“I was actually working on another project when I stumbled across a handful of journals written by women who had come west with their military husbands in the mid to late 1800s. I became fascinated with what these women endured crossing the desert and settling in Army forts ill-prepared to accommodate women. I also wanted to present their stories as they wrote them which means in today’s climate their words are not always politically or socially acceptable, but I felt they needed to tell their stories”—Jan Cleere
Jan Cleere’sMilitary Wives in Arizona Territory tickled my curiosity for two reasons. First, as those of you who follow this blog well know, I am at work on a book about Far West Texas, and its post-Civil War US military conquest is closely connected to that of Arizona. Early on in my researches I came across the writings of Lt. John Bigelow, Jr. on both Texas and Arizona, and—also essential for anyone looking at Far West Texas history— The Colonel’s Lady on the Western Frontier: The Correspondence of Alice Kirk Grierson, edited and introduced by Shirley Anne Leckie. Historians, among them, Cleere— already the celebrated author of several works on women’s history in the West— are doing important work to bring forth these long-neglected women’s letters, diaries and more. I salute Cleere and sincerely hope that her work inspires others. (And by the way, if you have inherited such papers— whether pertaining to the West or any other time and place—please consider finding a home for them in an historical society or library.)
Secondly, I’m always interested—and I assume many of my writerly readers are as well—in how historians, biographers, nonfiction writers of various stripes and writers of historical fiction work with and manage books, articles and digital materials. My own experience I would describe as an ongoing slog up the learning curve, so I’m always game to ask about that and learn what I can from other writers.
From the copy catalog for Military Wives in Arizona Territory:
When the US Army ordered troops into Arizona Territory in the nineteenth century to protect and defend newly established settlements, military men often brought their wives and families, particularly officers who might be stationed in the west for years. Most of the women were from refined, eastern-bred families with little knowledge of the territory. Their letters, diaries, and journals from their years on army posts reveal untold hardships and challenges. They learned to cope with the sparseness, the heat, sickness, and danger, including wildlife they never imagined. These women were bold, brave, and compassionate. They became an integral part of military posts that peppered the West and played an important role in civilizing the untamed frontier. Combining their words with original research and tracing their movements from post to post, this collection of historical narratives explores the tragedies and triumphs that early military wives experienced.
C.M. MAYO:What inspired you to write Military Wives in Arizona Territory?
JAN CLEERE: I was actually working on another project when I stumbled across a handful of journals written by women who had come west with their military husbands in the mid to late 1800s. I became fascinated with what these women endured crossing the desert and settling in Army forts ill-prepared to accommodate women. I also wanted to present their stories as they wrote them which means in today’s climate their words are not always politically or socially acceptable, but I felt they needed to tell their stories with little interference from me.
C.M. MAYO:As you were writing, did you have in mind an ideal reader?
JAN CLEERE: Not specifically an ideal reader but one who enjoyed reading women’s history and who had an interest in how women coped during the early days of western development and expansion.
C.M. MAYO:Of the military wives, is there one who especially impressed you, surprised you, and/or frustrated you in some ways?
JAN CLEERE: A couple women stood out for different reasons.
One woman was so determined to accompany her husband into the territory that she defied her husband, sold all their belongings to pay passage for her and her infant son and joined him on the long march across the desert from California to Arizona’s Fort McDowell.
Another woman, fearing for her children’s lives during an Indian uprising at Fort Apache, lined her children up against the fireplaces in her home, hoping the resilient breastwork would protect them from flying bullets.
I was impressed with how these women reacted quickly to whatever the situation demanded.
C.M. MAYO:Which writers have been the most important influences for you?
JAN CLEERE: Because my books concentrate mainly on early Arizona, Tom Sheridan and C.L. Sonnichsen’s books are a mainstay in my library. I also find myself picking up old Arizona history books such as Thomas Farish’s 1915 History of Arizona and James McClintock’s 1916 3 volume set Arizona.
C.M. MAYO:Which writers are you reading now?
JAN CLEERE: Since my books require my delving into so much history, I like to read fiction for pleasure although the books that have stood out for me are historical. Jim Fergus’ 1000 White Women and The Wild Girl stand out as exceptional novels. But right now I am reading Pat Conroy’s memoir The Water is Wide.
C.M. MAYO:Researching a book like this requires extraordinary organizational skills. Can you talk a little bit about your working library and how you keep track of the books you read / consulted for Military Wives?
JAN CLEERE: I am certainly not an organized researcher or writer. I dedicate an area on my bookshelf for the books I use for a particular project and am scrupulous about documenting my sources but I have no strict method of organizing my materials. I am trying out the References feature in Word now to see if that will help me in future projects to maintain a record my sources.
C.M. MAYO:How do you keep track of articles, both on-line and on paper?
JAN CLEERE: I started this book before the pandemic and completed it during the crisis. Online research became more important than ever. I gave each women considered for the book an online as well as physical file. Research notes on each woman were cataloged under her name. General information about the military forts and how women were treated and perceived at the time was kept in separate files.
I utilize both digital and paper records for my research and am sometimes redundant with what I collect. One tool that I find very useful is a timeline detailing the life of each person I am researching as well as a timeline of historic events that occurred during her lifetime.
C.M. MAYO:Any other tips to share / hard-earned lessons in organizing one’s research?
JAN CLEERE: I am always looking for a better way to organize my research and am open to any suggestions. I have tried several types of software but have not yet found one that answers all of my needs. One thing I will emphasize is to back up your work constantly. In the past, I have lost valuable material and learned my lesson. I have both a physical backup on my computer as well as using the iCloud for storage. Redundancy can be a saving tool.
C.M. MAYO:How has the Digital Revolution affected your writing? Specifically, has it become more challenging to stay focused with the siren calls of email, texting, blogs, online newspapers and magazines, social media, and such? If so, do you have some tips and tricks you might be able to share?
JAN CLEERE: While digital sources have made a writer’s job more efficient when it comes to finding pertinent sources, it has also taken away that spontaneous delight of uncovering a long lost letter or hidden journal that has not yet been digitized.
I try to focus on the business of writing separate from the hours I spend actually writing. Not always possible but I have found by trying to compartmentalize the creative from the business end of writing, I am more productive. The trick is to balance these activities so that by the end of the day, you feel you have put out all the fires as well as progressed with your writing.
C.M. MAYO:For those looking to publish, what would be your most hard-earned piece of advice?
JAN CLEERE: Do your research before querying publishers and agents. You will save so much time if you know whether the publisher or agent you are querying accepts the type of book you are writing. There are several good websites that list publishers and/or agents and describe what they are looking for.
C.M. MAYO:What’s next for you as a writer?
JAN CLEERE: I am researching the lives of women who ran boardinghouses in the early west and have run across some remarkable stories of why and how these women started taking in boarders, how the business changed their lives and those of their children. The majority of the book will be about respectable landladies but I have also run across a handful of women who operated bordellos and might include some of them.
Excerpt from Military Wives in Arizona Territory by Jan Cleere:
Ellen Biddle and Martha Summerhayes had already lived on a variety of military posts before meeting each other in Ehrenberg, Arizona, where Ellen experienced an incident that would stay with her long after she and Martha parted.
On her way to Fort Whipple in 1876, Ellen traveled up the Colorado River from Fort Yuma toward Ehrenberg with her husband and young daughter aboard a small steamer called “The Cocopah.”
“We reached Ehrenberg just before sundown four days after leaving Fort Yuma,” she wrote in her journal. “It was only a depot for supplies that were shipped to the forts in all parts of the Territory; and here, entirely isolated from the world, lived Lieutenant and Mrs. Jack [Martha] Summerhays [sic]. . . . They were very glad to see us and gave us the warmest welcome, though we had never before met.
“We had a very good dinner, notwithstanding it was so far out of the world, for most army women learned to cook and make the best of everything that came within reach. I was somewhat surprised when a very tall, thin Indian came in the dining-room to serve the dinner, which he did quite well.
“There was much to talk about before I thought of putting my little one to bed, and I asked Mrs. Summerhays if I might have a tub of warm water to give Nelly a bath.
“In a little while she told me it was ready in my room (which I soon learned was her own she had given up to me). We said good-night, and going to the room I undressed the child and gave her a refreshing bath, the first that she had had since leaving San Francisco. She soon fell asleep and after I had straightened the room a bit, I decided I would get in the tub. I had just sat down in the water when my room door was silently opened and in walked the tall Indian carrying a tray filled with silver before him. I scarcely breathed so great was my fright. He walked over to the table, put the tray down, and as silently walked out, looking neither to the right or the left. It is useless for me to attempt to describe what I felt, it would convey nothing.”
Martha was not as distressed with half-naked Natives as was Ellen. She described her servant Charley who interrupted Ellen’s bath as appealing “to my aesthetic sense in every way. Tall and well made, with clean-cut limbs and features, fine smooth copper-colored skin, handsome face and features, heavy black hair done up in pompadour fashion . . . wide turquoise bead bracelets upon his upper arm, and a knife at his waist—this was my Charley.”
For those rusty on their borderlands and Mexican history, Francisco I. Madero was the leader of Mexico’s 1910 revolution– the first major revolution of the 20th century– and President of Mexico from 1911-1913. This was not only a transformative episode for Mexico, but also for Texas.
My book, Metaphysical Odyssey into the Mexican Revolution: Francisco I. Madero and His Secret Book, Spiritist Manual, came out in 2014 (also in Spanish, translated by Agustín Cadena as Odisea metafísica hacia la Revolución Mexicana, Francisco I. Madero y su libro secreto, Manual espírita, from Literal Publishing.) So far so good: it has been cited already in a number of scholarly works about Madero and the Revolution.
Yes indeed, Metaphysical Odyssey is a peculiar title. In the article, I explain why I chose it and why, much as readers groan about it, I would not change it.
