1 10 2 https://thurman.pitts.emory.edu/files/original/728e1520ca2ca9519a19a374fa5491a0.pdf b878fd3f94ddbafdfd0d787f9ea6ce75 PDF Text Text Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu 394-043_B.mp3 Europeans on this side, Indians on that side. He couldn't go on my side. We couldn't go on his side. So we did what has happened many times in this country in the past. We sat down at the station all night and talked about it. Pitts Theology Library Emory University So I was full of questions on this issue, because I wanted to know something about it. The whole concept of non-violence action as a concept, not as an experience, as a concept was foreign to myself. You see I-- so I asked him. I hope I can do this in the minutes. It's about what we have. So I asked him why did you fail to bring freedom to India? And he said that it was an idyllic land, was dependent upon the last involvement of people. That they couldn't do it [AUDIO OUT] have enough energy. Non-violence takes energy. And this puzzled me. And he said, I discovered that the Indian people could not do it without it breaking down into violence because they're hungry. So he went to the spinning wheel and that's the whole genius of that development. And then he said they didn't have enough energy because they lost their self-respect. The loss of self-respect was a continuous drain on their sense of persona. Dr. Thurman, this loss of energy, this loss of self-respect, reminds me of a paragraph in your book. It goes like this, "in order to overcome the ravages of segregation, the overt sufferers must carry on an energy-consuming inner struggle, which undermines their effectiveness in practically every aspect of their lives. "Such persons tend to be emotionally exhausted as a chronic state of being. There is the barest margin for creativity and growth. It's impossible even to hazard the loss to American life that has resulted from the waste in energy and creativity in the desperate necessity to find a way to survive against such overwhelming odds." You spoke before we were on the air about energy consumption also, and it seems that hatred might be one of the emotions that drains the most energy from human beings. You talked in your book about a story when a white salesman came to a place where you were working, and he said, "don't misunderstand me, boy. I don't love Negroes, and certainly don't want my children to love them, but that's not the same as hating them. Hate's a funny thing. It doesn't have a mind. All hate knows how to do is hate. If I teach my children to hate Negroes, they might wind up hating white folks, and I can't run the risk of ruining their lives in that way." Well, when you're finished thinking these deep thoughts and about the great emotions that move us first in one direction and then another, what do you do for fun, Dr. Thurman? 1 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu I think the greatest bit of wisdom that a man can winnow out of the stuff of his experience is to discover the things that are needful for his own peace, and I find various things. For instance, all of my life, I wanted to learn to play an instrument. I felt humiliated every time I looked at a page of notes and knew that I did not know what they meant, and I love music. What do you like to paint? Pitts Theology Library Emory University So at 60, I decided that I would learn to play the clarinet. And so I worked at it. Learned it so that I could feel in one swirling moment, I could feel that I had gotten inside of the way sound is put together. Now this is renewing for me. I like to do what I call paint. Well, of course, my-- you are now looking at a man who has one of the great secrets. I don't know any other human being in this period of human history who has been given this secret. What is it? And the secret is this, the penguin has revealed to me how the penguin looks at himself, and these I have painted. So that when my friends see my penguins, they say, I've never seen a penguin like that. Of course, you haven't seen a penguin like that. Because you're a human being, but this is the way the penguin looks to himself. This was revealed to you. Revealed to me, I won't tell you how, because I'm under obligation not to divulge it, but I can confess it but not detail it. So I paint, and I like to cook. Is it edible? Something so-Sorry. Oh, no. I will forgive you because [INAUDIBLE] There's something so tremendous about taking raw stuff and putting it together in creative combination and then see what happens under the wooing pressure of gentle heat, until at last, the whole thing becomes something better. Every time I do it, it's a miracle. And I enjoy it, and it's one of the most renewing and creative things for me. The other thing that I like to do is to take one- and two-hour vacations. When I was at the University, we lived downtown across from one of the big department stores. And I'd come home three o'clock, just dead, because there's nothing more exhausting than just sitting down, listening, and pouring your soul out that way. And I'd come home, and I'd say to Mrs. Thurman, I'm going to take a two-hour vacation. I changed my clothes so my nervous system would get the message also. And then I would walk across The Commons and go over to Jordan Marsh's department store and ride the escalators up and down, you know, for maybe a half hour, 35 minutes. 