Wednesday, April 8, 2015

F.B. Eyes: How J. Edgar Hoover's Ghostreaders Framed African American Literature


Joining me this afternoon, in the 5 o'clock hour, William J. Maxwell, author of F.B. Eyes: How J. Edgar Hoover's Ghostreaders Framed African American Literature. Tune in for what promises to be a vital, provocative discussion of this immensely important new book. 

MISSED THE SHOW?

"According to the Bureau's own declassified word, Hoover and many lesser FBI ghostreaders pored over scores of Afro-modernist poems, plays, stories, novels, essays, and reviews - some even before publication with the aid of bookish informers at magazines and publishing firms. Alarmingly, the files divulge that the FBI readied preventive arrests of the majority of the black authors shadowed in its archive. Twenty-seven of fifty-one were caught in the invisible dragnet of the Bureau's 'Custodial Detention' index and its successors, hot lists of precaptives 'whose presence at liberty in this country in time of war or national emergency,' Hoover resolved, 'would be dangerous to the public peace and the safety of the United States Government' (Hoover, Directive 409). By the time the Black Panthers and Black Power, Hoover's literary-critical G-men style of state minstrelsy bent to counterintelligence purposes of simulation, infiltration, and plausibly deniable manipulation. The early and creative intensity of the Bureau's watch on black literature has been unknowingly minimized, the files collectively suggest, both in literary studies and in recent historical exposes harnessing FOIA requests to uncover either the Bureau's 'war on words' or its 'secret file on black America,' parallel tracks that should acknowledge their parallel underground crossings. The backdating and thick description of FBI surveillance of legal dissent, a muckracking preoccupation since Hoover's passing, is thus due for extension into the field of African American literary history. And the Bureau's peculiar contributions to this history are due at least a moment of national self-reflection. Even now, when it takes massive NSA 'data mining' to excite resistance to the surveillance of daily life, it is not just an academic matter that U.S. state intelligence essentially arranged to jail the African American literary tradition at mid-century. Well before the labeling of the prison-industrial complex, the republic of black letters joined black urban communities as an exceptional zone of police supervision." ~ William J. Maxwell, F.B. Eyes: How J. Edgar Hoover's Ghostreaders Framed African American Literature 
Few institutions seem more opposed than African American literature and J. Edgar Hoover’s white-bread Federal Bureau of Investigation. But behind the scenes the FBI’s hostility to black protest was energized by fear of and respect for black writing. Drawing on nearly 14,000 pages of newly released FBI files, F.B. Eyes exposes the Bureau’s intimate policing of five decades of African American poems, plays, essays, and novels. Starting in 1919, year one of Harlem’s renaissance and Hoover’s career at the Bureau, secretive FBI “ghostreaders” monitored the latest developments in African American letters. By the time of Hoover’s death in 1972, these ghostreaders knew enough to simulate a sinister black literature of their own. The official aim behind the Bureau’s close reading was to anticipate political unrest. Yet, as William J. Maxwell reveals, FBI surveillance came to influence the creation and public reception of African American literature in the heart of the twentieth century.
Taking his title from Richard Wright’s poem “The FB Eye Blues,” Maxwell details how the FBI threatened the international travels of African American writers and prepared to jail dozens of them in times of national emergency. All the same, he shows that the Bureau’s paranoid style could prompt insightful criticism from Hoover’s ghostreaders and creative replies from their literary targets. For authors such as Claude McKay, James Baldwin, and Sonia Sanchez, the suspicion that government spy-critics tracked their every word inspired rewarding stylistic experiments as well as disabling self-censorship.
Illuminating both the serious harms of state surveillance and the ways in which imaginative writing can withstand and exploit it, F.B. Eyes is a groundbreaking account of a long-hidden dimension of African American literature.
William J. Maxwell is associate professor of English and African American studies at Washington University in St. Louis. He is the author of New Negro, Old Left: African-American Writing and Communism between the Wars and the editor of Claude McKay’s Complete Poems.

"[An] immensely important story about the black authors that we thought we knew, from the 'notorious negro revolutionary' Claude McKay to the Black Arts poet Sonia Sanchez. . . . [A] welcome model for seeing state interference in culture as a two-way street."--Los Angeles Review of Books
"[A] bold, provocative study. . . . Maxwell's passion for the subject spills onto every page of his detailed, persuasive documentation that 'the FBI [was] an institution tightly knit (not consensually) to African-American literature.'"--Publishers Weekly (a Publishers Weekly pick of the week)
"[S]tartling. . . . Much of what Maxwell has discovered . . . paints a sobering picture of state-sanctioned repression and harassment over decades. It's a tribute to the strength of the panoply of FBI-targeted writers, intellectuals and leaders that they, for the most part, toughed it out and remain with us today as a fundamental part of the fabric of American history and letters."--Repps Hudson, St. Louis Post-Dispatch
"[T]his well-researched volume illustrates the paranoia and self-censorship that altered the course of African American literature for decades as a result of the bureau's surveillance. This scholarly work will appeal to academic readers with a particular interest in African American literature or the FBI."--Library Journal 