> Read the paper here. (I had posted an earlier only partially edited PDF at this link; in case you’ve already seen it, as of today, June 17, 2019, it has been updated.) And you can order a copy of the actual printed article with all photos, and of the complete issue from the Center for Big Bend Studies here.
A few of the photos, not in the PDF:
#
SPECIAL NOTE
Undoubtedly scholars, novelists and screenwriters will be producing works about Francisco I. Madero and the Mexican Revolution until Kingdom Come (or, perhaps I should say, the Reemergence of Atlantis); because I am a literary writer who roams over a wide variety of subjects, I do not intend to keep up with them all. That said, I regret that I could not cite in my article the book by Mexican historian Beatriz Gutiérrez Müller, Dos Revolucionarios a la sombra de Madero: A historia de Solón Argüello Escobar y Rogelio Fernández Güell(Mexico: Ariel, 2016), which I recommend as crucial for any bibliography on Madero, his Spiritism, the history of metaphysical religion in Mexico, and the Mexican Revolution itself. Gutíerrez Müller’s work should also be of special interest for anyone interested in current Mexican politics, for the prologue is by the author’s husband, now president of Mexico, Andrés López Obrador. This video on his YouTube channel shows the president and first lady discussing her book.
This blog posts on Mondays. This year the fourth Monday of the month is dedicated to a Q & A with a fellow writer.
I was excited to see David A. Taylor’s Cork Wars: Intrigue and Industry in World War II, firstly because I know from his previous works that this promises to be a thoroughly researched and superbly written history; and secondly because I have some tangentially related family history with another strategic material during World War II. My grandfather, organic chemist Frank R. Mayo, was then a research chemist at U.S. Rubber Company working on the crucial task of creating a synthetic rubber that could be mass-produced in a dangerously narrowing window of time; sources of natural rubber –essential for making automobile and airplane tires as well as tank caterpillar tracks–had been cut off when the Japanese invaded southeast Asia. Moreover, these days I am not the only one nervously aware that as we become increasingly dependent on our computers, smartphones, and electric vehicles, we are becoming increasingly beholden to a supply of “rare earths,” many found nowhere near the United States, for the batteries (as David mentions in this interview).
Cork, a strategic material: Who’dathunkit?
Taylor’s Cork Wars has been garnering rich praise. Meredith Hindley, author of Destination Casablanca, calls Cork Wars “fascinating;” Mary Otto, author of Teeth, says: “Cork Wars captures the drama of three families whose lives are bound up with a precious forest product—and the urgency of war;” and noted biographer Douglas Brinkley calls Cork Wars “a landmark achievement!”
C.M. MAYO: How might you describe the ideal reader for Cork Wars?
DAVID A. TAYLOR: The story is narrative nonfiction, so really the ideal reader is anyone who loves a good story. Because it involves espionage and World War II, that tends toward a male reader but the focus on families and how they respond to a crisis will make it interesting to a wider audience. I’ve been pleased that a wide range of readers have responded warmly to the book.
C.M. MAYO: An unsung commodity turns out to be crucial for national defense. It seems to me there are many parallels to this, both in the past and the present. Can you talk about this a bit?
DAVID A. TAYLOR: That’s long been an interest of mine,
especially commodities that come from nature. We’ve come to know that water can
be a flashpoint for conflict and security. And many of us grew up hearing
“Blood for oil!” as a shorthand describing the motivation for wars fought over petroleum
reserves.
But other parallels
today are less well known. One is an obscure ingredient in electronics like our
cellphones: minerals called “rare earths.” Your cellphone contains just a tiny
amount of rare earths, but they’re irreplaceable – and China holds practically a
monopoly on them. That’s why the Pentagon recently issued a report saying rare earths are a matter of
U.S. national security.
That’s a factor in
the current trade conflict. It helps to know these things as world citizens. And
for writers, I think that holds dramatic possibilities as well.
C.M. MAYO: Can you talk about which writers have been the most important influences for your writing in general and for Cork Wars in particular?
DAVID A. TAYLOR: My reading taste has been shaped by
so many wonderful writers of both fiction and nonfiction. It’s hard to keep to
just a few. In fiction I’ve loved the works of Alice Munro, Grace Paley, Amy
Bloom, George Saunders, Kate Wheeler, Chekhov, Tagore (stories), Borges, and
Machado de Assis, the Brazilian master who combines wit and poignancy. In
nonfiction I’ve been influenced by John McPhee, Rebecca Skloot, Isabel
Wilkerson and others.
For Cork Wars, I was very impressed by a novel by Alan Furst called Dark Voyage, set during World War II and in the Mediterranean, in which the crew of a freighter (hauling a cargo of cork for part of the voyage) figures prominently. Furst evoked a world that’s noir and world-wise with vital characters, a combination I wanted for my book.
The other novel that I admired recently – it didn’t influence me because of when it came out – was Jennifer Egan’s Manhattan Beach, which has beautiful writing and characters in that wartime atmosphere of New York harbor.
C.M. MAYO: You have been a consistently productive writer for many years. How has the Digital Revolution affected your writing? Specifically, has it become more challenging to stay focused with the siren calls of email, texting, blogs, online newspapers and magazines, social media, and such? If so, do you have some tips and tricks you might be able to share?
DAVID A. TAYLOR: Thanks, so have you! The digital
revolution has had a huge affect on my process. Yes, the distractions – and
even the requirements – of email and social media have cut a chunk out of my
writing time. I still write in the mornings, right after I get up, and that
helps. And at some point in the day I like to write on paper, for a different
neural connection to work. But I wish I had more tricks for staying focused
(apart from self-imposed deadlines).
C.M. MAYO: Another question apropos of the digital revolution. At what point, if any, were you working on paper? Was working on paper necessary for you, or problematic?
DAVID A. TAYLOR: Yes, I started writing on computers
but printing out to review and revise. I’ve seen research findings that reading
hardcopy can help foster focus on longform reading (and revising). So as much
as I write and revise onscreen, I do also edit on paper. The visceral circling
of passages to move around can be satisfying.
I also read my work
aloud to get my ear involved in hearing points for improvement.
C.M. MAYO: Organization… Keeping the research and working library all in order is a titantic task in writing a book of this nature. What were some of the things you did for this book that worked especially well for you?
DAVID A. TAYLOR: It’s interesting – have you found your own process has changed with each book? Mine has. For my first book, I used index cards to map out scenes, chapter by chapter. Later books relied on folders on the computer.
This one was
challenging in terms of structure – it took a while to find the braided
structure woven in three strands, with three families. As the structure
evolved, the way I sorted my text, interview transcripts and images shifted.
One strength in
this story’s evolution was the rhythm of research and interviews, writing and
revision. The research led me to people to talk with – including Frank DiCara at his home in
Baltimore, and Gloria Marsa, the daughter of a man recruited for spying by the
OSS. I spoke with her often by phone in Mexico City, where she lives.
Those conversations
in turn pointed me forward with search terms for more documentary research,
which often yielded details that would be hard to recall, but that help the
narrative.
C.M. MAYO: What’s next for you as a writer?
DAVID A. TAYLOR: I’ve been encouraged by the response to Cork Wars and I think there are other formats in which the story and its characters can speak to us. In earlier work, I was fortunate to have partners for adapting my book about the WPA writers of the 1930s, Soul of a People, as a documentary and later as a feature screenplay (not yet produced, but it did get some nice WGA recognition). So I’d like to explore something like that with this story.
I also have several new projects. I’m in awe of the vision of August Wilson, whose Twentieth Century Cycle is so monumental. I love the idea of imagining a vast canvas, and carving it up by decade! On my own much smaller scale, I have my Thirties story with the WPA writers, and now Cork Wars in the 1940s. So I have a few more to go.
>>Visit David A. Taylor here, and check out this excellent trailer for Cork Wars:
“Systems analysis must become cultural
analysis, and in this historians may be helpful.”– Lynn White, Jr.
Drive into Far West Texas and before you can say
“pass the Snickers” you’ll spy the railroad tracks, which more often
than not run, seemingly infinite sinuous ribbons, parallel to the highway.
Travel for a spell and you’ll pass or, if at a crossing, be passed by a freight
train, always an impressive experience. All of which is to say, railroads are
an inescapable part of Far West Texas scenery and history, and so, for my book
in-progress on that region, I have been doing my homework.
Of late: The Railway Journey: The Industrialization of Time and Space in the Nineteenth Century by Wolfgang Schivelbusch, a German historian and scholar of cultural studies. Originally published as Geschichte der Eisenbahnreise, the English translation came out in 1979; I read the 2014 edition with a new preface, “World Machines: The Steam Engine, the Railway, and the Computer,” in which Schivelbusch asks,
“Could it be that the railway, the
accelerator of the Industrial Revolution, and the computer occupy different
points along / on the same trajectory of machine evolution?”
In recent weeks, this question of machine
evolution, to my surprise, has begun to interest me intensely.
At first I had thought of this book I am writing about Far West Texas as a doppelgänger to my 2002 memoir of Mexico’s Baja California peninsula, Miraculous Air, for the ecosystems and early exploration and mission histories of these two regions have many parallels. There are indeed many parallels, however, to start with, the literature on Far West Texas is exponentially greater and– more to the point– since the time I was traveling in Baja California, the experience of traveling itself has been radically transformed by the Digital Revolution. My sense of this is a compression of time and a curious elasticity of space; of oftentimes disquieting and othertimes most welcome transparency; and that constant pull to the little screens that, so it would seem, we all feel these days, whenever, wherever.
In The Railway Journey, Schivelbusch opens
with a detailed discussion of the history of the steam engine.
“Next to wood, water and wind power were the main energy sources of pre-industrial economic life. The Industrial Revolution, generally seem as having begun in the the last third of the eighteenth century, was a complex process of denaturalization… Iron became the new industrial building material, coal the new combustible. In the steam engine, the prime mover of industry, these two combined to produce energy in theoretically unlimited amounts.”
