BIRSS Keynote 032824

all right we'll get started now um thank you all for coming out I was just telling um Christine and Jennifer that I'm reminded the last time we had this in person the last time we had the burst talk in person we left and didn't come back for a year so um at the end of at the end of the day so um so it's nice to be back here in person and not virtual um for those of you who I don't know my name is Adam braver I'm the interim dean of the library um I also my usual role in the library is the um the library program director of which iore quite a bit on this Pro this bur program so I do feel very um connected and committed to it um and I also want to acknowledge because I see right next sitting side byid or Jim tat and CHR Fagan who worked for many many years on the burst program before um before I was involved and overlapping when I when I got involved so um so this is the 24th anniversary of the burst Memorial program and this year we celebrate the street by Anne Petri a book whose relevance still holds so true and so Fierce and so important that one could imagine it having been published in the past year affirming the uh famous expression of the ancient Greek philosopher theis milus that quote time is the wisest of all things that are for it brings everything to light so first I want to thank he's not here but I want to thank Bob blae who was the class of 1970 at Roger Williams University who endowed this program in honor of his mentor John Howard bur who as young man Bob met by chance one afternoon and as those of us in higher education know that meaning led to Bob's life and world really being opened up from being exposed to the knowledge and insights shared by Professor bur um I also want to thank who is here um Bob Blaze's daughter Jennifer who has been a tremendous partner with us over the past several years um standing in for for her father um on um on administering this program from their side I want to thank the abers committee with representation from many disciplines here at RW as well as our community partner Roger Free Library who um is part of that committee um and I want to point out Susan tent who represents who is also teaching here but represents uh Rogers Free Library um who brought the street to our attention um and passionately advocated for us to celebrate it and from our side um you know I'd like to thank you my agent my my director my producer my um from our side archist Heidi Benedict has been essential to creating the exhibitions and afterwards if you haven't seen it you should look at the exhibition out there and spend some time with it Heidi will um I'm sure be around um to answer questions another key player and often behind the scenes is Liz Balia without Fanfare or a call for attention contributes to the exhibition in ways that simply bring it to life and while we're at it Thelma dialo Christ chowski Cindy Jones all lend support in essential ways that only serve to raise the level of the burst program and finally I want to introduce our two burst fellows student fellows Cassandra bue and Shelby gainy sitting right here in front um I had the pleasure of accompanying them on Research visits to the bayi library at Yale where we poured through the original manuscripts of the street and later to the old Sab Historical Society where we were treated to a behindth scenes exhibition on Anne Petri and her family and their legacy and Heritage in that town at each stop of the way Cassandra and Shelby participated in decisionmaking about how this exhibition would be shaped the types of artifacts we could showcase and the type of keynote talk we would have which leads me to our speaker Dr Jesse nasta specializes in the history of slavery emancipation and their aftermaths with a particular emphasis on New England he has been a professor in wesleyian University's African-American studies department since 2017 and is the executive director of the middlex County Historical Society in Middletown Connecticut he's speaking today as a as a personal friend and a research collaborator of Anne Petrie's daughter Elizabeth Petri who um sadly and unexpectedly passed away um last year um so please welcome him as he talks about Anne Petri her work and her amazing family thank you I have my own long list of thanks to start with so first thank you so much to director Adam braver for inviting me I was thrilled to get this invitation and to be here today um thank and acknowledge your wonderful University archist Heidi benedict for for this incredible exhibit and to the student fellows um it's I'm thrilled to see the exhibit uh in person for the first time um and thank to Cindy Jones for your patience with all the logistics of setting today up so thank you again I'm thrilled to be here um as as you were told um I'm speaking as a historian but really I came to Anne petre's life and family through my personal friendship with an petre's only daughter Liz Petri Riley who as you heard um unexpectedly and very sadly passed away last year so so during my talk today I'll be reading some prepared statements but I will interrupt myself a lot with stories about Liz stories about the family because this history is just so personal to me so personal to Liz um that it's not just an academic subject it's a friendship and I kind of feel like an honorary part of the family having grown up uh close to Liz and hearing stories about her family so um to start with we'll keep coming back to this image but this is kind of the the the image Liz Petri used most in her writing about the family um on the the the young woman the child really on the right that's Anne Petrie's mother so the novelist Anne Petrie's mother birth of James Lane this photo was taken in Harford Connecticut in the late 1880s um so really you can see that this family right here it's Harford 1880s it's only two decades after the Civil War the these children were the children of formerly enslaved parents so just visually you could see that within two decades um an petre's grandparents had escaped from slavery in Virginia Alabama made their way to Connecticut were not only free but middle class gave their daughters and sons piano lessons and elocution lessons and music lessons and nothing that that was denied them that they could humanly give them right and that really set the stage for the next Generations kind of that's the childhood that an petre's mother had and then you can kind of see where an Petri came from a generation later knowing that um we usually say middle class but that's such shorthand for what they for the fullness of their education and dignity um so I'll keep coming back to this image a quick outline um so just I'll start with a overview of this family uh who they were um Connecticut we talk about Harford Connecticut and old sa Brook which are the communities that they came from the communities that shape this family and that really are the backdrop for most of an Petrie's writing old Sab Hartford New London come up again and again in her larger body of work um beyond the street um then I want to give you a background on an Petrie's development who she was as a writer as a person and then finally at the end talk about an Petri sort of in the fullness of who she was in meshed in this Tiny Town of old sa Brook and all the family ties her whole family was around her shaped who she was and also um shaped her writing throughout her life so this is Liz Petri um and 's only daughter so I just want to start with Liz both to honor her give some context for why I care about the family how I came to this story and kind of locate Liz within this larger lineage so as you see here Liz Petri was uh the only child of best-selling novelist Anne Petri and Anne Petrie's husband George Petri uh Liz was born in Old sa Brook Connecticut in 1949 uh when her mother and Petri was almost 41 and sadly Liz passed away unexpectedly last year February 2 2 2023 at age 74 in a lot of ways I feel almost like lizz's representative today in the sense that uh she would and would be here speaking to you if she could today um she spoke tirelessly and relentlessly about the family and shared and advocated for their history um I'll in a few minutes I'll be playing a short video clip where you can see and he Liz herself but one of the last things she did was collaborate with me in a few other Scholars on an exhibit at the old sabr Historical Society on her family which is where she her hometown and her mother's Hometown um so I want to give you that background um one of the last things she did in October 2022 before she passed away was attend the ceremony for the naming of a street after her mom and Petri in Harlem so right up until the end she was speaking sometimes with me sometimes with others and advocating for this history um and how I came