Speaker 1: Identity is such a tough topic to have conversations around.
Speaker 1: It's such a nebulous concept, and every person can align
Speaker 1: with a bunch of different identity groupings. Within any identity group,
Speaker 1: individual people will have their own perspectives and experiences. It's
Speaker 1: almost as if lives are intricate and require us to
Speaker 1: think deeply about ourselves and others. It's no wonder that
Speaker 1: when identity comes up in relation to social and political issues,
Speaker 1: chaos often ensues confronting the ways we think about and
Speaker 1: address identity is no one size fits all process, and
Speaker 1: if you're an outsider in any way and conscious of
Speaker 1: its effects, you're often tasked with defending your humanity and
Speaker 1: disrupting orthodoxes. But answers don't come without questioning. I'm Eve
Speaker 1: stef Coote and This is Unpopular, a podcast about people
Speaker 1: in history who didn't let the threat of persecution keep
Speaker 1: them from speaking truth to power. In the early and
Speaker 1: mid nineteen hundreds, the relationship between the FBI and black
Speaker 1: activists and artists was and still is fraught with tension
Speaker 1: and animosity that moved in both directions. The United States
Speaker 1: Federal Bureau of Investigation targeted many black Americans for their
Speaker 1: work and political involvement. Take writer Claude Mackay, who wrote
Speaker 1: the sonnet If We Must Die, among many other poems, stories,
Speaker 1: and books. The FBI's file on him was a hundred
Speaker 1: and ninety three pages long, and it called him a
Speaker 1: notorious Negro revolutionary coin tel pro Or The FBI's Counter
Speaker 1: intellig program used psychological warfare, informants, and illegal surveillance to
Speaker 1: go after civil rights activists, communists, and other organizers and
Speaker 1: movement leaders. It killed members of the Black Panther Party
Speaker 1: and raids. Put simply, the FEDS went to great lengths
Speaker 1: to sew division and political organizations, encourage presentment of black
Speaker 1: leaders and groups, and make sure people that they considered
Speaker 1: subversives were brought down in any way possible. FBI Director
Speaker 1: j Edgar Hoover even directed the FBI's attention to black
Speaker 1: owned extremist bookstores, as he labeled them. It's a move
Speaker 1: that hearkens back to the restrictions placed on enslaved people's
Speaker 1: literacy in the attempt to limit insurrection and challenges of
Speaker 1: authority and status quo. One of the people the FBI
Speaker 1: employed it's correct tactics on was Richard Nathaniel Right. Richard
Speaker 1: was born in nineteen o eight in Roxy, Mississippi. His
Speaker 1: mother was a teacher and his father was a sharecropper.
Speaker 1: Richard had a younger brother named Leon Allen Wright. As
Speaker 1: the family attempted to make ends meet, they moved from
Speaker 1: Roxy to Natchez, Mississippi, to Memphis, Tennessee, but Richard's father
Speaker 1: left the family by nineteen fourteen, and Richard, his mom,
Speaker 1: and his brother moved a lot in the following years
Speaker 1: as Richard's mother took low paying jobs to take care
Speaker 1: of the family. His father's absence took a toll on him,
Speaker 1: and Richard remained estranged from him into adulthood. When Richard
Speaker 1: was young, he and his brother spent time at an orphanage,
Speaker 1: and his mom had a paralytic stroke, so neighbors and
Speaker 1: family helped take care of the Rights as they moved
Speaker 1: from place to place. A major moment in Richard's life
Speaker 1: happened when he was about nine years old, living with
Speaker 1: his aunt and uncle in Elaine, Arkansas. Richard grew to
Speaker 1: love his uncle Silas, but that relationship was cut short
Speaker 1: when Silas was murdered by a gang of white men.
Speaker 1: Richard's family and his aunt soon fled the city and
Speaker 1: headed for West Helena, Arkansas. For a while, the family
Speaker 1: also lived with Richard's grandparents in Jackson, Mississippi. His grandma
Speaker 1: and aunt Addie, who lived there too, were devout Seventh
Speaker 1: Day at Venice, and were strict about what Richard could
Speaker 1: read and write. He rejected having evangelical teachings pressed upon him.