2 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu And then one day when I was there, I came down, I looked over near the jewelry counter and I saw a very well-dressed man. He was standing there, leaning on the counter. And I said, I've always wanted-- to myself, I always wanted to know something about diamonds. I didn't know anything about diamonds. So I think I'll take the rest of my time and do this. Pitts Theology Library Emory University So I go to him, I said, I don't want to buy a diamond today. I'm interested in diamonds. I don't know anything about them. Do you mind just talking? And for nearly an hour, he's talking all kinds of things about-- went back and got things out of the safe and gave me this glass to look at. Now, and when I got home at the end of two hours, I was completely renewed. The other thing I like to do is to quiet my own soul, to meditate, to do what I call pray, and that is to open up the windows of my spirit and let the winds of God blow through. We've been talking to Dr. Howard Thurman. Join us for the next two shows. In the first one, Dr. Thurman will re-examine his the book The Luminous Darkness, The Anatomy of Segregation and the Ground of Hope. The third show, he will be confronted by eight University of Washington students who question his philosophy. [MUSIC PLAYING] 3 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Television Interview with Roberta Byrd Barr (1969, KING-TV, Seattle, WA) Description An account of the resource This collection includes an audio recording of part one of Howard Thurman's 1969 interview with Roberta Byrd Barr, originally aired in three parts with the title "A Creative Encounter" on Seattle-based KING-TV.<br /><br /> All three parts of the interview are <a href="http://hgar-srv3.bu.edu/web/howard-thurman/virtual-listening-room/results?query=Barr&amp;Submit1=Search">available on the Virtual Listening Room site</a> by Boston University. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1969 AudioWithTranscription Audio that is shown through the 3Play Media embedded interactive transcript Audio with Transcription <iframe width="100%" height="820" frameborder="0" src="/files/players/394-043_B.html" ></iframe> Original Title Title as transcribed from tape cassette Television Interview (I) On Thurman's Life (69-0/01) [Side B], 1969 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 394-043_B Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Thurman, Howard Title A name given to the resource The Creative Encounter, Interview with Roberta Byrd Barr, Part 1 (continued), 1969 Nov 30 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1969-11-30 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="http://pid.emory.edu/ark:/25593/rp8k9">MSS 394</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available <a href="http://pitts.emory.edu/">Pitts Theology Library, Emory University</a> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/"><img alt="Creative Commons License" style="border-width:0" src="https://i.creativecommons.org/l/by-nc/4.0/80x15.png" /></a><br />This work is licensed under a <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License</a>. 2019. Description An account of the resource Originally aired on KING-TV based in Seattle, this audio is from the first part of a three-part series in which Roberta Byrd Barr interviewed Howard Thurman about his life and work. This segment concludes the first part of the series; the beginning is available in <a href="https://thurman.pitts.emory.edu/items/show/51">this related item</a>.<br><br> All three parts of the interview are <a href="http://hgar-srv3.bu.edu/web/howard-thurman/virtual-listening-room/results?query=Barr&Submit1=Search">available on the Virtual Listening Room site</a> by Boston University. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Description by Spencer Roberts https://thurman.pitts.emory.edu/files/original/cfc1f30d48122e05bbeb84097a9506d4.pdf 0d585aeb5955b64a4a0c5f1b59984bbb PDF Text Text Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu 394-043_A.mp3 Dr. Thurman. How do you reconcile yourself to this time? Does this make it easier for you to understand, and more difficult to censor the young? Pitts Theology Library Emory University It was not very easy and not very hard, because I believe that a man has to honor the seasons through which he lives and to be current with himself. And therefore, I do not try to be what I should have been when I was 20 at 68. I think it makes it easier for me to understand them. And also, it deepens the agony that I feel. Because I can see the logic of some of the things that are being done, which logic they cannot see. For if they could see it, it would cut the nerve center of their activity. And that would be terrible. It's necessary for the young not to be aware-Right. --of some of the things, and to be deeply aware of others. That's right. I think that they represent the growing edge. And everything that I, anyone else, can do to keep that alive and persistent and creative-- I think we have an obligation to do it, or else there's no