to the family history how I came to this topic how I came to African-American history um I had the Good Fortune of growing up in Middletown Connecticut just five doors from Liz petre and her husband Larry Riley um and knowing them since I was a child as a result um lizz's stories of her remarkable best-selling novelist mother Anne Petri um inspired me to pursue my college degree and then my PhD in African-American history um Liza was one of my first and best academic mentors and by the time she passed away one of my closest friends despite our 35 year age Gap and I would say also because of it um Liz didn't get married to Larry until she was in her 50s and had no children of her own so in a lot of ways I kind of felt like a surrogate nephew who helped take the story Into the Next Generation because Liz knew she was kind of the last generation in this lineage going from an Petrie's grandparents to an petre's parents to Anne Petri and then to Liz um so that uh that was kind of how I was placed in all of this um in terms of who Liz was as a person and writer I should just briefly acknowledge and mention um Christy Billings is here from Middletown she's the director of library programs in Middletown's Public Library the Russell Library and for a decade just completely on our own valtion um Liz Petri ran a writing group for veterans mostly World War II Korean and Vietnam veterans they met every week for 10 years at the Middletown Public Library um and she so she was the kind of person who um encouraged everybody encourage their writing and I kind of feel like I knew Anne Petri through Liz even though Anne Petri passed away in 1997 and by all accounts an Petri was the exact same way that she uh saw the potential in everyone encouraged everyone and inspired everyone um I told her I'd interrupt myself a lot so my first Interruption is you know when you go to Old sa Brook it's just fascinating because a couple of you went to Old sa Brook to the Historical Society there and even though an Petri and the street are famous in literature and history when you go to this Tiny Town of old sa Brook they're just the Petri and the jameses everybody still remembers them everybody still knows them their Pharmacy that they ran for almost 80 years is still in the center of town and everybody remembers it now it's a restaurant but um if you go into the restaurant there's still photos and memorabilia all over the wall of the James Pharmacy um so I mentioned this just to say that when you go to Old sa Brook there are people who say you know can recall conversations with an Petri from 30 40 50 years back who recall conversations in the pharmacy with her parents and aunts and uncles and grandparents um and you know you can still get writing advice from an Petrie's ghost by going to old sabr um so you know people will still say um you know an Petri would say to them things like if you want to be a writer um don't tell anyone because you'll lose steam you'll lose interest she said if you have a story just keep it in your head keep it in your heart until you get on paper because if if you go around telling everyone the story story you lose all motivation to write it which is pretty sound writing advice from a really acclaimed famous writer right um other writing advice from an pet is um it she said you know people ask me how I write and she said uh I just write so she said I just sit down and I write out the story as best as I know it in my mind um in one in you know one go and then I go back and revise um so she was not the type to sit there and agonize over every sentence like the typical writer's block right she's just like you know know write out the story as you know it as it comes to you and then you can come back to it um in terms of so in terms of lizz's work uh she was a successful journalist and freelance writer and after her mom aun Petri died in 1997 at age 89 Liz really carried the family history and Legacy into the 21st century um you you've seen the cover of these books in the exhibit in the hallway there um but Liz published two books about her family history um the one on the left can anything beat white this this book really is the the Genesis of the family history so I told you that an Petrie's mom who's the child in that photo was birth of James Lane right um she in Old sa Brook uh when she passed away and Petri inherited it and then Liz inherited it it was a tin from the pharmacy that they shipped uh ice cream cones in around 1910 so you can picture a big tin that used to contain ice cream cones and after an Petri died her daughter Liz inherited this weird 3ft tall tin that used to contain ice cream cones and Liz told me that she had to pry off the lid you know she almost fell across the room trying to pry off the lid to this ice cream cone tin when she finally pried open there were 400 family letters inside from 1891 to 1910 and these are letters that an Petrie's mother Bertha had written and received from her siblings the children from that 19th century photo and from her parents who themselves had been enslaved and then taught themselves to read and write at at in their middle age so this is a pretty remarkable find to have 400 family letters from a African-American family a formerly enslaved African-American family and a family in Connecticut which is not known for having a huge African-American population in the 1800s so um can anything be white is lizz's um Family Memoir based on those 400 letters and then the other book at home inside is really where Liz few years later in 2009 I wrote more of a personal Memoir of what it was like to be an Petrie's daughter so uh while the can anything beat white is really a history of the family in the 19th century um her her at home inside really rounds out our picture of who an Petri was as a mother as a person as a writer and her experience there so I I highly recommend both books I'll be giving you highlights from both books in case you know you don't have time to track both down but um a lot of my talk going forward will be highlights from from both of those books um okay the setting right Hartford and old sa Brook so uh I want to just pause there on the left is an Petrie's dad Peter Clark Lane U his photo is in the exhibit um he's known for a lot of things but most known for being the first black man in Connecticut to get a pharmacist license so he was the first licensed pharmacist in the state of Connecticut and he did that in the 1890s so at the height of the Jim Crow South is when he or I should say the emergence of the Jim Crow South is when he did that and on the right is an petre's Father Peter clarkl in front of the drugstore the James Family Pharmacy in old sabr and you'll see some Modern Day images of that it doesn't look terribly different so that's him in front of the pharmacy um I want to just put old sa Brook and and Hartford in the context of an petre's larger writing so the street an Petrie's 1946 novel the street is certainly her best known book it was her bestselling book right uh was published one year after World War II and three years before her daughter lives was born in 1949 um and as many of you know it became it's claimed to fame is that the street became the first novel by an African-American woman to sell a million copies in 1946 upon its publication and ultimately sold a million and a half copies right um and in selling a million and a half copies the street earned an pet Tre Fame and Celebrity Status instantly a status that this intensely private author detested and fled from as much as possible and I'll tell you more about that later um but anre Petri you know she lived 89 years and was writing for six Decades of those 89 years so her larger body of work includes the novel's Country Place published the following year in 1947 um and the Narrows published in 1953 along with a dozen short stories collected and published as Miss mural and Other Stories in 1971 so living in Harlem from 1938 to 1947 inspired an Petri to write the street yet in the context of her long lifetime not to mention the spans of her parents and grandparents lives Harlem is really a short blip in an Petrie's longer life story and the longer life story of her family um while she lived in Harlem for 9 years she spent the remaining 80 years of her life in the small town of old sabr Connecticut the same town where her father the first black man to receive a pharmacist license in the state and her aunt the first black woman in Connecticut to receive a pharmacist license um owned the James Pharmacy for almost 80 years from 1900 to 1977 this family business the town of old sa Brook and an Peter's experience of being the fourth generation of her African-American family to live in Connecticut shaped her life and her writing immensely in the time I have