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OLIVER GOODRICH: Good evening, and welcome. My name is Oliver Goodrich, and I serve as the Associate Dean of Students for Spirituality and Meaning Making, and Director of Cornell United Religious Work. And on behalf of the Martin Luther King Jr. Commemorative Event Planning Committee, and the entire division of Student and Campus Life, I want to welcome you all here tonight. It's good to be with you.
I'll be the first to admit that I would much prefer to be gathering in person tonight, but out of an abundance of caution, we felt that it was more important for everyone to stay home, and safe, and warm. So thanks again for tuning in on what is a very cold and snowy night here in Ithaca.
I want to begin tonight by acknowledging the Indigenous peoples of all the lands that we're on today. While we're gathering tonight on a virtual platform, I want to take a moment to acknowledge the importance of all the lands that we each call home, whether you're in Ithaca or elsewhere.
Cornell University is located on the traditional homelands of the Gayogohono, the Cayuga Nation. The Gayogohono are members of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, an alliance of six sovereign nations with a historic and contemporary presence on this land. This Confederacy precedes the establishment of Cornell University, New York state, and the United States of America. We're grateful for the ability to organize here, and we wish to extend our respect to the people and elders of the Cayuga Nation.
We acknowledge the painful history of Gayogohono dispossession. And we honor the ongoing connection of Gayogohono people, past and present, to these lands and waters. And we reaffirm our commitment to improving our own understanding of local Indigenous peoples and their culture.
And now a word about this evening's event. This annual Martin Luther King Jr. Commemoration at Cornell aspires to be a cross campus and community partnership that really makes accessible the life and legacy of Dr. King for contemporary times. The King Commemoration seeks to bring together Cornellians and Ithaca area friends and neighbors to plan and participate in this annual event.
Our past speakers have included those who worked directly with or who knew Dr. King, along with scholars, activists, journalists, and religious leaders whose work was informed by and represents a continuation of his legacy. These speakers have highlighted the continuity between past and present, providing a critical examination of King's legacy and contemporary issues.
Cornell has long felt a special connection to Dr. King, who visited campus and spoke from the Sage Chapel pulpit in November 1960. It's the stone pulpit that you see depicted behind me. As we reflect on the events of the last few years, we're keenly aware that the issues with which Dr. King grappled remain with us today, issues like systemic racism, voter disenfranchisement, income inequality, militarism, and all manner of barriers to community participation based on ethnicity, religion and creed.
The manner in which these issues continue to be addressed may well determine our collective future as a society. And so it's our sincere hope that tonight's event will catalyze and even recommit each of us here tonight, and indeed our whole community, to carry forward the values and actions that were so central to the beloved community that was inspired by Dr. King.
So now I want to welcome Marla Love, the Robert W. And Elizabeth C. Staley Dean of Students, who will introduce our featured guests. Welcome, Marla.
MARLA LOVE: Thanks, Oliver. As Oliver mentioned, I'm Marla Love, and I serve as the Robert W. And Elizabeth C. Staley Dean of Students. And on behalf of everyone who's had a hand in planning this evening's event, I want to extend a warm welcome to each of you. Thanks for joining us this evening.
Speaking of our planners, I want to take a brief moment to thank our incredible planning committee, who have been preparing for tonight's event for months. I also want to thank our generous co-sponsors who have helped make this evening's event possible.
We are grateful to the Office of Spirituality and Meaning Making, the See You Tonight Programming Board. The Office of Academic Diversity Initiatives, and the College of Architecture, Art, and Planning for their financial support. We are also grateful to our community partners, including the Greater Ithaca Activity Center and Calvary Baptist Church, and our many other co-sponsors who are too numerous to name, but you can find their name on all of the publicity and posters. Thank you all.
And now it is my privilege to introduce our featured speakers this evening. Moderating tonight's conversation is Cole Arthur Riley. Cole is the spiritual teacher in residence this semester with our Office of Spirituality and Meaning Making. She is the creator of Black Liturgies, a space for Black spiritual words of liberation, lament, rage, and rest, and a project of the Center for Dignity and Contemplation.
Born and for the most part raised in Pittsburgh, Cole studied writing at the University of Pittsburgh. Her debut book, This Here Flesh, will be published by Penguin Random House on February 22. We're also joined tonight by Danté Stewart, who is the author of Shoutin' in the Fire: An American Epistle. Named by Religion News Service as one of the 10 up and coming faith influencers, he is a writer and speaker whose voice has been featured on the New York Times, The Washington Post, ESPN'S The Undefeated, Sojourners, and more.
As an up and coming voice, he writes and speaks into the areas of race, religion, and politics. He received his Bachelor of Arts in sociology from Clemson University. And he is currently studying at the Candler School of Theology at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia.
We are pleased to have Danté and Cole with us this evening. You all in the audience tonight will have a chance to join in the conversation later in the hour. Please feel free to think on your questions, and then there'll be a moment where our chat will open up and you'll be able to add your questions to the chat. We'll be engaging those questions later in the program, and we want to get to as many of them as we can. With that, please join me in welcoming Cole Arthur Riley and Danté Stewart.
COLE ARTHUR RILEY: Hello. Hey.
DANTÉ STEWART: What's up, Cole? What's up?
COLE ARTHUR RILEY: Hello to everyone watching. Hey, Danté. How are you doing?
DANTÉ STEWART: I am well. I am well. I wish we were at Sage Chapel after y'all have spoke so wonderfully about the magnificence of such a beautiful space, but I'm OK with being on Zoom, too.
COLE ARTHUR RILEY: Yeah. I'm just glad you got to see Ithaca. We have the Southern boy up in the snow. And you're making it.
DANTÉ STEWART: Yes. Indeed. Indeed.
COLE ARTHUR RILEY: So for those watching, just to give a little background, Danté and I, we've become good friends over at course of the pandemic. We're actually with the same publisher and imprint. And we've talked on the phone a lot. Danté was the first soul to read my book besides my editor and my spouse. And he read it in all its rawness, in its raw form. So he knows me better than most. But we only met in person for the first time a few days ago.
