The New Yorker Radio Hour - How Alpha Kappa Alpha Shaped Kamala Harris; Plus, Bill T. Jones

Episode Date: October 29, 2024

One aspect of the Vice-President’s background that’s relatively overlooked, and yet critical to understanding her, is her membership in the sorority Alpha Kappa Alpha. “In one of the bylaws,” the writer Jazmine Hughes tells David Remnick, “it says that the mission of the organization, among many, is to uplift the social status of the Negro.” Far from a Greek party club, A.K.A. "is an identity” to its members. When Donald Trump insinuated that Kamala Harris had “turned Black,” in his words, for political advantage, “a lot of people pointed to her time at Howard, and her membership in A.K.A., [as] a very specific Black American experience that they did not see from someone like Barack Obama.”  Jazmine Hughes’s reporting on “The Tight-Knit World of Kamala Harris’s Sorority” was published in the October 21, 2024, issue ofThe New Yorker. Plus, Kai Wright, who hosts WNYC’s “Notes from America,” speaks with the choreographer Bill T. Jones. This week, the Brooklyn Academy of Music is re-mounting Jones’s work “Still/Here,” which caused a stir when it débuted at BAM, thirty years ago: The New Yorker’s own dance critic at the time, Arlene Croce, declared that she wasn’t going to review it. Now “Still/Here” is considered a landmark in contemporary dance, and Jones a towering figure.  New Yorker Radio Hour listeners, we want to hear from you.  We have a few questions about the show and how you listen to it. The survey takes about twenty minutes, and your feedback will help us make our podcast better.  Take the survey here.

This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. You can often hear Kamala Harris on the campaign trail talking about growing up middle class, being raised by a single mom. She talks about a summer job at McDonald's. And Harris talks a great deal, too, about the early part of her career as a prosecutor in California. But there's one aspect of her background that's relatively overlooked and it's critical. to understanding her. Harris's membership in the sorority, Alpha Kappa Alpha, because AKA is no simple drinking club.

It is an identity, I would say, probably as important to them, or, you know, on the same list as their race, their gender, political affiliations, religion, and what have you. It is a lifetime commitment. It is a community service organization. It is a secret society.

It is Alpha Kappa Alpha Incorporated. Jasmine Hughes writes in this week's New Yorker about Alpha Kappa Alpha and its role in shaping the woman who would be the first black female president. Who are some of the more prominent members of AK? Tony Morrison. Sonia Sanchez.

Poet. Ellen Sirleaf Johnson, the first woman elected president of any African nation. As well as the first black Black woman in space, the first black female bishop. It's a long, long list. It's a long, long list. I have a quote from a woman from an A.k.a. in the story saying it's relatively impossible to become the first black fill in the blank without the backing of a sorority because the networks are so strong in addition to, you know, the commodity and the colors and all of that. How did being a member of A.k.a. Shape Kamla Harris's experience of Howard and really more importantly the rest of her life.

So, AKA was founded in 1908, right? And in this incredibly difficult, sticky time for African-Americans, an organization like Alpha Kappa Alpha was really created out of self-reliance. Black college students were barred from joining white fraternal and rural organizations, and so they formed their own. While writing this story, I thought a lot about Du Bois, right, and the talented 10th. this idea that 10% of the college-educated black population would work in their communities to sort of uplift the race. That's a really good way to understand AKA. So when we look at Kamala Harris as not only a presidential candidate but as a member of AKA, we first and foremost see someone who is supposed to be committed to uplifting black women, to uplifting the race.

I think in one of the bylaws of the organization, truly it says that the mission of the organization, among many, is to uplift the social status of the Negro, right? And so the reason why I was interested in this story in the first place was that if Kamala Harris does win the presidency, that is sort of literally what AKA was created to do. This is the ultimate fulfillment. This is the ultimate fulfillment. Someone said to me on the record,

Kamala Harris is our ancestor's wildest dreams. The idea that a black woman could rise to that level obviously comes with some, for lack of better word, training. And so one of the focuses of AKA is on, and all these historically black fraternities and sororities, is on comportment, right? How to be excellent. How to dress properly. How to, like, comport yourself in public. How to be involved in your community.