remaining I'll tell you a bit more about the places in Connecticut and the people that Anne Petri came from that is the town of old sa Brook where an Petri was born in 1908 and lived most of her life and the small capital city of Harford Connecticut where her parents were both raised in the decades right after the Civil War and their emancipation and I'll discuss the remarkable previous generations of her family her parents Aunts Uncles and grandparents that shaped this groundbreaking author ant Petrie's mother's parents had been born into slavery in the South prohibited by state law from even learning to read or write before the Civil War a generation later an Petrie's father and Aunt became the first licensed African-American pharmacists in Connecticut and a generation after that an Petri became the first best-selling black woman novelist it's no wonder that an's daughter my friend Liz felt called to preserve and carry on this family Legacy um so going to the James Pharmacy I'd like to play you now just a short clip of the the video that this was produced in 2022 a few months before Liz passed away as part of that old SE broke exhibit so I just imp playing this so you can um hear from Liz directly they Brook in the 1870s and 1880s was still largely forested with Farms filling much of the remaining land along with a few homes and businesses shipping and fishing activities were found along the Waters of the Connecticut River and Long Island Sound many Merchants moved from saber point and North Cove to the new business district forming Uptown it would not be until the 1890s when Peter Lane an africanamerican opened a drugstore on Penny wise Lane the lane family was just one of a handful of black residents in this small almost entirely white New England Village they would face and overcome difficulties and discrimination through determination education perseverance and mutual support this film is the story of their experiences on the way to becoming valued and honored members of the community and the larger society and in particular two remarkable women Anna l L James and Ann Lane Petri hello I'm Elizabeth Petri and I am proud to tell you the story of my family my mother's mother Bertha James spent part of her Summers here as a little girl in the late 1870s Bertha and her mother Anna Estelle Hon were guests of a wealthy white woman by the name of Emily Malbone Morgan who operated Rest Homes for poor young women one of these homes was called heart this home still stands on the North Coast if you Google Family Matters um and an Petri you can find the full video online so I just wanted to give you a sample of Liz petry's voice and and image for that so I wanted to move forward again returning to Peter Clark Lan tell you a bit more about an Petri Father Peter Clark Lan where he came from um he migrated from New Jersey to Hartford with his parents around 18 1974 when he was 3 years old this this is his father and Petrie's paternal grandfather um for the next 55 years Peter's father and Peter's grandfather Theodore lay here worked for Hartford CIS and Drug Company although the Harford current merely referred to him as an employee an's grandfather Theodore or the major as everyone called him created his own brand of medications that sold all over the world his son Peter and Petrie's father joined joined him in the family business in Harford in the 1890s during that decade Peter obtained what his father never did a pharmacist license making him the first black man in Connecticut with that title an Petrie's mother here Bertha James Lane was an entrepreneur in her own right offering hairdressing and kop chirop foot doctor Services as well as opening a fine linen store in Old sa Brook Bertha was born in Harford in 1875 only 10 years after the Civil War these are anri's grandparents her mother's parents Willis Samuel James on the left and Anna hon James on the right these photos were taken in Harford around the 1890s um Bertha's parents here and Petrie's paternal grandparents had both been born into slavery in the South Bertha's father and Peter's grandfather Willis Samuel James was born on a Virginia Plantation around 1843 during the Civil War he like thousands of other enslaved people fled to the approaching Union Army and seized his own Freedom even before the Emancipation Proclamation was passed by Lincoln from there Willis made his way to Hartford where he secured work as a Coachman for the governor of Connecticut this job gave him valuable contacts in Connecticut society and helped launch him into hartford's small but decades old uh middle-class black community he soon became a leader in harford's Pearl Street African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church which had been founded by free African-Americans three decades before the Civil War um bera's mother on the right here was born into slavery in Alabama in 1844 and I'll say that uh her life reads like a novel that Anne Petri her granddaughter could have written she was born in Alabama in 1844 and she was biracial her father uh was not only white but he was the plantation owner he was the enslaver of her mother sort of like Thomas Jefferson and Sally hemings if you if you're familiar with that story um unfortunately it was not uncommon at all for enslavers to have children with enslaved women through all forms of sexual assault and sexual coercion but this is a rare instance in which he brought his brought the family North through the Underground Railroad to free them instead of having them remain in southern slavery like so many enslavers did right so he brought uh an Petrie's um great-grandmother and their biracial children six-year-old an Petri six-year-old grandmother here to New Haven in Connecticut and and freed them and set them up in a life in New Haven in 18 50 the sad part of the story is that when Anne Peter's great-grandfather went back to Alabama his father and brothers killed him for quote stealing the family property and the quote family property was his own six-year-old daughter and 5-year-old son so you can see the ugliness of slavery and the ugliness of Legally owning your own offspring right so I I refer to this really horrible story well it's horrible it's also inspiring a lot of ways what they went through to get to Connecticut and to get freedom but I think this is relevant when we look beyond the street to the larger body of an Pet's work because her own family's history of slavery history of enslavement her own grandmother's Escape through the Underground Railroad to Connecticut as a six-year-old really shaped her writing and Her Imagination for the rest of her life so in addition the street is really obviously about a black mother in Harlem in the 1940s but some of her lesser known work and Petri wrote a biography of Harriet Tubman for young adults um inspired by the fact that her own Grandmother Had escaped on the Underground Railroad like those Harriet Tubman led to freedom and then have you heard of her young adult novel it's called Tiba of Salem Village um that's part of I actually read that as a middle schooler in Connecticut having no idea who Anne Petri was having real no idea of the history of slavery in New England um but years later I found out oh wow that's that's my friend lizz's mom who wrote that book and really tiu Sal Village um Tio was uh enslaved woman from Africa who was the first accused of Witchcraft during the Salem Witchcraft Trials of 1692 so an Petri um kind of absorbing this family history of enslavement of Escape From Slavery of survival of slavery um went on to write books not only about free free black families like hers uh middle class black families like hers but also enslaved women that inspired her like Harriet Tubman and TI of Salem Village so it's really a remarkable family history in so in so many ways um so going from her ancestors to her own life um this is an Petri as a child on the left in Old sa Brook with her dad Peter Clark Lane the first pharmacist um giving a little bit about her biography she was born Anna hon Lane named after her grandmother Anna hon the one who's who was who came here here through the Underground Railroad as a six-year-old um in 1908 in the second floor quarters of buer family's far Pharmacy um no an Petri later name changed from Anna to Anne one of her many acts of self-invention and reinvention an Peter's parents moved from Harford to Old sa Brook in 1900 when they opened the family drugstore um and just to give you some context in moving to a small town like old sa Brook um an's Ann's parents were truly Trail BL blazing black entrepreneurs um back in Hartford the African-American population had been small before the Great Migration only about 2,000 African-Americans in a city of nearly 880,000 people so just 2% um but upon moving