But way back when Danté and I were both writing our books, we were writing them at the same time. And we would call each other and just talk. And one of the earliest things you said in those conversations, Danté-- I think it was our first conversation. You said, I just hope people will see our work as in conversation with each other. And I was just remembering that this morning and thinking, here we are. You had an imagination for things like this. And I'm so excited that we're finally doing this.
DANTÉ STEWART: Indeed. Indeed. It is indeed a blessing. I'm so grateful for the many people who made this possible. It is indeed a blessing to be able to be here with you, particularly celebrating this moment, to be in a Black History moment. To pause.
I was talking with a friend that Black History Month is a time of intensification and looking at the particular ways in which we Black folk have built life, have created meaning, have developed love, have turned the menial of the world into something beautiful, and indeed a miracle. So I'm grateful to be centering ourselves in this moment around the topic in praise of being Black and alive.
COLE ARTHUR RILEY: Yes.
DANTÉ STEWART: Yeah.
COLE ARTHUR RILEY: I want to get into Shoutin' in the Fire. So I read your book for the first time as a PDF. I don't know if you remember sending it to me in the summer. So it was before release. And even in that form, it was everything I wanted for you, everything I believed you to be and could do as a writer. But the second time I read your book, my spouse and I read it aloud. And it was truly an entirely-- in a different way, a powerful experience. So I'd love for you to just start by reading a little bit of your book for us, if you're all right.
DANTÉ STEWART: Indeed. Indeed I will. OK, cool. So thank you all for joining in this moment. I want to tell you a little bit about the section that I'm going to read, and then I'm going to go-- I'm going to read it. Over the last three weeks I have encountered an incredible amount of loss. I've lost my aunt three weeks ago.
Then the day after her funeral, I lost my granddaddy. And then the day after his funeral, I lost another aunt. And so this topic in praise of being Black and alive in a moment in which I am dealing with immense loss and death, I think is a relevant thing. And in some sense is really-- in a very ironic way has encouraged my spirit.
So I was getting giving a few interviews, and a lot of people talk about how many people I talk about in my book. They're like, you talk about your mother, you talk about your father, you talk about yourself, you talk about your wife, you talk about your grandmother, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And they ask-- one person in particular asks, who do you want to start and talk with? And I told them, I wanted to start by talking about my granddaddy.
So in honor of Johnny Reuben Albert, if we can go back home to a small, Southern town--
COLE ARTHUR RILEY: Take us.
DANTÉ STEWART: --of a young man born in 1932, and went to rest in 2022. I would like to start this moment in reflection of being Black and alive, thinking about Black aliveness with my granddaddy. So here we are.
My phone rang one day. It was early. Danté, my mom said with a trembling voice, your granddaddy got out of the house early in the morning. We don't know where he is. We've been looking for him for hours. He's lost. My heart immediately sank to the carpet floor. I felt turning, and twisting, and trembling.
I grabbed the olive oil in the green bottle the same way they used to do when I was a young kid. I rubbed it in my hands. I put it on my head like Bishop did when we stood in line during prayer service. I got on my knees and prayed, and prayed, and prayed.
Whenever we would get in trouble or would get sick my mom would call for the elders of the church and they would come and pray for us. It might not have changed the situation, but it did make us a little less ashy, and more greasy, and more confident. So I prayed my only prayers. The fluid that came over my body was violent. It was rushing from my stomach to my neck. My mouth was dry. I started to feel the palms of my hands sweat.
How is grandma doing? What is she thinking right now? What is she feeling? I was terrified. I was angry. I was tired. I needed some air. So I walked outside. The morning was still and quiet. There were clouds covering the sun. I was afraid, so very afraid. Even sick. The cold brisk air came and it went. It touched the tip of my head, and then my nose, and then my chest, and my stomach.
My heart was racing and I haven't even started running yet. And I begin to cry. I cried because I was not around. I cried because I didn't want to lose him. He was lost, for dementia had taken so much of him. And there was nothing that I could do.
I prayed another terrifying prayer. God, let him be found alive. What's the update, I asked my mama, as I called. Jazz and I was in California. My family was in South Carolina. And that distance, that terrible thousands of mile distance, felt terribly far that day. It felt like ages.
I tried to convince myself that my granddaddy would be alive. But if I'm honest, I had started to prepare myself for his death, because I didn't want to have my heart shatter again at the pain of seeing another cold, dead, Black body. I could not take the thought of abruptly learning of his death. So I prepared myself. And I tried to remember so much that I experienced of him.
I wanted him to live, but I was prepared to grieve even if he died. My mom called me a few minutes later. She said Sister Jones told her to go back to the river. Go look for him one more time, Deb, she said. My mom resolved to look again. Everybody was tired. She said she heard in her spirit, the river, Deborah. The river. Go back to the river.
Rubin? Rubin? Rubin? My mama called out. No answer. They knew wild coyotes ran through the bushes, the old trees, and the dark leaves. They knew that wild hogs snorting were aggressive as well. They knew the water moccasins, poisonous and deadly, lived there. 14 hours had passed, and he was still not found. Go back to the river, Deb. Go back to the river.
They walked across the embankment on the high side so they wouldn't fall off what my mama and them call The Cliff. Rubin, they called again. Hey, a voice cried out in the distance. Be quiet, everybody, my mama said, motioning everybody to be still. Daddy? Reuben? She cried out.
Hey. We found him. We found him. We found him. Everybody shouted. They found him sitting underneath a tree. His gray hoodie with the red rooster on it was covered in mud. His frail body was still alive. My mama called me to tell me the news, and it was around 6:00 o'clock in the evening.
I shouted and cried because he was alive. He was alert and alive. Daddy, can you sing me a song? My mama asked him as he lay in a hospital bed. He started humming, and clapping, and singing. I know prayer changes things. I know prayer changes things. Yes, I know prayer changes things.
He didn't know where he was at in that moment, but he knew that he could sing as he laid, his body covered in a white gown with blue dots on it. And it washed over him like fresh country rain, steady yet patient, healing. I visited him when I got home. I walked up again to that old red brick house in Sandy Run, South Carolina. He was laughing. He was laughing. He was singing. He was dancing.
