The Protest, Part I
Rev. William Hamilton / 1959
Broadcast on Look Up and Live, CBS-TV, May 3, 1959. Printed by permission of CBS News.1
Announcer: The CBS television network presents Look Up and Live. Today, âPart I: The Protest,â an examination of what might be the religious nature of our contemporary culture. Our narrator, Reverend William Hamilton, professor of theology at Colgate Rochester Divinity School, Rochester, New York.
William Hamilton: Why should a religious program concern protest? Particularly since some of the most powerful protests of our time are against religion and against God? And even more, many of the critics of our conformist culture tell us that there is no capacity for protest or dissent or rebellion in our times today. Could we be examining something that does not exist? We think there is a kind of protest thatâs important that we find in our culture today, and we want to examine its shape and direction. We want to see what it is protest against, and we want to see what it is protest for, on behalf of. We will hear it on its own terms as humbly and sympathetically as we can, and we will try, if possible, to speak a Christian word, perhaps, of interpretation and criticism as well. So, this morning, we will hear from four people, have four conversations with protestors or observers of this protest of our time. They will help us clarify our protest, I think. They will also, in their words, speak to us a word of power. For behind their words is real religious power, even if they do not use the word God at all. This power may come through, and we may find that their words are words of divine discontent that will hurt us and perhaps even transform us.
[Hamilton interviews Nat Hentoff, writer and critic of jazz.]
WH: Lorraine, we are talking about protest in our time today. What do you see, as both an artist and a person who lives in the midst of contemporary culture, what do you see as the shape of protest in our time?
Lorraine Hansberry: Well, itâs there in many diffuse ways. I think we are trying very hard, with some very negative ways even, to set up protest. I think some of the so-called âBeatâ is a reflection of a kind of protest. I think some of us are a little more articulate in being specific about our protest.
WH: What are the forms of specific protest that you think are alive today?
LH: Well, with regard to something I feel very close to, the Negro question, for instance, there have been very clear and pronounced movements among Negroes to protest that which is actively against us in society, and other things. I think there is the beginning of some sort of feeling about the right to survive that is not as outspoken as it should be, but itâs getting there.
WH: The problem of weapons.
LH: Mmm.
WH: And yet, donât you feel that in a sense there is more feeling about this than any coherent action in our time.
LH: Definitely, but presumably that feeling has to come first.
WH: Yes.
LH: And I think that the feeling is beginning to be there.
WH: And yet, surely, in the world in which you live, the capacity for protest is as often silent as articulate. It is not âŠ
LH: Thatâs terribly true, and I donât quite understand it, simply because there is so much to protest, and people who feel that the lack of protest or the absence of it is sophistication, I think, are kidding themselves and are doing no service to our problems.
WH: Then you would emphasize the distinction between simply an emotional identification with causes and actual action on behalf of causes.
LH: Yes, Iâm afraid the real rewards in life and in literature come when you do somethingâwhen you participate activelyâand I think weâre going to see that in America.
WH: How rare, though, political protest of any lively kind is.
LH: Well, weâve been told that it wasnât nice for eight years to have a political thought that had any element of protest and that this was very unwholesome for America, and I think weâre getting over it.
WH: And weâre still living on that fear, I suppose
LH: In many ways.
WH: Your play has been sometimes described as a play without protest, and some people have even tried to compliment you by saying that itâs not a Negro play at all but a play about people. Do you consider that a compliment?
LH: Itâs a misstatement. Itâs very much a play about people [laughs], but itâs also a play about Negroes in the first place. Iâve said very often that I think that you achieve the universal through the specific.
WH: Yes.
LH: And it certainly is a protest, perhaps not in the traditional form. Thatâs what they mean, I hope. But it is more than a protest in that I did try to suggest that there is something to doâthat it is possible to take principled positions in our life.
WH: Yes, and itâs not really a question of fighting against something, but actually fighting on behalf of something.
LH: Always for. Always for. And that doesnât mean that you diminish anything down to slogans; it means that you elevate it up to a very large statement.
WH: And that really the personal relationships at the end of the play between persons are the kind of secret of the âŠ
LH: Yes and ⊠it transcends interpersonal relationships. They begin to speak to all of us. I think. I hope. [laughs]
WH: Thank you very much, Lorraine.
[Hamilton interviews Gilbert Millstein of the New York Times and novelist John Clellon Holmes.]