to Old sabr Brook with its 1,400 white residents um the Petri were two of only about 36 black people in the whole town of old sa Brook and of those 36 black people they were the only uh business owner so they were really one-of a kind so you can kind of see this the special status they had in Old sa Brook right the idea that there were only 36 black people at all in this in this Village of 14400 people and they were certainly the only black business owners um and P 's daughter Liz wrote in her Memoir quote based on descriptions in her short stories on notes in her journals and on stories she told mother's early years in the little village of sa Brook were in some ways idic and in other ways horrific um some some people had tried to run them off as soon as they open the business saying they didn't want any quote nword in Old sa Brook um the Father Peter Clark Lane um said well tell them I'm from Madagascar and we kill people with their bare with our bare hands so he was not going to be runoff um he I think there's a good chance his grandparents were from Madagascar but he completely kind of played up this idea of himself as you know playing with this Trope of uncivilized or or Savage to say that if you try to run me out I'll kill you with my bare hands so that that didn't work so they were staying they were staying in Old Saybrook um and they went on to become involved in the local church local politics and leaders in the black community um at the same time um I'll talk a little a bit more about some of the obstacles they overcame but I want to also talk about the other major figure in the story this is Miss James this is an pet tre's Aunt who was the first black woman pharmacist uh licensed in the state of Connecticut here she is standing in front of the James Family Pharmacy in 1918 when she was about 32 um one cool story that Liz used to tell about Miss James and Petrie's aun is that Katherine Hein said she was the only woman who ever intimidated her now how was Katherine he Katherine Hein vacation in Old sa Brook every year from 1913 until her death so Katherine the actress CN he heurn and other rich people would come to Old sa Brook every summer and the pharmacy was kind of a main stay for everybody that's where they got uh prescriptions ice cream postcard soda so she was a known entity to everyone including uh Katherine heurn um she was in 1908 she became the only woman and the only African-American in her graduating class of the Brooklyn College of Pharmacy that's her graduation photo on the left which is on display in the exhibit and then I just want to point out this is her great her great niece Liz wearing that same necklace uh 90 years later so you can kind of see that necklace in in color 3 years later in 1911 at age 25 Miss James became the first licensed black female pharmacist in Connecticut uh she took over the James pharmacy from her brother-in-law and petre's Father Peter Lane and ran it until her death in 1977 at age 91 um let skip ah head a little bit an Petri wrote in her journal years later quote we use this formality Miss James because we felt the whole town would be calling her aunt or auntie and probably would have loved to if we had um think of the racist character of Anima that they were contending with right um and and Miss James maintained her dignity by going by Miss Even within her own family family um in her wonderfully evocative short story Miss Muriel an Petri turns the James Pharmacy itself into a sort of character she captures with sharp Precision how her family navigated and maintained the boundaries between their inner worlds their dignity as individuals and the Integrity of their family in this all-white Community um despite the the child narrator and Miss Muriel based on an Petrie's own child self is appalled when Mr Beamish an old white Shoemaker tries to court anop frenia the character based on Miss James Aunt her aunt Anna um as the child narrator tries M Mr Beamish quote the front part of the building the part where the drug store is belongs to everybody the back of our building and upstairs and the yard are ours the yard is a private part of our Lives you don't belong in it you're not part of the family I bring this up to say both that an Petrie's short stories are wonderful and we should read them and also just to say that the front part of the building the drugstore was where the James family were public figures any white person who came in for medicine ice cream postcards or soda upstairs and in their home and out back they belonged only to each other as husband and wife father and daughter aunt and niece most important they belong to themselves in their own minds and intellects which me leads me to an Petri self-development as a writer this is an Petri um her typewriter while writing the street and this actually once the street sold a million copies and she became a celebrity um Ebony magazine the major Black Magazine of the time republish this of her um spoken out her typewriter but just to give you some biography some background an Petri did not start out as a writer she started out as a pharmacist like her father grandfather and Aunt before her after graduating from old sabr high school in 1926 she briefly attended Hampton normal and Industrial Institute the historically black college in Virginia that her mother's sister Aunt Helen had attended a generation earlier um after one year there an Petri shunned the courses in meal preparation and household expenses that were the designed to train young black women like her as Homemakers If Anne Petri hadn't broken away as a 19-year-old the street and her other contributions to literature might never have been written uh but first Petri took one more detour as a pharmacist receiving her degree at the Connecticut College of Pharmacy in New Haven as uh there she felt inferior to her peers do more to class than racism her classmates from New Haven's Black Elite including Jane Bolan who became the first uh female African-American judge in New York state and whose father was the black graduate of Williams College Peter wrote in her journal a decade later quote in comparison to all these people I was fat had no perceptible waistline had no clothes no money no boyfriends um and was not well supplied with funds the jameses had respect intelligence and dignity but remained working class the pharmacy providing them a liing but not a glamorous one after graduating in 1931 at the height of the Great Depression Petri spent several years behind the counter of her family drugstore in old sabr six decades later after receiving her fourth honorary degree she wrote in her journal quote I think that's amazing started out as a pharmacist ended up as a writer with all kinds of Acclaim really quite extraordinary her her path wasn't easy while working at the pharmacy Petri began submitting her first short stories for publication and received nothing but one rejection letter after another um as an aside anybody who's attempted to publish their writing is well familiar with that experience aside from petre's mother Bertha her family you might be surprised to find out her family did not encourage her aspiration to become a writer Miss James even scolded her for quote wasting all that money on postage from all these rejection letters that kept coming back now that might seem really surprising but I want to point out that U Miss James and petre's aunt and the other relatives who raised her were ambitious educated and hardworking they had gone from slavery to college educations in just one generation but they had been Pharmacists and teachers entrepreneurs and Educators writing fiction probably seemed impractical and more of a hobby than a career to these um ambitious people they saw themselves as leaders of the race who had communities of black children to teach and professional barriers to break writing fiction might have seemed too self-indulgent but in her 20s and 30s Petri took a gamble on her writing and as we know it paid off in 1938 shortly after she married George Petri Liz's father the couple moved from Old sabro Connecticut to Harlem there she wrote for the left-wing black newspaper the people's voice um as petre's daughter Liz wrote living in Harlem quote amounted to culture shock for the young woman from the pastor Village of Old sa Brook as she witnessed Urban poverty created by segregation and other structural racism for the first time up close in Harlem Petri had access to experiences and people REM removed from her family at the small town Pharmacy in Old sa Brook in addition to her newspaper work at the people's voice a Columbia University course with Mabel Luis Robinson helped launch her career as a writer a professor of English at Columbia University Robinson became an important mentor and teacher