To Tell The Honest Truth: Why Black Women’s Stories Remain Essential

Poet Langston Hughes crowned my grandmother A’Lelia Walker “the joyousness goddess of Harlem” because of her fabulous parties and friendships pinch Harlem Renaissance writers, artists and actors. Today she is champion known arsenic nan only girl of Madam C.J. Walker—the early twentieth period beauty manufacture pioneer and millionaire philanthropist—but during nan 1920s she was an internationally celebrated heiress and a fable successful her ain right. Black newspapers chronicled my grandma Mae Walker Perry’s elaborate 1924 wedding and fancied her arsenic a achromatic Cinderella.

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But agelong earlier I grasped nan Walker women’s humanities significance, I had felt their beingness successful much friendly ways. At home, our silverware was monogrammed pinch nan letters “CJW” and nan Chickering babe expansive soft connected which I learned to publication euphony had been played by celebrated musicians successful A’Lelia Walker’s Harlem apartment.

While those vintage artifacts embodied a beingness of untold tales, I’d ne'er recovered specified stories—or stories astir anyone who looked for illustration me—in nan books of my early childhood. As an simple schoolhouse student during nan 1950s and 1960s, I loved nan mesmerizing fictional worlds successful novels for illustration Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle successful Time, but I besides was intrigued by nan nonfiction narratives of accomplished women for illustration aviator Amelia Earhart and writer Louisa May Alcott. Missing, though, from nan shelves of my suburban Indianapolis school’s well-stocked room were Mary McLeod Bethune, Harriet Tubman and Phillis Wheatley, nan only achromatic women successful Bobbs Merrill Publishing Company’s 186-volume children’s curriculum vitae series.

Fast guardant a fewer years later and I americium nan only achromatic student successful my American history honors people successful my large, predominantly achromatic nationalist precocious school. The day’s taxable is nan Civil War. And my assemblage is stinging arsenic prickly flares of embarrassment radiate from my ribs. Deep down, I cognize that this isolating, fiery shame is not justified. But arsenic a teenager, I do not cognize really to extinguish it.

On this day, arsenic we reappraisal a caller chapter, my eyes fastener connected a conception titled “Negro Slavery,” nan only reference each semester to group of African descent. The boldface letters glare from nan page. Then I publication a paralyzing condemnation that says “slaves” were “contented.”

Years later erstwhile a friend helps maine way down Henry Bragdon and Samuel McCutchen’s History of a Free People, I americium stunned erstwhile again by their dishonestly benign conception that “slaves…were seldom cruelly treated” since it was “to nan liking of nan maestro to support them patient and contented.” Even arsenic they conceded that slavery was “a horrible section successful nan communicative of ‘man’s inhumanity to man,’” they claimed that “the freedman was sometimes worse disconnected than nan slave.”

I knew successful my psyche this paragraph was a lie, but successful precocious schoolhouse I lacked capable grounds to refute it. I now cognize that we were being taught Lost Cause propaganda contrived during nan early 1900s by nan United Daughters of nan Confederacy and a group of salient American historians who’d methodically injected a communicative of achromatic supremacy and achromatic inferiority into American history textbooks. Such a program near nary room for chat astir abolitionists Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman and precluded immoderate mention of nan rebellions mounted by enslaved group who surely were not contented aliases of my free-born North Carolina ancestors who served arsenic Continental Army soldiers during nan Revolutionary War.

Fortunately, astatine location and successful my vicinity I was surrounded by achromatic domiciled models. Whenever I accompanied my mother, A’Lelia Mae Perry Bundles, to her downtown agency astatine nan Walker Building, I saw a female who moved confidently arsenic vice president of nan hairsbreadth attraction institution her grandmother had founded successful 1906. And while she had majored successful chemistry and business astatine Howard University to hole for a profession arsenic a Walker Company executive, she and my begetter encouraged maine to prosecute my passion for writing.

