very few people other than
black scholars and blacks wanting to be educated really knew about it. It mirrored in that way
a segregated nation. When I came along in the-- I
was born at the end of '40s. I went to a quite progressive
school, which was largely white. So we got little bits of
black or even African history, but basically tiny
little injections. I was getting basically,
you know, canonical history. And my parents at a certain
point began to worry that I in fact needed remedial
black history lessons. You know, because in
an integrated world, I wasn't getting the
history they had gotten in grammar school, et cetera. College was era-- I was in
college in the mid and late '60s of black studies and ethnic
studies, African American studies. You know, and now, you know still
they were controversial, you know, these programs have to work
to establish themselves. Now to see this kind of given,
the acceptance, the claiming of it and the entitlement, you know, that this is a major,
this is not footnote. This is not special interest as
conservatist often like to say about minorities and
women, special interest. You know, this is major American
history in Washington, DC. >> Marcia Davis: Thank you. Thank you. Your book won the National Books-- the National Book Critic
Circles Award for autobiography. And you titled it "Negroland"
and that is an interesting title and it almost seems as another
country inside a country. >> Margo Jefferson: Exactly. >> Marcia Davis: And I wonder if
you could talk a little bit more about how you came to
name the book that. >> Margo Jefferson: Gladly. And you said it exactly right. I wanted that sense of
another country, James Weldon, within a country, a separate
and yet overlapping land. I chose the word Negro because capitalized it was the
honored and preferred term. As I'm sure people of an older
generation in this audience know. For basically early 20th
century to mid to late '60s, the Harlem Renaissance
talked about the New Negro. The New York Times
began capitalizing it. This was a big fight in the '30s. But that was the honored word
during my coming of the age years and I wanted to use that as a way of helping recreate the
culture of being a Negro. And in the world I was in,
which was the Negro bourgeoisie which called itself-- like to call
itself an upper class or an elite, you know, being a Negro meant-- it's what people call
respectability politics today trying to be a perfect emblematic--
emblematically intelligent, dignified, representative
of your race. And this went, you
know, into everything from your speech patterns,
to your manners, to, in fact, in my Chicago version of that
world, having decent race politics, you know, advancing the race. So all I wanted to capture
those rituals that tone. Land is an interesting word because
lands have their own culture, each land, which we did
as American Negroes. But lands are also bordered by
others, sometimes hostile lands. And, you know, the
very segregated world of Chicago contained various kinds
of black life all bordering on and often menaced by
white lands, if you will. >> Marcia Davis: So what--
I'm curious as a writer. When you-- When is it that you
decided to write this memoir? And how long were you writing it
before you actually committed words to paper? >> Margo Jefferson: Oh,
that's a good question. You are an editor, aren't you? All right. So your first one is when did began? >> Marcia Davis: Decide. >> Margo Jefferson:
Decide, all right. You know, often when
you're a writer, you know, you're going about your business like some people you're
turning out books. I was turning out articles. But, you know, material
keeps building up. And as particularly my parents
got older and as I, you know, got through my rebellions and began
to trust myself in relation to them, every time I visited Chicago,
their world became more and more interesting to me because
I could bring an adult person and writer's eye to it
and look back at all-- look at all the rituals and
manners and ways and expressions. They were carrying on, you know,
and realized, "Oh, my God, you know. This has to be preserved. This is fascinating." And Isabel Wilkerson captures
that, you know, all that so well in her book "The Warmth
of Other Suns", so many ways of talking,
thinking, dressing. So that's I think when it started-- probably I started taking notes in
the '70s or '80s but did not at all yet commit myself,
commit my imagination or my consciousness to a book. In-- Not until the 2000s really
did I decide I have to do this. Zoey Mil Harrison [assumed
spelling] has a great line about-- she's talking about needing
to tell a story as a writer and she says there's the Roman
legend of the boy who that was like a wolf knowing at his entrails
and that's what happens when story for a writer can't come out. So I started to feel acutely
uncomfortable and I would get angry and jealous when other writers
were turning out memoirs or novels that I thought they're