Granddaddy, I said as we sat down on the couch days after he had returned home, talking about El Paso, Texas, the place that he barely remembers but always talks about, you still got your dance moves? He paused. He rubbed his bald head with the patches of white on the side. He looked at me and looked me straight in my eye. And he said these words, well, I don't know, but I'm still here.
He may have lost some memory, but he still remains. You know, that's his story. That's our story, our Black story. There have been so many things snatched from us, but there are still so much that remains.
He doesn't remember his time living in El Paso, Texas, the miles and miles he walked to school in South Carolina as a young child. He doesn't remember every heartache and hallelujah that brought him to where he is today. He doesn't remember all the John Coltrane tunes that he used to play on the old piano. He doesn't remember the songs he used to sing, the old outfits he used to wear, the car games he would play, the drives we took up and down I-95.
He doesn't remember the prayers we prayed around the dinner table. He doesn't remember how proud he was of me when I first put on a jersey, or when I got married, or when I had Asa, or when I had Ava. He doesn't remember traveling up the dusty country roads, picking up kids for practice, driving all those Black folk to the poles when they learned that their voices could be heard.
He does not remember Martin and him marching. He does not remember Rosa and her sitting. He doesn't remember the movement, or the struggle, or the suffering, or the terror. And you know what? Maybe that is OK.
Maybe in the loss of memory he gained his body in ways that this country tried to steal from him. He doesn't remember, but we do. And when he can't remember, we hold his story, and he is still found.
You know, I used to think talking about Black life was about convincing white folk to be better. But that's far too lemony. No, I've learned that talking about Blackness is about giving us words, setting our bodies free, living in ways that we feel seen, inspired, and protected.
It is about speaking deeply to the pain and the trauma, but also bringing out our complexity and beauty. For after all, we are indeed human. It is not about triumph as much as it is about telling our story. It is about how we have created love, and created life, and showed up for one another. In those moments, even in this moment as I think about my granddaddy, and my granddaddy doesn't remain anymore, we were not concerned about what white people thought. We were too busy living.
COLE ARTHUR RILEY: That's beautiful. First of all, thank you for taking us there and letting us experience one part of your grief. Because I know that's-- it's costly to let people bear witness to our pain, to grief. And I think something that you do so well in this book is you tell the story of struggle, you tell the story of pain, but you also tell the story of joy, of hope, of-- it's funny. There's humor. There's something-- yeah, there's something even whimsical about it at times. And I think that you were able to write a book that possess such nuance, it's so necessary for these times when people are so given to reducing Blackness into one thing.
And in grief, our grief is complicated. There's times when you were reading where I wanted to smile. There's times where I wanted to laugh. And so to be able to translate that onto the page even before you were grieving Ruben is special. And thank you.
There's also something about the cadence of your book that I think people can really miss if they aren't paying attention. I think the Black artist and the Black preacher in you just show up so clearly in your craft, which I really appreciate. I just needed to say that, because as you were reading I was once again thinking, where am I? I can see you. Am in a pulpit? Or am I-- anyways, so I appreciate that about your craft.
You wrote this book. You wrote it for Black people. I know that. I feel it in me when I encounter your words. And you begin with this epigraph from James Baldwin.
DANTÉ STEWART: Yes.
COLE ARTHUR RILEY: Our mutual-- one of our mutual favorites from James Baldwin from My Dungeon Shook. Here you were to be loved, to be loved, baby. Hard at once and forever, to strengthen you against the loveless world. And I think that tension, even in Baldwin, is what your book possesses, this tension. Here you were to be loved against a loveless world.
A lot of-- yeah, there's a lot of complicated stuff even within that epigraph. But tell me. Tell me about this beginning. Why did you ground the book here? Why that phrase from Baldwin? And how do you see it play throughout your book?
DANTÉ STEWART: Indeed. Indeed. For me, I wanted to capture the reality of the question, the relevant question, that lies at the heart of even this idea of shouting within the fire. And it is the question, what does it mean to be Black in this country? What does it mean to be American? And then, indeed, what does it mean to be Christian? And so what does it mean to be Black, and American, and Christian?
And thinking about Baldwin, Baldwin was clear to say that one must account for the lovelessness of this world. In this very moment where right now we are dealing with a pandemic. We are dealing with people wanting to ban Black books. And we're dealing with a society where empathy and compassion is so low right now. We're dealing with the residual of a world that we have inherited.
And so to ground Shoutin' in the Fire in that world meant that I needed to account for the loveless of the world. I needed to deal with the pain and the trauma that is associated with-- as Saidiya Hartman says, that to live in a time of slavery, whereby I mean, she writes, that I still live in a place where there is still a crisis of citizenship in this country as it relates to Black people.
So to think about the loveless world is to not run from it, not to try and escape it, but to face it. Because this is where we live. This is the moment that we live in right now. And I am even right now I'm reminded of an a essay that Octavia Butler wrote on a few rules for predicting the future. And a student comes to her after they've read The Parable of the Sword.
And they said, is it really as bad as you make it? She says, well, it's not as bad as-- I didn't make it bad. It's not as bad as I made it. What I just did was I took the dangers of the present and allowed them to become the disasters of the future. And then the student asks her, he simply asked, he says, OK, then what is the answer? And Octavia Butler says, there is no answer. There's no one single answer. There are many answers. And you can become one if you so choose.
And so when I think about the lovelessness of the world, I also wanted to also account for the way Baldwin says, here you were to be loved. And what is being loved but simply being seen? Being able to push back against the ways in which we have been erased.
So to think about Black history, even this 28 day period is grounded in a history of erasure that Carter G. Woodson wanted to push against. Originally and stated I think, if I'm not mistaken, in the 1920s, originally designated as Negro History Week. And what Carter G. Woodson wanted Black History Month to become is a time where we could experience what Martin Luther King would say, the reality of our somebodiness.
So for me in Shoutin' in the Fire what I wanted to do is to hold intention, the loveless world that I and others are living in, that we know to be true, even as near as our breath, we know the world that we live in, we know the struggles that we have to deal with continually, but also that's not all we know. We do know love.
