{"id":4761,"date":"2021-12-16T15:52:33","date_gmt":"2021-12-16T20:52:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/magazine.alumni.ncsu.edu\/?p=1165"},"modified":"2024-02-01T16:27:39","modified_gmt":"2024-02-01T21:27:39","slug":"the-moments-of-truth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/magazine.ncsu.edu\/2021\/the-moments-of-truth\/","title":{"rendered":"The Moments of Truth"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

It doesn\u2019t take long talking to NC State English professor Jason Miller to understand that for him, everything begins and ends with 20th century American poet Langston Hughes. \u201cI was drawn to Hughes\u2019 accessibility,\u201d Miller says of a leader of the Harlem Renaissance movement in the 1920s and \u201930s. \u201cHere is somebody with some profound thoughts that aren\u2019t very nuanced or so ambiguous that they\u2019re really hard to tease out.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Take, for instance, one of Hughes\u2019 most famous poems, \u201cHarlem,\u201d in which he asked readers to think about America\u2019s unfulfilled promises of equality and dignity to Black people. \u201cWhat happens to a dream deferred?\u201d Hughes wrote. \u201cDoes it dry up\/like a raisin in the sun?\u201d The simplicity to that weighty question is what first attracted Miller to focus on Hughes in 2011. He wrote a book on Hughes, and then Miller continued to research Hughes\u2019 influence on Martin Luther King Jr. And for the last six years, Miller followed where that trail led him, from King\u2019s \u201cI Have a Dream\u201d speech delivered in Washington, D.C., in 1963 to how he clashed with the Ku Klux Klan in Raleigh in 1966.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Poet Langston Hughes, left, and singer Nina Simone, right, were 32 years apart in age but had a warm friendship based on their willingness to challenge the status quo.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Miller\u2019s latest project, Backlash Blues: Nina Simone and Langston Hughes<\/a><\/em>, is for Miller a continuation of his research on Hughes. Featuring letters, song and poem analyses, newspaper articles and an extensive library of photos, the new online archive offers for the first time an in-depth analysis of the friendship between Hughes and blues and soul legend Nina Simone. The union was sparked by a 1949 lecture in Asheville, N.C., Hughes gave to an audience that included a teenage Simone, and their association became more intense in the 1960s. The project\u2019s title, in fact, takes its name from a song whose lyrics Hughes wrote for Simone and gives a powerful voice to the civil rights struggle. Miller and his team of students highlight Hughes\u2019 influence on two other hits of Simone, and argue for the first time that Hughes helped shape Simone\u2019s transformation from shy standards singer to the High Priestess of Soul, a moniker by which she is eternally known.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The project also underscores the power of what Miller has long done with his work. Like Hughes did with his poems, Miller approaches his work with a certain accessibility. He doesn\u2019t just write articles in an esoteric journal that only other scholars will read. Instead, he uses performances, exhibits and multimedia platforms, uncovering and bringing to life concealed histories for public consumption. He recreates moments, like King delivering the first iteration of \u201cI Have a Dream\u201d in Rocky Mount in 1962, nine months before the world heard it in Washington, D.C. Miller goes beyond the page and finds stories within local communities that reveal the larger essence of historical moments, some inspirational and some uncomfortable, like those in his exhibit detailing the KKK marching on Fayetteville Street and naming the men in white robes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis state has the first real practice of the sit-ins,\u201d Miller says. \u201cThis state organized the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. This is a state Dr. King appears in. This is a state that birthed and shaped Nina Simone. These are North Carolina stories with North Carolina legacies. Positive and negative.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSo this is a state as much as any state in America that needs to deal with these things, understand then work through.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wide Eyed and Ready to Go<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Miller says he\u2019s mistaken for a history professor quite often. \u201cAnd I find that wonderful in that particular way,\u201d he says, laughing. But make no mistake, Miller, 51, is a literature scholar who has a love affair with language. Just ask him about a poet like Robert Frost. With Sunday morning evangelical intensity, Miller closes his eyes and incants, bringing to life Frost\u2019s \u201cTwo Tramps in Mud Time.\u201d \u201cBut yield who will to their separation\/My object in living is to unite\/My avocation and my vocation\/As my two eyes make one in sight.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eyes are often on Miller\u2019s mind. He says of his curiosity, \u201cOur eyes will never callous.\u201d He has adopted the epitaph of Midwestern poet Don Welch, who was also Miller\u2019s mentor at the University of Nebraska at Kearney. It reads, \u201cHe tried to keep both eyes open.\u201d And Miller cites the German philosopher Martin Heidegger in explaining the power of open eyes. Heidegger, Miller says, believed in the idea of \u201cunconcealment,\u201d that you have to be ready to see as the world reveals truths to you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI say it this way to my students,\u201d Miller says. \u201cIt\u2019s that truth really is a secret that gets repeated.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Simone printed this review by Hughes, which had originally appeared in the Chicago Defender<\/em> in 1960, on the back of her 1964 album. The review helped establish Simone\u2019s reputation as a soul singer.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