WH: Weâve heard about protest today, a number of different kinds and in a number of different places. Weâve heard about protest embodied in jazzânot just a protest against our culture here, but a protest on behalf of human integrity and human dignity. Weâve heard about the kinds of protest possible in regard to the race issue, in regard to the problem of mass destruction weapons today. And weâve heard about the kind of protestâvery largely negative, weâre toldâin the very unlikely place of the nightclub comedians. What is the relationship of the Christian faith to all this protest? Does it simply say yes to it and give it a word of encouragement? Well, it certainly must do this. But there is something more. John Holmes just mentioned that there is a spiritual yes that may be said. And Christians would certainly say this. Say yes to human dignity and human integrity and all that this means. But I think that the Christian faith in its depth even has a deeper word to say. A word deeper even than the affirmation of human love or human dignity or human integrity. And that is a word of protest first against God. Biblical man didnât ever get to God easily. It was not easy for him to say yes to God. And you can trace that thin red line throughout both the Old and the New Testament, where man was not able to get to God until he argued with him. And whether we look at Jacob having to wrestle with the angel before he could be blessed, whether we look at the psalmist who was hounded by God into submission, whether we look at Job who had to argue impatiently and almost blasphemously with God before he could say yes to him, or whether we look at Christ in the Garden of [Gethsemane] turning away from the terror that was to follow, or even more horribly whether we listen to that imponderable word from the cross, âMy God, why has Thou forsaken me,â we see that at the heart of the biblical message is the statement that one cannot be a man, one can know no human dignity until one dares to protest against God, for only by this vicious kind of arguing with God, can man ever know Him.
Note
1. Editorâs note: Self-prepared transcript. The original audio version of this interview is located in the Lorraine Hansberry Papers located in the Moving Image & Recorded Sound Division of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library.
Unaired Interview with Lorraine Hansberry
Mike Wallace / 1959
Conducted May 8, 1959. Printed by permission of the Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan, on behalf of the Mike Wallace papers.1
Mike Wallace: This is Mike Wallace with another television portrait in our gallery of interesting people. Our guest was an unknown, unpublished writer until earlier this year when her play A Raisin in the Sun came to Broadway. She is twenty-eight-year-old Lorraine Hansberry whose powerful story about the struggles of a poor Negro family in Chicago was voted by the New York Drama Critics as the best play of the year, better even than plays by Tennessee Williams, Archibald MacLeish, and Eugene OâNeill. Weâll talk with Miss Hansberry about playwriting and about people in just one minute.
â â â
MW: And now to our story. There is a story that one night, Lorraine Hansberry, a girl who had dabbled in writing, made a brash announcement to her husband. She was going to sit down and write an honest and accurate drama about Negroes. Miss Hansberry exceeded her own expectations, perhaps, because she wrote A Raisin in the Sun, the Broadway hit which has been hailed as an important new play by an important new writer on the American scene. Miss Hansberry, first let me ask you this: recently the New York Drama Critics voted that you had written the best play of the season, better than plays written by Tennessee Williams, Archibald MacLeish, Eugene OâNeill. As a heretofore unknown writer, a twenty-eight-, or is it twenty-nine-year-old girl, what was your reaction to that kind of a claim?
Lorraine Hansberry: Well, I received it happily. I felt that our piece was substantial and honest, and the craft of it rather satisfies me. I think I would have liked it as a play if I had just walked in.
MW: John Chapman, the drama critic for the New York Daily News, wrote that he has great respect for your play, but he feels perhaps that part of the acclaim may be a sentimental reactionââan admirable gesture,â I think, is the way that he put itâto the fact that you are a Negro and one of the few Negroes ever to have written a good Broadway play.
LH: Iâve heard this alluded to in other ways. I didnât see Mr. Chapmanâs piece. I would imagine that if I were given the award because they wanted to give it to a Negro, it would be the first time in the history of this country that anyone had ever been given anything for being a Negro. I donât think itâs a very complimentary assessment of an honest piece of work ⊠or of his colleaguesâ intent.
MW: He says that A Raisin in the Sunâwell, let me quote him. He said, âIf one sets aside the one, unusual fact that it is a Negro work, A Raisin in the Sun becomes no more than a solid and enjoyable commercial play.â
LH: Well, Iâve heard this said, too. I donât know quite what people mean. If they are trying to speak about it honestly, if they are trying to really analyze the play dramaturgically, there is no such assessment. You canât say that if you take away the American character of something then it just becomes, you know, something else. The Negro character of these people is intrinsic to the play. Itâs important to it. If itâs a good play, itâs good with that.
MW: Is it fair to say that even in proportion very few Negroes have distinguished themselves as playwrights, novelists, and poets? There have been a few, including yourself, but not many. How come?
LH: Well, whether they have distinguished themselves is kind of difficult to discuss, because we always have to keep in mind the circumstances and the framework that Negroes do anything in America, which, of course, is a hostile circumstance. We have been writing poetry since the seventeenth century in this country and publishing, been writing plays that simply never see the light of day because the circumstance, as I say, is hostile.
MW: But the same is not true in the case of Negro athletes, Negro entertainers. I think in proportion there are more o...