Author of 'Strange Fruit'Describes HomeTown
Author of 'Strange Fruit'Describes HomeTown PHILHARMONIC -SYMPHONY CONCERTS at Carnegie Hall Arthur Rodzinski, musical director. Saturday evening, Dec. 1, at 8:15, and Sunday afternoon ,l)ec. 2,...
...4, Tchaikowsky...
...And there was a great emptiness after her going...
...Suite, "A Midsummer Night's Dream," Mendelssohn...
...Piano Concerto in E flat (K...
...minority whip ol the Senate, said llnii lie was now ciiiiviuced more llian ever that Mr...
...2, at ":00 (broadcast over CBS) — Soloist: Wanda I.andowska, pianist and harpsichordist...
...Soloist: Yehudi Menu-hin, violinist...
...Do yon' "Our proposed arbitration agreement provides that any wage increases awarded by the Arbitration Board shall be retroactive to August 18, 1945, the date on which our demand was filed, and shall remain in effect until August 18, 194n...
...America read it and called it a book about the Negro problem...
...We delivered the goods during the war and we are prepared to do Ihe same in peace...
...Across the street was our church, white and shining, with a steeple so high it seemed to my eyes to reach into the sky and touch the hand of Cod...
...This was my town...
...H'e prefer the conference telle to the picket line...
...I learned to expect colored chil drill to step off Ihe sidewalk when I passed by, and I learned to accept the bowing of head and bend iiif of body as due me, ami I learned never to call a Negro "mister" no matter how deeply I respected him, and I learned not lo doubt my own superiority, mid I learned to sing hymns and lo...
...Our war record does not depend alone on Mr...
...Lost time amounted to only .tMSOfi percent of the time winked...
...Then one day she was sent away and I was told that I no longer needed her...
...And as Ihe years passed, its paths grew old and familiar and I learned to walk them without looking, even though I knew they edged charms deep and measureless that folks said could never be bridged over...
...These things 1 fell a long lime before I wrote them down in a book...
...Rimming the town like a shadow *«'e the Quarters where colored *»jk lived and at the edge of the Wjsrters a little unpainted church nv?r<' tfley worshipped an(l san|t 'heir gongs of yearning and ••'smed of a heaven where they •WH «it down and rest ami cat ¦t God's table...
...thinking about walls that white people have built in their desperate efforts to shut off colord people from them, only to find that in walling oft" Colored Town, they walled off White Town from truth and beauty and knowledge...
...Sen...
...1)1 a final effect to reach a peaceful ¦eNJfceient, the union appealed to the rtiiporstioii two days before the walk-««t that the controversy over the 30 pgtent increase be submitted to arbitration...
...482), Mozart...
...WECK-END AT WALDORF ttk WEEK AT MUSIC HALL Attaining the distinction of being the fourth picture in Radio City Music Hall's history to achieve so extended an engagement, the Metro-Coldwyn-Mayer screen hit, "Week-end at the Waldorf" will enter its ninth and final week at the theatre, Dec...
...I was born in an old rambling house that grew, room by room, as our family grew, until it spread itself in ample comfort across lawn and under great limbs of trees—the kind of house that curves itself around your heart forever, holding you close to its dust and its memories...
...It took General Motors 08 hours to say "no" to arbitration lioth in principle and in practice...
...It may be that these characters have a lot of kinfolks up North...
...7, at 2:30...
...North of town were the mills and beyond them white uiilltnwn and colored milltown, separated general Motors Strike to open their books to the union, but iay that -even their own stock-Ljj— can't aee them...
...8—The Board of Arbitration shall tasks a final and binding decision of this dispute...
...corporation was not being asked u •¦bin it to a revolutioriai y practice, far year* other employers have permit-is* the books of their business to be JEned '" collective bargaining and luM managed to prosper...
...It took me seven years to write them, but at last Strange Fruit was written...
...When I was a child in Maxwell, I lived on College Street, where oak trees made cool paths for children to run on and moss shut the glare of sun from their eyes...
...6th, of the Music Hall's famed Christmas stage show and the premiere of the Bing Crosby-Ingrid Bergman picture, "The Bells of St...
...In our backyard, in a little cabin, lived our nurse, a woman strong and wise and tender who gave my life its first meaning and on whom I lesned as I took my first steps into a new and strange world...
...When I grew older, and traveled across the earth, I found white men everywhere walking the same old paths that I bad walked in Maxwell, and this was something I could not forget either...
...6, at 8:45, and Friday afternoon, Dec...
...Suite Francaisc...
...We challenge you to match our action in relinquishing use of the strike weapon by laying the arithmetic of this wage dispute before a Board of Arbitration...
...The issue al last is going lo I" liicd before llie coiirl of the American people...
...In a letter transmitting the proposal, Reuthcr pointed out, at the instruction •f delegates representing GM workers in approximately 100 bargaining units: "In the interest of GM workers, the Corporation and all the people, we urge jou to join with us in this arbitration Sfreement...
...A ltd so when I came buck home, I kept thinking . . . tblnking about chasms that cut deep gashes across the map of a (own hut more deeply across Ihe hearts of the people who live there...
...Plainly, General Motors management has committed Ihe Corporation lo war all along the industrial front, war to break the bark of organized labor, and te turn the clock back to the days of plant or company unions, helpless against the strength of great employing groups...