The “decisive step” for the development
of the steam engine– and ultimately the railroads– was the introduction of
rotary motion, “a kind of mechanization of the mill race.” In other
words, transforming the up-and-down movement of the steam-driven piston
to the driving wheel.
In his new 2014 preface, however, Schivelbusch
writes: “It took me forty years and the Digital Revolution to realize that
I had missed the more important point of the invention preceding it.” In
other words, the technological Crossing of the Rubicon, as it were, was
“placing a piston in a cylinder and applying the pressure of steam… [I]t
did not transfer an existing form but forced a new form of power out of
combustible matter.” Moreover, “the piston’s up-and-down movement
was no longer the analogue of any form of movement found in nature but
possessed a binary-digital logic all its own.”
Watch a demonstration of a piston (in this
example, powered by an electric motor):
Most histories of the computer’s binary-digital
logic that I am familiar with focus on English mathematician George Boole’s An
Investigation into the Laws of Thought (1854)– the concept of binary
logic. Schivelbusch’s is a wondrously powerful insight.
THE MACHINE ENSEMBLE
In his second chapter, “The Machine
Ensemble,” Schivelbusch explores the ways the development of the railways
was experienced as “denaturalization and densensualization.” With
cuttings, embankments, and tunnels”the railroad was constructed straight
across the terrain, as if drawn with a ruler.” Now “the traveler
perceived the landscape as it was filtered through the machine ensemble.”
And what is the machine ensemble? “[W]heel
and rail, railroad and carriage, expanded into a unified railway system… one
great machine covering the land.”
RAILROAD SPACE
With the railroad, argues Schivelbusch,
“space was both diminished and expanded.” Things moved across space
faster, and simultaneously, more space could be accessed. “What was
experienced as being annihilated was the traditional space-time coninuum which
characterized the old transport technology.”
Schivelbusch quotes the German poet Heinrich
Heine, writing in 1843:
“What changes must now occur, in our way of looking at things, in our notions! Even the elementary concepts of time and space have begun to vacillate. Space is killed by the railways, and we are left with time lone… Now you can travel to Orléans in four and a half hours, and it takes no longer to get to Rouen. Just imagine what will happen when the lines to Belgium and Germany are completed and connected up with their railways! I feel as if the mountains and forests of all countries were advancing on Paris. Even now, I can smell the linden trees; the North Sea’s breakers are rolling against my door.”
Sniffed Victorian-era English art critic John
Ruskin:
“Modern traveling is not traveling at all; it is merely being sent to a place, and very little different from being a parcel.”
(I quail to imagine what might have been Ruskin’s
reaction to a TSA line. We airline travelers have been demoted from parcel to
cattle…)
PANORAMIC TRAVEL
For me, having spent so many hours driving
through the vast spaces of Far West Texas, the fourth chapter, “Panoramic
Travel,” was the most engaging. The opening epigraph is from Emerson’s Journals:
“Dreamlike traveling on the railroad.” In a car, as in a railway
compartment, we are enclosed from the weather behind windows, and by a roof and
a floor. We rest our bodies in an upholstered seat. Beyond the window, things
sail by silently, inexorably, scentlessly: hills, fences, a gas station– it
becomes a blur.
Travel by railroad induced “panoramic
perception.” Schivelbusch:
“Panoramic perception, in contrast to traditional perception, no longer belonged to the same space as the perceived objects: the traveler saw the objects, landscapes, etc. through the apparatus which moved him through the world. That machine and the motion it created became integrated into his viual perception: thus he could only see things in motion. That mobility of vision– for a traditionally oriented sensorium, such as Ruskin’s– became a prerequisite for the ‘normality’ of panoramic vision. This vision no longe experiences evanescence: evanescent reality had become the new reality.” (p.64)
Because this can be deadly boring, and
necesitated being in close quarters with fellow travelers of, shall we say,
possibly inconvenient social connections, bougeois train travelers took up
reading. Schivelbusch:
“Reading while traveling became almost obligatory.The dissolution of reality and its resurrection as panorama thus became agents for the total emancipation from the traversed landscape: the traveler’s gaze could then move into an imaginary surrogate landscape, that of his book.” (p. 64)*
But back to computers. I am beginning, with
fraying patience, to think of ours as the Age of Phubbing Smombies. To walk the
aisle of a railway passenger car or an airplane is to catch the soundless
glow of dozens of little screens… the overwhelming majority not of text but
of flashing images of murders, faces, scantily clad women, roaring dinosaurs,
cars and other objects hurling off cliffs (what is it with all the cliffs?)..
and cartoons of the same… In sum, a mesmerizing mishmash of imagery.
AMERICAN VS EUROPEAN RAILROADS
In the 19th century the “great machine”
of the railway ensemble spread across the land in both Europe and the
North American continent, but, as Schivelbusch details, there were fundamental
differences in the pattern and nature of that machine. Europe was already
densely populated and richly networked by highways and roads; “in America,
the railroad served to open up, for the first time, vast regions of previously
unsettled winderness.”* In other words, to quote Schivelbusch quoting von
Weber, “In Europe, the railroad facilitates traffic; in
America, it creates it.”
*Quibble: Important regions of America’s interior were not in fact a wholly “unsettled wilderness” until after the cascading demographic collapses, and later Indian removals, and the Indian Wars. There were well-established trails and trade routes throughout the continent, many going back many hundreds of years. But yes, compared to Europe, the road networks in Amreica were thin and poor and the vast desert expanses and the Great Plains were terrible to traverse by horse-drawn vehicles, as many memoirs attest.
And while Europe’s industrial revolution focused
on manufacturing, primarily textiles, in America it was about agriculture
(cotton, tobacco) and transport. In the early 19th century, what American
industry had in the way of machines was, writes Schivelbusch, “river
steamboats, railroad trains, sawmills, harvesting combines.”
By the 19th century the string of older cities of
the North Atlantic coast– Boston down to Washington DC– were linked by
well-established highways, however, the rest of the continent had more
primitive roads, oftentimes what amounted to footpaths and, above all,
waterways: The Mississippi, the Missouri, the Ohio, the Hudson, various canals,
and the Great Lakes. “Thus passenger travel used these waterways in the
absence of highways… One traveled by water whenever possible.”
Unsurprisingly, the American railway compartment
took on the distinctive character of the American riverboat cabin. These tended
to be broad open rooms, more comfortable for traveling long distances. European
railroad compartments took their template from the stagecoach, a cozier space.
Schivelbuch argues that in American culture the
railroad was closely linked with the steamer both because it was these were the
first and second mechanized means of transportation and because so much of the
interior landcape– the Great Plains–was described by travelers as kind of
vast ocean. (Indeed it was, in an eon past, the bottom of an ocean.)
The path of the railroad tracks differed as well:
American tracks tended to curve where European tracks would be straight. As
Schivelbusch points out, this reflected differences in labor and land costs. In
America, land was cheap and labor expensive. In Europe then “it paid to
construct tunnels, embankments and cuttings in order to make the rails proceed
in a straight line, at a minimum of land cost.”
Ah, so that explains the sinuosity of those Far
West Texas rails.
INDUSTRIALIZED CONSCIOUSNESS
“new consciousness of time and space based on train schedules and the novel activity of reading while traveling” (p.160)
Re: The reconsideration of the concept of shock
in the 19th century. Schivelbusch:
“The railroad related to the coach and horses as the modern mass army relates to the medieval army of knights (and as manufacture and industry do to craftmanship.)” (p.159)
Re: A “sinister aspect”.
Schivelbusch:
“…it had become possible to travel in something that seemed like an enormous grenade.” (p.160)
“The train passenger of the later nineteenth century who sat reading his book thus had a thicker layer of that skin than the earlier traveler, who coud not even think about reading because the journey still was, for him, a space-time adventure that engaged his entire sensorium.” (p.165)
(Thicker layer of skin!! Just turn on TV news!!
The commercials!! In our day, we’ve all grown callouses on top of rhino hide.)
HAUSSMANN’S REDO OF PARIS AND A NEW CONSCIOUSNESS FOR A NEW CITYSCAPE
Schivelbusch covers Haussmann’s remodeling of
Paris in detail in chapter 12, “Tracks in the City.”
“The streets Haussmann created served only traffic, a fact that distinguished them from the medieval streets an lanes that they destroyed, whose function was not so much to serve traffic as to be a forum for neighborhood life; it also distinguihsed them from the boulevards and avenues of the Baroque, who linearity and width was designed more for pomp and ceremony han for mere traffic.” (p. 183)
“The broad, tree-lined streets were seen as providers of light and air, creating sanitary conditions in both a physiological and a political sense– the latter favorable to the rule of Napoleon III.” (p. 186)
MORE ABOUT PANORAMIC PERCEPTION
The final chapter, “Circulation,” looks
at the consequences of the changes in transportation for retail, specifically,
the development of department stores.
“As Haussmann’s traffic arteries were connected to the rail network by means of the railway stations,and thus to all traffic in its entirety, the new department stores, in turn, were connected to the new intra-urban arteries and their traffic. The Grands Magasins that arose during the second half of the nineteenth century were concentrated on the boulevards that supplied them with goods and customers.” (p.188)
While traveling on the train put an end to
conversation, so the department store put an end to haggling, for now there
were price tags.
Department stores encouraged panoramic
perception.
