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I first met James Earl Jones backstage at the Schoenfeld Theatre on Broadway (we were both there because we had been asked to speak at Gore Vidal’s memorial some 12 years ago). I was over the moon that within minutes I was going to get to meet him. I walked up and introduced myself.
We had a nice talk, remembering our funny and poignant moments with Gore Vidal. Jones, who was born in Mississippi, grew up south of Traverse City, Michigan in Manistee County. Moving to northern Michigan, he said, was a culture shock, and the trauma he experienced from the treatment he received as one of the few Black kids in the area, and the ridicule he endured for having a serious stutter, caused him to go silent at the age of 5, to become “mute,” and he did not use his voice until he was in high school.
I told him that I now live in Traverse City — “near where you grew up!”
He paused and looked intently at me.
“Traverse City is racist,” he said to me, quietly. He then told me what happened to him there. I’ll let him explain it in his own words in these paragraphs from his autobiography:
Soon after we settled in Michigan [in 1936], I started first grade at a one-room grammar school in Dublin, Michigan [in Manistee, County, south of Traverse City]…. I was doing far more listening than speaking, however, for it was at that time that I began to stutter badly. I began to find it painfully difficult to talk, to speak what was on my mind without stammering.
For the next eight years, James Earl Jones did not speak. It wasn’t until high school that he found his voice:
For me, the pivotal teacher was Donald E. Crouch, a former college professor who came out of retirement to teach us English, Latin, and history [at a small high school in Brethren, Michigan]. I was still mute when I entered high school. I had gotten through eight years of school without using the power of speech unless I was forced to.
The turning point in my ability to cope with my stuttering came in Professor Crouch's English classroom. He introduced me to good literature — Shakespeare, Emerson, Longfellow. Because it had taken place in our part of the country, I especially loved Longfellow's "The Song of Hiawatha." In fact, I was so inspired that I started writing poetry, and poetry got me into trouble, and then, ironically, changed my life.
During the Depression and on into the war, the government shipped surplus food around the country, staples and perishables, any overabundance of fruits. We knew when the food train was coming to town, and we could go get our welfare allotment of whatever the train was handing out on that trip. One winter, we got grapefruit, shipped all the way from Florida to Michigan on the food train. We hardly ever had grapefruit in our house.
The taste of it knocked me out, the pure, juicy luxury of grapefruit in winter. I decided to write a poem about it, patterned after the poem I knew best — Longfellow's "Song of Hiawatha." I forced my grapefruit rhapsody into Longfellow's cadence and rhyme scheme. Fortunately, no copy of that poem survives.
I was proud of my effort, however. Somehow Professor Crouch, to his surprise and pleasure, discovered that I wrote poetry. The boy who had written the poems was the same mute boy who had fought with uncontrolled fury. Both fury and poetry poured out of my silence.
"I'm impressed with your poem, James Earl," Professor Crouch told me after he read my ode to grapefruit. "I know how hard it is for you to talk, and I don't require you to do that… [But I think it’s best] for you to say it aloud to the class," he told me.
It would be a trauma to open my mouth in front of my classmates, who would probably laugh at my poem and my stuttering….
I was shaking as I stood up, cursing myself. I strained to get the words out, pushing from the bottom of my soul. I opened my mouth — and to my astonishment, the words flowed out smoothly, every one of them. There was no stutter. All of us were amazed, not so much by the poem as by the performance….
"Aha!" my professor exclaimed as I sat down, vindicated. "We will now use this as a way to recapture your ability to speak."
And so, gradually, my powers of speech were resurrected.
Before long, James Earl Jones was embracing his new power:
I was pouring all my energy into learning again to speak.
Poor boys of my race have often prided themselves on athletic skill, seeing it as a ticket to somewhere better. I never had that agenda. I played some basketball and ran track, but the time I might have given to honing my athletic skill I gave instead to forensics — public speaking, orations, interpretive readings. That was my extracurricular passion, and it was another of those crucial choices we make in life.
I could not get enough of speaking, debating, orating, acting. I became the school's champion public speaker. During those prior mute years [from the age of 5 until high school], of course, my voice had changed, almost without my awareness, so in addition to the novelty of being able to speak, I could now speak in a deep, strong voice. People seemed to like to hear it, and I was overwhelmed to be able to speak aloud, in any voice at all.
I remember, my teacher, Mr. Crouch took me to a regional forensics meet in Traverse City, Michigan. I competed — but any prize I may have won was overshadowed by what happened after. We went to lunch at a fine restaurant in Traverse City. I had never been to such a nice place.
"No colored people will be served here," a voice told us.
Somehow that arbitrary wall always took me by surprise. We left. I do not remember what we did after that.
I was stunned and embarrassed to hear this story about where I live from James Earl Jones. But I was not surprised.
I apologized to Mr. Jones for how he had been treated. I told him how I believe while things are better now in Traverse City, it still has a ways to go. Although Michigan sits on the border with Canada, people throughout northern Michigan still flew Confederate flags. I told him how for years the annual community talent show featured grown white men, some of them pillars of the community, performing not so funny skits in blackface. The townspeople ate it up. There used to be photographs of this hanging up on the wall downtown – photos not from the 1930s and ‘40s but from the 1970s and ‘80s! This seemed to be the shared ethos of many of the citizens.
For years the school district wouldn’t recognize Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. And just a few years ago, white students at Traverse City Central High School held a despicable online “slave auction” of the few black students who went there, posting pictures of them on a website and “selling” them off to the “highest bidder.” This at a time when their parents were packing school board meetings to oppose the teaching of America’s racist “past”.
After meeting James Earl Jones I decided I would have to do something to make things right about how he was treated all those years ago here in my town. Like having a statue erected honoring him in one of Traverse City’s parks, or a historical marker placed on that restaurant where he was denied a seat because of the color of his skin. But life got busy for me. Then came the pandemic. I never got around to it.
And now he is gone.
Maybe, though, it’s not too late. Is it ever “too late” to right a wrong? I think I will call a few of my neighbors in Traverse City to see what we can do.
I think I’ll also redouble my efforts to deliver Michigan into the Blue Wave. The current level of racism and misogyny in this election is driving me crazy.