WEBVTT - Diary Dialogues 0:00:01.360 --> 0:00:04.200 On theme is a production of iHeartRadio and fair Weather 0:00:04.280 --> 0:00:35.919 Friends Media, December twenty seventh, nineteen seventy five. Sometimes I 0:00:36.000 --> 0:00:38.280 know I go places in the diary that take my 0:00:38.360 --> 0:00:41.839 breath away, as if there were someone else living inside me, 0:00:42.000 --> 0:00:45.040 with her own determined will to see and speak clearly. 0:00:45.479 --> 0:00:48.680 Because I don't write to protect myself or to say 0:00:48.720 --> 0:00:51.960 things I don't dare say to others. I don't cater 0:00:52.120 --> 0:00:55.200 to any pampered image of myself as a too sensitive 0:00:55.200 --> 0:00:57.920 soul for whom the world is too much. In the 0:00:57.960 --> 0:01:02.400 Diary her only friend, neither too fragile nor too sensitive. 0:01:03.000 --> 0:01:05.560 I have many true friends, and the portrayals I have 0:01:05.680 --> 0:01:09.080 known I have asked for. I don't write to hide 0:01:09.160 --> 0:01:16.200 from the world. Today's episode Diary dialogues I'm Katie and 0:01:16.240 --> 0:01:20.720 I'm Eves. Kathleen Collins was a writer, filmmaker, and activist. 0:01:21.200 --> 0:01:23.560 She's known for works like the nineteen eighty two film 0:01:23.680 --> 0:01:26.560 Losing Ground, as well as the plays In the Midnight 0:01:26.560 --> 0:01:30.760 Hour and The Brothers. Sadly, Kathleen died from breast cancer 0:01:30.800 --> 0:01:33.560 in nineteen eighty eight at the tender age of forty six, 0:01:34.080 --> 0:01:38.000 before most of her work could be published, so Kathleen's daughter, 0:01:38.160 --> 0:01:41.280 Nina Collins, took to the task of diligently gathering her 0:01:41.319 --> 0:01:43.000 mom's work and releasing it. 0:01:43.600 --> 0:01:47.360 In twenty sixteen, Echo Press posthumously published a collection of 0:01:47.440 --> 0:01:51.880 Kathleen's stories called Whatever Happened to Interracial Love, and in 0:01:51.920 --> 0:01:55.200 twenty nineteen, Notes from a Black Woman's Diary was published. 0:01:55.440 --> 0:01:59.040 It features a selection of her fiction, letters and diary entries, 0:01:59.280 --> 0:02:01.800 including the diary entry that you heard at the beginning 0:02:01.840 --> 0:02:02.800 of this episode. 0:02:03.160 --> 0:02:06.200 Now, it was a diary entry, but it was also 0:02:06.320 --> 0:02:09.560 a kind of commentary. She's actually reflecting on some of 0:02:09.600 --> 0:02:12.640 her older diary entries, pausing to think about why she 0:02:12.760 --> 0:02:16.399 wrote and what the diary meant to her. In my opinion, 0:02:16.760 --> 0:02:19.760 this is a brave act. The other day, I was 0:02:19.880 --> 0:02:22.080 just thinking about going back to look at some of 0:02:22.120 --> 0:02:25.240 my old journals, and I was already starting the sweat. Girl. 0:02:25.800 --> 0:02:29.200 You know, I've thrown away and ripped up all my 0:02:29.280 --> 0:02:32.400 old journals and I regret it. Yeah, like especially the 0:02:32.400 --> 0:02:33.959 ones I've had when I was really young. But they're 0:02:34.000 --> 0:02:36.240 just so embarrassing, and I'm like, I want to make 0:02:36.280 --> 0:02:39.120 sure no one ever sees these, including myself. 0:02:39.560 --> 0:02:41.320 Yeah, that's how I feel about looking at my own 0:02:41.360 --> 0:02:42.959 and not even once I were that old. How old 0:02:43.000 --> 0:02:44.119 were the ones that you were? 0:02:44.760 --> 0:02:46.720 It was that you ripped up the last ones I 0:02:46.760 --> 0:02:48.960 think I ripped up. I was truly like in like 0:02:49.000 --> 0:02:51.519 middle school or something, which now I'm like, oh, it 0:02:51.520 --> 0:02:53.840 would be like funny to like go back and look 0:02:53.840 --> 0:02:56.360 at them. I have someones from like twenty sixteen, twenty 0:02:56.360 --> 0:03:00.400 seventeen era. I haven't ripped those up, but baby, I will, 0:03:01.200 --> 0:03:01.600 I will. 0:03:02.240 --> 0:03:03.680 I haven't learned you just said. 0:03:03.760 --> 0:03:05.840 She did it. No, because