And what I wanted to say was that going back home, going to Black literature, going even to my own self and my own failures, for me, that is where the love was. And the love was simply this, learning from the story of the everyday, ordinary power of Black people. And the ways we have taken the mundane, the ugly, the traumatic, and even the grand, and we have made it all Black. And for me, that was just me. I wanted to do that same thing. That I wanted to take-- say that love is taking whatever I have experienced and turning it Black.
COLE ARTHUR RILEY: Mhm. Yeah. And in that world-- in that world that you're conveying, no one is fully hero, no one's fully oppressor. It's complicated. And when you-- you've been honest about this when you were writing. I remember you saying, I'm writing a book where I'm not the hero. I'm not the hero in this book.
And I want to know-- I haven't really asked you this, but what is that impulse? What's that impulse? And was that they're going into the writing? Did you know going into the writing, I'm going to tell this story where I'm not the hero? Or did that kind of unfold slowly and you were able to step into it more as you went? And why does that matter?
DANTÉ STEWART: Yeah. Yeah. For me, it was a process of revelation and uncovery. When I think about the writing process of this book, there were so many areas of writing where I had to rewrite because I was lying. And I'm not just simply saying like I was lying in telling the untruth, per se, but it was me not being honest about either how I feel or how I actually felt.
So I think about in one situation where I tell the story of my wife, where when I went through these white spaces and I was apathetic and oblivious to our Black death, particularly with Michael Brown and those in Charleston who were murdered, I was apathetic and callous to those deaths. But originally I didn't want to write about that. And I didn't write about that originally.
But it was through the process of wrestling with my own self-- and even really so much of the honesty that is woven within my book is a reflection of my reading of Kiese Laymon's Heavy. Jesmyn Ward's Men We Reaped, and even Sarah Broom's The Yellow House, and Darnell Moore's book, No Ashes in the Fire.
As I started to read their work, and sit with them, and study what they were doing as writers, because I wanted to be in that type of tradition, I realized that one of the key components missing in my writing and telling of my story was vulnerability and honesty. And I said this earlier when I was in the conversation earlier with the students, that vulnerability and honesty is as much pathways to liberation as is our protest, and our revolt, and our revolution. Because vulnerability and honesty allows us to do what Alice Walker says, saw what I considered a scar and redefined it as a world.
I can't redefine, and redefine myself, and reinvent myself if I'm not honest about the way I hurt or the way others have hurt me as well. And I think being the hero, especially as I think about the ways many people tell Black stories, we have to be honest about Black history, that it's not a story of triumph. For we fail as much as we love, and we and destroy as much as we liberate. And that's just the reality of being human is that we need to embrace the fullness of our stories, and say that if we're honest with ourselves, if we're vulnerable, then we realize that you do not have to be perfect or in performance in order for you to be loved.
And so for me to tell the story which I'm not the hero of the story meant that I and others were able to embrace the fullness of Blackness. And when I got to the point where I finally was honest, then I could be honest enough with myself to say, as I did in the book, that I had loved white people more than I love my Black wife. And now I got to deal with that.
And dealing with that uncovered areas of liberation and revelation with my own self to see, OK, this is what I was in the past, but this is also the many ways that I changed, and matured, and got better. And the story would not be what it is had I not had that part of failure. You would not be able to see the fullness of any of our journeys if we only tell the story of the good parts of ourselves, rather than tell the parts of ourselves that we oftentimes want to conceal and hide.
COLE ARTHUR RILEY: Mhm. When you think about all the people that have inspired us, all the people that we read, that that's the kind of art that I think we gravitate to, and I think most people gravitate to. Even if they aren't able to articulate it, I think, yeah, there's an appetite for nuanced storytelling, for not reducing people to one thing. There's a way to write easy, and there's a way to write true and to tell the truth.
And I think in terms of business though, it's very tempting as writers to want to sell one thing. It's strange. It's strange. Because I sometimes just want to shake the publishing industry and say, don't you see, these are the stories that persevere, are stories of nuance, and particularity, and where no one is all hero, no one is all villain.
DANTÉ STEWART: Yeah, but then also, that's so much of your book, This Here Flesh. There is so much woven into your story, in This here Flesh, that I think-- our stories are so in line with one another as it relates to a certain narrative arc, as it relates to the crafting of the book.
Now I cannot-- I want to be the question asker in this moment. There is something beautiful in your story about-- you italicize certain things. And it's almost as if it is a voice that moves within the text. The voice is not a perfect voice, but the voice is an illuminating voice.
So as we're thinking about voices, I would love for people to hear more about This Here Flesh, but also hear about the ways in which these voices, or the voice that help you tell your own story, is woven in that narrative of This Here Flesh.
COLE ARTHUR RILEY: Yeah. I love the way you just articulated that. I haven't thought about it in that way, but I will from now on. I'll say, Danté Stewart said. But I love that. I think that even if I didn't know that that's why I did it, there's something true when you say that back to me.
I started interviewing people in my family a handful of years-- four years ago or so. And I started with my father and my grandma. And when I started to write This Here Flesh I thought I was going to write this very deep, philosophical, contemplative book. And I think at that time those voices-- that voice-- those voices you're hearing, it was just so alive in me because of the bond that formed when I was interviewing, the bond between stories.
I noticed so much interplay and overlap in the stories of myself, my grandma, and my father. It was like I went to write something, and I just couldn't. I couldn't write about dignity without writing about my father greasing our scalps every morning. I couldn't write about lament without writing about my grandma on the linoleum floor.
And I just reached this place where I was just like, surrender. Surrender to this. Surrender to the voices that are remaining with you, these stories that are remaining with you. And so what resulted was this kind of mix. This mix between vocal storytelling and some contemplation.
And I knew I wasn't going to tell their stories for them entirely. I wanted-- their voices are so important and so distinctive, I wanted to be able to bring them onto the page with me. So it's not like I'm retelling their stories, I'm telling about them telling me their stories. You know where I am where my grandma tells me about kneeling on the floor for hours. You know where I was sitting. So I'm trying-- I tried my best to situate people into these conversations that unfolded over time.