Sunday 2/15/2015 @ 3:00PM - 6:00PM

ArtistSongAlbumLabelComments
John ColtraneLush LifeLush LifePrestige
Thelonious MonkEpistrophyMonk's MusicRiverside
Billie HolidayCheek to CheekAll or Nothing at AllVerve
AIRBREAK
Billie HolidayLove Me or Leave MeLady Sings the BluesVerve
Billie HolidayToo Marvelous for WordsLady Sings the BluesVerve
Nina SimoneLilac WineWild is the WindPhilips
Charles MingusWest Coast GhostEast CoastingBethlehem
Bill Evans TrioWhen I Fall in LovePortrait in JazzRiverside
Michel Legrand featuring Miles DavisWild Man BluesLegrand JazzColumbia
Michel Legrand featuring Miles DavisDjangoLegrand JazzColumbia
AIRBREAK
Sonny RollinsCome, GoneWay Out WestContemporary
Joe HendersonBlue BossaPage OneBlue Note
Hank MobleyMessage from the BorderMobley's Second MessagePrestige
Thelonious MonkLiza (All the Clouds'll Roll Away)The Unique Thelonious MonkRiverside
AIRBREAK
Roscoe Mitchell and the Sound Ensemble3 X 4 Eye3 X 4 EyeBlack Saint
Interview with William J. Maxwell by Justin DesmanglesInterview with William J. Maxwell by Justin DesmanglesInterview with William J. Maxwell by Justin DesmanglesInterview with William J. Maxwell by Justin Desmangles
Miles Davis QuintetBudoFacetsCBS-France

Monday, April 6, 2015

Billie Holiday (April 7, 1915 – July 17, 1959) Know your history, know your culture. Your independence depends on your remembrance. Each one, teach one.


New Day Jazz

Justin Desmangles
Billie Holiday (April 7, 1915 – July 17, 1959) Know your history, know your culture. Your independence depends on your remembrance. Each one, teach one.

GENRE

Jazz

MISSED THE SHOW?

Sunday 4/05/2015 @ 3:00PM - 6:00PM

ArtistSongAlbumLabelComments
Billie HolidayThem There EyesThe Billie Holiday StoryDecca
Billie HolidayNow or NeverThe Billie Holiday StoryDecca
Billie HolidayGimme a Pigfoot and a Bottle of BeerThe Billie Holiday StoryDecca
Billie HolidayDo Your DutyThe Billie Holiday StoryDecca
Ntozake Shange (Laurie Carlos)SorryFor Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is EnufBuddha
Billie HolidayAin't Nobodies Business If I DoThe Billie Holiday StoryDecca
AIRBREAK
Mal WaldronBlues for Lady DayBlues for Lady Day: A Tribute to Billie HolidayArista
Adrienne RichPowerA Sign / I Was Not AloneOut & Out Books
Teddy Wilson & His OrchestraI Wished in the MoonThe Quintessential Billie Holiday Vol. 1Columbia
Teddy Wilson & His OrchestraWhat A Little Moonlight Can DoThe Quintessential Billie Holiday Vol. 1Columbia
Teddy Wilson & His OrchestraMiss Brown to YouThe Quintessential Billie Holiday Vol. 1Columbia
Margaret WalkerKissie LeeAnthology of Negro PoetsFolkways
Billie Holiday & Her OrchestraBillie's BluesThe Quintessential Billie Holiday Vol. 2Columbia
AIRBREAK
Eric DolphyGod Bless the ChildStatusPrestige
Langston Hughes (Ellen Holly)Mother to SonA Hand is on the GateVerve-Folkways
Billie HolidayGod Bless the ChildLady Sings the BluesVerve
Sonny RollinsGod Bless the ChildThe BridgeRCA
Billie HolidayLove is Here to StayAll or Nothing at AllVerve
AIRBREAK
Teddy Wilson & His OrchestraThis Year's KissesThe Quintessential Billie Holiday Vol. 3Columbia
Billie Holiday & Her OrchestraA Sailboat in the MoonlightThe Quintessential Billie Holiday Vol. 4Columbia
Billie Holiday & Her OrchestraHe's Funny That WayThe Quintessential Billie Holiday Vol. 5Columbia
Maya AngelouTo a ManThe Poetry of Maya AngelouPerception
Maya AngelouFacesThe Poetry of Maya AngelouPerception
Lee MorganThe LadyThe RumprollerBlue Note
Herbie NicholsThe Lady Sings the BluesThe Third WorldBlue Note Re-issue Series
Billie HolidayLady Sings the BluesLady Sings the BluesVerve
AIRBREAK
Sterling Brown (Gloria Foster)An Old Woman RemembersA Hand is on the GateVerve-Folkways
Richard Wright (James Earl Jones)Between the World and MeA Hand is on the GateVerve-Folkways
Billie HolidayStrange FruitLady Sings the BluesVerve
Mal WaldronStrange FruitBlues for Lady Day: A Tribute to Billie HolidayArista
Ronald StoneLady Day Spring-tonedNew Jazz PoetsBroadside Records
Archie SheppThe Lady Sings the BluesLive in San FranciscoImpulse!
Jayne Cortez & Richard DavisEssence of Rose SolitudeCelebrations & SolitudesStrata-East
Billie Holiday & Her OrchestraSolitudeThe Billie Holiday Story Vol. 3(Okeh) Columbia
Billie Holiday & Her OrchestraI'm in a Low-down GrooveThe Billie Holiday Story Vol. 3(Okeh) Columbia
AIRBREAK
Billie Holiday & Her OrchestraThe Way You Look TonightThe Golden YearsColumbia
Billie Holiday & Her OrchestraThat's All I Ask of YouThe Golden YearsColumbia
Billie Holiday & Her OrchestraGhost of YesterdayThe Golden YearsColumbia
John HicksGhost of YesterdaySome Other TimeTheresa
Billie HolidayCrazy He Calls MeThe Billie Holiday StoryDecca
Billie HolidayThat Old Devil Called LoveThe Billie Holiday StoryDecca
Johnny GriffinThat Old Devil Called LoveWhite Gardenia: A Tribute to Billie HolidayRiverside
Billie HolidayI Thought About YouLady Sings the BluesVerve
AIRBREAK
Gil-Scott HeronPieces of a ManPieces of a ManFlying Dutchman