Blacks at Harvard: A Documentary History of African-American Experience At Harvard and Radcliffe

WILLIAM MELVIN KELLEY

WILLIAM MELVIN KELLE Y William Melvin Kelley Jr. was born in New York City on 1 November 1937. After attending the private Fieldston School, he spent parts of five years at Harvard (Clas s of '60) but lef t befor e completin g his degree. A n English concentrator, he studied with novelist John Hawkes and three-time Pulitzer Prize winne r Archibal d MacLeish . Hi s shor t stor y "Th e Poke r Party, " published i n the Harvard Advocate, won the Dana Ree d Priz e as the best piece of undergraduate writing. Kelley's novels range from the Faulknerianyi Different Drummer (1962), which won two awards, to the Joycean Dunfords Travels Everywheres (1970), which brough t hi m anothe r award . Fro m hi s collectio n o f shor t stories , Dancers on the Shore (1964), Langston Hughe s chose "The Only Man o n Liberty Street" for inclusion in The Best Short Stories by Negro Writers (1967). 'The Ivy League Negro," which Kelley wrote for Esquire (August 1963), drew much comment. Kelley's writing has also appeared in Negro Digest, Saturday Evening Post, the New York Times Magazine, Mademoiselle, and other periodicals, and in numerous anthologies . W e reprin t hi s contributio n t o "Blac k Power : A Discussion," for which the Partisan Review solicited 1 2 brief statement s in 1968. Hi s short story "My Next to Last Hit" appears here for the first time. Kelley has spent some time teaching college in this country and abroad, and much tim e livin g in foreig n locales . I n addition t o writing, h e has been active as a photographer and sign maker. Currentl y he is a member of the Department of Creative Writing at Sarah Lawrence College. 318 William Melvin Kelley Black Power Is it still necessary, in 1968, to discuss the differences between the two peoples, African and European, who inhabit the United States? I thought everybody accepted those differences. I thought that everybody kne w th e differenc e betwee n Jame s Brow n an d Elvi s Presley, o r Willi e May s an d Mickey Mantle, o r the waltz and the guaguanco, or the Temptations and the Beatles, or Leontyne Price and Joan Sutherland, or Duke Ellington and Aaron Copland or even old Nat Turner and Mr. Jefferson Davis. An d so I did not think we had to leaf back to Chapter One. Bu t we do. Please, sir, we are different, sir. Our ancestor s cam e fro m Africa , your s fro m Europe . Ou r ancestors did not want to come to the United States, yours did. Onc e we arrived in the United States, yes, we both worked—but separated from eac h other . W e di d no t mix . Yo u remained , essentially , a European people. W e remained an African people. We remaine d Africa n becaus e i n Afric a w e ha d possesse d a complex and highly-developed oral tradition. Knowledge—of the past, of the environment, artistic traditions, philosophy, myth, cuisine—was passed from one generation to the next, orally. For the most part, we did not have written languages, books. Yo u had books, libraries, where knowledge of the past, the environment, artistic traditions , philosophy , myt h an d eve n cuisin e wa s boxed , packaged, stacked, catalogued, categorized, entombed and enshrined. In books. Yo u must have money to get into such places, to study books, to buy books. Everybod y cannot do it. Many more people talk than write. Man y more people hear and see tha n read . An d we, thos e o f u s whose ancestor s cam e from Africa, we had, still have, an oral tradition. Unlike man y immigrants, we did not suffer th e shock o f being separated, b y English , fro m language s whic h wer e bot h ora l an d written. W e were torn only from spoken cultures. William Melvin KeUey 319 We missed the sounds of each of our languages, but the content, its meanings, staye d with us . A n importan t aspec t o f ou r African cultures was the strong emphasis on Improvisation. Improvisation , in many different forms, is common to all of Africa. In the United States, we improvised...