“There had to be noise, commotion, life everywhere… The customer was kept in motion; he traveled through the department store as a train passenger traveled through the landscape. In their totality, the goods impressed him as an ensemble of objects and price tags fused into a pointillistic overall view…”(p. 191)
The sources of parnoramic perception were at once
speed and “the commodity character of objects.”(p. 193)
THE CIRCULATION CONCEPT IN THE 19th CENTURY
“… whatever was part of circulation was regarded as healthy, progressive, constructive; all that was detached from circulation, on the other hand, appeared diseased, medieval, subversive, threatening.” (p. 195)
CIAO, GRAND TOUR
Re: The Grand Tour, “an essential part of
… education before the industrialization of travel.” The world was
experienced in its original spatio-temporality… His education consisted of
his assimilation of the spatial individuality of the places visited, by means
of an effort that was both physical and intellectual” (p. 197)
(At this thought, of the industrialization of
travel, I had an evil little chuckle recalling Mrs Pofrock in Henry James’ The
Ambassadors.)
So:
“The railroad, the destroyer of experiential space and time, thus also destroyed the educational experience of the Grand Tour… the places visited by the traveler became increasingly similar to the commodities that were part of the same circulation system. For the twentieth-century tourist, the world has become one huge department store of countrysides and cities” (p. 197)
I would venture that a more apt analogy would now
be “menu of venues for digitally realized self-presentation” —
translation from the Noodathipious Flooflemoofle: “selfies.” I hear
most everyone shops online these days.
#
FURTHER TIDBITTY THOUGHTOID
A curious analogy occured to me, that just as the
automobile allowed for more agency for a traveler vis-a-vis the railroad, so
the tablets and smartphones allow more agency than the television for the
consumer of entertainment.
This finds me working
on the
book on Far West Texas, and about to resume the Marfa Mondays podcasts (20
podcasts posted so far, 4 more to go, listen in anytime). I just
posted a brief video of my visit last November to see, among other wonders and
curiosities, a most extraordinary and controversial statue at the El Paso
International Airport.
Because of the way it is placed, directly behind a grove of extra-fluffy trees,
and at the entrance where most drivers, speeding in, are on the lookout for
signs, such as rental car return, departures, arrivals or parking, I
daresay few passersby would even notice the statue. I myself drove by it more
times that I would like to admit before I realized it was there.
Here’s my 3 minute video:
My video mentions “The Last Conquistador,” a magnificent documentary about this statue and the controversy. Watch the trailer:
POV Interactive offers the first clip of “The Last Conquistador” documentary:
For “Behind the Lens POV PBS”
Cristina Ibarra and John Valadez Talk about the Juan de Oñate Sculpture:
I’ll give the sculptor, John Sherrill Houser, the last word, quoting him from the documentary:
“Here it is, look at this and think about it, good and bad, the whole thing. The history.”
As those of you following this blog well know, I’m at work on a book about Far West Texas (that’s Texas west of the Pecos) and so reading deep into the history of the wider region that is now Texas and northern Mexico– for it all connects. I’m not reporting on each and every book I come across, but now and then I read one that, in taking both my understanding and my curiosity to a fresh level, prompts me to order my thoughts with a review and/or interview the author, should he or she be alive and willing. (See for example, Q & As with Raymond Caballero, Paul Cool, and John Tutino). Carolina Castillo Crimm’s deeply researched De León: A Tejano Family History is one of those.
We often hear about the Tejanos (Mexican Texans or, as you please, Texan Mexicans) in Mexican and Texas history, but who were they? Crimm’s De León provides an intimate glimpse of one of the first and most influential Tejano families though several generations, beginning with Don Martín de Léon and his wife Doña Patricia de la Garza, the founders of the de Léon colony and the town of Victoria on the coastal plains of Texas in the early 19th century. They and their descendants weathered Mexican civil wars; Comanche attacks; cattle rustlers; cholera; the Texas Revolution of 1835-36; the massive influx of “Anglo” immigrants; exile and legal battles to reclaim their land; the US Civil War and Reconstruction; and, into the late 19th century, the rise of the railroads and the cattle ranching industry.
C.M. MAYO: As historian Arnoldo de León commented, your study of a Tejano family “confirms what other historians have said (but not buttressed with this kind of detail) about Mexican Americans in history: that they are resilient in the face of adversity, that they adjusted to an Anglo American political environment after 1836 with a degree of success, and that their absence in Texas history books is explained by a neglect of the primary sources.”
CAROLINA CASTILLO CRIMM:
Thank you for the opportunity to talk about the De León family of Victoria,
Texas, one of the early founding families of Texas. As far as I know, Arnoldo
de León is not related to the De León family of Victoria although you never
know. He has been influential in encouraging many students to study the
Hispanic world both past and present.
I am grateful to be part of a growing field of
historians focusing on early Hispanic settlement in Texas. These so-called
Borderlanders were originally inspired by Arnoldo de León and David
Weber. Since then, there have been many more scholars who have delved into
this area and produced excellent studies on this period. Among them are Dr.
Frank de la Teja, Dr. Andrés Tijerina, Dr. Armando Alonso, Dr. Francis X.
Galan, among many others.
There are also dozens of new, up-and-coming young
historians working in the field of the Borderlands. It is thrilling to see so
many people searching through primary sources to discover the histories of
these early settlers.
C.M. MAYO: And a related question: You mention in your acknowledgements that Nettie Lee Benson had been one of your mentors. She was such a towering figure among historians of Latin America that the University of Texas Library’s Latin American collection is named after her. Can you share a memory or two about Nettie Lee Benson, how you met her, what you remember of her?
CAROLINA CASTILLO CRIMM: I
was fortunate enough to arrive at the University of Texas at Austin in 1989
while Dr. Benson, or Miss Nettie as one of my fellow students called her, was
still teaching her course on Mexican History and the Borderlands. I had
mistakenly assumed that the Latin American Collection at UT had been named for
her because she was the wife of some oilman who had donated millions to the
University. I was wrong.
As it turned out, she had been a librarian at UT
during the 1940s. She made it her mission to take the funds she was given by
the university and invest the money in books and materials from Mexico and
Latin America. Each summer, she would take what, in reality, was a pittance and
travel throughout Mexico. She bought, traded or salvaged materials everywhere
she could. On one occasion she found a stack of old dissertations from the UNAM
at a pawn shop. They were about to be destroyed but she bought them for fifty
cents each, thereby rescuing a precious heritage. Each evening, she would go
back to her room and wrap up her finds in brown paper and string and send them
back to the library at UT. She did this every summer for years.
At last, Eugene C. Barker (for whom the Texas
collection was named) encouraged her to begin work on a Ph.D. in Mexican
History. Working part-time, she completed her degree and became a professor in
the History Department. She continued to work at the library and to add to the collection
which eventually was renamed in her honor. Students still remember her falsetto
voice echoing through the stacks as she asked what each of us was working on
then led us directly to some seminal book on our particular topic. She spent
her life helping students explore the stacks that she created.
Dr. Benson was awarded the Aguila Azteca by the
Mexican government, the highest honor that can be given to a foreigner, for her
work on the Provincial Deputations of the 1820s. Her on-going encouragement of
students working in the field has led to the production of hundreds of works on
Mexican and Borderlands History.
There have been some Mexican scholars who have
resented the removal of so much material from Mexico. They maintain that the
books should be in Mexican libraries, not in the United States. As I have seen,
however, Mexican libraries often do not have the funding to protect these
priceless treasures. I have been in archives in Matamoros where there are bugs
eating away at the paper, or in Saltillo where burned archives were only
rescued by accident when a historian/diner at an out-door restaurant noticed
the bits of burning paper sifting down from next door. The material at the University
of Texas has been preserved and protected and is accessible to scholars from
all over the world. Admittedly, Mexicans do have to travel to Austin to find
the materials, but at least it is available.
C.M. MAYO: You also write that Nettie Lee Benson set you on your path. Can you talk more about that, and what inspired you to write De León?
CAROLINA CASTILLO CRIMM: I
started on my Ph.D. at the University of Texas without any sure direction or
goal in mind. As a Mexican, I wanted very much to focus on the early Hispanics
of Texas. Miss Nettie Lee suggested I work on Martín de León, the only
successful Hispanic Empresario in early Texas. The problem then, and now, was
the lack of sources. There were no diaries or letters, but with Nettie Lee’s
help, I began to discover court records, county records, land records, and the
last will and testament of Doña Patricia de León. I was also fortunate to find
many of the descendants of the De León family who provided invaluable
assistance in writing the book.
C.M. MAYO: You tell the story of the matriarch of the de León clan, Doña Patricia, who lived a long life filled with success but also struggle and heartbreak. And one of the key contributions of De León is to underline the role of Hispanic women settlers in Texas and, by their example, their influence on Texas laws pertaining to women. Can you talk about that a bit?
CAROLINA CASTILLO CRIMM: I
had not originally focused on Doña Patricia or the women of the De León clan.
As with many studies of Texas history, the women were often relegated to
background roles. As I explored the sources, however, I began to see that the Victoria
settlement would not have existed without the efforts of Doña Patricia and her
daughters and daughters-in-law.
Patricia, evidently from a very good family at
Soto la Marina, had received an immense dowry of $9,000 pesos. This was at a
time when most dowries in Monterrey averaged less than $5,000. Some might say she
gave up the money to her husband, Martín, to fund the ranches in Texas.
Considering her later careful use of money, I prefer to think she invested the
money in the future of her family. And it paid off handsomely. She was able to
recoup the money when she needed it most by selling the Texas family ranch in
1836 to a New Orleans real estate broker for a handsome profit. But Patricia
also donated land. The lovely St. Mary’s Catholic Church sits on land donated
by Doña Patricia to the Catholic Church.
Doña Patricia taught her daughters to fight for
their rights when they returned to Texas in 1845. Not only did she enter the
American courts to regain family land, but she encouraged her offspring to
regain land that had been usurped by unscrupulous settlers. She held mortgages
on land and taught her daughters to do the same. Luz Escalera, wife of
eldest-son Fernando, and Matiana Benavides, a grand-daughter, held a mortgage
on land owned by an uncle. When he didn’t pay up, family or no, they foreclosed
on him, leaving him only the 20 acres around his ranch house.