Speaker 1: Despite the strict religious rules of the household, Richard read
Speaker 1: pulp magazines, newspapers, and stories. It was hard for Richard
Speaker 1: to manage his schooling because the family moved so much
Speaker 1: and because of his mom's disability, but he published his
Speaker 1: first short story, The Voodoo of Hell's half Acre, in
Speaker 1: a black newspaper called The Southern Register in nineteen four,
Speaker 1: and he graduated from Smith Robertson Junior High School in
Speaker 1: nineteen Richard started attending Lanier High School that fall, but
Speaker 1: he was only there for a few weeks before he
Speaker 1: dropped out to begin working. He left Mississippi once again
Speaker 1: and went to Memphis, where he worked for the Merry
Speaker 1: Optical Company and discovered a love for the writings of H. L.
Speaker 1: Mencon Fyodor Dostoyevski, Saint Clair, Louis Sherwood Anderson, and Theodore Dreiser.
Speaker 1: Richard's literary interest was being fed in Memphis. He identified
Speaker 1: with Mencon's view of the South as hell and the
Speaker 1: writing planted in Richard a seed of social protest. But
Speaker 1: Memphis itself, Jim Crow, was stifling. He hopped on a
Speaker 1: train to Chicago near the end of eight His family,
Speaker 1: who had joined him in Memphis, followed him to Chicago.
Speaker 1: To Chicago was not the South, but it was no
Speaker 1: magical city, devoid of segregation, discrimination, and racism. He took
Speaker 1: a series of jobs and went through a period of
Speaker 1: unemployment during the depression. But all the while Richard was
Speaker 1: still writing, still reading, and still studying writers, and he
Speaker 1: was developing an interest in communism. In nineteen thirty two,
Speaker 1: when he was working at a post office where a
Speaker 1: bunch of radical intellectuals were employed, he began going to
Speaker 1: meetings of the Chicago John Reid Club, which was mainly white.
Speaker 1: John Read Clubs were an arm of the Communist Party
Speaker 1: u S, a geared towards Marxist artists and intellectual Richard
Speaker 1: joined the Communist Party in nineteen thirty three, and he
Speaker 1: began publishing essays and poems in left wing journals. He
Speaker 1: was even elected executive secretary of the Chicago John Read Club.
Speaker 1: This is what he later said in an essay about
Speaker 1: how he felt when reading communist magazines. After attending his
Speaker 1: first club meeting, the revolutionary words leaped from the page
Speaker 1: and struck me with tremendous force. It was not the
Speaker 1: economics of communism, nor the great power of trade unions,
Speaker 1: nor the excitement of underground politics that claimed me. My
Speaker 1: attention was caught by the similarity of the experiences of
Speaker 1: workers in other lands, by the possibility of uniting scattered
Speaker 1: but kindred people's into a hole. It seemed to me
Speaker 1: that here, at last, in the realm of revolutionary expression,
Speaker 1: Negro experience could find a home of functioning value and roll.
Speaker 1: Around this time he wrote his first novel, Law Today,
Speaker 1: but it was not published until after his death. The
Speaker 1: John Reid Clubs disbanded in nineteen thirty four, but Richard
Speaker 1: continued in his literary pursuits. He went to the American
Speaker 1: Writers Congress in New York in nineteen thirty five. That
Speaker 1: same year, he began preparing guidebooks for the Federal Writers Project,
Speaker 1: A New Deal Relief program for unemployed writers. In nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty six, he was transferred to the Negro Theater unit
Speaker 1: of the Federal Theater Project and his writing career was flourishing.
Speaker 1: He joined the South Side Writers Group and wrote two
Speaker 1: plays based on his unfinished novel. He wrote the short
Speaker 1: story Big Boy Leaves Home, which was published in the
Speaker 1: Anthology of the New Caravan and received critical acclaim. He
Speaker 1: worked as a journalist for New Masses of Marxist magazine,
Speaker 1: but Richard was becoming disenchanted with the Communist Party. He
Speaker 1: questioned Stalinist policies and recruiting and organizing for the party
Speaker 1: was interfering with his literary work. Plus other Chicago communists
Speaker 1: constantly questioned his loyalty. In ninety seven, he decided to
Speaker 1: move to New York City. After the break, Wright publishes
Speaker 1: his magnum opus. In a counter terrorism report the FBI
Speaker 1: put out in the agency referenced a group of people
Speaker 1: they called Black identity extremists. The report said that quote,
Speaker 1: it is very likely black identity extremists perceptions of police
Speaker 1: brutality against African Americans spurred an increase in premeditated retaliatory
Speaker 1: lethal violence against law enforcement, and will very likely serve
Speaker 1: as justification for such violence. It noted that the violence
Speaker 1: committed by these extremists, or b I E S as
Speaker 1: it called them, peaked in the nineteen sixties and seventies,
Speaker 1: and that this violence was rare in the past twenty years,
Speaker 1: but the six targeted attacks against police that it listed
Speaker 1: since those could be indicative of a resurgence of targeted
Speaker 1: violence in what they called the b I E Movement.