like the closer I am 0:03:05.880 --> 0:03:08.360 to that age, I'm like, nah, that's embarrassing, Like you know, 0:03:08.400 --> 0:03:10.840 I can't have it nobody looking at me late that. Yeah, 0:03:11.080 --> 0:03:13.320 and I have some diary entries from you know, this 0:03:13.480 --> 0:03:15.560 year that I will likely you rip up later on. 0:03:15.800 --> 0:03:18.200 Yeah, I know I got something from last year. 0:03:18.360 --> 0:03:18.640 Girl. 0:03:19.200 --> 0:03:20.799 It's a lot of them in there that I don't 0:03:20.840 --> 0:03:23.600 want to see, and I just couldn't imagine publishing them 0:03:23.680 --> 0:03:25.480 of my own volition. Yeah. 0:03:25.480 --> 0:03:27.640 And then even the fact that she's like commenting on 0:03:27.680 --> 0:03:30.639 herself that makes me like, I don't know if I would. 0:03:30.760 --> 0:03:32.839 No, I wouldn't be able to do that. I don't 0:03:32.840 --> 0:03:36.160 think I would. I mean, when I go back when 0:03:36.160 --> 0:03:37.600 I was wanting to go back and look at my 0:03:37.680 --> 0:03:41.240 old journal entries, it was for practical reasons. I was like, oh, 0:03:41.280 --> 0:03:43.560 I know, I put some story ideas in there somewhere. 0:03:43.560 --> 0:03:45.320 I had some notes that I took about yoga or 0:03:45.360 --> 0:03:48.080 something like that. But I knew I was gonna come 0:03:48.080 --> 0:03:49.640 across other stuff while I was in there. I was like, 0:03:49.640 --> 0:03:51.440 I'm not trying to sift through all that to find 0:03:52.320 --> 0:03:53.080 what I need. 0:03:53.320 --> 0:03:56.480 Yeah, even not even like diaries, but the pictures you 0:03:56.480 --> 0:03:59.920 take and then your phone like makes a little video 0:04:00.200 --> 0:04:01.720 of like the status fucking day. 0:04:01.560 --> 0:04:03.240 Of coming up. 0:04:07.680 --> 0:04:13.720 You know what it is? Yeah, yes, same energy, same energy, 0:04:14.000 --> 0:04:17.000 but almost a little worse because AI is doing that 0:04:17.040 --> 0:04:18.760 to you, and you're doing it to yourself when you're 0:04:18.800 --> 0:04:21.960 going back to the journals, putting yourself through that mess. 0:04:22.520 --> 0:04:25.280 But I'm on the same page as you. So there 0:04:25.320 --> 0:04:28.560 aren't many diary entries in Notes from a Black Woman's Diary, 0:04:29.040 --> 0:04:31.560 but you get the best of both worlds. You get 0:04:31.560 --> 0:04:33.960 some of the original entries, and you get this meta 0:04:34.040 --> 0:04:37.000 narrative where the author gets to analyze her past self 0:04:37.040 --> 0:04:40.719 with more context and insight. Kathleen's entries give us a 0:04:40.720 --> 0:04:44.800 peek at contemporary published diaries, but they're a tiny sliver 0:04:44.920 --> 0:04:47.600 of a long history of black women writing their innermost 0:04:47.600 --> 0:04:51.359 thoughts and feelings on paper that includes their history of 0:04:51.480 --> 0:04:56.559 slave narratives, letters, and autobiographies. And through all of these 0:04:56.600 --> 0:05:00.320 published and unpublished diaries, we get to learn more about 0:05:00.400 --> 0:05:04.960 historical eras and culture, about the biographies of our ancestors, 0:05:05.000 --> 0:05:08.760 and about the day to day experiences of communities. Plus 0:05:08.839 --> 0:05:11.680 we get a sneak peek into the private, interior worlds 0:05:11.720 --> 0:05:16.120 of everyday people, unmarred by the specter of surveillance. And 0:05:16.200 --> 0:05:19.800 to be honest, it feels a little voyeuristic, but we're 0:05:19.839 --> 0:05:22.520 lucky to have the diaries that we do. So let's 0:05:22.600 --> 0:05:25.400 grab our tiny keys and crack open the padlocks on 0:05:25.640 --> 0:05:35.200 a few diaries. First up, Francis and Rowlin Whipper. Francis 0:05:35.279 --> 0:05:38.159 was born in Charleston, South Carolina, in eighteen forty five, 0:05:38.640 --> 0:05:41.799 and she was the oldest of five girls. Her father 0:05:42.000 --> 0:05:44.920 dealt in lumber. Not much is known about her mother, 0:05:45.320 --> 0:05:47.840 but the family had a fair amount of social and 0:05:47.880 --> 0:05:51.080 political status in black circles in the city, and they 0:05:51.080 --> 0:05:55.279 were considered free people of color. Frances was well educated 0:05:55.560 --> 0:05:58.279 and she and her sisters were proponents of women's rights 0:05:58.320 --> 0:06:02.000 and suffrage. Was a teacher, and she was a writer, 0:06:02.800 --> 0:06:05.120 and she was so good at her jobs that abolitionist 0:06:05.200 --> 0:06:09.760 and politician Martin Delaney commissioned her to write his official biography. 