History Hide and Seek<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Jason Miller, professor in the Department of English, knows how to find the forgotten in the past. Here is a list of his projects he\u2019s done while at NC State.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>
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  • 2011<\/span>
    <\/div>

    Miller released Langston Hughes and American Lynching Culture<\/em>, a book that analyzes 36 of Hughes\u2019 works.<\/p><\/div><\/li>\n\n\n\n

  • 2015<\/span>
    <\/div>

    Origins of the Dream: Hughes\u2019s Poetry and King\u2019s Rhetoric<\/em> was published. Miller uncovered a reel of tape with a version of the \u201cI Have a Dream\u201d speech, which was recorded in Rocky Mount, N.C., November 1962, nine months before King delivered the speech in Washington, D.C.<\/p><\/div><\/li>\n\n\n\n

  • 2016<\/span>
    <\/div>

    Miller organized Experiencing King<\/em> at the Hunt Library, an immersive two-day event on King\u2019s legacy in North Carolina.<\/p><\/div><\/li>\n\n\n\n

  • 2018<\/span>
    <\/div>

    Miller helped put together \u201cThe Dream Is Alive,\u201d a concert that set King\u2019s Rocky Mount speech to music. Miller also organized and staged the reenactment of the speech in the high school gym where King originally delivered it in 1962.<\/p><\/div><\/li>\n\n\n\n

  • 2020<\/span>
    <\/div>

    The exhibit \u201cWhen MLK and the KKK Met in Raleigh\u201d opened in NC State\u2019s African American Cultural Center. It now is available to view in the Hunt Library\u2019s iPearl Immersion Theater.<\/p><\/div><\/li>\n\n\n\n

  • 2021<\/span>
    <\/div>

    In addition to unveiling Backlash Blues: Nina Simone and Langston Hughes<\/em>, Miller also released Plain Sense<\/em>, an online project dedicated to the life and study of his mentor at the University of Nebraska at Kearney, poet Don Welch.<\/p><\/div><\/li>\n<\/ul><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

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    Hughes reading at a 1949 event for what was called \u201cNegro History Week\u201d in a Winston-Salem, N.C., library. Miller says the library had a capacity of 100 people; 600 showed up.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

    Close Encounter<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

    Miller remembers the first time he saw a secret get repeated, how truth shook him. It was 1999, and he came across Without Sanctuary<\/em>, a book containing all the photographs of lynchings that had been sold or reproduced in America. Miller says he made it through only seven photographs before he had to walk away from being physically revolted. One thought stayed with him: \u201cIf I don\u2019t know about this, I know all these other people don\u2019t know about this.\u201d So he then set out to identify how Hughes addressed the concept of lynching in his poetry. The result was Miller\u2019s first book, 2011\u2019s Langston Hughes and American Lynching Culture<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    These are North Carolina stories with North Carolina legacies. Positive and negative.<\/p><\/div><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

    When Miller finished, he had found in his research multiple instances of Martin Luther King Jr.\u2019s use of Hughes\u2019 words and ideas in his speeches. So came his next book, Origins of the Dream: Hughes\u2019s Poetry and King\u2019s Rhetoric<\/em>, published in 2015. It was in that research that an extraordinary moment of unconcealment happened in 2013. Miller had traveled all over the U.S., trying to document how King had conceived of, written, drafted and edited the immortal \u201cI Have a Dream\u201d speech he delivered at the March on Washington, D.C., in August 1963. In a library in Rocky Mount, N.C., Miller discovered a tape reel containing an early version of the speech, which King delivered in November 1962 in Booker T. Washington High School\u2019s gym in Rocky Mount. What sticks with him is how that discovery dispelled the myth that \u201cfaraway things are where history happens.\u201d \u201cI literally traveled around the country for eight years studying MLK\u2019s \u2018I Have a Dream,\u2019\u201d he says, \u201cand it was an hour away, the thing I needed.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    The Dream Is Alive<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

    One of Miller\u2019s goals was to make sure his work had life beyond the page. So Miller launched lectures and programs in Rocky Mount in 2015. \u201cWhere the Dream Began\u201d featured the history of King\u2019s appearance there. He built a two-day event at the Hunt Library called \u201cExperiencing King,\u201d replete with walking tours, a preview of the documentary he made about King in Rocky Mount and a performance of An Evening with Martin and Langston<\/em>, where actors Felix Justice and Danny Glover performed as King and Hughes, respectively. Miller went on to work with the Raleigh Civic Chamber Orchestra in 2018 to shepherd the commission of King\u2019s Rocky Mount speech set to music by a Harlem composer, resulting in the concert \u201cThe Dream Is Alive.\u201d That same year, he and leaders in Rocky Mount held a re-creation of King\u2019s speech in the same high school gym where King had performed it 56 years prior.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \"\"
    Miller holds the reel of Martin Luther King Jr.\u2019s 1962 speech in Rocky Mount, N.C. Miller found the reel hidden away in a library in Rocky Mount in 2013 and takes it out now on rare occasions.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

