Updated 3:13 p.m. Wednesday with minor edits.
Sherelle Harris (D-At Large) is a member of the Board of Education and the assistant director of the Norwalk Public Library System
I thought I could have a palatable discussion with the Norwalk Arts Commission about the message Justin Gruelle’s WPA mural, “Steamboat Days on the Mississippi” (ala Mark Twain), sends as it hangs in Norwalk’s City Hall today. I will suffice it say that, while some “got it” and I even gained a new friend (Tony Velez mark 26:22), some clearly did not. I could barely begin before being interrupted. Tony offered his support and his follow-ups were unlike one person’s who included me in the group’s email about a proposed lecture on (let’s say it all together) race, led by (let’s say it all together) a Black man.
I get the feeling that some feel it is acceptable to discuss race only if they orchestrate and control both the discussion and the speaker who will understand, no doubt, that any acrimony had better be handled with trivial and saccharine anecdotes.
I was included in another email that had clips of an inter-racial couple who joked about everything, including (let’s say it all together) race. I decided I should give Jason L. Riley’s book “PLEASE STOP HELPING US” a read after all, due to my budding disenchantment with wanna-be progressive folk who prefer Blacks that are biddable.
I remember the first time I read, with an open mind, Flannery O’Connor’s “The Artificial Nigger.” It was a good exercise for me. I wonder if those who want to fall under entitlement’s hegemony are secure enough to come outside of self-sameness. While I prefer cultural art, I grew up in a home with landscape art and I learned to appreciate other styles of art and artists such as Monet, his water lilies in particular, and Michelangelo, the creation of Adam in particular. I’ve read Hemingway, Bronte, Twain, et al. and respected their unique capturing, in words, the times in which they lived, just as I both respect and relate to the work of William Wells Brown, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Bessie Head, Chinua Achebe, Pearl Cleage, J. California Cooper, Carter G. Woodson et al.
There are others I also appreciate like Anne Moody, whose book “Coming of Age in Mississippi” gives raw, unapologetic insight into the wretchedness she lived through in Mississippi during the 1950s and 1960s as the great-granddaughter or great-great granddaughter of the African Americans depicted in the Twainian painting. The pain was not pretty. The villains were not neatly packaged.
A gentleman who belongs to the same church as I sang “Ol’ Man River” during Black History Month. That song, about African American life on the Mississippi River, made me think of the Twainian painting and how this man’s voice could bring God, Himself, to earth to breathe life into the valley of the dry bones. I also thought of those resilient people depicted in the painting and wondered of the lives of my ancestors prior to being brought to America.
My favorite song, “Many Rains Ago,” from the soundtrack of Alex Haley’s “Roots,” also came to mind. While “Roots” tells the story of Haley’s maternal family, “Queen” tells the story of his paternal family. I am so grateful that Mr. Haley brought the oral history and well-researched lives of his ancestors to the American people.
A City of Norwalk employee asked another City of Norwalk employee and me, while viewing the Twainian piece, if we were upset because the figures are so dark, some with elongated arms and ape-like features. I thought about it. Some people’s pain is other people’s profit and glory, obsession even. My simple response: “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. That is not where my upset lies.”
My upset lies in what the picture represents, boldly standing in the background as a tenet or norm in City Hall in 2016. The controversy over the Confederate flag’s hanging on South Carolina’s statehouse grounds caused its removal. But the south stands in Norwalk’s City Hall. It is not spectacular artwork on the surface, but there is an honesty in its muted pink, grey, blue and brown background in contrast to the dulled vibrancy of its bolder foreground. I think it captures well the time when blacks were looked upon as subhuman in America and whites reaped the benefits of their chattel status. This piece, however, no longer hangs in Norwalk City Hall by happenstance. It now deliberately hangs there.
Let me put it in context. An elderly Jewish woman who took a liking to my children’s work asked me not to use the word ghetto. She said it conjures bad memories for her. It bothered her. I respected her wishes and didn’t use the word around her again. Simple.
My point: If the Twainian piece were among the depiction of other cultures that have endured horrific moments in history, it would have context. If it were in the Mark Twain Boyhood Home & Museum in Hannibal, Mo., the Mark Twain Library in Redding, or The Mark Twain House & Museum in Hartford, it would have context. My upset lies in the bold indifference to what the picture represents out of context. Picture Sara Baartman (the “Hottentot Venus”). Think Henrietta Lacks. We – another Norwalk resident, who is one of the aforementioned City of Norwalk employees, decided together to ask for a subsequent meeting that included a slightly bigger circle of people. We discussed having another piece put in place of the Twainian piece. Two members of the Norwalk Historical Society, one of whom is also on the Norwalk Arts Commission, agreed that there are many other pieces in storage that can easily go in its place. When we left that meeting, it was a matter of where the piece would be placed.
Somehow things changed. I get the feeling someone(s) want to turn this into a cruel play of power.
