Creating A Personal Archive Is On My To-Do List

The New York Times a few years ago published an article about the death of the black dance historian Joe Nash whose Harlem apartment was filled with dance memorabilia. The article struck a chord with me. It reminded me that I should get my papers and artifacts together for submission to an archive.

It also reminded me that my late friend, the poet and playwright Assotto Saint, encouraged me and others to start organizing our materials while we were still able to. Unfortunately, I haven't done it yet but it's at the top of my to-do list.

In 1990, I interviewed Mr. Nash via telephone for an article in the New York Amsterdam News about the dance pioneer Pearl Primus. He had been a dancer in her company in the late nineteen-forties. I remember him thanking me for keeping her memory alive. It wouldn't surprise me to learn that my article was included in his vast archive.

Unmade Black Projects

The following black experience-related film and stage projects proposed by black entertainers were mentioned in the press but so far they have not been made:

1. Spike Lee (director)--A biopic about the 1938 boxing rematch between Joe Louis and Max Schmeling; A film adaptation of Porgy and Bess.

2. Barry Jenkins (director)--A biopic about the choreographer Alvin Ailey.

3. Jon Batiste (musician/composer)--A Broadway musical based on the life of the artist Jean-Michel Basquiat.

4. Alicia Keys (singer/pianist)--A biopic about the biracial piano prodigy Philippa Schuyler, whose father was the Harlem Renaissance writer and critic George Schuyler.

5. Jesse L. Martin (actor)--A biopic about the R & B singer Marvin Gaye.

Hollywood Confidential

Mike Rothmiller, a former LAPD detective and the co-author of the true crime book, Bombshell: The Night Bobby Kennedy Killed Marilyn Monroe (Ad Lib Publishers, 2021), said on a nationally broadcast radio talk show that the vice squad of the LAPD in the 1940s and 1950s kept detailed dossiers on Hollywood movie stars and others in the movie capital by order of the police chief. Those files, it would be safe to assume, probably surpassed anything Kenneth Anger revealed in his gossip-filled books, Hollywood Babylon and Hollywood Babylon II. Let's hope those dossiers (which probably included photographs) weren't destroyed because they would be of immense interest to historians, biographers, and movie fans. 

Higher Education And Black Gay Men

There's always talk about college enrollment among black men being outpaced by black women. No one breaks it down further by comparing black gay men to their black straight counterparts. I suspect that black gay men, being overachievers, account for the majority of black male enrollment and graduation. Most of my black gay friends and acquaintances are college grads. Am I off track on this or not?

Stanley Crouch's Breath

Several years ago, the journalist and social critic Stanley Crouch interviewed my upstairs neighbor, the late legendary jazz drummer (and a former president of my building's co-op board), Charli Persip, at Minton's Playhouse, considered the birthplace of bebop. It's located on West 118th Street in Harlem. (Both Crouch and Persip died a few weeks apart in 2020.)

I got to meet Crouch only one time around 1982 or 1983 when I was a proofreader at The Village Voice. He came over to where I was sitting, presumably to discuss the article of his that I had proofread. I don't recall what was said but what was most memorable as he stood over me was getting a whiff of his bad breath.

In subsequent years, I read his New York Daily News column and saw him being interviewed more than once on Charlie Rose's public TV show (I hope he used mouthwash before going on-camera). I also remember seeing him appear as one of the authoritative talking heads in Ken Burns's documentary series on jazz.

From then on, whenever I saw his name in print or saw him on TV, my mind would go back to the first time I encountered him and got assaulted by his breath.

Compton And Los Angeles Are Separate Cities

In the New York Times obituary (July 4, 2025) of the prolific hip hop choreographer for films and TV, Dave Scott, who grew up in Compton, California, and died in Las Vegas at age 52, Compton is described as "the city in South Central Los Angeles." I've lived and attended public schools in both places and know, if the obituary writer doesn't, that Compton is a city near Los Angeles, not in Los Angeles.

The obituary writer would have been on firmer ground if he or she or they had written that Compton is a city located in Los Angeles County.

How A Gossip Column Provided An Opportunity

When the ultra-right wing New York Post's gossip column Page Six was actually on page 6, not page 12 or page 20, I saw an item that stated that the civil rights icon Andrew Young was running for mayor of Atlanta and was giving up his Los Angeles Times-syndicated opinion column. Since, it was reported, the paper was looking for replacement writers for the column, I immediately contacted the L. A. Times about their talent search. Soon after I was able to contribute three columns.

One of those columns was about homosexuality in the black community. The Oregon Journal in Portland published the article in August 1981 with the headline, "Gays Are Black, Too." The Times editor I submitted the article to begrudgingly sent it out, saying that Andrew Young would not have written about the subject. That was precisely why the column needed to be written. It gave attention to a segment of the black community that was stigmatized and rendered invisible and voiceless.

Unfortunately, Young's column was dropped by many newspapers because it was his opinions they were interested in publishing. To me, this attitude was short-sighted and foolish.  No one should expect one person to speak for all black people. You would've thought they would've been glad to have a multiplicity of black voices and perspectives on a variety of topics. I think it's a safe bet to say that some of those voices they weren't interested in hearing from might have been the next James Baldwin or the next Toni Morrison or the next Audre Lorde.

Anyway, this was the first, and only, time I ever got a job opportunity via a gossip column.