Speaker 1: Throughout the report, the FBI took care to emphasize how
Speaker 1: these extremists premeditated attacks were motivated by the perceptions of
Speaker 1: an unjust criminal justice system, perceptions of unjust treatment of
Speaker 1: African Americans in the perceived unchallenged the legitimate actions of
Speaker 1: law enforcement. Here's US Representative Karen Bass expressing her concerns
Speaker 1: about the report to former U s Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
Speaker 1: So you should know that a lot of active surround
Speaker 1: the country are very concerned that we're getting ready to
Speaker 1: repeat a very sad chapter of our history where people
Speaker 1: who are rightfully protesting what they consider to be an
Speaker 1: injustice in their community, which is their relationship with police officers,
Speaker 1: are now being targeted and labeled as extremists and are
Speaker 1: going through periods of surveillance and harassment. She goes on
Speaker 1: to ask him what the Department of Justice is going
Speaker 1: to do to protect the rights of average citizens who
Speaker 1: want to protest the actions of police officers. He says,
Speaker 1: this department will not unlawfully target people, but too many
Speaker 1: Black identity extremists. Labeling and targeting represented a spiritual successor
Speaker 1: of co intel pro the grouping is fictitious. The cases
Speaker 1: the FBI identified in relation to Black identity extremism had
Speaker 1: no link to a unified movement. The label does, however,
Speaker 1: provide a concise terminology to help spread fear a moniker,
Speaker 1: not unlike the one given to serial killers for the
Speaker 1: purposes of sensationalizing and mythologizing. The specter of a black
Speaker 1: uprising looms closer when black identity extremists exist. In July
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen, it was reported that the FBI ditched the
Speaker 1: term black identity extremists and was opting to place several
Speaker 1: categories it once used under the umbrella of racially motivated
Speaker 1: violent extremism instead, but the point had been proven. It
Speaker 1: was not about organized and targeted violence against the state.
Speaker 1: Any challenge of the racial status quo was a threat
Speaker 1: to an order to precious to let go of without
Speaker 1: a fight. So Richard left Chicago the place that represented
Speaker 1: his departure from a South and his journey deeper into
Speaker 1: radical thought and social justice. But Chicago was not the
Speaker 1: refuge he had worked it up to be. It had
Speaker 1: also been a place where he lived in the boundary
Speaker 1: between black space and white space. He rubbed shoulders with
Speaker 1: white people in his Communist Party circles, but was still
Speaker 1: confined by the limitations that white society imposed on him.
Speaker 1: Years later, after he moved out of the United States,
Speaker 1: but returned to Chicago briefly, he wrote an essay titled
Speaker 1: The Shame of Chicago for the magazine Evenue. In the essay,
Speaker 1: he described the ugliness of Chicago and says it never
Speaker 1: became the promised land, the loaned for Mecca that he
Speaker 1: envisioned when he left the South. In New York, Richard
Speaker 1: helped start the magazine New Challenge. He also became the
Speaker 1: Harlem editor of The Daily Worker and co editor of
Speaker 1: Left Front, and to New York is where he had
Speaker 1: his first book published. He submitted some of his stories
Speaker 1: to a magazine contest that was open to Federal Writers
Speaker 1: Project Authors, and he won first prize. The publishing house
Speaker 1: Harper and Brothers then published four of his novellas as
Speaker 1: the book Uncle Tom's Children in nineteen thirty eight. Uncle
Speaker 1: Tom's Children confronted the horrors of Southern racism and black
Speaker 1: people's resistance against it. But it was the book Native Son,
Speaker 1: which he finished in nineteen forty with the help of
Speaker 1: a Guggenheim fellowship, that really put right on the map.