in petre's life while living in Harlem her short story is still being rejected one after another um an Petri uh read the Memoir of a well-known lawyer named Arthur train and Arthur train wrote quote if I wanted to be a writer and I was young the first thing I would do would be to go to Columbia and see if I could enroll in Mabel Luis Robinson's Workshop in writing Petri instantly decided to do that she enrolled in the workshop to apply she had to submit a short story as Petri recalled in 1988 quote I made an appointment for an interview and took in my story my hot I took my story in my hot little hand and I can see her now Professor Robbins looked me over very carefully and she sat and read the story in front of me which is also embarrassing then she put it down looked at me and said well that's a very good story I thanked her and she told me when the course met and that was it um within 3 years petre's bestselling novel the street came out uh shaped by her experience of living in Harlem and of her experience in Professor Robinson's writing course uh but Petri never felt fully at home in Harlem and felt even less at home with the attention and fame that becoming a bestselling author brought her overnight as she recounted in her journal quote shortly after the street was published I decided I had a choice either become a professional writer a celebrity and lose whatever privacy I had to be public property or to be a writer I opted for being a writer in order to write I needed privacy and anonymity and I fiercely defended it moving in Connecticut was no accident it was deliberate so Petri uh published the street became a celebrity and then instantly retreated to Old sa Brook because she wanted that quiet Village Life and this is kind of remarkable another thing is that in addition um when she moved back to Old sabr Miss James her aunt the first black female pharmacist in Connecticut she was so well known that people mistook her for her aunt so here she's the celebrity writer but in Old sa Brook her aunt was the famous one and she really liked that she loved her anonymity and um Liz writes in the Memoir how her mom would pretty much turn down almost every speaking engagement she was invited to she hated public appearances she avoided them as much as possible and she quote called it pressing the flesh she said the world is entitled to my writing so here we all are reading the street um you know almost 80 years later but she felt that we were not entitled to her life her as a person um she hated invad personal questions she hated personal interviews so there's so few of them and I also think about she died in 1997 she would have hated social media right she died a few years before Facebook social media was so antithetical to everything an Petri was and stood for she really felt like writing was a secret private sacred solitary activity you kind of go inside yourself you tell the story you write out the story you don't tell everyone about the story because you'll lose Steam and then you can reveal it and the writing has a life of its own right and she felt like her the her writing was for the world but she herself wasn't so um if you read Liz Petrie's at home inside um she starts out her Memoir by saying my mom did not want this book to exist so she did not write about her mom till after her mom died in um for that very reason because she was so private um so uh as I said within a few years they were back in Old sa Brook I just I just want to um play a couple clips for you I want to pause here in the time I have left so you saw that this this came out this is a very rare um news reel that came out right after uh The Narrows was published 1950 and all sa Brook Connecticut lives the author of The critically acclaimed novel The Narrows and P3 her third and latest it took 5 years in that time she brought up a daughter while writing and rewriting to Perfection a book praise for its depth and human perception the literary World eagerly awaits her next but her family comes [Music] first so there's that's Liz age uh four and then this is she hated TV appearances but she made this one TV appearance in 1975 from Temple University this is profiles in literature featuring interviews with authors and illustrators prominent in American literature for children the moderator for this series is Dr Jacqueline M Shaker professor of children's literature with Temple [Music] University from all Brook Connecticut comes today's guest an Petri who writes for both children and adults when we wanted to arrange Miss Petrie's visit I had to contact her in Hawaii because in 1974 75 she taught literature and creative writing at the University of Hawaii do share anything that you think will be of interest concerning your Hawaiian experiences well I I have to say first that Hawaii is so beautiful that it's unbelievable in spite of all the stories and all the pictures you don't really have any idea what it's like until you are there and that applies also to the people who are stunning looking I have a couple of amusing stories one of them when I reached the end of the spring semester in a creative writing class I said to my students well now is there anything that you would like to ask me do you have any questions and I thought that they were going to ask questions is about writing and one young man and I can only describe him as a Brash young man he really was was huge great enormous shoulders a very athletic uh said well there is one thing I would like to know and I said what is that and he said well what does your husband do for a living and I said well of course i' be very happy to answer that question but I would like to point out to you that you have been conditioned by the culture in which you live because it would never occur to you to ask a man what his wife did for a living and as far as what my husband does for living I'd be happy to tell you he is a retired advertising executive and he used to be in New York City that was that the other story favorite and these are curious sidelights on Hawaii I won't I won't play beyond that but I would just like to go on and talk a little bit in the remaining time I have left what this also says about um an petre's lifelong fight against the constraints of sexism as well as racism right in that 1950s clip um 1950 style patriarchy and sexism are on full display as that male narrator literally speaks for an Petri assuring us that although she's a famous author she's a wife and mother first right um so he was assuring his his in the second clip a rare 1975 TV appearance and Petri pushes back against sexism just as she pushed back Against Racism her whole life and that leads me to my last Point how she balanced her writing with her sense of responsibility to her large close-knit family that surrounded her in Old sa Brook um I'll say sometimes she did balance them and sometimes she put her writing aside for months and even years at a time um in fact some people in the 1970s a reporter said uh did you stop write why did you stop writing and she said well first of all I haven't stopped writing second of all in the past year alone I've been a nurse to my aing aunt I've been a real estate agent selling my Family Pharmacy I've been a mother I've been a a cousin so she saw her her work as encompassing all of this right that um her body of work was her writing but also who she was as a person um one important often overlooked consideration is that Petri wrote the street during World War II while her husband served in the Army and an Petri was living alone for the first and only time in her 89-year life during World War II Rosie the Riveter went to the factory while an Petri was glued to her typewriter the other women in her Columbia University Writing Workshop were also the wives of soldiers who were off to war giving them new found free time for their writing um and their their Professor Mabel Luis Robinson was a lesbian giving her a sort of lifelong freedom from the common demands and constraints of mid 20th century marriage motherhood and gender Norms um even after the war Petri deferred having her only child Liz until 1949 at nearly 41 years old a highly unusual move for the time during that time she managed to publish her second nov Country Place in 1947 just one year after the street these couple years during and immediately after World War II proved to be the most productive of Petrie's long writing career um yet even as she struggled to balance her writing with the expectations of being a wife and mother a daughter and a niece her family and their Hometown inspired her personally and creatively immensely Old Saybrook became the small toown setting of petre's second novel Country Place a sharp contrast to the Harlem depicted in the street um years earlier petrier was living