expressing something. I'm not. And then frankly, in
2008, I got a grant for it. And then my sister who was
three years older than I and the director of
the Alvanley School. My sister got cancer and I thought
I have to-- you know, I have-- often life gives you
a kind of urgency. I thought I have to record
everything I can while she's alive but also, you know, because I don't
know how long any of them will live. >> Marcia Davis: Right. >> Margo Jefferson: Yeah. >> Marcia Davis: What-- So was she
able to see any part of your book? >> Margo Jefferson: She saw part of
it, yes, she didn't see the whole and she helped a lot, you know. Siblings, relatives, you have
different kinds of memory and she had very acute sense memory
and also just things to compare-- >> Marcia Davis: Right. >> Margo Jefferson: -- against. So that was good. And my mother-- my
father died first. My mother is incredibly sharp
and witty and I was constantly-- I'd be on the phone with her and
I'd be typing down her witticisms. >> Marcia Davis: Right, right. So when we-- you know, you've
taken us into this second country in our country of the black
elite, the black bourgeoisie. And the geography, the map you draw
the geography is very intimate, very detailed, and
also very painful. And I wondered if you could
talk a little bit about that and how you feel about it now? >> Margo Jefferson: Well, you know,
to this business of belonging to the so called elite of an-- discriminated against to
oppressed group is very peculiar. You certainly-- you're
a fool and you're a liar if you do not acknowledge
that you are sheltered and privileged in many ways. Where I think the pain
and the-- came is-- you know, it's partly the old W.
E. B. Du Bois double consciousness. We were constantly living
out and living up to all of the accomplishments
and achievements of black people, of Negroes. And that's where we did know
or were taught black history. At the same time we knew perfectly
well that if we did not proved in terms of manners,
our accomplishments, our cultural references that we
were as good as a white people, which in a clear way meant
being like white people, then we were flapping, you know. That leads both to self consciousness a
struggle with self hatred. >> Marcia Davis: Yeah. >> Margo Jefferson: And
that was very difficult. Also there was kind of self scrutiny
particularly for girls, I would say. You know, this constant
surveillance and watching of are my manners good enough? Am I a lady? We were-- As girls
were busy combating. We had been taught the history
of a black women which included-- you know, we've been raped. Many white people think
we weren't even raped. We were just loose and flatteringly on the plantations
and after, you know. We don't really have minds. We're just lusty, sexy creatures. All of those stereotypes, we're
still circulating in the, you know, through the whole-- through
most of the 20th century. They only started changing
in the late '60s. So, you know, that--
those kinds of history-- histories are hanging over you when
you go out to eat in a restaurant, when you sit down in a
school room, you know. When-- Anytime you enter any part of
the white world, at the same time, you know, we were fighting that
self hatred by honoring black people and their history and yet
because of class prejudice, you are also cultivating
real kinds of snobbery as every bourgeoisie
is taught to do. >> Marcia Davis: Except the
dress really nice for you today. [ Laughter ] >> Margo Jefferson: Oh, God. >> Marcia Davis: Just teasing. Actually I do-- >> Margo Jefferson: And you
look very fabulous in deed. Yes. >> Marcia Davis: Go on. >> Margo Jefferson:
You are so [inaudible]. So it's that kind of
self consciousness, the struggle between pride and
self hatred and the struggle between honor and snobbery,
I would say, right, it's key. And consciousness, you know. Black power was a big struggle for
the black-- for the Negro elite. >> Marcia Davis: Right. >> Margo Jefferson: Not so
much from my generation. We were thrilled to seize it. But nevertheless, it felt like you
had to remake yourself entirely. >> Marcia Davis: All the internal
scrutiny, I wonder about what it was like as a child, one of the things that I found rather sad is the
pressure for children to figure this out and to navigate the world of through this two
worlds in which they live. >> Margo Jefferson: Yeah. >> Marcia Davis: It seemed very
challenging and also the struggle for parents, for African
American parents the whole idea of preserving innocence
as long as you can. I wonder if you can talk about that. >> Margo Jefferson: There is. >> Marcia Davis: And
comparing it now, do you still see the
remnants of that? >> Margo Jefferson:
You know, every-- I'm wondering if I
can find this passage from the wonderful black historian
and writer James Weldon Johnson where he describes
exactly the pressures. Well, I don't want to spend huge
amounts of time looking for it but he says, "For every Negro
