“Lucille Clifton and Black Buffalo Writers”

Humanities New York Reading & Discussion Program

October 6 to November 10, 2020 – Tuesday Evenings 6:00 to 8:00pm

Meeting Via zoom

In the nineteenth century, Buffalo was the final stop on the Underground Railroad, a hotbed of abolitionist activity and the home of the ex-slave, novelist and activist William Wells Brown. In the twentieth century, it was a center of Black musical culture and literary innovation, producing such writers as Ishmael Reed, Lucille Clifton, Masani Alexis deVeaux, Gary Earl Ross, and Connie Porter. This group will dive into the rich literary history of Black Buffalo through discussion of essays, fiction, drama, journalism, and poetry and Spoken word performances.

This group grows out of three previous HNY discussion groups held in Buffalo during the past eighteen months: the first on James Baldwin, the second on Audre Lorde, and the third on American Politics and Community Today. This proposed new group will focus on literary materials that relate to the Buffalo context in particular, both its history and its contemporary challenges with regards to racial justice and cross-racial community. Because Buffalo has produced so many prominent and innovative literary figures over the years, we have rich resources to draw from in exploring our city’s Black literary legacies and current vitality. And because our city continues to struggle with poverty, segregation, unequal schooling, and police brutality directed at citizens of color, we feel an urgent need to promote cross-racial conversations within our community. Literature that gives voice to Black perspectives with a local slant can provide us with a way to focus those conversations fruitfully and tease out the relations of literature to social change.

Thankfully, Buffalo has a vibrant arts community. In addition to a number of internationally known writers, Buffalo can lay claim to a vital contemporary poetry scene featuring readings, slams, workshops, and literary magazines that provide venues for talented young Black artists. We plan to begin our readings with selections of fiction and speeches by William Wells Brown and journalism by Mary Talbert, one of the founders of the Niagara Movement (precursor of the NAACP). We will then turn to poetry by mid-twentieth-century writers Lucille Clifton and Ishmael Reed, then to a play, The Trial of Trayvon Martin, by Gary Earl Ross, excerpts of two novels, All-Bright Court by Connie Porter and Everywhere You Don’t Belong by Gabriel Bump, and journalism by Alexis deVeaux. Next, we’ll read a play, A Little Bit of Paradise, set on Buffalo’s East Side in the prohibition era, written by our facilitator Annette Daniels Taylor. We will close out the session by sampling the work of contemporary Spoken Word poets Eve Williams, Brandon Williamson, Marquis Burton (aka Ten Thousand), Tyrone Huston (aka Legendary), Jasmine Thorpe, and Bianca McGraw. The Lit City Voices archive of poetry videos filmed at different sites around Buffalo (created by the Just Buffalo Literary Center) will give us a wonderful set of resources for viewing such performances. 

We plan to reach out to people of various backgrounds and interests, young and old, across Buffalo’s diverse neighborhoods in order to create a group who will bring varied perspectives to an exploration of Buffalo’s rich literary heritage. Our hope is that our discussions will help to open up areas of shared concern and possibilities of collaboration between artists, activists and community members in Buffalo around issues of racial history and racial justice.