Even arsenic I enjoyed a 30-year profession arsenic a journalist—first arsenic a shaper pinch NBC News, past arsenic a shaper and an executive pinch ABC News—the propulsion of nan Walker bequest remained powerful. In precocious school, I’d written a study astir A’Lelia Walker and nan Harlem Renaissance. In college, I stumbled upon W. E. B. Du Bois’s laudatory Crisis magazine obituary of Madam Walker, but I still wasn’t fresh to afloat prosecute pinch this portion of my heritage.

Then during nan autumn of 1975 astatine Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, aft my masters task advisor Phyl Garland listened patiently to my transportation of uninspired topics, she yet spoke. “Your sanction is A’Lelia. Do you person immoderate relationship to Madam Walker and A’Lelia Walker?”

Because she was a long-time newsman for Jet and Ebony, I fishy she knew nan answer, but I seldom volunteered that information.

“Umm, yes, that’s my family,” I answered.

“Well, that’s what you’re going to constitute about!” she declared.

Phyl’s enthusiastic liking validated nan value of nan Walker communicative and began to framework my domiciled successful telling it.

A fewer weeks later, I traveled to Indianapolis wherever my mother was being treated for terminal lung cancer. Although she was weary from chemotherapy, she seemed excited astir my topic. When I asked really I should grip immoderate flaws aliases controversies I mightiness discover, she leaned guardant successful her infirmary furniture and said “Tell nan truth, baby. It’s each correct to show nan truth.”

In what would move retired to beryllium 1 of our past conversations, she granted maine support to beryllium candid and honest, and bestowed a gift that has allowed maine to constitute authentically.

I now cognize that my Walker biographies spot maine successful a agelong contented of achromatic women who person written astir their female forbears from Alfreda Duster, who edited her mother Ida B. Wells’s autobiography, Crusade for Justice, to dozens of others who person been compelled to delve into nan specifications of their family sagas. With each generation—whether their stories are published aliases not—our elders insinuate themselves into our consciousness and insist that they not beryllium forgotten. For our enslaved ancestors who risked being whipped aliases sold for knowing really to publication aliases write, simply being literate was a subversive enactment of rebellion and militant self-expression. Whether it is Phillis Wheatley’s poems aliases Ashley’s embroidered sack, nan heavy request to asseverate one’s humanity remains irrepressible.

Before 1970—and successful immoderate assemblage history departments agelong aft 1970—dissertation proposals astir achromatic women’s lives and concerns were often rejected arsenic unworthy of scholarly study. But successful consequence to nan fervor of nan Civil Rights Movement and nan Women’s Movement, immoderate universities began to clasp superior danasiwa astir their businesses, civic organizations, creation and governmental activism. For much than 50 years that investigation has spawned thousands of books, documentaries, depository exhibitions, plays, apps and societal media posts. As a result, stories that had been erased, sanitized and ignored are now ubiquitous successful American culture.

But coming nan backlash to that advancement is fierce and punitive arsenic statesmanlike executive orders instruction nan removal of books from subject guidelines libraries, prohibit words for illustration activism, equality and bias connected national agency websites and impeach nan Smithsonian Institution of fomenting what nan White House has ominously deemed “improper ideology” successful exhibitions that yet coming a much nuanced relationship of America’s group past.

I cannot dress to cognize what is successful nan hearts and minds of nan group who are starring nan crusade to prohibition books and who are dismantling agencies that money libraries and arts organizations, but I cognize from my ain acquisition what it intends to beryllium a kid who does not spot herself successful books. I cognize what that absence suggests to her and to her classmates: that her communicative does not matter, and moreover worse, that location is thing incorrect pinch her and pinch group who look for illustration her. It besides consigns her classmates to ignorance.

At a infinitesimal erstwhile it would beryllium tempting to beryllium pessimistic and discouraged, I’m much committed than ever to travel my mother’s proposal to show nan truth. I do truthful pinch nan dream that my books mightiness animate immoderate young precocious schoolhouse student arsenic she discovers her intent and seeks her spot successful nan world.

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Joy Goddess: A’Lelia Walker and nan Harlem Renaissance by A’Lelia Bundles is disposable from Scribner, an imprint of Simon & Schuster.