parent," and his writing this in the '30s, "there is this
battle, internal battle between keeping a child, you know,
innocent enough to feel confident about moving through the world. And yet if you are a black child, making sure you know
enough about prejudice." We see played out, acted out in-- you know, in terms of the police
brutality cases all the time when parents say, "What am
I going to tell my son?" you know, going through this. Well, there also, you know,
plenty of other things. Parents are worrying about
telling a black child. So you know, that balance is
always, do you tell too little, do you tell too much,
do you tell it too soon. And James Weldon Johnson
has a chilling line. He says, "Either way if
you go too far either way, it can spell spiritual disaster
for the child," you know, which is psychologically as
well as sociologically profound. And every generation of black
parents inherits what their parents did or didn't-- and didn't
do with them and then has to renegotiate it according
to the historical and sociological circumstances. I was not-- my sister and
I we were very protected in that world in many ways. We were not physically threatened. What our parents had
to navigate, you know, were things like-- it's in the book. Well, we go to-- we're
on a vacation, we go to a hotel in Atlantic City. They suddenly can't
find the reservations. My father says, "Dr. Jefferson." The hotel clerk keeps saying,
"Mr. Jefferson, I can't find it." Finally, we got shown
to an egregious room. You know, and my sister
and I still don't get it. My parents, you know, are--
they don't want to tell us but they are letting us
know we're leaving tomorrow. It's a prejudice hotel. The bathtub is dirty. There are those kinds of things. Also, we have to navigate
and integration. And by the time especially you get--
you know, do you do play dates? Now, this is the '50s. So let's not forget in the
'50s, the Brown versus Board of Education is just happening. So, you know, these little worlds
of this or that, private school or public school, the private
ones were more sheltered. They were-- Everyone
was feeling their way. So, yeah, do you do play dates? When you do, are you reading that the mothers are really not
comfortable with each other? And do you make of that. When adolescence comes,
the whole question of interracial dating comes up. And, you know, the parents--
all parents have to decide, I don't want my black child
to be hurt or belittled or exonecized [phonetic]. But the child has-- is going
to be doing and thinking and experimenting with things. I, the parent, did not and
they must have room, you know, to move into the world
as it changes. That is still going on, of course. You know, life-- well, you know,
it depends on where you are and how much, you know, money
and access and privilege in terms schools, neighborhoods. The black parents were
talking about have, actually. I can't give one answer
to that question. But the negotiations, of
course, are still continuing. >> Marcia Davis: You're right. Your book has been called and
described as brave and revelatory. And there is-- there
are a couple of moments in the book that are very poignant. The level of stress for you, you
talked about and being in college and wanting to avoid offensing
program and practicing-- throwing yourself down the
step so that you could-- >> Margo Jefferson: So that I
could say I had a real injury. >> Marcia Davis: Yes. Exactly. But more poignantly
was this idea that you consider, thought about suicide quite a lot. And I wanted to know how the process by which you decided
to write about that. >> Margo Jefferson: All right. One, you know, suicide
is a very private matter. But I decided I wanted to write
about it for several reasons. The easiest reason to state
first, I think is, and I am-- well, first the statement
then the qualification. One of the stereotypes,
interestingly enough that black people contend
with or one of the sets of expectations is you're supposed
to be too strong to be depressed, you know, to breakdown, to
be acknowledged any kind of unhappiness that's
certainly the way many, many black people are
raised, you know. Don't give way. To give way in anyway to acknowledge
defeat, grief, melancholy, depression, is to give
the white man, to give white people the victory. I grew up very much in
that landscape which, you know, really comes several. Certainly, it's totally forms in
the 19th century it precedes that. And I found it enormously burdensome
as I moved into my life as a writer. I found when I spoke honestly
to black friends of my, again, particularly women that I
saw it manifested in men that they were often
suffering the same-- from the same thing and
yet the business of therapy or counseling, that very forbidden. So, you know, so much of this book
is about what in terms of the-- you know, one's matriculation
into adult, you know, blackness, you know, what's forbidden,
