Letter to Marcus B. Christian


Letter to Marcus B. Christian (1900-1976)

Dear Mr. Christian:

I am writing to inform you that you shall be remembered in various ways during 2018. As I begin to examine some of your published and unpublished works,  I begin to see how you wrote nothing in vain.  You wrote everything with gruff purpose ---for example, The Common Peoples' Manifesto of World War II (1948). That long poem is as compelling now as it was seventy years ago.  Thus, as I deal with 300 years of New Orleans history, I must deal with your inserting the manifesto between the proem "Men on Horseback" and the apologia "The Ballad of Rebellious Men."  What you were saying to Harry S. Truman's  Jim Crow/Cold War America is an aesthetic condemnation of Donald S. Trump's White Supremacy Drifting Into Fascism America.  It is my duty to witness how the black fire of your imagination cuts forward and backward.

You placed a card with  the following request in some copies of your book:

You are earnestly requested to read this complimentary copy of The Common Peoples' Manifesto.  It was written in the Spring of 1943.  The task of typesetting got under way in 1945.  The third or fourth printing of the title-page was completed on November 7, 1948, and the first copies bound during the last week of December.  Your written comments concerning this slender volume will be greatly appreciated.



After seventy years, I will honor your request.



Sincerely yours,



Jerry W. Ward, Jr.

February 6, 2018



*Where my mind currently resides, what the dead say to the living is ultimately more important than what the living say to the dead. JWW


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