    Herbert Tillman was 17 when he was in the Booker T. Washington High School gym in 1962 to hear King speak. He remembers growing up Rocky Mount in the 1950s, not allowed to eat in restaurants with white people and only welcome in one of the city\u2019s three white movie theaters\u2009\u2014\u2009and that was if he sat in the balcony while the white people sat downstairs. So, he says, King\u2019s coming to Rocky Mount was immeasurable in what it meant to Black people like himself. \u201cJust because he was from Georgia didn\u2019t mean he didn\u2019t know about what was going on everywhere. It was happening here in Rocky Mount,\u201d Tillman says. \u201cThose were times we really needed for someone who could give us inspiration.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    For five-plus decades, Tillman says, the memory of King\u2019s appearance stayed alive in Rocky Mount\u2019s Black community. But elsewhere, he says, there was little recognition of it around town. That is until Miller started showing up asking to interview people who attended King\u2019s appearance in 1962 and when he discovered the tape of King\u2019s speech. Tillman says it was emotional to hear the speech played again and that it immediately took him back to being in the gym, a moment that he and other Black citizens in Rocky Mount had long held on to. \u201cAnd now [Miller] has opened this jar and has made it known,\u201d Tillman says. \u201cAnd making it known does validate you. It\u2019s one of those things that make you feel good.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Miller then further dove into King\u2019s impact on North Carolina. Eighteen-hundred members of the Ku Klux Klan marched down Fayetteville Street in Raleigh on a July day in 1966 to counter King\u2019s appearance in Reynolds Coliseum. Miller turned his research about the day into an exhibit and a series of lectures titled, \u201cWhen MLK and the KKK Met in Raleigh.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \n
    \"\"
    Much of Miller\u2019s research has focused on tracing the origins of King\u2019s iconic \u201cI Have a Dream\u201d speech at the March on Washington in 1963. That research led him to King\u2019s appearance in a Rocky Mount, N.C., school gym in 1962, above. Below, a pin commemorates King\u2019s speech at NC State.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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    \"\"<\/figure>\n<\/section>\n<\/section>\n\n\n\n

    Working on his research during a residency at NC State\u2019s African American Cultural Center, Miller found more than 150 photographs of the march in the State Archives, providing an up-close lens into virulent racism. Men dressed in white robes. Children by their side. Counter-protestors meeting the Klan. Miller also interviewed eyewitnesses to that day in 1966. And he found some historical records, such as KKK newspapers that were circulating with pictures of King and an advertisement in The News & Observer<\/em> by Raleigh churches that labeled King a communist. \u201c[Miller] made Raleigh a living heartbeat in all of this as MLK and the KKK were living blood cells passing through it,\u201d says Austin Horne \u201920 MA, a former student of Miller\u2019s who researched the 1960 Newport Jazz Festival for the project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    It\u2019s the work after the moments are revealed that Miller finds indispensable. \u201cI\u2019m not only gathering materials,\u201d he says, \u201cbut then by doing it publicly, more people come forward.\u201d In Rocky Mount, someone in the community told him the code\u2009\u2014\u2009in case people were listening in on the phone\u2009\u2014\u2009for visitors to come to the house where King was having dinner in 1962: \u201cThe blueberry pie is ready.\u201d A woman told Miller that her father took her to Fayetteville Street on that day in 1966, telling Miller, \u201cMy daddy said, \u2018Come here. I\u2019m going to show you what hate looks like.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \u201cYou\u2019re literally looking eye to eye with somebody who experienced it,\u201d says Miller. \u201cAnd you\u2019re going, \u2018This is a community tale.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Facing the Backlash<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

    In early 1949, Hughes was traveling through North Carolina set to read his poetry at a series of events celebrating what was known as \u201cNegro History Week.\u201d One of these events took place in Asheville, where he spoke at the Allen School, a private institute. It was there that one of the most influential American poets of the 20th century spoke in front of a young lady in the audience who would grow up and become one of the most revered American singers of the 20th century: Nina Simone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Miller\u2019s Backlash Blues: Nina Simone and Langston Hughes<\/em> pinpoints the moment as the genesis of a long friendship between songstress and poet. And it\u2019s just one of the many treasures visitors can uncover on the project\u2019s website, along with pictures from the 1960 Newport Jazz Festival featuring Hughes alongside blues legends Muddy Waters and John Lee Hooker, a review of Simone that Hughes wrote in the Chicago Defender<\/em> at the outset of her career, and original Christmas cards Hughes and Simone sent one another.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    The beginnings of the project stretch back to just before the pandemic hit in 2020. Miller was giving a talk about a Hughes biography he\u2019d written. He mentioned to the Raleigh audience that he had come across some research suggesting Hughes had an intense and lifelong friendship with Simone, who is from Tryon, N.C. People in the audience wanted to know more. \u201cIt was right there in front of me,\u201d Miller says. \u201cAnd it was continuous in every way.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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