At a time when Hispanics could not borrow from
Anglo banks, Hispanic women were often the money-lenders within the Mexican
community. They learned to be tough business women. It will remain a mystery
why she turned on her eldest son, Fernando. In her will, she forgives all the
debts owed to her by her descendants, except for the money owed her by
Fernando. That money was to be collected by his brothers and sisters.
C.M. MAYO: What comes through clearly to me in De León is that the early Tejano settlers, such as Martín de León, were neither wealthy nor campesinos (peasants), but part of an emerging and literate middle class. Yet throughout many decades of the 19th century the Tejanos had to fight both the Comanches and, depending on where they placed their loyalties, various factions for or against Spain, Mexico City, the Texians, and then the Confederacy. What stands out is that these decisions were not unanimous in the Tejano community, and they were fraught with terrible risk.
CAROLINA CASTILLO CRIMM: Yes,
as Dr. de la Teja has pointed out, the Texas ranchers were not wealthy but they
were not poverty-stricken either. The de León family employed a teacher on the
ranch to educate their children. And not all the children agreed on which side
to choose. I suspect Patricia’s Christmas gatherings were a trifle tense during
the years of Mexican Independence when some of her offspring sided with the
Liberals while others chose the Conservatives. Things got even worse during the
Texas Revolution.
C.M. MAYO: Until recent times the story of the fall of the Alamo came across as a simple story of brave Texians vs dastardly Santa Anna. Do you see your book as part of the impetus to enrich that particular narrative?
CAROLINA CASTILLO CRIMM: Yes,
certainly. During the Texas Revolution, half the De León family sided with the
Texians while others supported the legally constituted Mexican government, even
if it was Santa Anna.
The decades from 1800 through the Civil War,
were a time during which there were dangerous decisions to be made. The wrong
decision could result in being shot by one side or the other. Many of the
Mexican ranchers learned from bitter experience to keep their heads down and
their mouths shut or get out of the way. General Joaquín de Arredondo’s 1813
attack at the Battle of Medina and the later executions of Liberals, or
Revolutionaries, in San Antonio was a difficult time for everyone in Texas.
Doña Patricia had good reason to insist on removing her family to Soto la
Marina for safety during these years, and again in 1836 to escape to New
Orleans during the lawlessness of the Republic of
Texas. But she always came back.
C.M. MAYO: You mention that during the US Civil War many Tejanos, including members of the de León family, engaged in the cotton and transport trades to benefit the Confederacy. I note that Evaristo Madero, grandfather of the subject of my recent book, also made his first fortune in this trade. My question is, do you see the de Leóns as part of the broader fabric of a culture of entrepreneurship found throughout the north of Mexico?
CAROLINA CASTILLO CRIMM: The
Spanish and then the Mexican government had restricted trade for generations
(1713 to 1821) thereby preventing much in the way of entrepreneurship for the
ranchers of Texas. They could sell hides and lard but there was little else of
value in Texas that could be transported and sold. The Anglo settlers, in
particular the Irish from the Refugio area, learned to profit from the sale of
cattle from their Mexican rancher neighbors.
Once the borders were opened to trade after 1836,
the Mexicans improved on their cattle trade and profited by selling corn and
vegetables to the incoming colonists. They also made a profit by carrying goods
in carts to the coast. As soon as the Texians saw there was a profit to be
made, however, the Cart Wars of
the 1850s broke out, and the Tejanos were cut out of the trade. They continued
to profit wherever they could, and wherever the Texians would permit.
C.M. MAYO: It is impossible to read Texas history without the mention of the strains and struggles between the so-called Anglos and Tejanos, as if the two communities were sealed off from one another under two bell jars. Yet of course they were not. You mention the tensions and the struggles the de León family faced in defending their dignity and their land titles against Anglo newcomers at various points in the 19th century, but you also mention their long-time friendship with the Linn family.
Can you talk a little more about the Linns?
CAROLINA CASTILLO CRIMM: Martín
de León needed settlers to establish his Empresario grant. He brought some from
Mexico, but there were some settlers already squatting on the land he had been
granted. Rather than get rid of them, he simply incorporated them into his
colony. Although some said he was a “cranky old man” as an Empresario (he was,
after all, in his 60s), he accepted people of all nationalities into his
colony. Fernando, his eldest son, became very close to the Linn family. Just as
the De León family helped the Linns during the Mexican period (Edward Linn
became their surveryor), they returned the favor when Texas became a State.
Fernando was able to count on the Linns (John Linn
became a Texas Senator) for help with legal problems.
I found that the early settlers, both Texian and
Tejano, who had helped each other survive Indian raids and droughts and hard
times in the years from 1821 to 1836 became loyal friends, regardless of
nationality. The arrival of new settlers after 1836, however, who had not
had those close relationships, created an atmosphere of antipathy and racial hatred
against the Mexicans. Fortunately, there were still a few of the supportive old
Texian families who protected their Tejano friends and called them the “Old
Spanish Families.” This didn’t prevent the killings of the Mexican families by
mobs during the 1870s or the mass murders by the Texas Rangers
during the 1920s.
C.M. MAYO: At various points you mention a slave owned by Fernando de León and later inherited by his adopted son Frank, and that Frank tried to manumit him but the laws of Texas at that time would not permit it. Do you know his name and what became of him?
CAROLINA CASTILLO CRIMM: Unhappily,
I do not know what happened to the slave. It is possible that Frank’s will, if
one were able to find it, might indicate a name or what happened to him. Most
Mexicans were opposed to slavery which made the years of the Civil War
difficult for them. Unlike the Germans, however, they kept their opinions to
themselves and avoided getting hung. They created guard units to protect the
coast from Union troops, but only one of the de León grandsons actually fought
with the Confederate troops.
C.M. MAYO: You managed to keep straight several generations of a sprawling family. I can only begin to imagine how much work it must have been just to keep your research in order! For readers who may be working on their own opus, can you offer your best organizational tip?
CAROLINA CASTILLO CRIMM: Any
genealogical study that covers several generations is challenging. Rather than
just tracing one line, where one can safely ignore all but one of the children
of each generation, I created a large wall chart with all of the various
children, each of their spouses, and their descendants. Where it gets
complicated is with the families of the in-laws who are equally important as
brothers- or sisters-in-laws. More charts, more wall space.
As anyone in South Texas will tell you: “Todos
somos primos.”* And it is true. Once you connect in-laws and
godparents, the network of relations is truly a Gordian knot. I found out, to
my surprise, that my Castillo family who lived in the Refugio area from the
1790s to the 1870s, were distantly related to the de León family as well.
*We’re all cousins.
C.M. MAYO: Your book came out in 2003. What are the reactions that surprised you, and what are the ones that gratified you?
CAROLINA CASTILLO CRIMM: I
was very pleased to receive several awards from the Sons of the Republic of
Texas, from the San Antonio Conservancy, and from the Catholic scholars. To
have Arnoldo de León say such kind things about the book was a real
honor.
I should probably not have been surprised to find
that some Tejano scholars were opposed to my book. They felt that a blonde
Gringa should not be writing books about Mexican land loss. I don’t “pass”
since I don’t look Hispanic. I had a rather heated altercation with one of my
colleagues at a conference about whether I understood how difficult it had been
for Mexicans in Texas at the time. They were certain I was just another
do-gooder Anglo trying to put a better light on the challenges facing Tejanos
during the 1800s and their survival in spite of the difficulties. I was glad to
be able to prove them wrong.
In the course of my research, I had learned that
my Castillo family had lost their Refugio land in an 1870s court case to a
(now) wealthy Texan family. A gunfight resulted in which one of the Anglos was
shot. A lynch mob was formed and the Castillo brothers had to make a run for
the border to avoid the noose. The Castillo family left Texas and lost their
land. Some say it was sold, others that it was stolen. They reestablished a
large ranch outside Reynosa at Charco Escondido on the Mexican side and
continued to prosper as ranchers until the Mexican Revolution when they
returned to the United States. So, yes, I may not look Mexican, but my family
does understand land loss.
C.M. MAYO: What are you working on now?
CAROLINA CASTILLO CRIMM: As you can imagine, my interest is still focused on writing about Hispanics on the border and in Texas. I have started to write the story of the Castillo land loss and have already gotten several chapters into it. However, inspired by Americo Paredes, I wanted to go back and look at what formed the early Tejanos. Luis Alberto Urrea’s The Hummingbird’s Daughter has certainly helped.
Scandalizing though it is for a historian, now
that I am retired, I have kicked over the traces and turned to fiction. I am
working on a series of three novels on the 1770s in New Spain and the impact of
the Bourbon Reforms. I’ve based my characters in large part on the social gulf
that existed between the criollos
or mestizos,
like Martín who may have been a low class muleteer who made good, and
Patricia, the daughter of a wealthy Spanish family. Since the story (in the
third book) carries us into 1777, Bernardo de
Gálvez and his defense of the American Revolution plays a part as
well. The first two novels are finished and are in the editing stages. The
third should be done soon. Now, I just need to find an agent and publisher. My
usual publishers–the university presses–don’t do fiction.
Thanks for the opportunity to share the story of
the De León saga with your readers. My website is at www.carolinacastillocrimm.com
and De León is available through my web site or through amazon.
C.M. MAYO: Immense thanks to you, Carolina, and mucha suerte with your novels.
I am still turtling along in writing my book about Far West Texas, which has involved not only extensive travel in the Trans-Pecos and some podcasting but reading– towers of books!– and what a joy it was to encounter one so fascinating as Paul Cool’sSalt Warriors: Insurgency on the Rio Grande.
A meticulously researched and expertly told history of the El Paso Salt War of 1877, Salt Warriors is essential reading for anyone interested in US-Mexico border and Texas history, and indeed, anyone interested in US history per se.