Basically, it's like a finishing school in some ways that is really steeped in black self-reliance and, you know, like brothers and sisters doing it for themselves. It's pretty Fubu, you know, for us by us. I found myself moved by some of this, the kind of mentor, mentee relationships that form out of this. You have a woman named Latifah Simon, who's a congressional candidate from the Bay Area, and she worked under Kamala Harris. What was her impression of Harris,

and how did A.K.A. figure into it. Latifah Simon gave me this amazing quote. She said, when I get an unknown call on my phone, I know it's either student loans or Kamala Harris calling me. Latifah and Kamala have been friends for over 20 years, and Latifah really drove home this sense of Harris trying to really instill excellence in her, of trying to bring her up to a level of professionalism. So whether that meant, like, buying Latifah her first suit on her second day of work,

as Kamala did not like what Latifah wore on the first day of work, or even things like, quote-unquote, making Latifah attend college. When Latifah started working for Kamala Harris, who was then the district attorney, Latifah was in her mid-20s, had a child, had a MacArthur fellowship, and Kamala was like,

you still have to go to college, and I'm going to be checking on your grades while you're there, while you're working for me. At one point, Latifah said, why are you wearing those pearls? One of the symbols of AKA. is the pearl. And, you know, there have been all these stories about why does Kamala Harris wear

these pearls? Why does she wear the pearls all the time? And it is alongside the Ivy Leaf, the primary totem, I would say, of the organization and a subtle way to signal your affiliation. But, you know, to be clear, Latifah loves this. She loves the rigor. She loved the seriousness with which Kamala took her because she said that no one else had ever, you know, considered her or regarded her in that way, and that it was something that she really needed and appreciated. So that goes back to the sense that A.K.A. is this sort of finishing school. And some people really like that behavior. Others, you know, are hairy-armed lesbians like myself. So you spoke with a woman named Jolanda Jones, who's a state representative in Texas

and AKA. And she said that she loves the Obamas, but, quote, neither of them were Greek. Then she told you, black folks are about to do more for Kamala than we did for Obama. Are we sure that's true? And what did you make of what she said? I think it's true that certain segments of the black voting population are more excited for Kamala Harris. Because remember the summer... Then for Obama? Then for Obama. I mean, okay, so remember NABJ, Donald Trump, friend to the blacks.

Yes. At the convention of the National Association of Black Journalists earlier the summer, Donald Trump insinuated the Kamala Harris turned black, right? that she hadn't always identified as such. And I think a lot of people just pointed to her time at Howard and her membership in AKA is not only identifying as black, but like a very specific black American experience that they did not see or really get from someone like Barack Obama who grew up in Hawaii who had, you know,

I mean, Kamala Harris is also biracial, but Barack Obama was raised predominantly by his white mother. Right? You know, when Barack talks about his sort of black American experience, in my mind, you know, it's sort of located in Chicago. It's something he comes into as an adult. Whereas Kamala at Howard University, age 18, that's like as black as spades and stepping and cookouts and greasing your scalp. And I think that it means something different, something deeper and something that's more tied, obviously, to the black American identity with his roots in the South, to see. someone like Kamala Harris, as opposed to Barack Obama, which is just sort of a different sort of blackness. You write that AKA has never endorsed a candidate, given that it's a nonprofit, it's not supposed to, but we've seen them mobilized to support the Harris campaign. What have they been doing? Are they going to door to door? And what kind of numbers are we talking about? They're sort of doing what they always do, which is so powerful about AKA is that they're really pounding the pavement in getting people to register to vote, to know the issues, to be able to get to the polls. And, you know, as voting gets increasingly more difficult in certain places, in certain areas of this country, whether it's ID laws or what have you, I think AK is really trying to fulfill its mission as a community service organization by taking down as many barriers as possible for people to vote.