what's accepted, you know, what-- how do you-- what's allowed, what
room for improvisation is allowed. You know, what's the relationship of each black individual
to the group at large. So that's one reason I wanted
to write openly about it, to help break that taboo. And I am finding many of my
students, you know, people of color, Blacks but also Latins,
South and East Asians. At Columbia are-- they're
writing about this kind of thing and responding to it also. It's been a kind of big
cultural social secret. The other thing is, if
you're writing a memoir, you do choose what
material to leave out. >> Marcia Davis: Yes. >> Margo Jefferson: But a real--
But living within the confines of and negotiating with
depression, which is as much anger at it is grief had been a very
large part of my adult life and it was just too much of
a lie, not to write about it. >> Marcia Davis: And I see we
have about five more minutes. So there's a question that
I wanted to really get to. And it's about the
quote for your mother. It's a very strong quote. And she says very early in the book. >> Margo Jefferson: Yeah, my-- This
is also at my-- they just placed. My mother and my father
are young-- married. It's 1943, there at Fort
Huachuca, the all black army fort. And my mother is writing. She's pregnant with my sister. She's only been married
a couple of years and she is writing a
dear friend of hers. >> Marcia Davis: Yes. And she writes to her friend in
the closing part of the letter. "Sometimes I almost
forget that I am a Negro. That's something, huh." Talk about the statement-- >> Margo Jefferson:
Oh, wait a minute. >> Marcia Davis: -- and
what that means to you? >> Margo Jefferson: What proceeds
that is that she is saying to her friend, you know, there's
another of hers is about is engaged and my mother is saying, please,
you know, give her my best and tell her I wish her
all the happiness I have. In fact, I have so
much happiness now that sometimes I almost
forget I'm a Negro and that's something [inaudible]. I found that letter--
or my mother found it and showed it to me in the '70s. And I read it out loud in
our kitchen to my sister and my then quite young niece. And we are joy drunk. It was so poignant my mother
had always been very meticulous about what in terms of racial--
we could see her anger at times. But racial grief, you know, that
sense of helplessness at times. She was-- no. We did not see. So to read this and realize that,
you know, the rest of the letter is about movies she's seeing and
sorority doing, then clothes and books and to see suddenly in
that line all of the pressures, you know, that she had lived with. She and every other black
person coming of age, you know, had lived with. And yet to see that she was a
full, charming, and lovely person and had seized all of these things
that you can take for granted from falling in love
with someone to loving, seeing the movie "Jane
Eyre", she had claimed those for herself even though
in some way we as black people didn't
quite have licensed-- >> Marcia Davis: Yeah. >> Margo Jefferson:
-- to those pressures. That's what I see that
sentence is mean, yeah. >> Marcia Davis: Yeah. I read as she had found
a way to be fully human-- >> Margo Jefferson: Yeah. >> Marcia Davis: -- in a
world that one of the things that racism does is
it denies humanity-- >> Margo Jefferson: Exactly. >> Marcia Davis: -- and
you're total humanity. >> Margo Jefferson: And
it can force you to feel-- it's a crime never to forget. >> Marcia Davis: Yes. >> Margo Jefferson: And she
was saying I can do both. I can remember and forget. Yeah. >> Marcia Davis: So you
mentioned your niece. How did you help her navigate
this world as she was growing up? >> Margo Jefferson: Well, I
followed my sister's lead. Of course, you have to be
careful as [inaudible] her uncle because I'm sure some of you know. Again, I think what we both tried
to do, what I was most aware of was she wanted to
dance, she was musical, really encouraging everything in
her temperament and personality that signaled flourishing, you
know, and to give her a sense. I always had her keeping
a little notebook. Not because she was going to
become a writer necessarily, but because as a girl also, I wanted
her to feel her thought mattered, you know, that she could have
observations about anything. In terms of race, we try to follow
the James Weldon Johnson lead. She took ballet lessons very early. And so my sister really had
to navigate between, you know, encouraging the hard work and
the discipline and the pleasure that if you love ballet, it can
give you nevertheless and the fact that it was a very,
very white world. My niece, oh, eventually danced
with the Frankfort Ballet and the Dance Theater of Harlem. But she's 46 now. You know, there would not have
been room for her in ballet theater as there is now for
wonderful [inaudible]. >> Marcia Davis: Right, yes. Right, yeah. Do you think white-- This is something that my
friends and I debate so often. It's just like do you think white
