May 31, 2021

 

IN THE USA

 

Carson MxCullers (1917-1967) was probably happy on June 4, 1940.  Her first novel The Heart is a Lonely Hunter was published.  Richard Wright commended her ability "to rise above the pressures of her environment….in one sweep of apprehension and tenderness." Having published Native Son a few months earlier, Wright quickly recognized the agony of her moral isolation.

 

Today is the centennial of the Tulsa Race Massacre (May 31-June 1, 1921).  But most Americans do not grieve for the women and men and children who were massacred; they grieve with violent laughter  on Memorial Day for dead soldiers. In this nation moral choices are strange. The National Urban League has raised a question that demands an answer: "Where are we 100 years after the Tulsa Massacre?" I suspect  the proper answer is that we are wherever we think we are.

 

"Far too many students of Black literature, as well as American scholars in general," according to Kalamu ya Salaam," are unaware of and/or overlook Reed's literary work."  The same people overlook Salaam's remarkable contributions to cultural criticism, because their eyes are watching Harvard, Princeton, and Yale.

 

Jerry W. Ward, Jr.            May 31, 2021

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