Paris – One of them left Brussels by train to get here. Three flew to “The City of Light” from Chicago. All four have Oak Park connections. All four were North American expatriates who lived in Europe and elsewhere, as did their ancestors. And all of them were linked to the James Baldwin International Conference at American University of Paris, May 28-30.
Dorrie Wilson, a former WTTW-TV producer, I first met a couple of decades ago when she produced with me an Emmy-nominated 90-minute town hall meeting on race in Oak Park. Now she works in Brussels doing cultural and human rights activities. She presented on hip-hop’s mirror of “fortress France,” a hyper-militarized response to the heinous acts of terrorism and the City of Light’s “dark side” when it comes to religious and racial intolerance. She also discussed how some African American expatriates here do not always support their North African, West Indian and African counterparts who are lower down on the totem pole.
My first visit to Paris was in 1977. I was 14 years old and had been studying French for two years. It was the first of two high school trips with my French teacher, Mr. Meute, and a cohort of giddy, first-time international travelers-turned-enthusiastic Francophiles by our teacher, of Belgian heritage. That trip and that teacher set me on a journey that would take me from the tree-lined streets of Oak Park to the Paris suburbs, or banlieues some 25 years later, and opened a world to me that I could never have anticipated.
In 1990, after completing my undergraduate degree in Afro-American Studies at UC Berkeley the previous spring, I embarked on a short but profoundly significant European tour, which landed me in the heart of the French capital. Through my then-roommate in London, I had been given the contact details of a person who would put me at the center of the arts and music scene of Paris, which at that time revolved around Le Mouve, the Mouvement Authentique – the world of French hip hop.
My 23-year-old French-speaking twin son, Amman, visited Dorrie in Brussels a decade ago when I was doing field work in Francophone countries on North American expatriate artists — a topic I completed an MFA on at University of New Orleans — and a theme I revisited for the James Baldwin Conference. Dorrie gave Amman his first French lesson. Now he holds a French degree from Cansius College and one in European Management from the University of Strasbourg. Amman and his brother, Jordan, know Dorrie’s mom, retired District 97 educator Bette Wilson, who co-founded the Ethnic Fest. On our first night at the conference, we hung out for dinner to celebrate Oak Parkers being reunited and Amman’s 23rd birthday. We toasted in French. Meanwhile, my psychiatrist-wife Dr. Earlene Strayhorn (who lived in Spain after college) rested at a nearby Eiffel Tower-area hotel from the long flight.
Nearly 200 writers, scholars and activists converged on this conference to discuss the late great James Baldwin’s influence on the world. I opened my discussion on his “quest for voice” in French telling a story about our first and only meeting, thanks in part to three Triton courses I had at OPRF High School under Prof. Richard Sloan.
Just before he died, I met James Baldwin at a 1986 Oakland, California event honoring Baldwin sponsored by Ishmael Reed’s Before Columbus Foundation. Reed, my former writing teacher and mentor, said, “Come meet Jimmy” — a term of endearment he only allowed close friends to use. I said how glad I was to meet such a great essayist, and how when I as a youth growing up in Chicago, he was someone I read from my parents’ bookshelf. I told him many of my black militant friends did not think he was “angry” enough as a black American writer. He told me something I’ll never forget: “Show me a black man who’s not angry and I’ll show you a fool nigger who’s lost!” Perhaps he thought I was a fool for asking about his anger. He died the next year, angry I suspect.
During the Q&A after my 10-minute presentation, my wife discussed how “Baldwin’s warm embrace of ambivalence and ambiguity was a lesson we could all learn from in this racially-charged era where people run from complexity.” One of the North American expatriates in Paris mentioned by Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison as “Baldwin’s successor” is Ta-Nehisi Coates, an author-journalist who also has written a lot on black males. We’re scheduled to appear on a panel on said subject at Oak Park Public Library, July 28, at 7 p.m.