Because they are so nonpartisan, many people went out of their way to say, I don't care who you vote for as long as you vote. It's really just about, I think, like, maintaining and respecting the legacy and the history of people in the civil rights movement who advocated so strongly for the right for black people to vote and really making sure that we carry that mission out. What kind of effect on the race do you think it'll have? I think it'll have a sizable one because of this sort of grassroots boots on the ground approach. And they're in particular places, the obvious places? I mean, they have over a thousand chapters around the world. They're everywhere. I think the reason why AKA can be so effective is, again, because they are knocking on doors.

They are very powerful and insistent organization. And I think by sheer will and grit, they were making sure that black people in their neighborhoods, that people in their communities are going out to vote. And we know that Democrats need a huge contingency of black people to vote for them in order to secure the White House. And I think that community organizations like AKA will be much more effective than even the campaign itself just because they're so enmeshed in their community and they know how to get shit done. We're looking at polls now and they may turn out to be real or they may turn out to be diluted in which in a lot of areas, Kamala Harris is doing less well with the black vote than, forget Barack Obama, but Joe Biden, what do you make of this? One thing I am curious about, again, is this identity politic. I was a freshman in college when Barack Obama was elected, okay?

So, like, it was, I wasn't cynical yet. It was like a watershed moment for the black community. I cried or whatever. And I think that that sort of identity politic, although, you know, now as a journalist in an adult, I can say that it's corny, but I think that it's really powerful for people. And I wonder if Kamala Harris is reluctance to embrace that. at least so far, is causing people. You think it might be a mistake? I don't think it's, I think maybe it's a mistake.

I don't think people dislike her. I think maybe they're not as excited for her as they were for someone like Barack Obama. And that has to do with what? Because she's not couching it and the importance of her identity, right? Because she's not saying, I will be the first black female president

in the way that even like a Shirley Chishism might have. But I found with Obama that he had a similar anxiety about talking too much about race, let alone, let's figure, get the race speech, the moment with Jeremiah Wright and all that. Oh, he is right. But I remember interviewing him

and I asked him a question about this very thing. And he said, and he kind of brushed it off. He gave me some nonsense answer. We're in the Oval Office and da-da-da-da. It's all very tense. And then he leaves, goes down the hall,

and then he comes all the way back, like 150 yards. It says, in the doorway and he says, you got to understand. Every time I talk about Ray, no matter what I say, if one little word is off, it moves the needle in the same way as if I talk about the economy and the effect on the stock market.

That it's so complicated, so many different constituencies that you're wary of politically and otherwise. That anxiety is difficult to watch. And I empathize with that. I wonder if the campaign is sort of relying on the black vote, maybe thinking they don't have to reach out as much, because we see Kamala Harris really trained to go after these sort of independent middle-of-the-road voters in an attempt to not scare voters out of, you know, electing a black and South Asian woman. Jasmine Hughes, thank you. Thank you.

You can read Jasmine Hughes's piece, The Tight-knit world of Kamala Harris's sorority at New Yorker. More in a moment. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. This week, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, one of New York's leading places to see new cutting-edge work, is featuring a performance that caused quite a stir when it debuted at BAM 30 years ago. The work is called Still Here.

And back then, some rejected its premise, the way it drew on true stories of people confronting illness and death. The New Yorker's own dance critic at the time, Arlene Croce, declared that she wouldn't even review it, but today, still here, is considered a landmark in contemporary performance. The choreographer, too, is now really a legend, Bill T. Jones. He recently spoke with Kai Wright, who hosts WNYC's Notes from America. Here's Kai. You do not have to be a devotee of dance to know the name Bill T. Jones. His face has been on the cover of Time magazine. President Obama gave him a national medal of arts.

Keith Herring painted his body, like painted on his naked body. Suffice to say, Bill T. Jones has lived quite a public life. And for most of that life, he's been a dancer and a choreographer. The Brooklyn Academy of Music is restaging one of his most renowned dances. It's called Still Here. It's a dance from 30 years ago, and I went to talk with him about it. Hello. Hi.

