Toni Morrison Talks with Hilton Als About Her Father

I've always loved hearing you talk about your father because he seems like the most incredibly supportive man in the world and you've also said in several interviews that he was a racist big time we know we know racism grows out of a kind of hurt or not in his case I didn't understand it my just knew that he wouldn't that way people in the house you know the my parents man it this you know I thought oh that's him and my mother was just the opposite she didn't care you were you know if you were nice to her that's her line he was nice to me and also we were didn't live in black neighborhoods you know there were Hungarians next door and Polish people and Jewish people anyway but that's the stuff that was a quirk and then I learned I went down to the little town where my father was born what was the name of that town Cartersville mm-hmm Georgia and a man there his name is Wofford there's a wafak Church is a Walton College so we know who owned the joint but one of the men who was a child at the time and grew up in that little town said that my father had seen two black men lynched on his street they were businessmen they had little stores and so on and so he was 14 mmm and he left and went to California and then he ended up in Ohio but I think seeing that at 14 not the murder of some terrible person or the lynching of some bad person but the lynching of two neighbors and I think that's why he thought that white people were as he said incorrigible you know they would like doomed but listen to this he went back to George every year to visit family well and my mother who thinks of her days in Alabama were her the sweet lovely you know little kitty you know in the woods and the flowers aren't there so that she never went back but he was you know he I am probably written about this several times he did a couple of things I had a little job cleaning a woman's house and I was about 12 13 years old after school yeah and the woman was cold mean to me meaning I didn't know what she was talking about I'd never seen a washing machine or vaccine or stove that was anything other than so I didn't know quite a person so I complained to my mother mmm my mother said quit you know I was getting $2 a week and I gave one dollar to my mother and the other dollar I kept for candy and I told my father and he said I go to work get your money and come on home you don't live there mmm oh okay this is it I mean it was a whole different I haven't had an employment problem since that's not where I live I live here with your family yeah that's right but my father you know after the during the war those of us black people that for people got really good jobs when they were not drafted and my father became a welder in a shipyard which was a you know highly skilled job and he came home one day and he said do you know today I welded a perfect scene on the ship and I said yeah but daddy nobody's gonna see it you know it he said it was so perfect I put my initials underneath GW and that's what I said nobody's gonna see that he said I know but I know it and it really was not so much good work for show it was good work that he approved even if it was hidden and private and that sense of you know approval yes right was very important to me

Channel: The New Yorker

Views: 24,222

Keywords: work ethic, racism, race, relationships, family, father, author, hilton als, toni morrison, interview, video, nyer festival, festival, new yorker video, new yorker, the new yorker

Id: ejKe-AE-1fo

Length: 4min 55sec (295 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 06 2015