future. I'm Roberta Byrd. And I'm talking with Dr. Howard Thurman. Dr. Thurman is indeed a man for all seasons, including this one. A scholar, a profound and decent man-- a man with whom I hope to reach contact. And I'm sure you will, too. We'll be pursuing the course of his thoughts through the years in a series of three programs. And we invite you to join us for all of them. Dr. Thurman is the grandson of a slave, author of 14 books, a man chosen by Life Magazine as one of the 10 great preachers of this century, dean emeritus of March Chapel at Boston University, and minister emeritus of the church which he founded, the Church for the Fellowship of All Peoples in San Francisco. Widely traveled, [INAUDIBLE] India, he came under the influence of Gandhi, from whom he learned much. More recently, he has taught in West Africa. The first we want to know, really, Dr. Thurman, in spite of all those vital statistics, is who are you, really? I would like to begin by a general statement. And that is that the time and the place of a man's life is the time and the place of his body. But the meaning of his life is as significant and creative, fruitful as his times, his commitment, and his creative will can make it. So I was born, obviously. [LAUGHTER] 1 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu Right. In Daytona, Florida. My father was one of the men who laid the track of the Florida East Coast railroads. Pitts Theology Library Emory University He was a section hand in-That's right. And he was a very wonderful man. He was the first person who I had ever seen die. He died when I was seven years old. He was sick for five days. And it is important to begin with this point, because it opens the road to so many things that followed in the years ahead. My mother was a very pious person, very devout. My father was not formally a religious man. He did not ever go to church, anything of that sort. When I was very small, he would sit on the front porch with his legs crossed, looking straight ahead. And I would crawl around the side of the house and then crawl under the steps so that I could see his face, but he couldn't see my face, to see whether he ever batted his eyes. When he died, my mother and I were standing by his bed. And she, typical of the moment and the [INAUDIBLE], and out of her great anxiety and her great religious piety, she said to him, Saul-- his name was Saul Solomon Thurman. Saul, are you ready to die? And he, between gasps for air, because he had double pneumonia-- he said, Alice-- that was my mother's name-- all my life, I've been a man. I can face death. And with that, his body gave a great spasm, and he died. And [INAUDIBLE] from that is very important for my own future. We were very poor. We lived in just two rooms. And it meant that my father had to be buried right away, because there was no [INAUDIBLE] or undertaker come to embalm him. And since he was a Negro, he could not be embalmed in town. So he had to be embalmed in our home. And there was [INAUDIBLE] so he could be buried the next day. I helped my grandmother bury him, and as we say, lay him out. And then, my earliest experience with community was established there, because we did not have enough money to buy the coffin, for $32. So my mother sent me to all the neighbors. And the neighbors gave the money. And I did it without embarrassment, because we were a part of them, and they were a part of us. And the question, of course, was the burial of my father from the Church. The minister of the church decided that he would not let my father be buried from the Church, because my father, in the language of the time, died out of Christ. And my grandmother, who was the great spirit in my life-- a strong, powerful human being-- she was in her middle 20s when the Civil War was fought. So she was a slave. She went to see the deacons of the church. And she said, ministers come and go, but deacons remain in the community. And you are responsible for the people in the community. If you don't let Saul be buried from the Church, it doesn't matter what the minister says. Let him be buried from the Church. At the service, a visiting Evangelist preached the sermon. And, of course, it was a windfall for him, because my father died without being a member of the Church. He was an Evangelist. So he 2 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu used my father as an object lesson-- what will happen to you if you die this way. And, in the language of that period, he preached my father into Hell. Pitts Theology Library Emory University And as a little boy sitting on the [INAUDIBLE] bench, as we call it, I kept saying to my mother, he didn't know Papa, did he? And she did the wonderful thing-- two intimate expressions that share the inside of the heart between human beings. One is when you wipe the tears from another person's eye. The other is when you put your hand on the knee and squeeze like that. And my mother did this. And it quieted me. So coming back from the graveyard, I persisted. Why did he do it? And no answer was satisfactory. So I said, one thing is true. If I ever grow to be a man, I will never have anything to do with the Church. Because I felt that something deep in me had been violated by this kind of