0:06:10.360 --> 0:06:13.320 That made her the author of the first biography of 0:06:13.360 --> 0:06:14.920 a freeborn Black American man. 0:06:15.720 --> 0:06:18.760 As an avid writer, Francis also kept a diary in 0:06:18.800 --> 0:06:21.640 eighteen sixty eight that still exists today. It's one of 0:06:21.640 --> 0:06:23.760 the oldest by a black woman from the South, and 0:06:23.839 --> 0:06:27.359 it's housed in the Smithsonian National Museum of African American 0:06:27.480 --> 0:06:30.520 History and Culture. But I just called that the Blacksonian Trial. 0:06:32.360 --> 0:06:36.680 In her diary, she writes about what she's reading, Dante, Shakespeare, 0:06:36.839 --> 0:06:40.200 Thomas Carlisle. She talks about writing her book, finishing it, 0:06:40.320 --> 0:06:43.640 and about its publishers and the pay for it. There's 0:06:43.760 --> 0:06:46.640 a little name dropping here and there on lectures and 0:06:46.680 --> 0:06:51.040 readings that she attended, like Charles Dickens and Ralph Waldo Emerson. 0:06:51.400 --> 0:06:54.560 In this diary entry, she talks about famous abolitionists and 0:06:54.600 --> 0:06:58.599 journalist William Lloyd Garrison, who founded the anti slavery newspaper 0:06:58.640 --> 0:07:05.080 The Liberator. Wednesday, February twelfth, eighteen sixty eight, mister William 0:07:05.120 --> 0:07:07.039 Lloyd Garrison spent the morning with me. 0:07:07.680 --> 0:07:11.480 I thank him a grand, noble soul, a singularly perfect 0:07:11.520 --> 0:07:16.120 development of God's highest humanity, a great intellect consecrated to 0:07:16.240 --> 0:07:19.440 one idea. I felt a reverence while in the presence 0:07:19.480 --> 0:07:22.120 of this great man who came to the rescue of 0:07:22.120 --> 0:07:25.960 a gaped and helpless people. God marked him out from 0:07:26.000 --> 0:07:29.440 the number to his truths. But is he a humanitarian? 0:07:30.000 --> 0:07:33.640 How can his practiced pen and ready heart remain uninterested 0:07:33.960 --> 0:07:37.760 while the same wrong exists under another form. God knoweth 0:07:37.800 --> 0:07:42.480 his purposes and the instruments best adapted. She mentions the 0:07:42.520 --> 0:07:45.520 anti slavery meetings that she goes to, and we learn 0:07:45.600 --> 0:07:48.320 a little bit about how anti black violence is showing 0:07:48.440 --> 0:07:52.080 up in current events that affect her. Sunday, August second, Columbia, 0:07:52.120 --> 0:07:56.680 South Carolina, reached Columbia about six o'clock. Mister Hipper met 0:07:56.680 --> 0:07:59.080 me at the depot with his buggy and took me 0:07:59.160 --> 0:08:01.800 to my boarding place, where an elegant and spacious room 0:08:01.840 --> 0:08:06.120 awaited me. Breakfast was tempting. My dear friend mister Adams 0:08:06.200 --> 0:08:08.679 was in to see me. Very soon after my arrival. 0:08:09.360 --> 0:08:11.320 Charlotte came to see me in the morning but Kate 0:08:11.400 --> 0:08:13.640 did not went to church in the morning with Harry 0:08:13.680 --> 0:08:17.080 Maxwell and mister Adams, the governor, and all the members 0:08:17.080 --> 0:08:20.200 were there. Quite an excitement created on account of the 0:08:20.240 --> 0:08:23.240 disappearance of Joe Howard after the visit of the Ku 0:08:23.320 --> 0:08:26.840 klups Klan at night, and we get some insight into 0:08:26.880 --> 0:08:31.240 some of our socio political opinions. Saturday, February twenty second, 0:08:31.720 --> 0:08:35.439 Washington's birthday. But if things continue as they are, there 0:08:35.480 --> 0:08:39.160 will be but little country left to celebrate it. For myself, 0:08:39.280 --> 0:08:43.120 I am no enthusiast over patriotic celebrations, as I am 0:08:43.160 --> 0:08:47.320 counted out of the way politic. I wrote very satisfactory today. 