I tried reasoning the opposition to replacing it with another piece of art. A member of a local church reminded me that Connecticut is about the Underground Railroad – with a reported stop in Norwalk – not life on the Mississippi. Prior to that reminder, I began viewing WPA murals in other places. I stopped when I arrived at Harlem Hospital’s depiction of blacks in WPA murals (see here and here). I thought, in focusing on Connecticut history, that the Amistad case, which occurred six years after Twain’s birth, is just as much a part of Connecticut history as Twain. In the introduction to his book “Connecticut in the American Civil War,” Central Connecticut State University Professor Matthew Warshauer wrote: The famed abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison – outraged by attacks on Prudence Crandall’s school for black girls and the decision by the town of Canterbury and the state to close the school – derisively referred to Connecticut as the “Georgia of New England.” More than one historian has noted that of the New England states, Connecticut was “the most inhospitable” to abolition. It is not that abolition failed to have a foothold in Connecticut. Rather, support for abolition was not nearly as widespread as many today believe. Moreover, whatever the number of abolitionists, there were many more in the state who actively opposed the end of slavery and black equality.
I looked to the current State of Connecticut. I wanted to see what Governor Malloy, et al., were up to in regard to race relations. I found some dignity in the State Historic Preservation Plan 2011 – 2016 on pages 19 and 20.
There seems to be something to be proud of for the cultures represented in Connecticut, similar to the window treatments decorated with the various cultures and their percentages represented in Norwalk in the recently relocated and remodeled Norwalk Historical Society Museum. I first visited to hear local researcher and historian Madeline Eckhert’s lecture, Discovering 18th Century Norwalk Black History. Ms. Eckhert handled the very delicate subject of my people with a sincere heart. It took me back to when the South Norwalk Branch Library honored Midge Unger, a Jewish woman who had recently passed, as part of a 2013 Black History Month program.
In 1970, when Midge was a teacher at Benjamin Franklin Middle School, she had students research and interview for what became the booklet “Black People Making History in Norwalk.” That was ultimate respect. Honoring her was a return on that respect. These are the types of people who make the world a better place. These are the types of people I want to be around, not those with the hubris to think they can dictate to other races, control their heroes, or think they know better what is best for them. There is something empty and miserable in that type of mindset.
Despite my/our not being given the same courtesy by some of those involved in the two meetings, while writing this piece I thought of the feelings of Paul Smart, Mr. Gruelle’s nephew who donated to the City of Norwalk in 2011 his uncle’s paintings, images, books, sheet music covers, etc. I know his uncle means as much to him and his family as my ancestors mean to me. I have nothing against Mr. Gruelle. I owned and loved my Raggedy Ann and Andy dolls as a young girl.
I was fascinated when I visited the Norwalk Museum, then located on the corner of Marshall and North Main Streets, and learned the history of the dolls. I do recall reading, however, that Mr. Smart said the donated pieces should be housed in Norwalk close to the Silvermine Guild Arts Center where his dad and two uncles spent their creative years. The Twainian piece, which has been in City Hall for many years, has traveled around Norwalk a time or two before landing there. Norwalk surely isn’t stuck on Black subservience. Stagnant water stinks. There is a touting of revival in the school system, a new curriculum, new textbooks. Why not have a different representation of African Americans in City Hall artwork, particularly if African Americans respectfully request it?
Finally, I have nothing against Twain. I believe he delved into the human condition in his book “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.” While the teacher’s guide as written on pbs.org explains the pros and cons of the book, ultimately, I think what the champions of the novel say, “It is a satire, a scathing attack on the hypocrisy and prejudice of a society that pretends to honor virtue while condoning slavery,” can be compared to present racial tensions. One person argued that “Huck” cared nothing for blacks or their plight, and that his relationship grows only with Jim, not his outlook on slavery.
Mark Twain is quoted as saying, “Huck Finn is a book of mine about a boy with a sound heart and a deformed conscience that come into conflict and the conscience suffers defeat.” Our conscience is formed by the society in which we live.
We can’t change history. Even the film “The Birth of a Nation” has its place in time, but I guess I wonder how long we will discuss race before we act on race respectfully. Are Blacks to “step and fetch” for human dignity? A paradox if ever there was one.
I don’t need to continually discuss race. I know when I’m in the company of good people, just as my ancestors knew when they were in the company of Quakers, Abolitionists, even former racists whose hearts had been converted.
I think of my late father when I am watching old shows he loved, like the sitcom “Sanford and Son.”
I love to laugh, not the diplomatic chuckle or the reserved chortle, but the genuine guffaw brought on Chris Rock, Sinbad, and family members. So how about this? Every time someone has racist overtones, or someone accuses others of being racist, or denies being racist, or is just plain insensitive, I will clutch my heart like the character “Fred Sanford,” take a few steps forward, a few steps backward and say, “I’m comin’ to join you, daddy.” I will be the one inside the ripples of the sun, moving from the merry-go-round on race, to slide down patience and swing toward time, leaving the dead to bury their own.
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