bigotry, even though it was done in the name of religion. You know, your grandmother sounds like somebody I would have liked. She really was, really, a positive, strong, tender human being, tender as a word as being soft, you see. And she was kind without being sentimental. She could sit on the front porch and control all the children in three blocks' distance without ever moving from her chair. [INAUDIBLE] oh, my. [LAUGHTER] [INAUDIBLE] She had a thing, if I may use that phrase, about education. Because she did not know how to read. Because as a slave girl in north Florida, many times, when the slave owner's little girl wanted to teach my grandmother to read, teach her her alphabets, her mother always sent her to bed without her meal, to beat it into her that she must never teach this slave how to read. So my grandmother decided that there must be some real magic in this. So when freedom came and she was responsible, largely, for taking care of us, because my mother had to work, she saw to it that we would go to school. If I wanted to miss school, let us say, on Tuesday because I was sick, it would mean I would have to be sick when I came from school on Monday and be in the bed Monday afternoon and Monday night. But if I played Monday afternoon, even though I died Monday night, I would have to be resurrected to go to school on Tuesday. And every Friday, the teacher came by to report to her what I had been doing. And she called me in to hear. And if the report was a bad one, I was whipped in the presence of the teacher. And then the teacher was instructed to do the same thing on Monday. Resurrected, [INAUDIBLE]. Well, no. [INAUDIBLE] To get my lessons. And then, when I finished the seventh grade, there was no eighth grade in my home town. And it's a very diabolical thing, you know? There was no eighth grade for Negro youngsters. Because if there were an eighth grade, the pressure to have a high school would be on the school board. So in order to keep from facing the issue, they simply did not have the eighth grade. 3 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu So whenever any of the-- usually, the ministers would go down to talk with the students about high school for Negroes. He said, there are no children [INAUDIBLE] already, because you have to finish the eighth grade, you see? Yes. Pitts Theology Library Emory University But I finished the seventh grade. The principal of my school decided that he would teach me the eighth grade on his lunch hour if the man for whom I worked would extend my time if I'd make it up in the afternoon. So I did this, and finished the eighth grade, and took the examination. And then the next year, they introduced the eighth grade. And then on and on, we got a high school. Then the time came to leave home, because there were only three high schools for Negroes in the state of Florida when I finished the eighth grade in this way. And one was in Jacksonville. And I wanted to go. My mother and my grandmother agreed that they would not keep me home to work to help support the family. They would release me to get an education-- if I could get it on my own, because they could not help me, you see. And one of the neighbors gave me a trunk. And there had not been a trunk in our family because we didn't go anywhere. And this was a wonderful trunk. It had no handles and no lock. And I went to [INAUDIBLE]. And when I went down to the railway station to ship it on my ticket, the agent said, you can't ship your trunk on this ticket, because the law says that the check must be attached to the trunk, not to you. And [INAUDIBLE] part of the trunk that [INAUDIBLE] in cargo. So he said, it must go by the express. And then I came around and sat on the steps of this [? Gem ?] [? Grove ?] Railway Station, crying my heart out, because all my dreams were gone now. And what would I say to my mother and my grandmother, to go back home after the train had gone? And I opened my eyes, and I saw two big feet down just in front of me. And my eyes literally crawled up until they reached, in focus, the face of a man in blue denims, a blue kerchief, cap. And as I opened my eyes, he was reaching in his jumper pocket, taking out a sack of [INAUDIBLE] tobacco. Of course, you're too young to know what [INAUDIBLE] tobacco is Right, exactly. And then, out of the other pocket, he took out a piece of cigarette paper. All with his left hand. Took the paper out, put the other back, opened the tobacco. Filled it, rolled it, sealed it with saliva, put in his mouth, tightened the cord of the tobacco sack, put it in his pocket, took a match out of another pocket, stuck it on a stone like that, lighted the cigarette, then inhaled deeply and said, boy, what the hell are you crying about? And I told him. And then he said, come with me. And he took me around. And he said, take this [INAUDIBLE] and his trunk to Jacksonville. And he [INAUDIBLE] out. And he was given the ticket-- the receipt. And he handed the receipt to me. And he said, if you are trying to get out of this so and so and so town to improve yourself, the least I can do is to help you. I had never seen him before that day. I have not seen him since. I don't know who he was. But had he not done that, I would not be here. 4 