An Interview with John A. Williams

JOHN A. WILLIAMS, author of The King God Didn't Save, was born near Jackson, Mississippi, and like fellow black novelist, John O. Killens, began writing while he was a soldier in a jimcrow regiment in the Pacific. Williams, along with Killens, Ellison and others, was strongly influenced by Richard Wright, who was also from Mississippi, and like Wright, Williams has traveled and lived in Africa and Europe. Perhaps it is because of this common background and experience that he has obtained a particular understanding of Wright, and is the author of a perceptive biography of him, The Most Native of Sons.

The King God Didn't Save, a controversial biography of Martin Luther King. Jr., is Wliliams' tenth book. The others include five novels, The Angry Ones, Night Song, Sissie, The Man Who Cried I Am, and. Sons of Darkness, Sons of Light. His last two novels have dealt particularly with the increasing level of violence and irrationality in the attitudes and actions of white America and the effect of this on black people everywhere.

This interview took place at the Boston University Afro-American Studies Department in Brookline where Williams delivered a guest lecture.

You once said "Writing is a craft or profession or rite of stupidity that can bring oblivion swifter than anything else I know." In light of the reaction to "The King God Didn't Save" which definition seems the most accurate?

Well, I don't know, it's-some people have called it stupid, and some people have predicted that I was headed for oblivion. What was the other thing?

Craft or profession.

Well, it wasn't a profession either. It was something that I felt compelled to do; because I see certain things I don't wish to see in the black movement that people are involved in, and that is, to deal with things in the same superficial manner that white people deal with things, to never probe beneath the surface to get at the gear, the mechanisms of things. So I did the book and it may well be that all of these things will fall upon my head. But I'm only sorry I did it in terms of the unease that it's caused my family and, I suppose, me too. But these are things that pass. It wasn't as though what has happened is totally unexpected. I expected it to be something about what's it's been like.

Could one say that your book is also about the God King didn't save?

The God King didn't save-that's fair enough, yeah. In that section that involved Protestants, Catholics and Jews, our three major religious organizations, the feeling I tried to set down is that, in spite of all the professions of religiosity, that these groups are more politically involved than in any other consideration. I think I did say that this man came along talking about religion, dealing with religion, and he was met with violence. As far as I'm concerned, religion had its last opportunity to flourish or reflourish . . . when Martin Luther King was alive.

Had King lived, what directions might he have followed?

I think his last year or so pointed him in the direction of less reliance upon the aid and assistance of the Federal government, but more on his own charisma. The Poor People's March of course is a primary example, and he had been, as James Foreman said it, in the armpit of the Federal government. Jim had been trying to get him out from under that so he could do his own thing without being monitored and advised. I think he, King, was getting into that. Unfortunately, he was monitored in other ways. And King was not the only one. Since the book has come out, I don't suppose not a month goes by when somebody doesn't tell me about some other pictures or some people in pictures that I hadn't even heard about before. So, apparently the surveillance of King was infinite, let's say. But I think . . . well, try to put yourself in the situation. Here you are, a charismatic leader, and perhaps more than that. Perhaps the bona fide leader by virtue of having received the Nobel prize, by virtue of commanding audiences wherever you go. Here you've been doing what any other man does given the opportunity-human response to human invitation, if you will. Suddenly these people come up and say, well, we've been bugging you, and wiretapping you, and we've been photographing you, and you better stop it. Well, at that point, the man has to make a choice whether he is going to be concerned about himself, his family, his children-that's five people-or millions of black people, not only millions of black people in 1967, but millions of black people for all the rest of time. I think he probably made a choice to go with the masses.

Do you see anyone filling his gap today?

WELL, I don't see anybody, I think I sort of predicted in the book that Jesse Jackson would be groomed next, and last fall or winter, Time magazine did a cover story on Jesse. I don't think we are ever going to have a leader who comes down-I'm using this advisedly because it is totally impossible for black people to have one leader-King was assigned to us by the white power structure, and we took him. We took Malcolm. And they got rid of Malcolm and we were left with King and several other lesser deities. But I don't think we'll ever see a leader assigned to us again from that route of publicity . . . because we've learned that when leaders are bred in the fashion of King and Malcolm X that something very terrible happens to them ultimately. They can be assassinated in the press or assassinated for real.

In the book you deal with power of the media . . . How are we to deal with it?

I have to agree with you that the media can make or break or cripple or assassinate anybody it chooses to, not only black but white as well, polka-dot. I don't foresees in the immediate future any high-level black editors on powerful American newspapers or magazines. By that I mean decision-making levels. I don't see black people getting into that in my lifetime. The system's so tied up that we almost have to forget it for now. Guys your age and, my little boy, Dennis' age may ultimately arrive at those levels, but you have to ask your selves, what is it going to cost you? What kind of compromise are you going to make. Yet if we throw television in with newspapers, you see that we're in a totally untenable position. The black press is as nothing, and it's very difficult to speak to a brother or sister through the white press.

Even with the magazines we have now, we lack a national publishing force.

That's really what we need, a national publication, maybe more than one.

What about "Muhammad Speaks?"