0:08:47.840 --> 0:08:51.520 Matthews brought me the Commonwealth and other papers. There was 0:08:51.559 --> 0:08:55.679 a grand description of Reverend to Bartell, Charles Elliot Norton 0:08:55.760 --> 0:08:59.600 and O. Bronson Alcott appear of the finest spiritual essence. 0:09:00.240 --> 0:09:04.440 I heard him at the Anti Slavery meeting. Also GB Fothenham. 0:09:04.920 --> 0:09:07.720 But she gets into some Monday moments too. She talks 0:09:07.760 --> 0:09:10.400 about her travels and snowstorms and all the folks she 0:09:10.480 --> 0:09:13.640 knew who were getting married while she was alone, and 0:09:13.679 --> 0:09:16.960 she talked about her later relationship with lawyer and legislator 0:09:17.000 --> 0:09:22.360 William James Whipper. Thursday August twentieth woke early wondering whether 0:09:22.440 --> 0:09:25.080 to throw up the sponge or accept a loveless life 0:09:25.160 --> 0:09:28.520 or not, felt as though w could not love anyone. 0:09:29.120 --> 0:09:32.240 A letter came from him today which restored me, A 0:09:32.320 --> 0:09:36.319 real love letter. What does throw up the sponge mean? 0:09:36.400 --> 0:09:37.679 I mean, I get the gist, but I was like, 0:09:37.720 --> 0:09:39.360 I've never heard that idiom before. 0:09:40.520 --> 0:09:44.679 Maybe like, oh, I'm just an old maid cleaning my house. 0:09:44.720 --> 0:09:45.840 I'm throwing up the spode. 0:09:48.640 --> 0:09:51.120 Actually that makes sense, that's probably it. 0:09:53.559 --> 0:09:55.600 I mean, there were a lot of domestic workers at 0:09:55.600 --> 0:09:57.600 the time. That was a lot of black women's jobs. 0:09:57.720 --> 0:10:01.240 I was also thinking it meant something about like birth control. 0:10:02.000 --> 0:10:04.319 I feel like it wasn't there some type of sponge? 0:10:04.679 --> 0:10:07.240 Yeah? Or is I don't know. Yeah, I think that 0:10:07.280 --> 0:10:10.480 was a method of birth control back then. Yeah. Still, 0:10:10.760 --> 0:10:18.600 those are two guesses. Yeah. I was thinking when I 0:10:18.640 --> 0:10:21.320 was going through all of her stuff, like, I feel 0:10:21.320 --> 0:10:22.680 like I wanted to be her friend when I was 0:10:22.679 --> 0:10:25.600 reading her diaries. I mean that might just be my delusion, 0:10:26.840 --> 0:10:29.720 but yeah, but I just loved how much she cared 0:10:29.720 --> 0:10:33.680 about writing and about learning and just about all the 0:10:33.720 --> 0:10:36.080 works she was reading, like actually critiquing it and having 0:10:36.160 --> 0:10:38.400 thoughts on it. There were moments where she was like, 0:10:38.440 --> 0:10:40.520 I was talking to I can't remember the person's name, 0:10:40.559 --> 0:10:45.120 but ostensibly a friend or an associate. I was talking 0:10:45.120 --> 0:10:47.679 to him and he said this about this piece, and 0:10:48.880 --> 0:10:50.560 I couldn't deal with that. I couldn't handle it. He 0:10:50.679 --> 0:10:54.920 was wrong. I liked her remarks and her reflections on 0:10:55.160 --> 0:10:57.520 how she felt about the work. I liked how she 0:10:57.559 --> 0:11:00.200 was like, that person needs to do some more work, 0:11:00.280 --> 0:11:02.120 like their writing needs to be tightened up, or their 0:11:02.200 --> 0:11:06.200 lecture needs to be tightened up. I really appreciated that 0:11:06.240 --> 0:11:09.040 element of her work, and she wrote so much about it. 0:11:09.080 --> 0:11:13.480 And I know this was just one year of writing, 0:11:13.520 --> 0:11:17.320 of detailed writing about her life, but you could tell 0:11:17.360 --> 0:11:19.440 she spent a lot of time in the books in 0:11:19.480 --> 0:11:25.760 the weeds, and she really enjoyed the knowledge, gathering, consciousness, 0:11:25.800 --> 0:11:27.320 raising elements of everything. 