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu Well, I went to Jacksonville, high school. I was a fair student. Not just a fair student, an excellent student. Pitts Theology Library Emory University And I had two great teachers. Three, as a matter-- two women and one man. And they're all living now. One was the lady who helped me get the [INAUDIBLE] feel for words. I was taking Latin with her. And she asked me to put on the blackboard the perfect tense of the verb [LATIN]. And I put the Latin up. And then she said, now write the English. And I wrote, I have came, you have came, he has came, we have came, you have came, they have came. And all of the silly youngsters who were more-- well, it's a long story. The difference between the city, at any age, and rural. But they heard good speech. And these were black youngsters. Yes. All black youngsters. And they laughed. Then, the teacher came from behind her desk, as I erased this in my embarrassment. And she said, Mr. Thurman, write it back on the board. So I wrote. And she stood there for the rest of the time and taught me. And every afternoon, after class-- all the work was over for the day-- I would go by her cottage, sit in her little living room, on the floor, and she would read to me from all the great classics of American and English literature. And I began to feel the inner texture of words, and to come under their magical spell. She did this. Then there's a man who taught mathematics. And, of course, I simply have no working affinity with mathematics. There's something about it that seems to be completely out of character for my kind of personality. Anyway, I simply couldn't do very much with his math. But one day, I had the answer to a proposition. And none of the smart kids had it. And I just kept this, you know. And finally, he said, well, Howard, that is it, now. And I gave him the answer. And when he recovered, he said, I'd like for Howard Thurman to stop by the desk on his way out. Well, I can hardly wait for the end of the hour, because I knew that he was going to tell me that if I kept on, I would become a very great, creative mathematician. [? I remember ?] very well [INAUDIBLE], you see, because I wanted to break the rules to them. So finally, we were let out, and I stood at the desk. He said, Howard, I want you always to do your own thinking. But remember, wisdom is not born with you. What a crusher. Right. But he was influential in helping me bring into focus the meaning of life-- values, a sense of persona that my grandmother and my mother saw and chiseled out, but he made articulate. Because they did not have the tools, the skill. They had the love. But they knew. And the faith. And they knew this, you see. 5 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu Yes. Then let's talk. We have some notion of some of the forces that shaped you in ways that you understood everything shapes us. Pitts Theology Library Emory University Right. You go on through high school, and you decide-- what must have been a tremendous decision-that you are going to college. Where did you go, and why? I went to Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia. Is that the same school that shaped Dr. Martin Luther King? Yes. Yes. Mordecai Johnson, the whole-- For the benefit of those who don't know who Mordecai Johnson was, the president of Howard University for a very long time. Yes. For 25 years. Morehouse was a good men's college. In Georgia. In Atlanta, Georgia. And I headed there, and wanted to major in English because of what this teacher had done. But all of my English teachers were mechanics. They were not engineers, anything like that. And they were [INAUDIBLE]. At the end of the first two courses, I felt the vitality of a language perishing because it couldn't get enough oxygen from these people. So I shifted to economics-- something that had no relevancy to this inner feeling, but something that my kind of quick mind, for that sort of thing, could do. So then I majored in economics. And then I decided that I need philosophy. Why? I needed philosophy because I wanted to learn how to think-- not merely creatively. I think that's given. But I wanted to learn how to think in ways that would reduce the conglomerates of ideas, hunks of ideas, to manageable units for communication, for the implementation of dreams and hopes and aspirations. And [INAUDIBLE] I had to have the tools. And in my college at that period, there were only two courses in philosophy-- one in logic, and one in ethics, which was really a glorified Sunday school class which the president of the college taught to all seniors. That's a little late. Yes. 6 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu Pitts Theology Library Emory University At the end of my sophomore year, I decided that I would do something about it-- that between my junior and senior years, in the summer school, I'd go to Columbia. I found out how much it cost-- and I was working my way through college. So in the fall of my junior year, I studied the catalog and made a list of all the cash prizes for everything-- short story, declamation, Bible reading, Bible recitation-- and decided I would take them all. And I did. And I got enough money to pay my tuition for the