Speaker 1: Native Son follows Bigger Thomas, a twenty year old black
Speaker 1: man living in poverty in Chicago's South Side. Bigger responds
Speaker 1: to the weight of racism, oppression, and poverty with anger, fear,
Speaker 1: and violence. Through that lens, he rapes a woman and
Speaker 1: murders her and another woman. In the end, Bigger is
Speaker 1: sentenced to death. The book was a bestseller. Black and
Speaker 1: White folks Alike praised right for its brutal realism, for
Speaker 1: its emotional residence, and for its unparalleled portrayal of the
Speaker 1: reality of the effects of racism on its targets and
Speaker 1: its perpetrators. The implication was that Bigger was not just
Speaker 1: an animalistic criminal acting out of primitive instinct. He was
Speaker 1: a Native Son shaped by an environment that encouraged isolation, hatred, resentment,
Speaker 1: and violence in black people. That was a viewpoint that
Speaker 1: could tug at the heartstrings of white people who were
Speaker 1: prone to sympathy and understanding. The book dramatized the injustice
Speaker 1: and bleakness that plagued black life under the thumb of racism,
Speaker 1: and it emphasized the need for social change. The n
Speaker 1: double a CP awarded Right the spin guard Metal for
Speaker 1: the book. Native Son even went on to become a
Speaker 1: play and a movie. But Richard's breakout hit was not
Speaker 1: immune to negative criticism, especially from black people. Bigger's troubled
Speaker 1: life and tragic end was predestined. He was one dimensional
Speaker 1: and poorly developed, with no roots in real truth. Critics
Speaker 1: also said the story grossly supported perceptions of black people
Speaker 1: as simple, brutish, and doomed to tragedy because they were
Speaker 1: poor and black. In nineteen forty nine, James Baldwin, who
Speaker 1: was friends with Fright, wrote the essay Everybody's Protest Novel.
Speaker 1: In it, he said, quote Bigger's tragedy is not that
Speaker 1: he is cold, or black or hungry, not even that
Speaker 1: he is American black, but that he has accepted a
Speaker 1: theology that denies him life, that he admits the possibility
Speaker 1: of his being subhuman and feels constrained therefore to battle
Speaker 1: for his humanity according to those brutal criteria bequeathed him
Speaker 1: at his birth. But our humanity is our burden, our life.
Speaker 1: We need not battle for it. We need only to
Speaker 1: do what it's infinitely more difficult that is accepted. We're
Speaker 1: going to pause on the controversy and take a quick
Speaker 1: break when we return. Right breaks with the Communist Party,
Speaker 1: but still earns a spot on the FBI's watch list.
Speaker 1: Wright had married a Russian Jewish ballerina, Dimo Rose Meadman,
Speaker 1: in ninety nine, but they got a divorce in nineteen forty.
Speaker 1: The next year, he married Ellen Poplar, a white woman
Speaker 1: who was a member of the Communist Party. They stayed
Speaker 1: together until he died, and had two daughters together, born
Speaker 1: in nineteen forty two and nineteen forty nine. Nineteen forty
Speaker 1: one was also the year that he published twelve Million
Speaker 1: Black Voices, a folk History of the Negro in the
Speaker 1: United States, a book about black life from slavery to
Speaker 1: sharecropping to the Great Migration. Right also wrote the manuscript
Speaker 1: for American Hunger, which wasn't published in its entirety until
Speaker 1: after his death. Part of the second section, about his
Speaker 1: involvement in and later rejection of the Communist Party, was
Speaker 1: published in the Atlantic Monthly in nineteen forty four. By
Speaker 1: this point Wright had grown completely disenchanted with the Party
Speaker 1: and split with it. The party had turned pro war
Speaker 1: and it did not challenge segregation. He also distanced himself
Speaker 1: from Marxism, which had contributed to his perspective in his writing.
Speaker 1: The first section of the manuscript was published as the
Speaker 1: memoir Black Boy, A Record of Childhood and Youth in
Speaker 1: nineteen He made this dark statement in Black Boy, I
Speaker 1: used to maul over the strange absence of real kindness
Speaker 1: and negroes. How unstable was our tenderness, How lacking in
Speaker 1: genuine passion we were, How void of great hope, how
Speaker 1: timid our joy, how bear our traditions, How hollow our memories?