0:11:27.880 --> 0:11:31.040 So she wrote that biography of that man. Did she 0:11:31.520 --> 0:11:35.160 write more public facing work that would kind of get 0:11:35.160 --> 0:11:38.240 into her cultural critic bag or was it all in 0:11:38.280 --> 0:11:38.800 her diary. 0:11:39.320 --> 0:11:42.040 I think it was mostly in her diary. H Yeah, 0:11:42.080 --> 0:11:44.280 I might be wrong about that, but she didn't do 0:11:44.400 --> 0:11:46.680 a ton of public writing that I know of. 0:11:47.480 --> 0:11:49.560 And I think that's a testament of the time that 0:11:49.600 --> 0:11:53.920 she was writing into, because now I can't really imagine 0:11:54.280 --> 0:11:58.520 someone like her just writing that stuff in their diary. 0:11:58.559 --> 0:12:01.200 And maybe that's just like the bubble I'm in, but 0:12:01.640 --> 0:12:05.880 it seems like nowadays, if you are really in the 0:12:05.920 --> 0:12:08.400 books and you got a little pin you can push, 0:12:08.760 --> 0:12:11.439 you're pitching the Atlantic, you're pitching the New York Times, 0:12:11.440 --> 0:12:14.920 you're pitching the Cut, you know, yeah, and you're not 0:12:14.920 --> 0:12:17.320 going to just like keep that to yourself. And it's 0:12:17.400 --> 0:12:20.920 interesting too, because I imagine she didn't think about having an 0:12:20.960 --> 0:12:24.360 audience for this diary, but now we like write for 0:12:24.440 --> 0:12:27.160 an audience. I feel like even in our diaries, we 0:12:27.200 --> 0:12:30.280 write for like thinking like, oh somebody might read this, 0:12:30.400 --> 0:12:32.760 like not even just like oh yo, man, going through 0:12:32.760 --> 0:12:35.280 your stuff, but like, oh later when I'm the famous 0:12:35.320 --> 0:12:37.480 and people want to read my diaries, like let me, 0:12:38.240 --> 0:12:40.559 let me put a little funk on this, you know, 0:12:40.640 --> 0:12:42.760 instead of just like writing normal like you would. Right, 0:12:43.240 --> 0:12:44.600 Do you feel that way, because I feel like i'd 0:12:44.600 --> 0:12:47.120 be like, I feel that way. We write a little better. 0:12:47.760 --> 0:12:50.679 I feel that way for myself. So for me, when 0:12:50.720 --> 0:12:52.880 I write in my journals today, it's more about I 0:12:52.880 --> 0:12:55.160 don't want if anybody finds it, I don't want them 0:12:55.200 --> 0:12:57.960 to read this. Sometimes I be leaving out names because 0:12:57.960 --> 0:13:01.240 of that. But then I have to check myself and 0:13:01.240 --> 0:13:03.120 be like, girl, be honest, you are writing this for you, 0:13:03.240 --> 0:13:04.680 so just get it out here, like you don't have 0:13:04.720 --> 0:13:07.040 many places you can do that. I don't really think 0:13:07.080 --> 0:13:09.840 about that in my journals from a larger perspective of 0:13:09.880 --> 0:13:14.000 like what society would read later. However, I do know 0:13:14.080 --> 0:13:17.520 that I have this self surveillance of thinking about what 0:13:17.559 --> 0:13:19.920 if this goes into the archives one day? So it's 0:13:19.920 --> 0:13:21.880 not necessarily conscious for me, but I can't see it 0:13:21.920 --> 0:13:25.000 being unconscious because the reality of it is that I 0:13:25.040 --> 0:13:27.760 have a podcast, I write things, you know, So I 0:13:27.800 --> 0:13:32.679 have things that will exist already in the public sphere 0:13:32.679 --> 0:13:36.040 in some way potentially on the internet for eternity until 0:13:36.040 --> 0:13:39.000 the Internet blows up. So I do probably un blove 0:13:39.280 --> 0:13:42.840 next week, next week, thank god, because some of that 0:13:42.840 --> 0:13:47.800 stuff needs to go away. Yeah, so I do. I 0:13:47.840 --> 0:13:52.480 don't find myself self censoring like for that reason per se, 0:13:52.640 --> 0:13:57.240 But I have an awareness that like, I mean, do 0:13:57.280 --> 0:13:59.480 I want archives, you know? Do I want my estate 0:13:59.480 --> 0:14:01.200 to put some of things in the archives. Do I 0:14:01.240 --> 0:14:03.400 want to be