Americans think about race as much as African Americans
think about race? Do they even think about us as
much as we think about them? >> Margo Jefferson: Well-- >> Marcia Davis: Maybe some
of you can answer that, too. >> Margo Jefferson:
Yeah, maybe you should. You know, it depends on
the white Americans, right. Doesn't it, she said. I would say what-- you know,
this is not something new. One of the privileges of being--
of taking your identity and status for granted is not having to
think about the complexities, the contradictions, the
difficulties of it all the time. One of the reasons we are
seeing this venomous backlash of racism going in multiple
directions, you know, is that certain groups of white
people are finding that they're-- when they think about their
identity, they are thinking about challenge, depravation,
you know, not getting what they used to-- you
know, it's all being rattled up. But I think traditionally,
white people have been able to choose much more when they wanted
or needed to think or interested in or even in terms of certain social
forces had to think about it. Then, you know, if you live in in all white neighborhood,
you could closed out. You could-- I think it's
becoming harder now. >> Marcia Davis: Sure the Obama
presidency has also made it-- >> Margo Jefferson: I think it was-- >> Marcia Davis: -- an issue. >> Margo Jefferson:
It was galvanizing in good and very bad ways. It brought a lot of stuff racially that could be suppressed
or confined. We, bubbling up for sure. >> Marcia Davis: So I want to
go back to your mother's quote-- >> Margo Jefferson: OK. >> Marcia Davis: -- and the freedom
that she found and the totality of her humanity that she found. I'd like to get free like that. And I wonder how you
feel about your life now. Do you feel that freedom
that she expressed? >> Margo Jefferson:
Well, first of all, she didn't feel a little bit tad. >> Marcia Davis: OK. >> Margo Jefferson: But she's
still have a joie de vivre, you know, that. I feel-- This is-- No, I don't know. She also had a much
more deliberately. She lived the life of an
intelligent upper middle class wife in the '40s, '50s, and '60s. And that meant a certain
kind of security albeit with difficulties as
we feminist know. That was a life that
you could structure in certain ways to be pretty safe. And if you are very
resourceful about it as she was, that pretty much worked. My generation, and thank God,
we were shaped by civil rights, black power, antiwar,
feminism, women's movement, gay rights, you know, boom. >> Marcia Davis: Right. >> Margo Jefferson: But the
excitement and the pleasure, the story of life, you know, the
sense of freedom was supposed to partly come from this conflicts
and feeling you had to be made new. It's very scary sometimes. I think often it does leave one more
fracture than fractious and open to uncertainties and unhappiness. It's also a-- you know,
it's also kind of thrilling. It's pretty thrilling
and it was essential. It was just utterly necessary. So we're looking for different
kinds of freedom, aren't we? >> Marcia Davis: Yeah. >> Margo Jefferson: Yeah. >> Marcia Davis: Yeah. All right. Well, we have to go to
questions from the audience. [ Applause ] >> Margo Jefferson: You too, yeah. [ Applause ] >> Marcia Davis: So smile when
you're asking your questions. And remember you're
going to be on camera. Before I call on the first person, I like to just take a little
personal privilege shamelessly so. First of all the Washington Post
is a sponsor of the Book Festival. And, you know, for
the last 60 years, since it's been organized,
we've been a part of it. And then also just to say in terms,
if you haven't seen this magazine, which is in last Sunday's paper,
it's a commemorative issue for the Museum of African
American History and Culture. John Lewis was in it. Oprah Winfrey is in it. Ken Burns was in it. So many features. And I wrote the cover story. I said it was going
to be shameless, so. Get your hands on it. [ Applause ] So we've got about 20-- excellent. We've got about 20
min for questions. So I see a gentleman
here at the mic. You. Yes, you. >> Thank you so much for you book. I thoroughly enjoyed it as much as reading your criticisms
in the New York Times. >> Margo Jefferson: Thank you. >> And I miss that. But there was something
that I kind of felt. In the first part of your
book when you talk about being at the lab school and having very
bourgeois protective parents, did you ever get a chance
to go down to the hood and make relationships there
and what kind of empathy and identifications you
make with the people on the other side of Chicago. I didn't quite get that as much
as I got what was happening at the lab school in terms
of your relationships. >> Margo Jefferson:
Well, that was my school. But I live until-- we
live in Park Manor, which was an all black
neighborhood except for the very first
years we moved into it and until I was in high school. And so really everyone