Speaker 1: How lacking we were in those intangible sentiments that bind
Speaker 1: man to man, And how shallow was even our despair.
Speaker 1: He was also busy with endeavors beyond writing. Fright gave
Speaker 1: a bunch of lectures, traveled helped James Baldwin get a
Speaker 1: grant and served on the American Council of Race Relations,
Speaker 1: but he would soon make another major life changing move.
Speaker 1: In nineteen he traveled to France, where he gave interviews,
Speaker 1: met with publishers, and linked up with French intellectuals and
Speaker 1: existentialists like Hertrude Stein, Jean Paul Sartre, and Simone de Beauvoir.
Speaker 1: Richard and his wife Ellen also traveled to other European countries,
Speaker 1: and Richard even helped other American, African and European intellectuals
Speaker 1: launched the Pan African magazine Presence Africane. The family returned
Speaker 1: to New York in January of nineteen forty seven, but
Speaker 1: the racism and anti radicalism was no longer tolerable, especially
Speaker 1: now that he had spent time in France, the looks
Speaker 1: he god for being in an interracial marriage, the discrimination
Speaker 1: he still faced for being black. He wrote the essay
Speaker 1: titled I Choose Exile, which was denied for publication in Ebony,
Speaker 1: but in it he wrote that there is more freedom
Speaker 1: in one square block of Paris than there is in
Speaker 1: an entire United States of America. He and the family
Speaker 1: moved to Paris in nineteen forty seven, where he remained
Speaker 1: until his death in nineteen sixty. There he continued to
Speaker 1: write essays and books, including The Outsider, Savage Holiday, The
Speaker 1: Color Curtain, and The Long Dream, and he published a
Speaker 1: collection of his lectures that he gave in Europe titled
Speaker 1: White Man Listening. After traveling to the Gold Coast or
Speaker 1: present day Ghana, he published the book Black Power, A
Speaker 1: Record of Reactions in a Land of Pathos, in which
Speaker 1: he espoused condescending views about so called African culture and
Speaker 1: tribal customs, and implied the superiority of Western traditions and industrialization.
Speaker 1: Right attended the Bandon Conference in Indonesia as a representative
Speaker 1: for the Congress of Cultural Freedom, and he took part
Speaker 1: in planning the first Congress of Negro Artists and Writers
Speaker 1: in Paris. His work was so troubling to US authorities
Speaker 1: that the FBI kept him under surveillance, targeting his passport
Speaker 1: and keeping him on the Security Index of Major Threats
Speaker 1: to the US. He was blacklisted in Hollywood, and he
Speaker 1: was having trouble publishing his work in the US, but
Speaker 1: he wrote and used his voice to champion social progress
Speaker 1: until the end. He died in Paris in nineteen sixty
Speaker 1: of a heart attack. Wright's work has been read worldwide,
Speaker 1: translated into many different languages. His writing indoors, and it
Speaker 1: has been credited with positively affecting race relations in the
Speaker 1: United States, and it continues to be contentious in the
Speaker 1: years after Wright's death. Many people have argued that his
Speaker 1: depiction of black life in Native Son and much of
Speaker 1: his writing reinforced negative stereotypes and distorted reality so much
Speaker 1: as to be harmful, and Zora Neil Harston said that
Speaker 1: his depiction of the South was unrealistic, writes words were
Speaker 1: more than vehicles to entice white readers into thinking and
Speaker 1: caring about the plight of black people. He influenced writers
Speaker 1: who came after him, and he worked to immortalize the
Speaker 1: truths of living well black that were often ignored in
Speaker 1: literary traditions in favor of caricature, idealism, or moderation. In nineties,
Speaker 1: Alas Poor Richard James Baldwin wrote and Uncle Tom's Children
Speaker 1: and Native Son and above all and Black Boy, I
Speaker 1: found expressed for the first time in my life, the sorrow,
Speaker 1: the rage, and the murderous bitterness which was eating up
Speaker 1: my life. Richard gave his lecture the Situation of the
Speaker 1: Black Artist and Intellectual in the United States just weeks
Speaker 1: before his death, when he was ill and under financial strife.