DANTÉ STEWART: Yeah. And then I think that was the beautiful part about it. In both of our books, especially as we think about Black stories, there is-- if we were to speak in the language of M. Shawn Copeland, theologian M. Shawn Copeland-- there is so much flesh there. Not just simply like the flesh that is here, like present, this here flesh, but there is also the flesh that walks among the ground, that is embodied in a place where in your book and in my book, place, geography, land, creation, what we do with ourselves in the world that we create and those Black worlds that we exist in, play a critical part in how we understand our own selves and our own place in the world.
And I'm even wondering as you was-- as you was going through your process, and as you-- kind of now your book is about to be soar in the world beautifully, and do some just incredibly beautiful things, why did you feel in this moment that you needed to turn a particular eye to your people, your family?
Because your book reminds me so much of Tiya Miles is-- I told you that you remind me of June Jordan as a writer. You remind me so much of June as a writer. But the feel of your book reminds me so much of Tiya Miles' book, All That She Carried, and how she talks about the sack and the history woven within a sack.
And a sack is a cultural and familiar artifact. So why did you feel in that way that you in this very moment, beyond 2020, where everybody is celebrating Black books. And then 2021, people a little bit more exhausted. 2022, people ready to ban Black books and Black stories. Why did you feel it was necessary to turn particularly to your people, to everyday Black folk around you, as places of meaning?
COLE ARTHUR RILEY: Well, I realized the necessity of family historians, of preserving our own stories. I think-- that timeline that you're talking about, I think in that I was just reminded how easily stories or co-opted, how easily stories are suppressed, how easily stories become about consuming Black pain. There's a-- yeah, there's a hunger-- there's a hunger in a lot of white people after George Floyd. There is a hunger, a curiosity, I think a sinister curiosity, around Black suffering.
And I think, exhausted of that, I knew I wanted ownership over my story. There's a lot of liberation that comes with being able to occupy your own story and tell it in your own way, and knowing that, at least in my family, those stories haven't been able to be preserved well. I'm like, we have to preserve what we can.
And to share that was-- I hope in a way sharing with other people-- we have this oral tradition-- I think a lot of people have this-- a lot of Black people have this oral tradition of storytelling in our families. And also we need to be caretakers of that. We need to be careful. We need to ask ourselves, who is the historian? Who are we allowing to be our historians so that we're telling the truth? Yeah.
DANTÉ STEWART: Yeah. It reminds me so much of Toni Morrison. She has this incredible-- she has this incredible essay that she wrote in 1974 as she was thinking and reflecting on The Black Book. This was an anthology of Black life that was released that year.
And one of the things I absolutely adore about this essay is she tells the story of going back to places she lived. And she did the same thing. She did these interviews. And even in her essay, The Site of Memory, she gave the Tanner Lecture. And she talks about the Black autobiography and the power of Black storyteller. But particularly, telling the story from our perspective. And almost as if she was a little girl in Ohio once again, sitting underneath a tree with a pen and pad in hand, talking to older Black women and men, she says that this process was like growing up Black one more time.
It's beautiful, just like growing up Black one more time. That it is, as she writes, an unconventional history told from the point of view of everyday people. And I think that that is the praising of Black aliveness. It is to celebrate-- there is something that we need to do as it relates to gazing upon Black deaths. Like, there is power. When Mamie Till opens up the-- have an open casket funeral, to say, this is what the white world has done to my son.
And Courtney Baker, who is a English Professor out in California, she has this book entitled Humane Insight, that we don't just look at Black death in voyeuristic ways, as many people do. Like, OK, Black pain and Black trauma, yes, that's a part of the story. But also a part of the story is like Toni Morrison said, looking at our lives as unconventional histories, that each of us, particularly as writers, that so many of us are the capturers of our story, and the historians that we all need.
And I think many of us have that opportunity to continue to carry on that work, that we indeed are living artifacts of Blackness. And I just want to preserve that as much as we possibly can.
COLE ARTHUR RILEY: As you were talking, I was thinking of these amazing-- we have these amazing photos of Dr. King on vacation actually. They were circulating some on social media last month. But we have Dr. King shirtless in a swimming pool, or holding his wife's hand. And they're these really mundane, humanizing moments.
Or I'm thinking of the photo that we have of James Baldwin shuffling. He's shuffling cards. I'm thinking of Toni Morrison hanging out on the side of the bed. And their these moments where-- first of all, I think, thank God for the artist, the artist who thought to capture those moments and that part of their stories. I think we have so much to learn from those kinds of artists.
And then the second thought that comes to mind is just how sacred, how subversive to think that it was important to photograph Toni Morrison laying down, or that that was a significant part of their life and a significant part of remembering them. Not as icons, not as badges of honor to make ourselves look some way a few times a year, but as fully embodied human people in the mundane.
Yeah, I'm thinking of some of those photos. And I'm looking at the time, and I just can't believe it's 7:48. I really cannot. But I just want to remind the people watching that this would be a good time, if you haven't done so, we're going to have a time of Q&A in a minute. And if you could just make sure to put your questions in the chat, that would be great.
And I'll just ask one final question while people are getting in their last minute questions. So you and I, we talk about-- we talk about the body, we talk about the flesh in different ways. Tell me what it means to-- well, I'll say this quickly. I just have to say it.
If you haven't read this, you wouldn't know-- you might not know that Danté is an athlete. He's been an athlete all his life. He was a college football athlete, a big deal. He was a hot shot.
And you are really acquainted with your body. You had to be. I'm curious if you can let us in a little bit to the journey-- you don't have to go too in depth into it-- the journey from being in athletic spaces where the body-- in attuning to the body. You've talked about that, it can be a form of commodification, the body can be used. And how you moved into this space you are now, where you're still an athlete, 100%. I can tell it in you. But at the same time, I get the sense that you're occupying your body in a different way. So tell me a little bit about that journey. I'm more curious about your transition into reclaiming the beauty in your body.