The El Paso Salt War of 1877 was sparked by
“Anglo” businessmen staking claim to the massive salt
bed that lies just west of what is now the Guadalupe Mountains National Park. Local
Mexican-Americans, known as Paseños, considered the salt deposits community
property, in accord with Spanish Law.
While the salt may have been free to anyone who
would shovel it up, that required an arduous journey across the desert with
carts pulled by oxen, and under constant threat of Indian attack. For
Paseño farmers who eked out a living in this drought-prone region, the salt
they could harvest was vital for curing food, pelts, for livestock licks, and
above all, as a cash commodity– much of it sold to mines in Mexico, where it
was used for refining silver. The Paseños were outraged when Judge Charles H.
Howard, a recent arrival from Virginia, informed them that they would have to
start paying his father-in-law, a German businessman based in Austin, for the
salt.
In the wake of the El Paso Salt War, several people on both sides of the conflict had been killed, some horribly (Judge Howard was murdered, and his body mutilated and thrown down a well), the town of San Elizario sacked, several reputations ruined– some fairly and others unfairly, as Cool argues– and a wedge of suspicion and resentment driven between communities that is still, more than a century later, not entirely healed.
Paul Cool is a former Army Reserve officer and resident of Arizona with an avid interest in the US-Mexico borderlands. He kindly agreed to answer my questions via email.
C.M. MAYO: When and why did you develop your avid interest in the US-Mexico border?
PAUL COOL: It came late in life, but traces back to growing up in Southern California and marrying a young lady whose paternal grandparents came to El Paso during the Mexican Revolution. Unfortunately, I spent nearly two decades trying to write a book about the French Revolutionary/Napoleonic era, and only recently turned to the borderlands for material.
C.M. MAYO: What prompted your interest in the Salt War?
PAUL COOL: I have always been drawn to historical eras marked by the collapse or relative absence of order, justice, and social restraint, periods when ambitious or unscrupulous individuals are more able to give free rein to their personal desires and vices at the expense of the larger community. The late Roman Republic. Revolutionary France. The frontier West.
In 1999, I drove from Seattle to
Baltimore via El Paso, where I happened to purchase Walter Prescott Webb’s
history of the Texas Rangers. His book contains a chapter on the Salt War. It
was obvious there was an interesting story here, but it was buried beneath the
ethnic bigotry running through Webb’s take. I then read C. L. Sonnichsen’s
little book on the Salt War. The writing was vivid, and his account grabbed me
in a way Webb’s had not. I felt closer to what happened, but the characters
were still archetypes and stereotypes.
C.M. MAYO: Outside the region this conflict is almost unknown. Why do you think this is?
PAUL COOL: Several reasons. The Spanish-speaking losers in the conflict disappeared into Mexico, and were in no position to write the history. As for the Anglos, many of the protagonists died, and they were soon replaced as by others who came to El Paso with the railroad, lacking any concern for the past. The story was buried because it was about a world that no longer existed, and no one cared about.
Second, the story did survive as a
chapter in Texas Ranger history, but since the Rangers surrendered to an enemy
repeatedly characterized as a “howling mob,” Texans generally considered the
Ranger performance a thing of shame and no one made any effort to expand our
knowledge of the episode for that reason.
Third, from the perspective of
Anglo sources, no iconic Anglo figure arose to grab our attention and turn the
story into the stuff of legend north of the border. I think the 1916-1918 Arab
Revolt illustrates what can happen with a hero. Think of Lawrence of Arabia’s
impact on Western understanding of the Arab Revolt. Without Lawrence, no
newspaper coverage by Lowell Thomas, no Seven Pillars of Wisdom, no
David Lean film, no Omar Sharif as Ali or Zhivago! Lawrence’s story, and
all that followed, is a misreading, to be sure, but corrective history is now
available. It is possible that Mexican sources will reveal the existence of a
hero, possibly Barela, possibly someone who we don’t yet know, and the
information needed to provide the foundation of a heroic narrative. The
romantic in me hopes that further research uncovers such a figure who can raise
awareness of this popular yet tragic rebellion, south of the border first, then
migrating up here.
Latino historians are and have long
been aware of the Salt War and its place in Mexican American history. When I
asked Dr. Arnoldo De
Leon, a preeminent authority on Tejano history, why Latino scholars
had never tackled the subject, he explained that they are playing catch-up,
that there are so many stories still in need of telling, so many that continue
to wait their chance.
C.M. MAYO: Of the results of the war, you write (p. 4) “In the long term, the distrust and marginalization of Paseño citizens by Anglos was deepened.” Your book does an excellent job of showing why this was but at the same time, you show that the insurgency was not “a bloody riot by a howling mob but in reality a complex political, social, and military struggle.” After your book came out, did your argument meet any notable resistance?
PAUL COOL: The academic community has generally applauded the appearance of Salt Warriors, although some reservations about my approach have been expressed. For example, one reviewer justly criticized the book for its reliance on north-of-the-border sources, to the exclusion of any archival material inside Mexico. I do not speak or read Spanish, and did not have the resources to hire others to dig through material that might or might not tell the story I wanted to tell. I had a choice: I could leave the story untold because I could not do a so-called “definitive” version (which is always elusive anyway), or I could tell this story to the best of my ability and hope that others would follow up to provide new perspectives.
One other criticism I will mention
is that I gave my opinion of the key participants, of their individual
responsibility for the chaos and destruction that took place, and even of their
moral failings. Some said that is not the historian’s job. It is best to just
state the facts and let the reader decide. That may be true, but in this case,
I felt that the story of the Salt War had been so repeatedly twisted over time
that a clear statement of who was responsible was in order. One can never
really know the hearts and minds of people who died more than a century before,
but I feel confident in my opinion of who was most responsible for the tragedy.
C.M. MAYO: What lessons does the Salt War offer us today? I am thinking of some of the dynamics we see played out with other insurgencies and their repression, and the dynamics that ensure. On p. 235 you write “‘Throughout history,’ today’s U.S. Army and Marine Corps officers learn, many defeated insurgent movements ‘have degenerated into criminality.'” My understanding is that this would apply both to some of the defeated Mexican-American and allied Mexican insurgents, as well as to many ex-Confederates who were then coming into the Southwest and taking up careers as rustlers, and bank and train robbers.
PAUL COOL: Any population is always going to include “hustling individualists” who are most interested in getting what they want, whether it is inordinate power or wealth at the expense of the larger population, or the satisfaction of some baser need, including taking something from someone else in a violent or disturbing manner.
The question is, does the presence
of an equally applied law and a just order prevent or at least put a damper on
that?
In the first instance, one group,
whether it’s Gilded Age entrepreneurs and their political allies, or their 21st century heirs on Wall Street and
in government, uses “law” to corral wealth and power at the expense of the
general population.
In the second, violent criminals
trade on the lack of “order” to achieve much the same ends, perhaps more
bloodily, but not necessarily on a smaller scale.
What transpired in post-Salt War El
Paso, in terms of increases in criminal activity by gangs and individuals, was
probably not much different in nature than what happens any place the authority
structure collapses, whether in Iraq, Revolutionary France between Louis XVI
and Napoleon, or the Soviet Union after Gorbachev.
But something additional happened
in El Paso, new to the American West but not uncommon in world history. There,
the sheriff hired mercenaries to enforce order against perceived enemies, in
this case the Mexican American population. Those mercenaries included career
criminals led by John Kinney. What happened in El Paso became, for a few years,
the way sheriffs did business in the American borderlands, and was repeated
during the Lincoln County War (again with Kinney leading a band of criminals)
and in Cochise County, Arizona during the final stage of the so-called
Earp-Cowboy troubles.
C.M. MAYO: You were a former Army Reserve officer. How did this inform and color how you saw some of the individuals in this story?
PAUL COOL: The event had largely been treated as an ugly civil disturbance requiring military policing. I decided to approach it as a “war” brought on by clashing cultures, economic drivers, and untrammeled ambition.
My own military career was slender,
but my first thirty years were spent as the son of a decorated combat hero and,
as a Reserve officer, in close association with officers and men who also met
that definition. The military is made up of people from the general population.
Soldiers, sailors, and airmen are, in that sense, much like the rest of us. But
in addition to military knowledge, i.e., how to fight and win, the military honestly
attempts to inculcate certain ideal qualities, including honor, integrity,
reliability. People, whether the population you’re sworn to protect or your
buddy in the next foxhole, suffer and die unnecessarily when these qualities
are forgotten or ignored. The military I knew does try to adhere to them.
There is, of course, so much more
to the military ethos, but I mention these factors because they influenced the
course of the Salt War. There were army officers, such as Lieutenant Rucker and
Colonel Hatch, who attempted to use their influence and authority to prevent
violence and to quickly, peacefully put a lid on it. But it just so happened
that, at the critical point, the officer on the scene, Captain Thomas Blair,
possessed probably less integrity than any other officer in the U.S. Army. He
was a smooth charmer, and no one realized his lack of character. Had Rucker not
been replaced by Blair, or had Blair possessed ordinary integrity, it seems to
me likely that some of the violence might have been short-circuited. Who knows?
It was only later, through Blair’s bigamy, that the value of his word was
revealed to all.
The military also attempts to
instill discipline, to convince young soldiers to follow the rules, something
that goes against the grain for many, from teenagers to independent-minded
middle-age men. Discipline enables a unit to carry out its missions and
prevents the naked exercise of power in service to personal wants. The Salt War
illustrates the importance of discipline and leadership. We read that the
various companies of the Ninth Cavalry occupying the Mexicano towns
carried out their pacifying mission without any complaints, whereas soldiers
from the company of the Tenth Cavalry engaged in a variety of violent personal
and property crimes. The difference was the discipline instilled by the leaders
of the Ninth Cavalry, but not the Tenth, both prior to and during the military
action.