in Harlem but happened to be visiting her parents in Old sabr when the 1938 hurricane struck trapping her in the small Connecticut coastal town and that became the setting for Country Place uh which took place in Old sa Brook during during the 1938 hurricane um at the same time ant Peter's daughter Liz wrote of her mother saying quote taking care of friends and relatives gave her a sense of accomplishment she did not seem to fill with her writing cooking shopping and cleaning for a family 3 did not satisfy her urge to nurture and she spent years carrying ing for ve various alien relatives between 1949 and 1988 a large cast of characters moved through her life seeking advice or just a sympathetic ear and some of them truly were characters many times she exhausted herself caring for everyone um be in a little bit I'll show you a clip from this fourth country coming documentary film that introduces you a bit more to her aunts and uncles um and and cousins who she talked about but I want to just briefly of all the aunts and uncles who INSP ired her I think crucial ones are Miss James the first black pharmacist and then I just want to mention her mother's other sister Aunt Helen Chisum um she uh in she was kind of the most immediate inspiration for ant Petri as an aunt who was who was a woman who was an educated uh professional so she after graduating from Hampton Institute historically black college um in 1900 her Aunt Helen went and traveled through the Jim Crow South by herself teaching at black schools um she then went on to Hawaii by herself as a as a young black woman in 1900 and taught there for four years and then when she came back to she went to Atlanta after that and was a student of WB de boys for a couple years the um author of The Souls of black folks so she was kind of I would say an petre's most immediate inspiration um in her short story Miss Muriel um she says that Aunt Helen's the one who brought culture to the family who played Bach and Beethoven on the on the piano and who taught cour ources and wrote articles so I just want to briefly quote Aunt Helen in 1932 uh wrote an article about the future of black women in this country um she insisted that quote any discussion of achievement must take into consideration the fact that achievement is related to opportunity as well as initiative talent and energy have the quote negro women of this country opportunity and if given opportunity have they talent and energy to achieve an Petrie's Aunt Helen concluded that although black women ly possess the talent and energy opportunities remain severely limited for them um she insisted these women have quote great capacity for organization and Direction opportunity is not given them they create it and I just want to point out at that very moment uh just up the road at the James Pharmacy Helen's 24-year-old niece Anne Petri was creating her own opportunity working in her family's Pharmacy by day she wrote short stories by Night creating a path of opportunity that finally came to fruition 14 years later with the publication of her best-selling novel the street uh but she did not Forge that path alone her family from her formerly enslaved grandparents who built lives of dignity and refinement in Connecticut to her entrepreneurial parents to her college educated aunts shaped the incredible woman and the claimed author that she became I'd like to pause there and then um in the time I have remaining I want to point out one last thing and that is an um an Petrie's cousin her first cousin once removed is named Ashley James and he's a well-known filmmaker who for the past several years initially with Liz Peter's collaboration is making a documentary based on those 400 family letters that were found in that um ice cream cone tin so um Ashley James is the the cousin and nationally claimed filmmaker who's making this documentary um and I in the in the last few minutes I have remaining I just want to show you a trailer for this documentary to sort of further highlight some of the people and events I've been talking about and uh Ashley wants us to know that in the final version there will be film actors so he's the narrator for all the parts right now but he wants you to know that there will be different film actors and in fact they're using AI to recreate an Petrie's voice so she can speak in her own voice decades after her death so there'll also be AI voice in the in the final version I am a new iner A Connecticut Yankee forign Generations in my family have been born in Connecticut so to borrow phrase from the Quakers I am a Birthright New Englander but of course I am not I'm an outsider not a member of the club because my grandfather Willis Samuel James was a Runway slave who came here on the Underground Railroad before the Civil War an Petri is actually the link between a writer like zor nosten who publishes her bestn novels in the 30s and the writers who we come to know in the 7s someone like Tony Morrison Alice Walker or Tony K bombara Petri is one of the first women to give us a complicated working class African-American woman character dealing with issues like racism and sexism I think what I admire about an Petrie's work especially her novel of the street is she really captures that feeling of Harlem in transition and maybe Harlem on the brink just a few years after you have Langston hughes's Montage of A Dream Deferred with its famous what happens to a Dream Deferred the question that became Raisin in the Sun and all that uh history I think you sort of starts for me with an Petri the street one of the things that she writes about is being A Connecticut Yankee born and raised in Old S Brook Connecticut but she's very clear about the fact that she is not a member of the club she is not a Connecticut Yankee in fact she describes herself as a Survivor Born in the USA old sa Brook is a very old town it's filled with the smell of salt and the sound of waterb birds I knew the difference in the smell of the air When the tide was going out and how it freshened when the tide was coming in the Coes and inlets and Creeks offer a perfect resting place for migratory Birds it's the picture of perfect New England Village except the reality for me was something different there's an ancient burial ground in town said to be the oldest cemetery in Connecticut in the back there's a gravestone with the name Rose Jackson a colored woman there's no other gravestone near it it's the 19th century equivalent of the back of the bus and it's not only segregated but the stone is facing backwards Sister Rose Jackson's grave looks to the rear New England in many ways was the most homogeneous White region in the United States William Lloyd Garrison called Connecticut the Georgia of the north and despite a record of abolition and support for the Underground Railroad that's exemplary that kind of undercurrent of racism among most white people in the state of Connecticut was consistent from the beginning of the Civil War through to World War I and in fact it increased after World War I and Beyond how did my family manage to survive intact in this largely White Community how did my parents manage to give their children a sense of self-confidence self-worth My Father Peter Clark Lane junor was a licensed pharmacist he opened a drugstore in Oldbrook In 1902 and my mother Bera James Lane was the eldest daughter of Willis James six children she was the rock of our family family a self-made entrepreneur a mentor and a guardian to all of us and I have these amazing aunts and uncles my Aunt Helen was a school teacher who taught in the Hawaiian islands and created a successful correspondence course in reading and literature my aunt Lou Anna Louise James was the first woman pharmacist in Connecticut she took over my father's drugstore in the 1920s and it became the James Pharmacy it remains a landmark even today and I had these extraordinary uncles they were foot loose and fancy free and lived all over the world they were routs with circuses seamen pman Porters barers one of them smuggled Chinese workers between the US and Canada one of them was a Buffalo Soldier in the Spanish American War One spent time on a Georgia Chain Gang sentenced to 5 years after being caught in a small town after Sunset my uncles and aunts were storytellers yarn Spinners and letter writers through these letters I survived the pain I learned about the world outside of old sa Brook Hampton February 18th 1902 dear Peter it has been snowing for the last 2 days and the weather is really sloppy the farmwork is stopped for a while and the snow was about 4 in deep yesterday there are about 500 Colored Boys here and about 100 Indians the Indians room in a large brick building called The Wigwam the color boys room in about eight different buildings one of the Indian