DANTÉ STEWART: Yes. Oh, great question. Great question. So, yeah, I played ball at Clemson. And I was reminded of, in some sense, the commodification of the body, but particularly the Black body. When I wrote an essay last year entitled, Dear White Clemson Fan. So the protests and all of this was happening in this moment of 20-- no, this would have been-- it was 2020 when I wrote this. Wow.
It was 2020 when I wrote it. And Clemson football wanted to stand in solidarity with Black Lives Matter. And so on the back of their helmet they put stickers. Some of them had fist in the air. Some of them had Black Lives Matter. Some of them-- they just had all different types of things.
And so when the news broke, Clemson fans absolutely lost their minds. It was as if-- in their mind, it was as if the crucifixion happened all over again. In their minds, they were losing everything they held dear.
And so as I started to look at the comments, I started to see that so many of these white people who were commenting on Black boys in college standing in solidarity with George Floyd, was still seeing them and treating them as if they owned them. And so in college football-- to play college football, in the language of Coach Brian Flores, who is now suing the NFL, that this league may be diverse, but it still ran like a plantation, and that our Black bodies are simply capital that is used to generate power, and that are commodified and not really cared for.
Our bodies are only cared for in so much as we produce for other people. And whenever our bodies either dry up or we don't produce the right way, we are being hurt, then we have things, we have that protection, we have that celebration, we have the clout and all of that comes with it, all of that is diminished because we can't perform up to the standards of people in power where they want us to perform.
And so oftentimes for Black athletes, and Black coaches, Black trainers, et cetera, et cetera, we're still seen as products to be used rather than people to be loved. And so over the years, as I started to think again about my body-- and this is really in line with M. Shawn Copeland-- I saw that not just white people in general thought about us through that language and lens of commodification, but white Christians in particular.
So I started to see how religion and race, as Baldwin would say, are trapped up at the guts of this nation, that to talk about one is to conjure the other. And so when I started to see that not just was my body a product on the field, but my body was a product in the church, in the Academy. And so to resist that meant that for me I had to take back and tell that story from my perspective. I had to first uncover and tell them that, yo, y'all actually treat us as still chattel, y'all still treat us as second class and exploit us.
But then also I had to lean in to say that we contain so much more than you try to make us, that we contain so much more than you try to think about us. That when you think that we're just athletes, and that we're just ignorant, and so-- like I can't tell you how many people when I meet them, they can't believe that I played at Clemson and now am an author. It blows their mind.
I'm like, yo, I'm human. There are so many of us who are Black, and talented, and athletic, and who are in fashion, and all these things. But because of these stereotypes and limited imaginations, many people only believe that we can be one thing. And that one thing must make them comfortable with their own ideas of themselves and us.
And so when I stand in the world as somebody who's an author and an athlete, somebody who goes back and tries to tell these athletes about how they live, and somebody who tries to write relevant words on things that they're dealing with inside of this society, this is all a part of reclaiming my body. But then another thing I need to talk about is how we rest. And you probably can talk about this better than me. Is for me to pause, and to stop, and to be still, for me, personally, that is also reclaiming my body.
For years, and years, and years, my body even to this day reacts automatically to the years of waking up early. It just gets up and go. My mind goes to boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Let's get it done. Let's grind it out.
So to as Tricia Hershey would always say, resist grind culture. To resist grind culture is also about me reclaiming myself, to rest, to say, I don't have to beat my body up through working out, through long, sleepless nights. I don't have to beat it up in order for it to be worthy of love.
COLE ARTHUR RILEY: I want to go to the chat because there are some questions popping up. What do you think we can do-- this is from Stanley. Thank you, Stanley. What do you think we can do to represent our Black faith in a white space that seems to stifle faiths that don't align with their agenda?
- Thank you, Stan, for that question. For me, I think we have to be connected to our culture. We have to be connected to our culture. We have to be connected to the stories and artifacts that bring us meaning. We have to be connected to the voices that has brought us over.
But then also, we still need to be tapped into-- we need to find some way, some space, to experience what feels like home for us. So that might be through looking at YouTube, that might be through listening to music. There should be something that keeps us grounded and rooted in who we are and connected to where we come from.
So for me, even when I was in California and there were no Black churches around, I would still look at church where I was-- I would look at church from back home. And that kept me connected to church back home. Or I would listen to music that felt familiar. I would listen to music that felt like home.
But then also I needed to shape my mind and develop my mind to listen to us and to tap into what we have created as it relates to literature. So that I'm not just feeding my emotions and my spirit, but I'm feeding my mind with how we think about the world.
Audre Lorde has this quote that if you don't use your power, then somebody will always use it against you. And in the realm of religion, particularly in the realm of theology, and particularly in the realm of theology as it relates to race, and whiteness, and Blackness within this space, oftentimes Blackness, or our distinctiveness, or our particularities, we're not things to be desired, but things to be devalued and destroyed.
I'm reminded of Professor Anthony Reddie over in the UK telling the story of a professor giving a lecture on Blackness and God. The lecture goes on. It gets to the end. Q&A opens up, as it is right now. There's a young Black brother, stands up and declares-- doesn't ask a question but makes a declaration, that when I became Christian I stopped being Black. When I became a Christian, I stopped being Black. So like MLK, he didn't realize his somebodiness, he didn't realize the beauty of Blackness. He said, when I became a Christian, I stopped being Black. The crowd went into an uproar. And the professor simply asked this, when did Blackness become so bad that God must save you from it?
So for us, we must push back against the ways that Blackness and religion is often seen as sin. And we need to see our Blackness as a gift in a world to be explored.
COLE ARTHUR RILEY: Yep. And I think we have to know-- we have to know when to leave. And I think it's a hard question to ask. It's a hard questions to discern. But I think as young people we can get caught up believing that it's our job to reform every space, to represent, to transform people and teach them, and yada, yada, yada. And I think you really have to become honest about the cost. And figure out, is that a cost that you're willing to endure? Is that a cost your body's willing to endure? And know when to leave, and to know that it's OK to do so.