worthy of that? Yes, I think that's 0:14:03.440 --> 0:14:05.520 the thing I would like to be worthy of that, 0:14:05.600 --> 0:14:07.719 Like my work will actually be meaningful to people in 0:14:07.760 --> 0:14:12.280 the future. But do I want my journals and diaries 0:14:12.320 --> 0:14:17.560 to go there? No, absolutely not. But that is what 0:14:17.640 --> 0:14:21.400 happened with Francis, and her eighteen sixty eight diary gives 0:14:21.440 --> 0:14:24.240 us a pretty detailed view of life in Boston and 0:14:24.320 --> 0:14:28.120 South Carolina in the reconstruction era, so it goes beyond 0:14:28.320 --> 0:14:31.560 just her personal reflections about her life. When we get 0:14:31.600 --> 0:14:33.960 back from the break, we'll jump forward about half a 0:14:33.960 --> 0:14:38.440 century to the lively generative period that was the Harlem Renaissance. 0:14:49.640 --> 0:14:57.040 Up next, Alice Dunbar Nelson. Like Francis, Alice advocated for 0:14:57.200 --> 0:15:00.680 political and social causes. She was in wom men's clubs, 0:15:00.840 --> 0:15:05.160 organized for suffrage and focused her journalistic efforts on topics 0:15:05.200 --> 0:15:09.320 like World War One, racial equality, and education. And she 0:15:09.360 --> 0:15:13.400 wrote essays, short stories, and poems. So she shared a 0:15:13.440 --> 0:15:16.400 lot of her thoughts in public. But her diary was 0:15:16.440 --> 0:15:19.320 published in nineteen eighty five, and it was the second 0:15:19.320 --> 0:15:21.920 book length diary of a black woman to be published. 0:15:22.440 --> 0:15:26.120 The first was activist writer and educator Charlotte Forton's in 0:15:26.200 --> 0:15:30.200 nineteen fifty three. Alice's diary provides an unfiltered look into 0:15:30.200 --> 0:15:34.080 her raw emotions as she endured personal ups and downs. 0:15:34.840 --> 0:15:37.800 As doctor Akasha Gloria Hall says in the book Give 0:15:37.880 --> 0:15:40.920 Us Each Day, the Diary of Alice Dunbar Nelson. During 0:15:40.960 --> 0:15:44.360 the periods when she kept the diary, Dunbar Nelson's life 0:15:44.440 --> 0:15:48.000 was in flux or crisis. Alice started writing her diary 0:15:48.080 --> 0:15:51.000 entries in nineteen twenty one, and her last entry is on, 0:15:51.360 --> 0:15:54.560 as she put it, the last night of a disastrous 0:15:54.680 --> 0:15:56.240 year of nineteen thirty one. 0:15:56.440 --> 0:15:58.560 But a big chunk of her entries are missing from 0:15:58.640 --> 0:16:00.680 nineteen twenty two to nineteen twenty. 0:16:00.360 --> 0:16:03.680 Five mm hm, because we don't have evidence of them. 0:16:03.880 --> 0:16:06.800 We don't know if Alice wrote during this period, but 0:16:06.960 --> 0:16:08.960 it is likely that she did, so we'll just have 0:16:09.000 --> 0:16:11.520 to be okay with that gap. But beyond that, we 0:16:11.640 --> 0:16:14.320 have a lot of her thoughts and sometimes she even 0:16:14.360 --> 0:16:17.440 typed entries on separate sheets and stuck them on the 0:16:17.480 --> 0:16:20.920 pages in her diary. Sometimes she put flyers, cards and 0:16:21.040 --> 0:16:24.400 invitations in the diary. Here's the first entry. In a preface, 0:16:24.440 --> 0:16:27.680 she wrote just after she began keeping her diary. Had 0:16:27.680 --> 0:16:30.040 I had sense enough to keep a diary all these 0:16:30.120 --> 0:16:33.960 years that I have been traveling around, particularly that memorable 0:16:33.960 --> 0:16:37.720 summer of nineteen eighteen when I did my bit traveling 0:16:37.760 --> 0:16:41.040 through the South for the Council of Defense, well there 0:16:41.080 --> 0:16:44.320 would be less confusion in my mind about lots of things. 