I was around was black. I do mention, you know,
in a sheltered way going into certain parts of the
hood, 47th in South Park, 63rd. And I say, there's a story I tell
when I say to my mother, "Oh, my God, you know, I love being
here, you know, the way people-- you know, the way black
people are moving and talking. Did you ever have that feeling
about some special part of Chicago?" And she said, "Yeah, exactly." My parents were-- My
mother grew up in Chicago. So she was going to, you
know, the Club DeLisa and the Regal Theater
and all of that. I did that with my friends, too. My parents went to
jazz clubs, you know, all of their friends were black. My father was pediatrician. He had patients from all classes. But I can't pretend that-- I won't
pretend that we made lots of friends across those class lines. We did not. But we did live in an
all black neighborhood. And, you know, I was
most familiar in terms of that day-to-day life with blacks. But no, those class lines
were certainly there. And in a certain way, you know, in-- you know, in terms of the black
music we loved and black language, we were slumming a little bit
when we try to imitate it. We love imitating it. But, yeah, we were playing
exotic a little bit. That's what class distinctions do. >> Marcia Davis: You. >> Margo Jefferson: And I wanted
to be very honest about that. >> Hi Ms. Jefferson. I just had a question about one part of the book what I thought was
really heart-wrenching was the moment like you're a kid and you're
playing with these white children and you didn't realize that
they were kind of playing with a racist joke on you. And it was kind of the heartbreaking
moment when as a parent when you have to be swaying your
kids that what was happening to them was wrong and that
they should be offended. >> Margo Jefferson: You mean the
little girl next door to my mother, the one remaining white
person on the block-- >> Yes. >> Margo Jefferson: -- who said,
"Let's play ice from the jungle"-- >> Yes. >> Margo Jefferson: -- and
started to swing her arms? Yeah. I had-- Thank God,
she was the only one. No, my grandmother called me in, "Margo would you come
in the house please?" Then she said, you know, "Do
you know what she was doing? She was imitating a monkey. She was saying black
people are monkeys." I had no idea. I think I was not allowed to watch. We were very-- Our parents was
scrupulous about how much TV, all parents in the '50s were. I don't think were allowed to
watch certain cartoons and such where blacks would be
regularly depicted as monkeys. That at the age of nine or so
was just not a stereotype I knew. >> And I guess my question was-- >> Margo Jefferson:
And it was excruciating because I was mortified
and angry by the girl. But I was mortified to have
done something so shameful in front of my grandmother. >> Exactly. So having the experienced kind
of similar things, I guess, my question would just be how
does that kind of affect you as a kid how you see
yourself once you realized that people your own
age are, you know, kind of internalizing
these stereotypes and projecting them
onto you, I guess. >> Margo Jefferson: I
think it's very scary and I think what one does, you veer
between suppressing it, you know, and trying to deal with
what would be, again, I was at the largely white school. There were little cluster
of we black people there. But I went to school
everyday with by kids. So I had to suppress that enough
to have my everyday relationships with kids who are not doing that. On the other hand, you have
to retain that somewhere in your consciousness
so that you'll be weary. You avoid a situation where
it might happen again. You'll know how to act more boldly
and bravely if it happens again. So you-- yeah. Yeah, you veer between
bearing it and using it. >> Marcia Davis: Sir with
the nice Hawaiian shirt. >> Yes. I read your book. I like it a lot. I can see that the black
experience which I have not had is-- >> Margo Jefferson: I'm sorry. >> I said I can see that
the black experience which I have not had is certainly
another layer of complexity. But I also had the
feeling that, you know, young white kids are also
learning to be growing up and learning to be white. And they don't know the rules
and they feel the same sort of mortification when they
use the wrong word, you know, do something embarrassing. And I wonder how much of your
experience with just growing up, which is difficult for anybody. >> Margo Jefferson: You
know, it's hard to quantify. There is a certain kind of childhood and especially adolescent experience
that, yes, we are all clumsy. We all make mistakes. We all yearn desperately
to be accepted. We all struggle with rejection. The fact is I had as a
black person, you know, the racialized I rather than, you
know, the, oh, poor me, intimate I. Any young black child had
an additional level layer, call it what you want of
pure race consciousness that could express itself in