Speaker 1: He said that black American artists lived in a nightmares
Speaker 1: jungle and were repressed when they tried to speak out
Speaker 1: against the racial status quo. He had previously been involved
Speaker 1: with the American Society of African Culture a c I,
Speaker 1: a funded organization, and he had given US officials who
Speaker 1: were eager to curb communism information about Ghanaian politician Quam
Speaker 1: and Cruma, But in this speech he took a sharp turn,
Speaker 1: denouncing the US for spying on and trying to silence expatriates,
Speaker 1: and claiming that most revolutionary movements in the West were
Speaker 1: started by a gen provocateur to organize the discontented so
Speaker 1: that the government can keep an eye on them. Some
Speaker 1: people have suggested that Right was murdered. Right once wrote
Speaker 1: that a person who doesn't have a theory about the meaning, structure,
Speaker 1: and direction of modern society is a lost victim in
Speaker 1: a world he cannot understand or control. The Black experience
Speaker 1: is not monolithic, and neither are the ways black people
Speaker 1: choose to pursue liberation right chose to try to get
Speaker 1: people to acknowledge the cruelty and dehumanization that were the
Speaker 1: products of race and class inequality. The criticism of his
Speaker 1: work and questioning of its efficacy in bettering the lives
Speaker 1: of black people was warranted, but the fluctuations in his philosophies, politics,
Speaker 1: and feelings throughout his life chart the path of a
Speaker 1: man trying to attain self actualization and trying not to
Speaker 1: become a lost victim. His writing was purposeful and the
Speaker 1: stakes were high. Mississippi Senator Theodora Bilbo, a white supremacist,
Speaker 1: segregationists and Ku Klux Klan member, said the book was
Speaker 1: a damnable lie whose purpose was to plant seeds of
Speaker 1: hate against white people. He said at the book was
Speaker 1: quote the dirtiest, filthiest, lousiest, most obscene piece of writing
Speaker 1: that I have ever seen in print. I would hate
Speaker 1: to have a son, our daughter of mine permitted to
Speaker 1: read it. It is so filthy and so dirty, but
Speaker 1: it comes from a Negro, and you cannot expect any
Speaker 1: better from a person of his type. He said this
Speaker 1: on the floor of the Senate in nine It's in
Speaker 1: the congressional record. He was sure the book would bread
Speaker 1: trouble in black folks if we were distributed widely, and
Speaker 1: he wasn't alone in this thinking. Black Boy was challenged
Speaker 1: or banned in many US public schools for inciting racial
Speaker 1: hatred or portraying race relations as strained in hostile decades
Speaker 1: after Bilbo s viewed his rage. So was the book agitational?
Speaker 1: Did it dig up something unsettling in the white American
Speaker 1: psyche that society could potentially sift through? I think? So?
Speaker 1: That doesn't mean it fueled a revolution that turned race
Speaker 1: relations in the US on its head. Right wrote about
Speaker 1: how social conditioning and systems helped construct black identities and
Speaker 1: built characters of black people of the South that many
Speaker 1: would say lacked nuance. Black suffering was on display in
Speaker 1: his work in front of a worldwide audience, and Right's
Speaker 1: fiction waded into uncomfortable territory, like the sexual violence against
Speaker 1: women that's in Native Son. But Right's views did not
Speaker 1: represent those of all Black Americans, despite the notions of
Speaker 1: critics who believed him to be the most eloquent spokesman
Speaker 1: for the American negro in this generation. As one New
Speaker 1: York Times obituary put it, Native Son definitely breathes differently
Speaker 1: now than it did in the context of nineteen forty America.
Speaker 1: Yet rights insistence on exposing the destruction of racism and exploitation,
Speaker 1: and his use of literary naturalism if imperfect, remain relevant.
Speaker 1: He responded to the moment in which he lived with
Speaker 1: an intentional call for understanding and progress. Isn't awakening even
Speaker 1: possible without discomfort? Yeah, our producer is Andrew Howard, Holly
Speaker 1: Fry and Christopher Hasiotis are our executive producers. So we've
Speaker 1: reached the end of season one of Unpopular, who will
Speaker 1: be going on a short break. We'll be back in October,
Speaker 1: but in the meantime you can be on the lookout
Speaker 1: for a bonus content over the break, So keep your
Speaker 1: eyes peeled on the feed and keep sharing the show,
Speaker 1: keep sending us your thoughts and ideas and warm praises,
Speaker 1: and we'll see you again soon