boys died in the hospital last week his death was brought on by an accident he had last fall his body was sent to Cherokee North Carolina for he belonged to the Cherokee Indian tribe there my dear Bera is it long since I've written you I have no idea whatever yet it seems weeks since I remember writing on the broad Veranda on which I am writing one can look for miles across the Pacific the eye traveling down the hillsides covered with sugar cane coffee and bananas it seems as though the wonders of this place are inexhaustible nearly every night the sky is brilliantly illuminated by the light from the volcano and I have read there is nothing dangerous from the LA of Love Saturday morning queen lilaa colani called accompanied by her attendant and Ward Joseph Leah she was very Regal and gracious and she shook my hand just think I have met a queen with my alas to all I am ever fondly yours Helen L James Jess Georgia November 1st 1905 my dear sister I would not write again if I am in a terrible fix that I got into after leaving Savannah Georgia while going through this place I shot a white man for bothering me and I tried to get away but they put the blood hones on my track and they caught me in a swamp and tried to Lynch me but the sheriff held them from me and got me to the jail where I am at present I get tried Monday morning but the sheriff is afraid they'll get me when I'm taken to the trial he told me if I had any folks I had better write to them at once and try to raise 3 $5 to pay off his guards before the trial and he would Spirit me away in the night to Florida now Bertha for dear mother's sake don't let me stay here to be killed by these white folks when a little of nothing will save me do this and I will never forget your kindness kiss Louise for me and if I never see you again may God bless you and protect you goodbye from your own dear brother will Jam that's of theer for the for the documentary this is just the trailer that um but it's in production it's being finished soon so in the remaining time I've left I'd love questions discussions open it out I've studied in taught African-American literature and you know Richard R James Bon lorine hster s need first I read them all I've never heard of Petri before this semester how come I think wow um I do think part of her own uh private nature helped that you know I think that she shied away from uh publicity and attention I think that's a big part of it I also think uh that she uh so she shied away from attention I also think she doesn't quite fit easily into categories so for instance um in speaking of categories so at the time um people call some people said she was the female Richard Wright for instance because her book the street came out a year after Richard Wright's black boy and she hated these kind of false categorizations false comparisons so I think that she might have fallen through the cracks of these genres fallen through the cracks of these categories that you know her protest novel was eclipsed by black men's protest novels and then her books about white people like Country Place didn't really fit into the genre of this new black literature that was coming out in the 50s and 60s so I think it's more a genre problem than a problem with her writing you know what I mean I do I think that that's a big a big issue um I will say luckily that all of her books that I've mentioned are in print and have all been reissued within the past decade so the the books I kind of feel like she's having a Renaissance is my point that it's only within the past 10 years that new issues of the Narrows and Country Place have come out from Northwestern University of press and others um I would say that Liz was instrumental her daughter was instrumental in getting those books back into print um and now it's sort of upon all of us to teach her writing spread the word I think this documentary helps um I hope that's a satisfactory answer but I do I think I think it's in she was at this weird intersection in terms of gendered categories racial categories um she kind of defied genre she defied categorization and she was also herself kind of private and not self-aggrandizing so I think all those things make her you know made made her harder to pin down or sort of harder to be a representative of one thing you know or one category yeah first heard the you know I didn't know the name and I looked at the data of the book and it's been around for a long time I thought it was going to be you know 2003 or something 1946 yeah yeah absolutely other question yeah I'll try this I'm not sure I can articulate this um so I facilitate a um library book club and we read this book uh last month or so and nobody had heard of it or read it before everyone loved it uh some people thought it was shocking that it was published back in uh the decade it was the time it was it felt very new um people were shocked that she wasn't from Harlem and so is it my question is it tempting to you know we're always trying to separate the bio the autobiography from the the work itself but when you give us her family history and their trajectory From Slavery into Connecticut um there's sort of an anomaly all throughout there and the book also you know the popularity of it the the readership the fact that it has 8 million different covers the fact that it's still in print the fact that nobody's heard of it and everybody loves it when they do find it um and they feel like they're discovering it for the first time it almost feels like and her her desire to keep it quiet is it tempting to to not try to separate like is there a new literary gesture to not separate the story from this book I would say so um from now again I'm in I'm in history more than literary criticism but there is an archival turn in literary studies where uh literary Scholars are trying to excavate the lives of the authors and you go deep into the archive and look at those intersections between the biography of the author and the the work um so I would absolutely say you know and Liz herself and her Memoir basically said um I think the fact that she wasn't from Harlem could have contributed to it in the sense that here She is again defying all categories she's black but she's from a nearly all white Village in Connecticut um she's you know middle class but her family is facing racism and has work you know working class and she has these left-wing Pro labor policies uh uh opinions but then she goes to Harlem and she was kind of like things like seeing people drunk on the street coming out of bars like this horrified her sensibility like there were you know old sa Brook was you know one one little one little road it still is so I think she approached Harlem in some ways as a visitor well as a visitor as an outsider sort of as a spectator so she saw it from a vantage point that she would not have if she had been been born and raised there so in some ways it's almost like a a travel perspective sort of you know this this outside view so in some ways the fact that she's not from Harlem I think was a big part of it but you know I didn't have time to get into you know there's so many things I cut out because of the limitations of time but you know people are sometimes shocked that she you know they're saying how did this Gentile woman who spoke like the Queen of England write the street right um but she recalls in Old sa for example her first day of school from kindergarten coming home and boys from her class throwing stones at her and and tearing her dress and you know so being literally you know being having Stones thrown at you as a four-year-old um I think of course she could not she was no stranger to sort of horror racist horror violence so that kind of in terms of you know life experience it's like you can be middle class and gential and refined but also be subjected to like racialized raci racist horror at four years old in a way that sort of you know certainly disillusions you for the rest of your life so she was a very disillusioned uh gential person you know she did not she was not up in the Ivory Tower at all because of her race you know and because of her family background like in the you know she's saying in in her journal like I'm a Yankee in the sense that I lived in this small Connecticut town my whole life um I go to the Congregational Church um I plan the library book sales but I'm not part of the club you know I'm the descendant of enslaved people and the town's people can't share that experience because they're they're the descendants of enslavers and in terms of Connecticut and all that um I do think one thing that's interesting about this this if you look at anri's Family on her father's side her mother's side basically every facet of black history and US history is repres presented in her ancestor