anything from innocent mistakes, maybe something you picked
up from a grandparent. You didn't know what it meant
to bigotry, open bigotry-- you know, whatever, to, you
know, just getting along fine. I don't think that-- I know
that level of racial weariness and watchfulness was just it wasn't
there if you were a white person. Unless you are a white-- very conscious white person
in a largely black setting. That would be a different situation. >> Marcia Davis: OK. I see two questions here. >> I just wanted to ask
about, in particular, the way in which you see the
Negroland of 2016, and I ask this from a position of teaching at a pretty [inaudible]
independent school in Washington, DC where the consumption of black
cultures is now very much central to the way in which we operate. That's part of what's happening
even in our political landscape. >> Margo Jefferson: Yeah. >> That black cultures are being
consumed more readily by more people in being digested whether
consciously or unconsciously-- >> Margo Jefferson: Absolutely. >> -- oftentimes. And I'm just wondering in looking
at that consumptious [phonetic], that conspicuous consumption
looking at it, do you see the Negroland shifting
in 2016, these Negrolands, are those spaces having to
adapt and to adjust to the way in which the cultural
landscape is moving and those new tensions
that are being created? >> Margo Jefferson: Absolutely. First of all, it's been
having to adjust just within my lifetime it started
to have to adjust, you know, with these upheavals of the
'60s and '70s, absolutely. And the upheaval even
included certain kinds of more intense integration. Now I think you're talking about
this mass cultural consumption, is that right, because-- yeah. You bet. It means for among
many things that Negrolanders of the so-called black elite has
to acknowledge, respect the fluent in many more kinds of black
culture than they once had to. And that is only a good thing. >> Yeah. >> Margo Jefferson: But yeah. >> I think I ask up a
guy was just at Dance with the Kids and I
notice how much-- >> Margo Jefferson: You think what? >> Marcia Davis: I was at a
dance like chaperoning the Dance with the Kids and they're
so on to like rap music now and like all these new things that
I think are like very different than like what have been 50
years ago and like that's like all the kids were consuming in. I'm like black culture
is much more central now. And I'm wondering how does
that affect it when you talk about black culture
and black wealth. >> Margo Jefferson:
You know, I think-- You know, I think that
actually to people first talking about the effect of The Jackson 5. That sense, whether you like all of
it or not of being unquestionably at the center of the culture
is a very different thing, in a way that's it can though,
you know, less controlled to what were saying at the
beginning about the Museum of African American History
in the center of this nation. No one can deny whether it's, you
know, on the pages of a magazine or a newspaper or, you know, on
your computer that black culture in every way from rap to books to TV shows [inaudible]
is absolutely central to this thing we call
American culture. That gives you a very
different sense of yourself. It means you're not a footnote
or only a problem or a kind of supplicant or the forced--
forced to be always the rebel. You can still be all of those
things but you don't have to be a supplicant or
a footnote anymore. >> Marcia Davis: So let's do our--
we've got time for one question, one more question, I
see the gentleman there. >> Hi. This may or
may not be related to what you were talking about. But you said something about-- or
one of the things is in cognizant of the block experience and
different from like white or how much do you think
about these things? And I always wondering if-- or
like, that relates to other things that like-- did you happen to-- or did you come across how it
may be related to thinking about, I don't know, being disabled
versus not being disabled. >> Margo Jefferson: Yeah. I could see an analogy
there, absolutely. If you are not, to use your
phrasing, if you are disabled, you have to constantly
compare yourself to what is declared the societal
norm, which is not being disabled. If you are not disabled,
you have much more room to take yourself for granted. It would also seem to me
that one of the other things that would analogous would be the-- sense constantly of
self consciousness, how are you being viewed by this
other world be it the normal world of white people or the normal world
of men often or the normal world of the abled, the not disabled. So yeah, I definitely see a
consciousness analogy there. >> Marcia Davis: Thank
you for your question. Thank you all for you questions. And thank you Ms. Jefferson. >> Margo Jefferson:
Thank you Marcia Davis. [ Applause ] Thank you. It's a great book fair. >> This has been a presentation
of the Library of Congress. Visit us at loc.gov.