summer at Columbia. Now, the problem was, how would I live? Well, one of my classmates had inherited an insurance policy because his brother was killed in the First World War. And he was getting a marvelous amount of money-- $65 a month for some 20 years. So I persuaded him that he needed to go to Columbia. And if he did, then he would rent the roof, and I would stay with him. And I figured that I could live for $0.55 a day for my food. And then I had it made. But I didn't know anything about philosophy. So I said, now, if I begin in the course at Columbia and I know nothing about philosophy, [INAUDIBLE] what was going on. So I had an uncle who lived in Cleveland. And I went by to see him. And I had to do all sorts of things for him. He let me stay there for four weeks, between the close of Morehouse and the beginning of Columbia. And the first day, I went down to the public library-- 79th Street branch library. I'll always remember it. And I said to the little lady-- little librarian-- she had these pince-nezes, you know. She was very dignified. I said, I am about to be a student of philosophy. I'm going to Columbia to study for the summer. I'm going to take three courses of philosophy. I know nothing about it. Can you give me a reading that will help me get the vocabulary so I know what the lectures are about? And she was very impressed. So she gave me a table in the corner and collected all the books in the library on philosophy and put them there. So every day, from 9:00 in the morning until 2:30, when I had my chores to do at home, I read philosophy. [INAUDIBLE] the system there, the Eastern philosophy, the approach to philosophy, Greek philosophy, the whole bit. So when I went to Columbia, at least I knew what was being talked about. I could recognize the vocabulary. And I went on from there. At the end of my time at Columbia, I went back to finish my senior year at Morehouse. And then to [INAUDIBLE] theological school, because I wanted-- I didn't know whether I wanted to become a minister, a preacher. But I knew that I wanted to understand man's story with reference to his quest for God. Because the one thing that had enabled me to keep from being destroyed by the violences of my environment as a youngster growing up in Florida was a deep religious sense that I had that I, Howard Thurman, was of infinite worth, and that that worth was not contingent upon anything external to me. No judgment external to me could be definitive in working out how I felt inside of me. And this truth was the meaning of religion. It had nothing to do with church as such. It had nothing to do with dogma as such. But it had to do with that [? in ?] [? me ?] of which I had become aware. That made it possible for me to stand anything that life could do to me. And I was convinced that I could do this. Now, I said, if this is 7 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu religion, well, I want to study it and give my life to it. Because this is the only thing that will keep us from being destroyed. The school that I went-- excuse me. [INAUDIBLE]? Pitts Theology Library Emory University No, not really. Go on. The school that I wanted to go to, of course, was Andover Newton, in Massachusetts, for a lot of reasons. It was New England. It was Boston. And I applied, but they told me that, we're sorry, that they could not admit me to study Christianity there. They didn't [INAUDIBLE]. Because they didn't have to admit Negroes. But I could go to a place like Virginia Union, in Richmond, Virginia, and get the kind of religion that would be useful for my people. You know that [INAUDIBLE]? Then I applied to Rochester and was accepted. At that time, Rochester had a quota of two. And I was one of the two. You fit. Yeah. It was my first sustained primal experience. on any shared basis of equality with white people. Aside from what must have been four years of learning about human relations in this kind of setting, what was the profoundest thing that-- it that's a fair question-- that you learned in this school of religion-- this white school of religion [INAUDIBLE] yourself? I learned how to think creatively about religion without having the wings of my thought clipped by dogma and by theologists. It was there that, for the first time in my life-- many men have made it over and over again. So I will not speak for the world. I simply speak for Howard Thurman. It was there that I made the discovery, which to me was primary in first, that all dogmas, all theologies, are inventions of the mind. They are what the mind does in its effort to reduce religious experience to something that can be apprehended, comprehended. So all the dogmas and all theologists, however wonderful they may be, and so forth, are always a little out of date. Because, you see, they are the rationalization-- using that word in the best sense of the word-- they are the rationalization of religious experience. But in order for the religious experience to be rationalized, it has to be put in a [INAUDIBLE] for a little while so the mind can bite into it and get it into shape. Meanwhile, keep on experiencing. So by the time it gets all dressed up and the experience is theologized, you have gone way over here so that the authentic religious