0:16:45.040 --> 0:16:47.520 Now I begin this day to keep the record that 0:16:47.600 --> 0:16:51.760 should have been kept long since that flux that doctor 0:16:51.760 --> 0:16:56.600 Hale mentioned, the confusion that Alice mentioned that's present across 0:16:56.640 --> 0:17:00.720 the entries. She talked about her writing, her social advocacy, 0:17:00.840 --> 0:17:03.680 and her teaching, but she also wrote about how she 0:17:03.720 --> 0:17:07.840 struggled financially and how she was quote forty six years 0:17:07.880 --> 0:17:11.639 old in nowhere Yet. Nine years after that comment, she 0:17:11.720 --> 0:17:16.359 wrote the following Saturday, September sixth, nineteen thirty, lay in 0:17:16.400 --> 0:17:18.919 bed and finished per roots is the master of the 0:17:19.000 --> 0:17:22.200 day of judgment and have been wanting to commit suicide 0:17:22.320 --> 0:17:26.080 all day. Life is such a god awful mess and 0:17:26.160 --> 0:17:30.720 I'm such a total and complete failure. God. 0:17:31.480 --> 0:17:36.679 We have more suicidal ideation, losing jobs, business and publishing struggles, 0:17:36.720 --> 0:17:38.680 health complications. 0:17:38.240 --> 0:17:43.119 Spiritual development, romantic flings, learning to drive deaths in the family, 0:17:43.200 --> 0:17:47.000 celebrations of spring. She takes us on a whole rollercoaster. 0:17:47.640 --> 0:17:51.280 We get to learn about her writing submissions and subsequent rejections, 0:17:51.320 --> 0:17:55.440 which we're getting her down. Monday, November two, nineteen thirty one, 0:17:56.359 --> 0:18:00.960 sent Harlem John Henry to The Crisis Today. She had 0:18:01.000 --> 0:18:04.800 sent the poem to the Bookmen, Atlantic Monthly, Harper's and 0:18:04.840 --> 0:18:08.640 other places. According to Alice, the rejection from the Bookmen 0:18:08.840 --> 0:18:13.280 came back quote disgustingly prompt and yeah, I can relate, 0:18:13.640 --> 0:18:17.520 but anyway, Harlem John Hemn Reviews. The Armada was eventually 0:18:17.520 --> 0:18:22.280 published in the NAACP's official magazine, The Crisis in January 0:18:22.400 --> 0:18:26.119 of nineteen thirty two. At the time, writing was a 0:18:26.160 --> 0:18:28.879 boys club that was hard for black women to break into, 0:18:29.280 --> 0:18:31.679 and it was hard for Alice to balance keeping up 0:18:31.680 --> 0:18:34.880 with her work and her activism. Her work did grow 0:18:35.000 --> 0:18:39.040 more popular over time, but her funds did not reflect that. 0:18:39.600 --> 0:18:42.720 She started her journal entry on August nineteenth, nineteen twenty nine. 0:18:42.840 --> 0:18:47.080 This way, I am so flat broke that it is funny. 0:18:47.480 --> 0:18:50.000 An epidemic of poverty seems to have struck us all. 0:18:51.160 --> 0:18:54.120 It wasn't all doom and gloom, though there were bright spots, 0:18:54.359 --> 0:18:56.879 moments where she drank and danced and hot from party 0:18:56.920 --> 0:18:57.399 to party. 0:18:58.040 --> 0:19:02.040 Thursday, December eighth, Well, here sitting in the little bear 0:19:02.160 --> 0:19:06.720 dressing room of Robinson's famed Colosseum, while outside, a jazz 0:19:06.760 --> 0:19:10.720 band consisting of five slim black youths are discoursing about 0:19:10.720 --> 0:19:15.600 the snappiest rendition of don't We Have Fun? One Shimmy's automatically. 0:19:16.160 --> 0:19:19.439 Even in my big coat, huddled with the proper missus Miller, 0:19:19.560 --> 0:19:23.639 mine Hostess, and the no less proper Missus Robinson, I 0:19:23.760 --> 0:19:27.360 let go hoarse, voice and all, and shake a shoulder 0:19:27.480 --> 0:19:29.320 and croake a line or two to help on the 0:19:29.359 --> 0:19:34.280 jazz noise. As her diary shows, Alice had quite a 0:19:34.320 --> 0:19:37.960 complicated life. It's disheartening to see how Alice went through 0:19:38.000 --> 0:19:41.080 that same rejection and struggle that so many other black 0:19:41.119 --> 0:19:44.040 women writers did at the time. It's also hard to 0:19:44.080 --> 0:19:47.160 see the mental challenges that she faced in her own words. 0:19:47.800 --> 0:19:50.520 But at the same time we see that Alice lived 0:19:50.520 --> 0:19:53.840 a full life and worked hard and played hard, and 0:19:53.960 --> 0:19:56.879 just like so many artists today, she questions the strength 0:19:56.920 --> 0:20:00.320 of her work and her self worth my diary it's 0:20:00.359 --> 0:20:02.439 going to be a valuable thing one of these days. 0:20:02.680 --> 0:20:05.480 She said on September twenty first, nineteen twenty eight. And 0:20:05.520 --> 0:20:06.440 I'd say she was right. 