so on her dad's side they had been enslaved in the North in New Jersey on her mom's side they had been enslaved in in Virginia and Alabama so you have Northern slavery Southern slavery um some went South some remained in New England so they fanned out all over the country to Hawaii you know it's pretty incredible um so I I think I think coming from that family background such widely traveled aunts and uncles and Par grandparents and those who wrote Such prolif letters and such vivid letters um she was from this little village in Connecticut but you know at a young age Her Imagination was Global right like she had you know she she hadd been reading about the queen of Hawaii since she was a kid and through through her aunt's very personal letter so um I you know that she said that World opened up to her through her family and what great writers and storytellers and travelers they were which is not typical at all um most people few people of any race were going to Hawaii and Virginia and and you know Florida in 1898 you know that was they were somewhat exceptional as such wide Travelers and you know entrepreneurs yeah yeah just a follow which suggests that she has an authenticity that can't be pinned down and that as a reader you can't argue with it you she gets she gets to tell this she has all sort of credentials that we you know properly maybe shouldn't be telling the story of this south or that novel American you know there things who gets to speak um and that's maybe part of why we weren't reading you know that people didn't know where to put her and didn't really want to hear it in some way because there was nothing you could say except to listen that's true um and she got some push back from other white from White authors and white friends being like your work's too brutal and she's like this is reality um I think now in this moment more people are ready to hear really brutal things brutally honest things some not you know there's also a backlash to that but you know in the 40s and 50s she got push back from people she considered friends being like we don't you know this is this is too much this is this is horrifying like we don't you know so um tone it down you know so that could be part of it too yeah yeah I would just say I mean and then in terms of sort of that Rose Jackson the only black woman in the cemetery in Old sa Brook I mean for context um Connecticut and Rhode Island were really Twin States in terms of the history of slavery here so within New England Connecticut and Rhode Island had the most enslaved people and were the um in were the most involved in the Triangle Trade the transatlantic slave trade so I if you just go within a few miles of here I'm sure you'll find Graves of enslaved people here in Bristol as well so this is not unique to Old sa Brook um do you know about the dwol family of Bristol um okay okay so I'm preaching of the choir here um you know the dwol here they are in New England and in the late 1700s they were the largest traffickers and enslaved people from Africa with in all of the United States and that's because in the late 1700s there was no north south divide over slavery that slavery was you know throughout the America so New England was the leader in the Triangle Trade because there had not been this sort of Mason Dixon line developing yet you know so I'm glad you all know that story so and and it's not unique I mean that documentary trace of the trade made the dwol family kind of famous or inFAMOUS but Middletown Connecticut where I teach and live they hundreds of enslaved people were brought up the Connecticut River to Middletown in the triangle trade as well so it's not like like Bristol's now become the kind of the poster for it but um all of this is to say that when Li when an petre's grandparents came here from the south they encountered a history of slavery and racism in New England that was homegrown to New England they weren't they didn't Escape race they didn't escape slavery they they escaped Southern slavery and then fit within a sort of a racial hierarchy here that came out of Northern slavery right and that's that's how an Petri ended up having Stones thrown at her her first day of kindergarten it wasn't the South made them do it it's the North had this long history of slavery and and racism as well so so many threads to this story um and I just wanted to communicate that that you know there's so many threads to the family story and then once you think about the family and an Peter biography putting the street in context of the dozens of other things she published in her 89 year long life right and I'm interested in all of that and I think it hopefully it helps sort of put the street in that sort of panoramic 360 degree view right that it's not an isolated you know to just this novel that it fits in the body of her life her larger work and then this really fascinating web of relatives that she came from I would say grow being from Connecticut I think she has some local you know local local cred um people know about her as a old sabr person but it's interesting that if you go just to the next state you know she wasn't being assigned and pet tre's work I mean um so that's a problem that we're addressing but should be addressed yeah um so I just want to like know your opinion like a lot of the students talk about like f We R in high school so it's like Scarlet Letter Great Gatsby catcher ride things like that um do you think that the street would be like something good to teach in high schools for the younger generation or do you think that would kind of go against ander's wishes of being this like private wrer oh um so I so let me clarify I the answer is yes it should be um I just want to clarify an Petri drew a real sharp line between her writing and her personal life the rest of her life so she wasn't like don't read my books she was just like don't read my books and then call me and ask me all these personal questions about my life I don't want to you know so I I and I think going back to that question about biography here we are after her death sort of dissecting her life and its place but within her lifetime she tried to really not be a quote celebrity not have her life dissected but you know in the passage of time I think it's fair game to say who was she as a person right so and she did I should also say this family left a lot of material like she left dozens and dozens of journals that are now at some of you saw drafts of the street at Yale the letters are at Yale um an Petri herself gave Boston University archives some of her journals but she did edit them first so she was like you don't get a full you know you don't get an unedited view of me but here's dozens of my journals that kind of so she did leave some of her inner thoughts for the archive yeah so I don't want to be misconstrued I don't think I don't think we should suppress her books just I'm saying within her lifetime it's just interesting to think about her philosophy of sort of the writer as private person versus the work right and their their work is public yeah yeah yes I'm curious you may not know this if anyone knows this I'm curious who readers ship was if she across all these categorization were New Yorkers suburbanites white who bought half million copies of the book that's that's fascinating I'm not sure if I don't know if we have a record of the distribution of those million and a half copies like geographically um are you like are these sort of like northeasterners like uh who Cosmopolitan folks um that's that's a really good question I wish I knew off top of my head where these million and a half copies were distributed to I mean I do I was thinking about this a lot in this sort of this immediate post World War II moment where like Richard writes book Black Boy becomes a sensation so there was this moment after World War II like just defeated the Nazis and fascism where things were opening up a bit and there was kind of this this like more of this liberalism like uh what are American values our American traditions of you know equality and um of course Jim Crow didn't end for a long time thereafter but I think it was if this come out before World War II I think it would have been a different story you know there wouldn't have been that reception so I think it was just like opening up in the postor War II but that's I'll try to get an answer to that sort of where these were being distributed yeah yeah and I will say um I hope that with especially with her short stories and her other book there's a real Rich body of work to dip into with n p Tre and I hope it does get a wider and wider recognition and hope you all see that documentary when it's when it's finished so anything else well thanks this was a pleasure thank you for having [Applause] me