experience means that I build up the dogma in order to tear it down. "Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough gleams that untraveled world whose margin fades for ever and for ever when I move." This is the way Tennyson puts it. 8 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu You work your way through the dogma to the real meaning of religion. Pitts Theology Library Emory University Yes. But you see, the dogma is necessary. Because it structures religious experience and makes it possible for me to say to you what I mean by what I am experiencing, so that you will be able to locate, in your experience, the same sort of thing, even though you may call it by a different name. So it is the nature of the mind-- this is what I'm getting at. It is the nature of the mind to make sense out of everything. Do the theologians, then, do the same thing that the natural scientists and all scientists do? Nomenclature is a very an important part of science. You can't talk about it if you haven't given it a name-- for the same reason, that the mind has to be able to grasp it first. Yes, except in religion, the most important dimension of communication is contagion. It is not really conceptualizing, as important and [INAUDIBLE] as that is. I know more, for instance, about the genius of the religion of Jesus from my grandmother than from all the men who taught me New Testament, who taught me all the-- and then the Greek and all the rest of it. Because she moved inside the experience and lived out of that kind of center. And therefore, she didn't ever try to prove anything. Because you don't try to prove something you're sure of. You want to try to prove these things around which-- she would have refused it. Dr. Thurman, let's take a specific. You were already a doctor of philosophy, I believe, or very close to it-- to your degree. A custodian in your college dies. You were class president. Oh, yes. Yes. How did you survive that intact? Doesn't sound like very much to some people, but as a-- Well, to fill in the story, it was while I was a student at Rochester. And the custodian of the school-- he'd been there for 30 years-- died. Everybody loved him. He lived on campus. I was the president of my class. And the family requested that the officers of the student body would serve as pall bearers. And I agreed. All was agreed. And then, the night before the funeral, the president of the student body came to see me. He was very apologetic. He was very sorry. But he was in this situation that he couldn't control, that the wife of the custodian objected to my serving as a pall bearer because I was black. And he said, I hate to do this, but it's her funeral, and so forth and so on. And I said, all right. I didn't say all right in that way. I had a few choice words to say to him, because I thought that my first responsibility to my own integrity was to honor my hostility. So I told him what I thought about it. And it was simple, clear, transparent English. And then I said, of course, I will not go. But I refuse to let you, or this lady, or anybody else control my thermostat. I refuse to let anybody determine how I feel on the inside of me. Now, this is difficult. And I went back to something in my childhood, and in my two daughters' childhood, if I may just take a minute to explain, because it's relevant. I was from Florida. Mrs. Thurman is from Arkansas. And so the first month in the summer, since I was gallivanting all around in the [? weather, ?] and teaching and working and so forth and so on, I had the responsibility for taking the two little [INAUDIBLE] down to spend two weeks with my mother, 9 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu and then all the way across to Arkansas to spend to weeks with Mrs. Thurman's mother. And then she would join us, having had a month's free from the responsibility of them. Pitts Theology Library Emory University I remember, with all these problems that I had when we went to Florida, they wanted me to show them all the places that I frequented as a boy, places I used to fish in. And they're all downtown. And we were going downtown one day. And our older daughter said, oh, to her sister, Anne, there's a beautiful playground over there. Let's go and swing. And I said, you can't swing there. And there's other things of that sort. And I was sick, sick at the very grounds of my persona, because I knew that if I didn't do something, they would be crippled for the rest of their lives. So walking home, I told them a story. I said, you may not understand these words I'm going to use now. But I said that the test or the estimate that people have of you is to be found in the kind of weapons they feel we must use in order to destroy you. Now, I said, it takes the state legislature of Florida, all the judges, all the policemen, most of the churches, all of the chamber of commerces, chambers of [INAUDIBLE], it takes all of those to keep two little girls from swinging in that swing. That's how important you are. And then I said, I'll tell you a story from the Bible. There's a man in the Bible whose name was Goliath. And there's another man whose name was David. And they decided that-- they was from different sides-- they would fight it