That's treacherous paper in many, ways. I've known a few guys who worked for them. They've never been critical since they left, but I guess I was turned off because of what they did with the King book. I'm not sure that the guy that wrote the piece had ever read the book. I suspect that he hadn't. When The Man Who Cried I Am came out I was a saint. I could do no wrong. Now this book-not only do I work for the CIA, but I'm probably just coming back from an all-expense, CIA-paid tour of Europe and sitting down at a gold-plated type-writer. I would hope that the readers would find that a bit ridiculous, but those are the extents that publications of this kind go to when the readers allow them to. Muhammad Speaks and the Panther paper are not the answer to the kind of publications we need.

Towards the end of the book you said, "To what Constitutional, to what moral authority do the black, the poor, and the young now appeal? This book is basically addressed to that point . . ." Then a few lines later you said, "There is no reliable authority." Do you think there are any useful values that can be derived from the African experience and applied to this moral void?

Yeah, I think that there are values that can come out of Africa, and very positive ones. I would on the other hand be reluctant to accept these as the over all cure; because I feel we've been on this toboggan and you have to get off where the damn thing stops. You know, if it's 50,000 miles from Africa then that's where you have to get off and do your thing. If you can reach back and bring some good from Africa to where this thing has stopped-beautiful.

The authority that people must appeal to, as far as I'm concerned, is totally lacking from contemporary society. It seems to me that we are in a time when before much longer the people must protest. I'm not only talking about black people, but white people who are getting tired of these damn taxes. I'm talking about white people who are getting tired of shaky business ventures because of this silly war we're in. I'm talking about all kinds of people that are tired of the direction we seem to be moving in. Well, if this means revolution in the streets like the French Revolution, and I'm talking about a real revolution with all of the attendant gore . . . then it will have to come. What we've been trying to do unsuccessfully since before the Civil War . . . is to create this relationship with the white under-classes, but they've been duped away from it. But I think that there will probably be some kind of revolution-fractured, with whites doing their thing and blacks doing their things, but all directed toward government, toward change. The terrible thing about that is that when that is done, then you're going to have the blacks and whites at each others' throats again because they didn't unite in the first place. Once more, I-think the out-look is very pessimistic.

In an article in the December '70 issue of "Black World" you said that the tradition of black communications needed to be molded anew. What forms would you like to see it take?

I THINK I'd like to see more rapport between older black writers and younger black writers. I think the publishing industry has had us in such a bag-you know, we're gonna give you this as an advance, but you don't tell lob how much you got cause we didn't give him this much. And the critics like Jimmy Baldwin, but they hate Ernie Gaines, and it'd be a disaster if them two cats got together. And all the rest of that, which is nonsense. I mean, you view the white literary establishment: Styron, Roth, Ma???, Updike, all of those cats, well, maybe they get together and maybe they don't, but the fact is they got their signals all so together, that it's not necessary. But we don't. We need to clean up some of this garbage and verbiage that has been built up between the black generations. We need to explain to ourselves our own writers. Explain that Ishmael Reed is a fantastic satirist as well as brilliantly knowledgeable of all facets of black people. That Bill Kelley has finally come around. . . . The publicity made it appear to be so impossible that young guys like Kelley and Reed could ever get together; because Kelley went to Feilston School and Harvard or wherever the hell he went. But that's crap. Kelley is in the same bag with Ishmael Reed, with me, with Baldwin, with Ellison, because we're black. Our problems deal with our approaches to our experiences, the way we can command or demand advances so we can support our families, and these are way out of line with the advances white writers get. Things of this nature.

There seems to be a movement towards the past afoot, particularly among whites. A return to Jeffersonian concepis of necrophilia. In the past, these periods when America seemed to be doing an intellectual about-face have always coincided with a loss of black people's rights, a breaking of what seemed to be a progressive trust. Do you see any way of counteracting this trend?

I really don't know or foresee any hopeful trends. This is not basically our fault, I think that black people, in terms of political clout and education are doing as much as they possibly can: because most of these things are dependent upon public money-whether it be state or federal. As always the burden is on white America, and even today white America as a mass is not terribly interested in what happens to us. The business with pollution and environment and so on and so forth. I think white youth veered to this business much too quickly for there to have been any real sincerity in what they seemed to have been involved in with us in the early sixties. And this is where you have to go, to the white youth; because the older people are cliche-set in their ways All they want to do is just hold the damn until they die, and let it become somebody else's problem. But if they can begin manipulating their children to perhaps necessary, but in terms of the immediate needs of this country, ethereal goals; then when the kids reach their ages, it's going to be the same thing all over again. I'm just not that hopeful on the white side that anything good is going to come.

In an interview in the "Paris Review," Ralph Ellison said the search for identity is, "THE American theme. The nature of our society is uch that we are prevented from knowing who we are." Do you agree with that, and do you see any particular reflection of it in the situation of black Americans?

This is most true of black people, and maybe only true of black people. You know, we've had a great deal of recent political awareness of ethnic political potential, and I'd say the Jews are a foremost example of awareness of the ethnic limitations and the exercise of that ethnic power. Ellison's statement is mostly true of black people, and I would disagree with his seeming contention that it's a problem for all Americans. It's not. I think that even Indians or Spanish-speaking Americans are more positive of their identity than are we: because they have languages to fall back on. We are saddled with this old American English and that's all there is to it.