00:00:05.100 - 00:00:20.310

Today, we are in Petworth at the, uh, Paul Robeson Memorial event. This is Dan Kerr. It's April 09th, in 2022, Do I have permission to record this interview? You have permission to record this interview. Could you tell us your name? My name is James Early.

00:00:20.310 - 00:05:11.920

And James. Could you tell us a little bit about the significance of Paul Robeson, to you? Well Paul Robeson, one of the metaphors that I think most captures and reflects who he was and what the spirit of his life continues to emanate for us is the tallest tree in our forest. He was an extraordinary individual and his social accomplishments having been the descendent of enslaved parents, having been the third African_American to enter Rutgers, to becoming a professional football player, becoming a lawyer, becoming a really organic self-trained Operatic singer singing in multiple languages including European languages, versed fundamentally in the spirituals of life of the ordinary, exploited, marginalized African-Americans who built in internal expression, despite the external externalities that limited their literal lives, that exploited them, that raped and pillaged them. And He saw in them, the essence of true democracy. And from that black particularity, if you will, he looked out onto the world, looked into Europe, looked into Eastern Europe in particular. When the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics emerged, he saw the humanistic possibilities and the philosophy that with board and he took his life and his career and to that arena, not for exchange. Not about sacrifice, but really about how they envision and to build a new world. This is the Paul Robeson. The tallest tree in our forest, and that metaphor is important because it meant that he was connected not only to the African-American Community, but he was connected to all communities in search of liberatory perspectives in their lives. And this made him quite a dangerous person. Not to be segmented into one group or another but to really become a concentrated expression, integrating himself into the plural, Humanistic expressions of people across the country and across the world. And so these monuments, this monument to him and this neighborhood has been pointed out. When you look at this literal environs here, when someone took away the original marker here, "Here I Stand", describing this artistic work by Uzikee Nelson, someone in the community, We don't know whom, put up a new marker. Someone put up this lamp hung it with wires with solar lights, We don't know who, so that light could be brought to this stature and its meaning 24 hours a day. So this is the connection between Paul Robeson, the tallest tree in our forest, the African American Forest, but the global, the forest of global humanity and the connection with Uzikee Nelson who has gone to the city of Washington DC and asked to be the caretaker of a public space but his artwork up. He installs them. He secures them. He's done it at numerous places here in Washington, DC, When I was interim director at the Smithsonian, Anacostia Neighborhood Museum, he called and said I have a piece of art. Well, like Paul Robeson, we discipline divide every rule, but we made a decision. We would it. And he came and he secured it. And the Smithsonian said "how did this get here? We have rules and regulations". Well, now we can talk about rules and regulations. The artwork is here and it stood for 27 years. That's Beautiful. And so you have been... you've known Uzikee for how long? I've been in this town now, uh, 51 years. And for the better part of that, I have known him because he is, as is his wife, Januwa Moja, they are organic expressions of community. They're, I refer to them as citizen artists. They are not pedestal artists. They're not high profile, highly individualized personalities. Their work reflects that kind of attention, but they're very much embedded in the Washington Arts culture, social activism community and that is what makes both of them quite distinct. And of course, the stature work, the iron work, the visual appeal of the work of Uzikee really embeds him in community. And of course he celebrated, you walk down 14th Street and you will find his images that the city has appropriated. He is not as recognized by The Establishment, but he is embraced and recognized by the Community.