out, just these two men. I remember [INAUDIBLE] said to them to have war. Let the heads of the states fight, and let the masses applaud. So Goliath put on his breastplate, armor, headgear, shield, short sword, long sword-- went out to meet David. That's what he thought of David. David came out in what is equivalent to a nightshirt, with sandals and a slingshot. That's all he thought of Goliath. And when Goliath saw this, he had a stroke! [LAUGHTER] [INAUDIBLE] was go to Hell. I feel this very deeply. And I know when I began feeling it. That the measure or the estimate that my environment has on me is the pains to which it must go in order to try to keep me in place. And the corollary to that in my own experience is that I reserve the right to say the things that I will stand for and the things I will stand against. And anybody who can determine how I feel on the inside can control my life. And I don't give anybody that prerogative except God. Is there any corollary between what you just said and the statement that Gandhi-- or, as you call him, Gandhi-ji-- in India, talking to you about nonviolence said when he is quoted to have said to you, if the idea of nonviolence-- "if you are violent, someone else is determining really, ultimately, what you do, because you're reacting against them." That's right. 10 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu That if the idea of nonviolence, which is not passive but active nonviolence-- acting on the environment-- gets across to the world, it may well be the American Negro who gets it across. Is this what you're saying? Pitts Theology Library Emory University Yes, this is what he said. Because I was puzzled, you see. I was in the throes, when I went to India the first time, that I had been far enough away from America and American society to look at it in perspective. And I wish I had time to tell about some of the aspects of the experience. And I was very conscious of, number one, of the universal dimensions of racism, for instance. It just hit me like this. It wasn't something that was isolated between these two oceans. But in India, for instance, I was a European. So at [INAUDIBLE] Junction, when we went upstairs to spend the night, waiting for our train to come through at 4 o'clock in the morning-because there are no sleepers. You pay someone in rupees and get a bed. And a guard would wake you up in time to get your train. 11 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Television Interview with Roberta Byrd Barr (1969, KING-TV, Seattle, WA) Description An account of the resource This collection includes an audio recording of part one of Howard Thurman's 1969 interview with Roberta Byrd Barr, originally aired in three parts with the title "A Creative Encounter" on Seattle-based KING-TV.<br /><br /> All three parts of the interview are <a href="http://hgar-srv3.bu.edu/web/howard-thurman/virtual-listening-room/results?query=Barr&amp;Submit1=Search">available on the Virtual Listening Room site</a> by Boston University. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1969 AudioWithTranscription Audio that is shown through the 3Play Media embedded interactive transcript Audio with Transcription <iframe width="100%" height="820" frameborder="0" src="/files/players/394-043_A.html" ></iframe> Internal Notes Notes for project team moment and the *period*; *Everything that followed* from that; *mourners'* bench; *there wasn't any* part; *inner* feel; *go to* theological; that *in me* (there might be a few words missing from the transcript here); two little *bozos* - Gl 5/16/19 Edited - GL 8/12 Original Title Title as transcribed from tape cassette Television Interview (I) On Thurman's Life (69-0/01) [Side A], 1969 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 394-043_A Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Thurman, Howard Title A name given to the resource The Creative Encounter, Interview with Roberta Byrd Barr, Part 1, 1969 Nov 30 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1969-11-30 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="http://pid.emory.edu/ark:/25593/rp8k9">MSS 394</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available <a href="http://pitts.emory.edu/">Pitts Theology Library, Emory University</a> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/"><img style="border-width:0;" src="https://i.creativecommons.org/l/by-nc/4.0/80x15.png" alt="80x15.png" /></a><br />This work is licensed under a <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License</a>. 2019. Description An account of the resource Originally aired on KING-TV based in Seattle, this audio is from the first part of a three-part series in which Roberta Byrd Barr interviewed Howard Thurman about his life and work. This segment includes the first 45 minutes of the first part. The remainder of the audio is available in <a href="https://thurman.pitts.emory.edu/items/show/52">this related item</a>.<br><br> All three parts of the interview are <a href="http://hgar-srv3.bu.edu/web/howard-thurman/virtual-listening-room/results?query=Barr&Submit1=Search">available on the Virtual Listening Room site</a> by Boston University. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Description by Spencer Roberts