[A Festive Sunday With William Grant Still; Cambria CD-1060 (1996); Cover Photo, c. 1971: William Grant Still and his granddaughter, Celeste Headlee]
The TakeAway
With John Hockenberry and Celeste Headlee
Co-production of WNYC Radio and Public Radio International
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
By Celeste Headlee: The Takeaway
“My grandfather didn't tell me the story of his childhood, of his birth in Mississippi and his school years in Arkansas. The story of my family (at least one side of it) is the story of adversity and triumph, but I didn't know that growing up. My great grandmother was the child of a black slave and a Scotch-Irish plantation overseer, the product of years of a rape that produced six children. But out of violence came one unlikely stroke of luck. Her Mississippi father developed such a strong affection for his mixed-race children that he provided them with small plots of land and advanced educations. And that's the environment into which my grandfather was born in 1895. So my family has been stable financially and well educated since the days of Reconstruction.
“I didn't learn any of this from my grandfather.” “He also didn't talk about why his mother fled Mississippi with her infant son, that his father was murdered by white men who were enraged by the idea of a successful black businessman in their community. I didn't learn these stories until years after my grandfather had passed away.
“But my grandfather was one of the silent, determined millions who left the South because they wanted their full rights of citizenship. For him, it was the promise of a college education at an interracial school, Oberlin College in Ohio. For others, it was an assembly line job and $5 an hour in Detroit, or voting without fear, living where they chose, saying what they pleased without the danger of violent reprisal, and raising their children far from the swinging shadows of corpses hanging in southern trees. Turns out that the North and West weren't the color-blind nirvanas that many blacks imagined, but Chicago and Cleveland were a far cry from Birmingham and Atlanta.” [William Grant Still (1895-1978) was a composer, arranger, oboist and conductor of African descent. He is profiled at AfriClassical.com, which features a complete Works List by Prof.Dominique-René de Lerma of Lawrence University Conservatory in Appleton, Wisconsin.]
My Great MigrationThe Takeaway
Still's Father Murdered in Mississippi
Racial Violence
Experiences Not Discussed
Grandfather Silent on Racism
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