0:20:07.040 --> 0:20:09.600 So she was pretty cognizant that people would be reading 0:20:09.600 --> 0:20:14.960 this afterwards. Yes, I think she was. I think she 0:20:15.040 --> 0:20:17.359 knew that there was a possibility of that, and hers 0:20:17.440 --> 0:20:21.199 was entertaining to me. So I wonder if she was 0:20:21.280 --> 0:20:25.440 kind of doing that for the future gaze she. 0:20:25.400 --> 0:20:27.280 Could have been she might've known her life was kind 0:20:27.320 --> 0:20:29.000 of a reality show in a lot of ways. I mean, 0:20:29.040 --> 0:20:31.680 there were a romantic there were love interests on the side. 0:20:31.840 --> 0:20:36.240 There was party, yeah, the party, all the rejections, the drinking. 0:20:36.040 --> 0:20:37.640 People love a little. 0:20:38.840 --> 0:20:43.680 A good little underdog David and Goliath moment. She's getting 0:20:43.680 --> 0:20:46.760 all these rejections. But I mean she's known as a 0:20:48.440 --> 0:20:51.800 big deal of the Harlem renaissance now. But if she 0:20:51.840 --> 0:20:53.680 hadn't been writing all those things like who would know 0:20:53.720 --> 0:20:57.119 that you're I say, got rejected seven times and from 0:20:57.160 --> 0:20:58.200 which places? Right? 0:20:58.640 --> 0:21:01.400 She was like, let it be know. Yeah, they played 0:21:01.480 --> 0:21:05.880 in my face. And that's my favorite part about reading journals. 0:21:06.160 --> 0:21:08.480 I mean you really get that insight into what they 0:21:08.480 --> 0:21:09.639 were truly thinking. 0:21:09.760 --> 0:21:12.320 Yeah, and what mattered because there's a million things that 0:21:12.359 --> 0:21:14.840 happened to you that even if you do keep a journal, 0:21:14.880 --> 0:21:19.320 you're not writing about like you could step on somebody 0:21:19.320 --> 0:21:22.040 foot at the intersection. You probably not going to write 0:21:22.040 --> 0:21:24.439 about that in your journal, but they're gon'll be like 0:21:24.520 --> 0:21:26.040 this bitch stepped on my lubitus. 0:21:27.200 --> 0:21:30.720 And you also get an insight into, like I guess 0:21:30.760 --> 0:21:33.399 if you want to do some cycle analyzing, into what 0:21:33.440 --> 0:21:35.600 they choose to include and what they don't choose to include. 0:21:35.840 --> 0:21:38.719 So there might be things that we now in hindsight, 0:21:39.200 --> 0:21:42.120 you know about them, and we know those things happen, 0:21:42.280 --> 0:21:46.240 and they may have represented it a different way in 0:21:46.280 --> 0:21:49.040 their diaries or they might not have included it at all. 0:21:49.200 --> 0:21:51.640 But there's also those moments where you read through stuff 0:21:51.760 --> 0:21:54.200 like this and I say, and I think, why did 0:21:54.200 --> 0:21:56.560 they say it like that? Why does she say did 0:21:56.640 --> 0:21:59.399 my bit? What does that mean? What's behind that? You know, 0:21:59.440 --> 0:22:02.440 there's a lot of subtext behind certain things and things 0:22:02.480 --> 0:22:04.400 where you can see the brackets there, you can see 0:22:04.400 --> 0:22:07.160 the parentheses, and something else happened. We might not get 0:22:07.200 --> 0:22:09.719 to know about it through the diaries, especially because there 0:22:09.720 --> 0:22:12.359 are probably some she wrote that are completely missing for 0:22:12.440 --> 0:22:13.040 many years. 0:22:13.240 --> 0:22:17.280 Yeah, and things that also can't be like really cooperated, 0:22:18.440 --> 0:22:21.560 like Okay, you went on these travels. There weren't like 0:22:22.080 --> 0:22:26.199 as many pictures back then, videos like maybe no one 0:22:26.280 --> 0:22:28.960 knew you were traveling like this, or maybe you had 0:22:29.000 --> 0:22:31.840 like a few official stops, but you was going off 0:22:31.840 --> 0:22:34.800 to little joy it on the side, you know. So 0:22:35.040 --> 0:22:38.760