I think any spiritual space that demands you believe a particular set of things in order to belong is not a liberating space. If you have to believe a particular doctrine in order to belong to that group, it's not for your liberation and I would be very skeptical of it. And so you have to balance the-- you have to ask the question of, how much do I have to give? How much do I have to push back against the force of whiteness in this space? And when can I go? When should I go? I'm going to ask another question.
What words-- OK, this is someone tuning in from the UK. Thanks for tuning in.
DANTÉ STEWART: Oh, thank you.
COLE ARTHUR RILEY: What words of wisdom can you share as a Black woman and younger writer who wants my passion to become my career, not because of financial advancement, but because you just want your income to come from doing what you love? I would say it's hard. And I think it's hard to make it a career. And the people that have, it tends to be that we have stumbled upon-- the Black women that have, we've stumbled upon a pool of privilege.
And I'll say that this book, This Here Flesh, this was in me, but there's no way I would have had the-- there's a very rare chance I would have the opportunity to share this book if I hadn't happened into a platform on social media. So I just want to be honest about that, because I like when people are honest to me, that it's difficult. But I think if you love it, it changes how you experience that difficulty.
And to think-- Danté and I were just talking about this yesterday. Our jobs as writers is to write good art, to tell good stories, to tell the truth. And it's not our responsibility if other people get in line or understand our art, or understand that it's worthy to be published in the broader world. So you just kind of have to balance that awareness with just a commitment to yourself, a commitment to your art, even if things don't seem to be coming.
Yeah, it takes time. It takes so much time. The people we admire, they've been doing it for so long. You could write 14 books before anyone knows your name. And so I would say just keep at it. There are so many questions--
DANTÉ STEWART: You answered it all, Cole. Yeah, we can go through that. You answered it all.
COLE ARTHUR RILEY: OK. You guys are writing some long questions. OK. 56-year-old Black Christian woman who is in the process of rediscovering my Blackness with pride and dignity, and who left a predominantly white nondenominational church that she used to attend. And she's just saying, oh, God is doing a miraculous, painful, uncomfortable self-love, self-acceptance in Christ. Thank you, Sheryl. I didn't realize that wasn't fully a question. So I'll go to the next one. And we'll end with this question, I think. Oh. OK. This is interesting.
OK. I'll just read the end of this. What thoughts do you have about the process of making the personal and the mundane legible to spaces that have a tendency toward abstraction and erasure of the particular?
DANTÉ STEWART: Oh, that's good. That's an excellent question. And that's a craft question. I love craft questions. I think you have to be a intentional writer and a patient writer. And I'm thinking about patients before intention.
So to be a patient writer is to not just pass over things so quickly, or try to get to the quote unquote point of the narrative, but it is about pausing at spaces that people may not have noticed, and looking at it with attention to detail. So it's not just looking at the way my grandmother sat at the table, but what does she have on? What is she doing with her hands? What does her hands look like? What does she have on her head? Is that the same thing that she wore when she went down in prayer? And why is she sitting there going down in prayer with this thing, and sitting at the table, and has not changed yet? Maybe because my granddaddy is now gone in this moment.
So it's about being intentional and trying to write in ways where you slow down as a writer. And you're not trying to get to the point so quickly, but you're trying to get to the details. So what are the details? And write about them, and pause at them, and don't just move by them so quickly.
I think that's how you move away from this kind of abstract writing to paying attention to the ordinary and the particular. What do you say, Cole? What do you think?
COLE ARTHUR RILEY: I agree with everything that you said. And I think it was well said. And I think if you find yourself in spaces that are uncomfortable with the particular-- with particularity, I think you should rightfully be a little bit suspicious. I think people who aren't interested in stories with particularity tend to, not always, have an objective that's ultimately about making everyone one. It's this unifying, see everyone's story and everyone kind of narrative.
And I don't trust-- I don't trust spaces like that. Because I think when you experience that kind of erasure, it's always Black people. It's always Black people who are erased. What will happen in these grand and general stories is white narratives will dominate. They will. And that will become the general. When in fact it's, as you know, not the experience of us. And so that desire for the overarching, the grand, just interrogate it. Sometimes it's well-meaning, and sometimes there's something really suspicious behind it.
DANTÉ STEWART: And it kind of reminds me of Alice Walker's quote in Search of our Mother's Gardens where she says that no person is your friend who demands your silence, nor denies your right to grow and be perceived as fully blossomed as you were intended. And then in The Color Purple she says, I am the expression of divine just as much as the flower is. So no space that doesn't want to see me fully bloom, actually want to see what I have to offer to the world. It doesn't want to see the divine stamp upon my life. And we need to be-- yeah, we just got to be careful and cognizant of those spaces to not be in those spaces, because it's going to stifle us.
COLE ARTHUR RILEY: Yeah. OK. There's a question-- this won't be-- I'll ask one more after this. I don't want to end centering whiteness. But there is a question on, what advice do you have for white people that care about their Black friends? How can someone offer support? How can we fight the racial injustice?
DANTÉ STEWART: The more I think about this question, the more I'm like, I don't know. And the more I'm like, just be human. I think we look for all these kind of philosophical ideas and theoretical talking points, to oftentimes at the expense of us just doing something. So I don't want to put morality on that. But I do want to think about doing something and not doing something. I don't want to think about it as good and bad. But I do want to think about it as doing something and not doing something.
Oftentimes like, oh, what am I to do? What am I to do? What am I to do? Do something. Treat others the way you want to be treated. What makes you feel seen and loved? And embody that as well. And that probably-- for me, that's probably the extent I will go on that one.
COLE ARTHUR RILEY: I'm thinking of MLKJ's-- I know this book was important to you-- the Where Do We Go from Here, Chaos or Community. And I'm paraphrasing here, so no one come for me, but he has so much-- he has so many good things to say to white liberals in that book. And one of the things he talks about is white liberals wanting to love Black people, care for Black people. And he says, people don't just need love, they need justice. And it's not enough to say, we love Black people, and we have friends that are Black. You have to be willing to demand justice for Black people. And he says, not the kind of love that's this sentimental affection. That's love without justice.