00:05:15.300 - 00:10:50.230

Would you mind maybe telling me a bit about what are some of the communities that you identify with, that you are a part of, that you see your connections to? Well, for many years, I worked in cultural heritage policy, Grassroots culture and traditional culture folk culture, the lives of Visions, the aspirations, the expressions of ordinary people who may not be literate, but who are powerful and their song expressions, who are powerful in their artisanal expressions, who is not only expressed the imaginary perspectives about beauty and truth, but bring their social history, tell their narratives. Sweet Honey in the Rock is one example, who still describes themselves today as a community, Washington, DC Community base. I happenstance was involved in giving them their first job at Howard University at the inauguration of The Association of African and African-American Folklorists. That's one expression of women, including gay, lesbian women, not all of them Lesbian women, who broke into the public space, one of the most important Democratic developments and we have seen since the modern Civil Rights Movement. They built a community of women who would travel all over the world but in process, which is a community sort of musical sewing circle of women, have come together, not as professionals, but to share in song, to...to express their humanity. And so these, this is one of the communities. I'm on the board of Road Work, which was founded by Dr. Bernice Johnson Reagan, who is the founder of Sweet Honey in the Rock and Dr. Amy Horrowitz, which put women on the road. Many of them in that instance, lesbian women, powerful imaginative creators in song and in instrumental music, but who were not recognized in the public institutions. We're about to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Road Work on the Millennium stage at the Kennedy Center. In the last number of years, we've done it at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival. So the broader women's community and all of its diversity is part of that. I'm a Latin American specialist by training and the Spanish and Portuguese languages in and, uh, and traditional culture. Uh, I'm very much involved with Latino Community here including the Afro-Latino community and so I have been fortunate to have my life and to sit in the public space. These various communities that comprise Washington DC and while in a singular sense, I'm an African American and in a more concentrated sense, I'm an expression of all of those communities that I have been engaged with, who have helped to inform my outlook and to sharpen my skills. That's beautiful, I'm going to ask you a little bit about your garden and your particular form of, I guess cultural expression or form of creative expression, shall I say, could you tell us a little bit about that? And the reason I'm asking you, of course, is because what you've told me about your folk art, and I just thought, maybe that might be interesting. Well, you know, I grew up in the rural areas of Florida and, uh, and I grew up in the capital city, Tallahassee, Florida, which has you know pine forests and Florida is a very naturalistic expressive growing state of weeds and Vines and Moss and all trees and Palms and as a state, it's an aquifer state. You dig a hole and you might have a lake the following day. And so Nature has always been something that is informed my life. As a child, I spent many days barefooted running in the woods, chasing rabbits and the like, but from a very practical point of view, I didn't want to cut grass. So I rewrote all over grass and I began to put down, ground cover and flowering ground cover. And so I find it meditative gives me a sense of ease and relaxation and wholesome diversion from activists stuff or family issues and the like and I have a history of attraction to iron and rocks, so I brought down, I don't know, 40 or 50 rocks from over Maybe a 20 year period from a little stream up in the Catskills. There's were my wife and I would go for 25 years or so to celebrate our anniversary with some Latino friends. And so rock's are spread all around my yard and all the house and I found find, you know, pieces of our and and I sort of arrange them. I don't I don't do any installation. I mean instalation in a literal sense. Leaning them against one another, or hanging from the tree or something of that sort. And it has become quite an attraction that I'm quite proud of. The kittle children passing my house going to the park every day or their parents, all stop to ell me what a wonderful experience it is for them. Joggers stop as they see me and say, I can't wait to get to this spot as I jog, and my regular jog. So, it has given me a sense of comfort and ease, and a form of expression, part of what...another part of my eclecticism.

00:10:50.230 - 00:12:10.300

I love that. Is there anything else, you'd like to share with us? The only other thing I would include, I'm really pleased when I saw the Humanities Truck. I thought all the DC Humanities Council which used to be called the DC Community Humanities Council, and they drop that word community and all due respect to the extraordinary people over the years who have worked there, and I was a member of the board, I think, ater Ethelbert Miller, who was the first board chair. I was very disappointed that they dropped the term community because it is in communities and the histories of communities that our Humanity emerges. And of course, history is the bedrock of that. What are people doing in space and time? Why? What are the events? How do they add up together? So I'm really pleased to see that American University, I think it is, with this Humanities Truck. American University, of course, in many ways contrasted to Georgetown and foreign policy and the life of a more democratic, a more Progressive point of view. American University has been very kind of model and University constructs here. And so It's really good to see that a Humanities Truck that moves in and among communities is here as a part of the celebration of Paul Robeson and the recognition of Uzikee Nelson.