C.M. MAYO: A modern recounting of the Salt Wars usually makes Judge Charles H. Howard into a simple character, an arrogant, stubborn and greedy villain, the outsider who swiped the community’s salt and then, even to the point of endangering both himself and others, insisted on pressing his client’s claim. One of the things I appreciated about your book is that you explained in more depth some of Howard’s probable motivations and, in particular, the mid-19th century Virginian concepts of honor to which he would have ascribed. The fact that he was bereaved after the death of his wife and deeply indebted to his father-in-law, the purported owner of the salt lakes, was another crucial factor you point out.
It seems to me that you have made a powerful effort to objectively present the different points of view in the conflict. Was this something that came easily or did it take a while?
Were there any individuals whose motivations were particularly obscure to you, or even now remain so?
PAUL COOL: While I don’t subscribe to the “great man” theory of history, I do believe that individuals make a difference, whether it’s Jean-Paul Marat steering the French Revolution along a more violent course or young Charlotte Corday who feels bound to save France from Marat. I believe that the Salt War was filled with such characters, whose personalities and behaviors were instrumental in leading the county into a downward spiral. That was not fully evident from the published record, because Salt War history was for decades largely a matter of historians regurgitating the same tale: largely nameless, faceless, hapless Texas Rangers surrender to a Mexican mob led by the evil Chico Barela. Nothing worth investigating further. But once I dug into sources not previously used, such as the federal government’s records, or personal correspondence that popped up in newspapers or located in the governor’s records, a different story emerged. At some point, for some reason, I decided to investigate the lives of key players before and after the Salt War. And that’s where I found the keys to their actions in 1877, most notably in the cases of Blair and Kerber.
Howard is a figure out of Greek
tragedy. He wore his arrogance on his sleeve, but arrogance is a trait, not a
motive. What was his motive? What impelled him to send a county over a cliff?
It had to be something deep and personal. Howard himself spoke and wrote of his
debasement by the Paseños, of his overriding debt to his father in law, of his
depression after the loss of his wife. Losing his honor, he wanted only to
regain it, and it did not matter who he harmed in the process. He was raised in
a society that educated him to believe that personal honor trumped all. I
don’t believe that he saw that he had any choice. He could only act as he
did.
I am afraid that, despite the best
efforts of New Mexico historian, Dr. Rick Hendricks, I never quite got a handle
on Father Antonio Severo Borrajo, the man most demonized by contemporary Anglo
sources. Toward the end of my work, I did add a paragraph that attempted to
make sense of Father Borrajo, based on Dr. Hendrick’s guidance, but then in the
final flurry of chopping and editing the manuscript, the passage got deleted
from one spot and not replaced in another. I didn’t notice until the book was
published. I tell myself that these things happen, but it’s a mistake I’d
rather sweep under the rug. I’d love to revise Salt Warriors after Dr.
Hendricks publishes his Borrajo biography. I think that would fill a large gap
in the story I’ve told.
The Paseños were a tough nut to
crack. They did not write the histories, their thoughts are largely absent from
the written record, and the victors universally denigrated their motives and
characters. I got past that in two ways. First, I decided to make the Paseño
community a character. Who were these people at the Pass of the North?
Faced with a century-long relative isolation from Spanish, Mexican, and
American authorities and support systems, what kind of community did they
establish and build? How did it function? What did that maintenance and
development of a community say about its leadership? Guesswork on my part was
necessary, but traits did present themselves and a portrait I trust did emerge.
Second, in the case of the Paseno’s
leaders, I was able to draw conclusions about their leadership skills based on
their military actions, which were quite elaborate. One thing that the evidence
revealed is that the Paseños had a long history of self-defense, whether
against Apache raiders or the demoralized Confederates who retreated from New
Mexico. It was obvious that the Paseño community had a core of leaders they
turned to, men who had previously considered how best to respond to threats,
and had put their lives on the line to lead those efforts. I had no direct
evidence enabling me to get inside the minds of Chico Barela (or “Varela”),
Sisto Salcido, or other leaders, but the reports of what actions they took was
very revealing. For example, the traditional Anglo account is that Barela was a
man not given to keeping his word. A different reading is that he was a master
of using deception to misdirect his enemy’s attentions and actions. He could
spot an opponent of weak resolve and then guide his actions by telling that
opponent what he wanted to hear. He played his opponents no less than Napoleon,
Robert E. Lee, or Rommel. That’s something you do in war, if you can.
Ultimately, Barela and his little army bit off more than they could chew, but
they conducted a skillful military operation that achieved short-term results
no one among the Anglos expected.
C.M. MAYO: About Father Antonio Severo Borrajo, who as you say was “most demonized by contemporary Anglo sources,” would you like to share the lost paragraph?
PAUL COOL: Unfortunately, whatever paragraph I had on Borrajo was in some unknown spot in some unknown draft that never got indexed. However, whatever I put in was influenced by this 2002 corrective view by Dr. Hendricks, who, since 2010, has been New Mexico’s State Historian. I do think Borrajo’s intolerance of the Protestants and the French-based Catholic teachings of the then current parish priest, Father Pierre Bourgade (later archbishop of Tucson), helped to keep the population stirred up, even if he was not the greedy demon falsely portrayed by his enemies. Unfortunately, Borrajo’s appearances during 1877, the climax of the crisis, are few and references to him at that point are probably less reliable than usual.
C.M. MAYO: Louis Cardis, the Italian-born businessman and stagecoach owner is a most intriguing character. Was it possible to find out more about his origins other than that he was from Piedmont and might have served as a captain in Giuseppe Garibaldi’s army?
PAUL COOL: There was more about his life story and others that just had to come out to get the book down to size. Anything I found that explains his actions did stay in the book. He is another character who, where the written record is concerned, is largely seen through the eyes of others. I detect no bigotry toward his constituents, none, but he did not do all he could to protect them from the power structure that was moving to seize their grandfathered rights in the salt lakes. For example, he signed his name to the 1876 Texas Constitution that enabled private citizens to own saline deposits, but never after, as far as I can tell, spurred his constituents to take legal action to forestall Anglo ownership.
C.M. MAYO: As you proceeded with your research, what most surprised you?
PAUL COOL: This project started as a planned 2-3 chapters in another book. I was surprised by the complexity and the epic sweep of the story, and by the characters who could leap off the page in the hands of writers much better than me. (If there were a viable market, this story deserves a ten-hour TV miniseries starring Russell Crowe and Edward James Olmos, among others.) If I could have made Salt Warriors twice as long, I would have. Pity the poor reader had I owned my own publishing house.
C.M. MAYO: You were able to talk to several of the descendants on both sides of the conflict. Were you surprised by how they saw it?
PAUL COOL: The families that remain in San Elizario knew they had reason to be proud of their ancestors, but over the years, exposed only to increasingly vague oral tradition and the Anglo-centric writings of later historians, they had largely lost the details of what really happened. In some cases, I had to reject the tradition, but in other instances, I thought tradition held up and explained what the records obscured. It was the first time I had to make sense of oral tradition, to treat it as evidence that deserved to be weighed rather than ignored.
On an early visit to San Elizario,
a leader of the local historical and genealogical society showed me where
tradition said certain key events happened. My research often showed otherwise,
and a few years later I was happy to return the favor, incorporating the
written evidence. We still had doubts about this and that event and had a great
time trying to make sense of the surviving evidence, including tradition.
C.M. MAYO: In reading about the organized crime in El Paso in the wake of the Salt War– in particular of cattle rustler John Kinney and his alliance with Sheriff Kerber– it’s tempting to make modern day comparisons with modern day drug trafficking, etc. Would you? Or was it something very different?
PAUL COOL: Well, it was much, much, less organized, and the crimes much more impromptu than we see with modern drug traffickers. My subsequent research has led me to believe that a better analogy would be the Bahamian pirates of the early 18th century, those who established a base of operations on Nassau temporarily free of British authority. (El Paso had a government, but totally ineffective keeping order.) There were criminal leaders (Blackbeard, for example), but individual pirates were more or less free to sign on to this piratical raid or that. They had to strictly follow orders during any voyage—at sea, everyone’s life depends on it—but otherwise were independent contractors who, between “jobs,” had no duty to follow anyone. Likewise, men might follow Kinney or not. That they raided with Kinney today did not prevent them from riding off to commit their own crimes tomorrow, or just sit around playing cards and drinking rot-gut till they went broke.
C.M. MAYO: One of the most astonishing things to me about the entire episode is that nearing the end of the book (p.280) we learn that the government never granted Zimpleman ownership of the salt lakes! So what happened after that? Who took possession of them? Who owns them now?
PAUL COOL: I too was astonished by that. I did learn that some business did extract salt into the 20th century, but more than that could not tell you. I simply had to move on.
C.M. MAYO: Anyone who drives east out of El Paso en route to Carlsbad NM passes right through the salt lakes. But to really see them, what is the best place to view them?
PAUL COOL: If one is simply traveling east or west, on the way to or from El Paso, one can get a good view at several points along Highway 62/180. My book’s cover painting, by artist Bob Boze Bell, is based on a photograph (found inside on the page facing the Introduction) that I took from this highway. A more immersive experience can be gained at the Gypsum Salt Dunes inside Guadalupe Mountains National Park. The lakes stretch for 100 miles, so I imagine there are any number of good sites for viewing.
C.M. MAYO: One of the stops on one of the routes from the Rio Grande out to the salt lakes is Hueco Tanks, an oasis with some important rock art that is now a State Park and Historic Site. For anyone interested in the history of the Salt War, is there any place there that would be especially relevant to see?
PAUL COOL: Among the signatures carved into the rocks of Hueco Tanks is that of Santiago Cooper, one of the Texas Rangers who survived the siege and battle of San Elizario.
A walking tour of San Elizario is essential. Many of the buildings date from 1877 and before.
With the benefit of the bird’s eye view painting in my book, it is possible to
follow the course of the actual fighting, as well as place other events that
took place in town. A walking tour guide is also available at the museum,
giving historic and architectural details on surviving structures.