He says, it's no more than someone would have for a pet. But love at its best is when justice is made concrete. He talks about love not being conditional upon one staying in their place or watering down demands. I was just thinking about this this morning. And then he talks about this inclination of well-meaning white people-- or really this belief in well-meaning white people that they can care for Black people, that they can care for their Black friends, while not ruffling feathers, while not making-- while not making a scene, while still guarding the emotions of the oppressor.
And Dr. King calls us to something different, and says, if you can't deal with the fact that the transition from injustice to justice is going to make people mad, is going to rub people the wrong way, then you don't actually love Black people. That was never love at all. So I say all that not as a judgment on whoever asked that question, but more as a way to reorient the question to ask, do they need you to care for them in that moment? Or do you need to make decisions in your life, have conversations in your life, that don't involve them, but that are for their justice, that are for their liberation? Are you doing that when you're absent from them, when you're not in their presence? As opposed to coming to the role of the caretaker, the nurturer.
Because-- and I'll say this, because when we do that, when white people do that, however well-intentioned, it places you in a very interesting position of trying to account for and trying to be the rescuer in a problem that whiteness created. And so when you're too concerned about how do you love your Black friends and not enough with, how do I demand justice for them, things can become skewed. And it can really change what you're hoping for. And I think that can happen to any of us, truly. So it's something to be aware of.
OK, I'm going to find the last question for us, Danté. Oh, I remember. This is a good question to end on. Someone asked the question about where we each are going from here. What do we think-- I'm blending some questions. What do you feel like you need to right next, Danté? And what's next for you?
DANTÉ STEWART: Yeah, for me, I am working on a few projects actually. I'm in a long project of research on the everyday, ordinary power of Blackness. I'm going to write about-- I'm going to be writing about that over the next few months, just finding spaces, whether that's back home or in Black history, to look again at certain spaces in Black life.
But more so than that, I think what's mostly next for me is-- I'm a student. So I am, as so many here joined, as many students, I'm-- I want to say first and foremost, say thank you for showing up tonight. It is a Thursday evening. And so many of you could be in so many different places. You have so much on your plate. And I want to say I'm extremely proud of the way that you are doing pandemic school and the ways that you are showing up for yourself and others with so much burden both in your heart, and your head, and in your hands. So thank you to students. Thank you so much. I'm very, very proud of you.
So, yeah, that's next. Let's try-- let's all finish this semester strong as we can, and rest, and get a breather. And things like that. So that's next for me. What about you, Cole?
COLE ARTHUR RILEY: I've been thinking a lot about letters, about epistles as a form of-- yeah, as a form of my writing. I've been thinking about memoir. But I'm proud of the book I wrote. I love This Here Flesh. But I'm really interested in what you were talking about, Danté, about becoming more and more honest, about taking away some of the heroism in some of my writing, even more. I want to interrogate that even more. And so hopefully after This Here Flesh you'll see more of my family in different ways. Yeah.
Danté, this has been wonderful. Your brain is such a gift. You have remembered everything that every Black person has ever said. I'm like-- any time we talk Danté-- by the way, he's not quoting these writers for y'all. This is truly-- it's in him. He reads Black thoughts so much and is able to retain it so much that you're extending their lives, you truly are, by remembering their words with such precision. I'm grateful for that. I'm grateful for this conversation. And thanks to everyone for being with us. I think Oliver has a few last words. And so Danté and I are going to exit the screen, but thank you.
OLIVER: Cole, Danté, to both of you, thank you from the bottom of our hearts. Thank you for telling us the truth tonight. Thank you for the vulnerability and candor of sharing your stories. I hardly want the position of having the last word. So I'm just going to defer the word to one of the comments that came into the chat. John says, just wanted to say how grateful I am to both of you for your work, and bravery, and willingness to share of yourselves. You're both heroes and healers. So thank you both.
If those who are here with us can stay just one minute, I want to do just a couple of quick announcements. And maybe as I do that, I'm going to ask Danté and Cole if they would drop their websites and their social media handles. We want for this conversation to continue. So that may be one way for folks to continue to engage with you and with your work.
While you're doing that, I'll just mention-- I want to do a quick plug for an upcoming event that you won't want to miss. Our annual Soup and Hope Series, which is now in its 15th year, is going to continue next week on Thursday, February 10th at 12:00 noon.
So we plan to hold next week's event in a hybrid format with an in-person event in Sage chapel and a live stream offered for those of you who aren't able to attend in person. So I'll drop the link in the chat. Soupandhope.cornell.edu. We welcome you to RSVP and join us in via live stream or in person.
And lastly I also just want to briefly mention that there will be a recording of tonight's conversation that will be made available as soon as we're able, probably next week. And that link will be made available at scl.cornell.edu/mlklecture. I'll drop it in the chat so that you have that for reference. So be on the lookout for that conversation to be posted there.
And with that, I'll thank Danté and Cole one more time for being with us tonight on the snowy evening. And thank you all for joining with us. Take good care and be well. Bye bye.
The 2022 annual Martin Luther King, Jr. Commemoration featured two young, Black authors in a conversation entitled “In Praise of Being Black and Alive.” On Thursday, February 3 at 7pm, we welcomed Danté Stewart to speak about his new book, “Shoutin’ in the Fire: An American Epistle.” Danté was joined by Ithaca-based author and curator of the popular Black Liturgies website Cole Riley, whose book “This Here Flesh: Spirituality, Liberation, and the Stories That Make Us” is due out February 22. Both authors grappled with the legacy of white supremacy in America and invited us to reclaim the liberative and communitarian spiritual practices so central to the work of Dr. King.
SPONSORS: Office of Spirituality and Meaning-Making (OSMM) and Cornell United Religious Work (CURW), Office of Academic Diversity Initiatives (OADI), Greater Ithaca Activity Center (GIAC)
COSPONSORS: College of Architecture, Art, and Planning; St. Luke Lutheran Church;
Protestant Cooperative Ministry; Office of Sorority and Fraternity Life; Flora Rose House; Bowers College of Computing and Information Science - Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion; Cornell Health; David M. Einhorn Center for Community Engagement; ILR School