...And I believed that also...
...pray and (o believe in love and brotherhood...
...l.e Ral Martiniquais," Milhaud...
...That is the mail to World Wai III ami, with the atomic bomb, the blackout of civilization...
...One day Jose Ferrer and Arthur Friend asked me to make Strange Fruit into a play...
...It is seeking a return to a longer work week in Ihe fare of rising unemployment, and to maintain on relief-subsistence basis a large pool of unemployed te hold down wages...
...1st, making way for the opening on Thursday, Dec...
...They are forever spilling over into the pit and the wings ami sometimes so many of them pop up in the audience that one begins to wonder after a lime just who are Ihe characters and who the spectators at this play about Maxwell...
...At that time, he told the press that the work record of CM employee* wit* 14 tiinr* better than that ttf the industry a* a whole...
...GM's rejection of our offer of at bi-tration," Beuther stated, "again emphasizes the fact that GM, viewing itself as a leader of American industry, is lient upon establishing an industrial dictatorship...
...Wherry 111., INebr...
...Capital Comment Continued Christian A. Ilerler I It Mass...
...We ate prepared to meet anywhere, al any time, to resume negotiations...
...Wilson's statement, it is attested by the facts...
...Our record is unsurpassed...
...I suppose it was easier to say that than to say it is about you and me and the others who are caught in this trap that white culture has made for itself a trap with a thousand doors it seems sometimes and all of them opening inward...
...The letter further stated: "In the event the Board of Arbitration concludes that the General Motors Corporation has the ability to pay a .')() percent increase in scheduled hourly »»re rates and ttill yield profit* after totei in exce*n of *nrh profits in it* best fesr during the pa*t tin, the Board shall be empowered to make advisory recommendations concerning price reductions on the products of the General Motors Corporation...
...We exhausted every possibility of settlement before we turned to our last resort, the withholding of our labor...
...But I never felt good in the learning...
...It looks from here as though Ceu...
...The Seven Ages," Carpenter...
...So I packed up Ihe fears and guilt and bate and love I had known as a child in Maxwell, and collected the char-actors from College Street and Milltown and Colored Quarters whom I had known also, and brought them North to (ho theatre...
...Hurley will eel his wish...
...It is seeking lo charge Ihe consumer whatever the traffic will bear and to stretch out and speed up American industrial production with disorganized labor and, finally, to rapture the world's markets by selling sweated goods for American dollars made cheaper abroad and dearer at home by spiralling inflation...
...And I never forgot the loneliness which always came hack when 1 heard old songs whose words would not grow clear again in my memory...
...It was in this church that I learned about hell and punishment and sins so terriWe that have to do with the body and love that God finds it hard to forgive them though He understands about the black man being the white man'i burden and the<necessity for segregation...
...I learned all the things white children in Maxwell had to learn in order to make their walking easy...
...Strange Fruit, which she has now dramatized...
...For I learned also that there are invisible walls that you are always bruising your heart against no matter how well your feet stay in the path, for your heart refuses to walk there...
...Or it may be that Maxwell is not just the town in Georgia they came from, hut every place on earth where there are walls, rough and jagged or smooth and invisible, which shut human beings away from each other and from n world in which they should feel st home...
...it ¦ould sweep across Maxwell ss I *' 'n my bed listening, I would fT though 1 hardly knew why I was crying, knew only (hat 1 felt a great loneliness as if some one 1 loved far away were singing a song whose words I would never be able to hear clearly...
...I introduced resolutions . .illiii» lor investigalinn of foreign service personnel, tin military and civil governments ol occupied enemy territory and administration ol foreign policies in these areas...
...Maxwell, Georgia By LILLIAN SMITH The author of the play that opened its New York engagement at the Roy ale Theatre on Thursday, November 20, tells of the town that provided the material for her best-selling novel...
...Harpsichord Concerto in D major, Haydn Thursday evening, Dec...
...Achrsoii wauled In go beyond llie I'ots-daiu agreement and create a revolution in Japan...
...The present attitude of (iM management is bitter payment for the record GM workers made during the years of war production—a record which (iM President C. E. Wilson boasted about in his October 19 press conference under (he auspices of (he National Association of Manufacturers...
...Milhaud...
...Mary's...
...The proposal provided: 1—The parties' submit this dispute t«.a three-man board of arbitration, rem posed of one representative of rsanagement, one representative of labor, and a < ban man selected by the ether two members...
...2—The Board of Arbitration shall have full access to the Isooks, records mil other documents of both parties which, in the judgment of the Board, am essential to an intelligent and factual solution of this dispute...
...Suite "Mo-tartiana" No...
...Maxwell, Georgia from each other by churches built *T the mill-owner where folks •died in sawdust anil shouted in """try to forget a supper of fat-¦Mk and cornbread and the long find of work hours that held no •""Prises...
...Violin Concerto in D major, Beethoven...
...Governed by the same sense of le-spousibility, we proposed public negotia-11.>n, conciliation and arbitration...
...Any wage increase ordered by the Board shall not lie used as a basis for a price increase for any CM product for the duration of such award...
...But it has not been easy to keep them on the stage up here...
...Sometimes at night "* they sang, the sound of...
...Now litis same lliiug is happening in China...
Vol. 28 • November 1945 • No. 48