In the city of El Paso, a very few
buildings survive, most notably the Magoffin House. One should also visit
nearby Mesilla, New Mexico, near Las Cruces, where A. J. Fountain published the
newspaper that gave the fullest, if one-sided, reporting of the events inside
El Paso County. The town square dates from before the salt war.
C.M. MAYO: Anything else you think I should have asked?
PAUL COOL: There was one other sound criticism of my book that deserves comment. In part because I did not use Mexican sources, I did not link the Paseños to Mexican national thinking and traditions regarding liberty, property, justice, and the right to rise in defense of one’s rights. Instead, I quite clearly linked them to traditions of New England’s minute men and the adoption of the U.S. Constitution.
I did that for two reasons. First, I know more
about U.S. traditions, and can stand on more solid ground. Second, I
intentionally attempted to make a point to an American audience. The
political philosophy driving the Paseños was of a universal nature but could be
and was expressed at the time by them (page 141) in terms that New Englanders
of 1775, Continental Congress delegates of 1789, and the Anglos who moved to El
Paso could understand, had their minds been open. However much the Paseños
acted within the traditions of the long Mexican quest for justice within the
law, they certainly acted within the U.S. tradition.
C.M. MAYO: What inspired you to write this biography?
SONJA D. WILLIAMS: In fall 1994 I had just started working as a writer/producer for the Smithsonian Institution’s Black Radio: Telling It Like It Was project—a 13-part series exploring the legacy of African Americans in radio. (The Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C., housed a unit that produced award-winning radio and television documentaries about the American experience). So starting in January 1996, our weekly half-hour Black Radio programs aired on more than two hundred noncommercial radio stations nationwide.
Of the five shows on my producing plate, I felt the most trepidation about the one exploring African American contributions during radio’s “theater of the mind” heyday of the 1930s and 1940s. Blacks were rarely featured in local or national dramatic broadcasts then. When I found out about Destination Freedom, I was struck by this radio series’ lyricism, dramatic flair, and fiery rhetoric. African American writer Richard Durham created this series in 1948 and for two years he served as its sole scriptwriter. A master storyteller, Durham seductively conjured aural magic, inventively dramatizing the lives of black history makers.
And Durham used his desire for universal freedom, justice, and equality to inform his storytelling choices.
Richard Durham had died in 1984, so my interviews with his wife, Clarice, actor/singer Oscar Brown Jr., and writer Louis “Studs” Terkel provided salient insights. Durham was an astute, Chicago-based writer who employed poetic, hard-hitting prose to entertain, educate, and promote positive social change. He stood behind his convictions, even when the consequences of his actions caused him emotional pain, financial hardship—or both.
Durham’s accomplishments reinforced my own belief that the media, in all its incarnations, should serve a higher purpose than just mindless diversion. His life was drama itself, full of unexpected twists and turns, of creative invention and reinvention. His story certainly fascinated me. So after the Black Radio series ended, I planned to work on Durham’s biography.
Unfortunately, other documentary projects monopolized my time. I also continued teaching in my academic home, the Howard University Department of Radio, Television, and Film. Appointment to an administrative position in my department eventually forced me to sandwich research for this book into spring or summer breaks and other far-too-fleeting time frames.
Still, a Howard University–sponsored research grant in 2002 enabled me to begin immersing myself in Durham’s world. Later, a 2009 Timuel D. Black Jr. Short-Term Fellowship in African American Studies sponsored by the Vivian G. Harsh Society enabled me to spend a summer in Chicago. I practically moved into the Woodson Regional Library, home base of the Harsh Research Collection of Afro-American History and Literature, where Richard Durham’s papers reside. Finally, a sabbatical from my university during the 2010–11 academic year allowed me to make significant progress toward the completion of this book.
C.M. MAYO: Did Durham’s family help and/or cooperate with you?
SONJA D. WILLIAMS: Durham’s family members were extremely cooperative and supportive. Durham’s wife, Clarice Davis Durham (now 95), generously allowed me to interview her on numerous occasions, and she provided contact information for several of her husband’s longtime friends and colleagues. She also shared documents she had not donated to the Chicago Public Library’s Harsh Research Collection.
Mrs. Durham’s brother, Charles A. Davis and sister Marguerite Davis offered touching stories and historical perspectives about their brother-in-law, as did Richard Durham’s older sister Clotilde and younger brothers Caldwell and Earl. And Mark Durham, Clarice and Richard’s only son, provided a wealth of additional information and contacts.
C.M. MAYO: What were the most unexpected and biggest challenges for you in writing this book?
SONJA D. WILLIAMS: If someone had told me in the early 2000s that it would take between 10 and 15 years to complete Word Warrior, I would have been convinced that this person had abused some crazy, judgment-clouding substance. The longest documentary project on which I had worked, NPR’s and the Smithsonian’s 26-part series Wade in the Water: African American Sacred Music Traditions, was about five years in the making, from its conception by artist/historian Bernice Johnson Reagon to airdate.
But additional documentary, teaching and administration responsibilities, along with other life demands, soon proved that Word Warrior would take a lot longer to become a reality. And at times I had to overcome serious personal roadblocks. Was I really up to this challenge? Who told me I could write a book? Was I fooling myself?
I got past those doubts, but not without struggle – and time.
C.M. MAYO: I believe every book has many angels. Who were the angels for this book?
SONJA D. WILLIAMS: So many angels hovered over this project. Durham’s longtime friends, artist Oscar Brown Jr., journalist Vernon Jarrett and writer/radio personality Studs Terkel were generous with their time, recollections and insights. Historian J. Fred MacDonald, who died earlier this year, was an angel from the start, providing all types of audio and visual materials and regular encouragement.
Vivian Gordon Harsh, an African American woman I never met, served as an earthbound angel during Durham’s lifetime and a heavenly one in mine. During the 1940s, this pioneering head librarian created and curated a special collection of Negro books and historical documents in Chicago’s George Cleveland Hall Public Library. Durham spent hours there, combing through the research materials Harsh provided for his Destination Freedom and other projects. Today, the Harsh Collection is the largest African American archive in the Midwest. It also houses Richard Durham’s Papers.
And of course, my family members and close friends – angels all – divvied up places to stay, reality checks and butt-kicking critiques.
C.M. MAYO: Were you able to listen to all of Durham’s “Destination Freedom” radio shows? (Where are they archived?) Did you have some favorites– and why?
SONJA D. WILLIAMS: Of the 92 shows in the Destination Freedom series, I listened to all of the tapes that have survived. Northeastern Illinois University historian and author J. Fred MacDonald discovered and rescued those tapes and scripts from Northwestern University years ago and housed them in his own media archives (now located in the Library of Congress). From his archives, Dr. MacDonald sent me a huge box containing copies of every Destination Freedom script. I read every word. I also listened to Destination Freedom tapes in the archives of the New York Public Library’s Schomburg Research Center of Black Culture, and in the Richard Durham Papers archived in the Chicago Public Library’s Harsh Research Collection.
It’s rather hard to pick favorites from such a rich cache of dramatic programs. Of course, a few stand out for their storytelling strengths and messages:
The Rime of Ancient Dodger examined Jackie Robinson’s integration of baseball, starring Oscar Brown Jr. as Robinson and Studs Terkel as a Brooklyn-accented, rhyming narrator. Denmark Vesey recounted Vesey’s revolutionary militancy and his 1822 slave revolt in South Carolina; Negro Cinderella portrayed artist Lena Horne’s young life and social awakening; Premonition of a Panther demonstrated how his sport’s brutality affected boxing great Sugar Ray Robinson; The Death of Aesop displayed the biting humor and wisdom of an Ethiopian slave famous for his fables; The Long Road explored the contributions of women’s suffrage activist and educator Mary Church Terrell.
C.M. MAYO: Durham was Muhammed Ali’s biographer (The Greatest, 1975). Did you find it challenging to write the biography of a biographer?
SONJA D. WILLIAMS: In part because Muhammad Ali is such a huge personality and significant cultural figure – and because I was fascinated by his story and his fights during my younger years – Ali threatened to take over the chapter about Durham’s work with him on The Greatest. I had to fight with myself to make sure that Durham remained in focus by using Durham’s interviews with historian J. Fred MacDonald, magazine and newspaper articles where Durham talked about Ali, the tapes Durham personally recorded while following Ali during the writing of The Greatest, and relevant interviews with Durham’s friends, colleagues (including his Random House editor Toni Morrison) and family members.
C.M. MAYO: You’ve written for radio. Did you find writing a book to be similar or a very different process?
SONJA D. WILLIAMS: While I never thought that writing a book would be a breeze, the research process felt very familiar. It required the same primary and secondary research muscles needed for documentary production. I loved digging for information and finding unexpected gems – like Durham’s letters to and from acclaimed writer Langston Hughes, or learning about Durham’s interaction (along with other labor union leaders) with a young Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Dr. King had journeyed to Chicago to seek financial support for the Montgomery, Alabama bus boycott he was leading. At that point, February 1956, the boycott was in its infancy and struggling to survive.
But writing for the page (or computer screen) is different that writing for the ear, and my early chapter drafts contained clunky chunks of interview segments or script samples. It was as if an unseen narrator (me) briefly set up an audio clip and then let the clip run uninterrupted, taking up a bulk of the page. While I could let audio segments, sound effects, ambient sound and/or music guide listeners in radio storytelling, it was clear that I had to take a more active role as narrator/guide for a book.
I had to reorient my mind and my writing. A struggle.
But if I learned anything from past projects, my work on Word Warrior cemented the fact that hard work, persistence, and faith are essential elements for any creative endeavor.
C.M. MAYO: What’s next for you?
SONJA D. WILLIAMS: I plan to return to my first love, music, and explore the lives, musical triumphs and personal struggles of some contemporary musicians. Wish me luck, faith and persistence!