In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

  • An Interview with Owen Dodson
  • Owen Dodson (bio) and Charles H. Rowell

I conducted this interview with Mr. Dodson at his home in New York City on April 12, 1975. I was accompanied to Mr. Dodson’s home by the late James Rice, a friend who invited me up from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, to his home in New York to interview his friend, Owen Dodson (b. 28 November 1914). The following interview was transcribed for me twice, but I, planning on two or three occasions to publish it in Callaloo, did not actually edit the interview for publication until September–October, 1997, when I also finally located the original cassette tape of it, fourteen years after Mr. Dodson’s death on June 21, 1983.—C.H.R.

ROWELL

You are essentially a Northerner, but you have used Southern black experiences in your work. I immediately think of “Guitar” and Bayou Legend, in particular. Did you spend time in the deep South and observe vernacular culture there?

DODSON

Yes. Well, you know I taught at Atlanta University. My first teaching job was at Spelman College. Spelman College and Morehouse College and Atlanta University—they were somewhat all together back then. When I had my first experience with black people, it was astonishing, because I was brought up in a neighborhood that was ethnic. All kinds of people were there: Germans, Blacks, Poles, West Indians, Africans, etc., and the question of race never came up. We went to Jewish synagogues. We went to the Catholic Church. We did all the kinds of things that normal people would do who live with normal people, people who not only understand each other but who also love each other. In the grammar school I attended, there were just about seven black boys and girls, and even fewer in my high school—my brother and I and maybe two others. And then I went to Bates College, where there were very few black students. Then I went to Yale University, where there were even fewer. And then I was suddenly thrust into being black, because when I got off the train in Atlanta, Georgia, there I was: there I was, and a sign said “Colored.” But I refused to walk through that door, and so I walked through the “white” door and was thrust into the “black” door. The cab I found went through Chestnut Street, where everybody—and I am telling you everybody—was absolutely black. I had never seen so many black people in all my life. And now I can understand, a little bit, why some white people act the way they do when they see black people, because I had been brought up in a white world. I experienced a beautiful feeling after I was in Atlanta for a few months living mostly amongst black people. And I realized for the first time that there was no difference between people at all. They had acted in the same way [End Page 627] that the white people I had known had acted—the Poles, the Jews, everybody else. So that was my first experience in the South. And I traveled all around then.

Years later, when I was with the American Film Center, I also traveled in the South. I traveled with a white man, and we went all over the South: Mississippi, Georgia, Alabama, Virginia. And we saw the conditions of black people in the South, as well as the relations between white people and black people.

Getting back to Bayou Legend. When I was first asked to write that play, I said, “Yes, I’ll do it.” I got an advance and went to Vermont, where I had a very, very pleasant little cabin with a friend. One day I wrote a letter to the man who had given me the money for this project, and I said, “Well, here I am, writing fast and good.” He asked me, “Why aren’t you in Louisiana, where you’re supposed to be writing Bayou Legend?” So I went to Louisiana. I went to the bayous and to the little island where Tabasco Sauce is made. I talked to people, and I met...

Share