I'm Kai. Still here. Yes. For people being introduced to the work, how would you describe it? It is at once a period work that is proving to have transcended its era. It came out of the personal questions and travails of its primary creator, Bilty Jones, about the nature of mortality. After his partner Arnie Zane's death and after the long,

of so many young gay men to HIV and AIDS, Bill T. Jones went in search of a choreography that spoke to our mortality, but also to the meaning of our lives. He began talking and moving with other people who were also facing death through terminal illnesses. He created survivor workshops, which allowed him to explore this new vocabulary of movement. In the original program for Still Here, Jones writes, my intention since the onset of this project has been to create a work not as a rumination on death and decline, but on the resourcefulness and courage necessary to perform the act of living. The journalist Bill Moyers was so interested in this inquiry that he made a documentary about still here,

and about the workshops that led up to the performance. What do you hope to accomplish at a workshop like this? I want these workshops to be moving and talking about life and death. Twelve workshops took place in ten different cities across the country. Almost a hundred people participated. James. Sam. Michael.

And they ranged. They ranged in age. Some were 70. Some were children. They were all different races. They were women. They were men. They were queer.

They were straight. But they were all people who were dealing with life-threatening illnesses themselves. They had firsthand experience of mortality. Bill walked into the room. Most often, he was just wearing sweatpants and a sweatshirt, and he got people moving. Whoa. Can you put me back? And then he would start asking questions.

How do you get up every day? How do you love your children? What have you learned about life? What are you afraid of? And so on. These became the script for the... sessions. And they were not primarily people who were dancers. That was a wonderful thing about it. They seem so intense. I mean, it seems like such an intense experience. Have you seen the Moyers?

Yeah. And it's just, I mean, I had to turn it off a couple times, if I'm honest. It's, it's, it's, it's, I'm just now to a point where I can watch it, but it, yeah. Do you remember the first workshop? Are you able to tell me the story of like the first one and what that was like? Well, I think the very first one was in Austin, Texas. And we didn't know what we were doing. doing, but I remember one, uh, codger, old codger. I'm an old codger now, but codger's saying, well, I came down here because they told me it's going to be some dancing girls. He was a clown. He was a lovely man. And, uh, they all came in. It was like, uh, it's a big studio or a gymnasium. We began to do certain exercises like draw your life on a piece of paper and now make a pattern.

It became a roadmap. Now I need a volunteer. who is actually going to walk us through their life. Complete guided tour. Speaking? With narration. Did we do in that first workshop, take me to your death? I remember it happening in Boston,

quite clearly in Boston, might have been the third one. Can you imagine the last moment of your life? What's the last thing you... The light. The light. Yes. The light.

I watched the light. The sun's shining. And that's an exercise. Not many of us actually are so interested. I mean, maybe now, I imagine there are, but at that time it's kind of a macabre exercise. To me, it remains a macab exercise. I can't do it.

Really? You can't at all. I mean, if you, but do you dare when you feel most secure in yourself? I said, okay, what would you like it to be? Ah, what would you like it to be? One of the things you would ask people in the workshops was what they love. Yeah, what they love, yeah. Why was that an important question? I think it implies their highest self.

Love is that faculty of being human that gives one a direction out of self. Parents know this. If you love anything, I think you understand that sometimes you are able, you're given the blessing of forgetting the self. Love

quiets those questions if only temporarily. Could I trust a person or does not, has never had the experience of loving? If they couldn't answer that question, yeah, it's true. You haven't given yourself over it anything. Well, and that's where art comes in.

Bill's art was turning what happened in the Survivor workshops into the dance, still here. The movements, the gestures, the expressions, that Bill encouraged the workshop participants to make, they became part of the actual choreography of the piece. Bill's dancers would perform gestures that people made in the workshops.

And the words from the workshop participants, those became part of the music for the piece. There's bird and there's death and in between there's life, and the joke is, God doesn't tell you when you're going to die. The second section is by Vernon Reed, and Vernon Reed is a rocker from Living Color, if you remember that group, you know? and a wonderful man.

One day in a workshop, which was a very good workshop, we're in the studio having this intense time, and somebody next door is doing construction with a drill. You're here talking about death. But you know what? And love and all of the things.

Yes, well, as a matter of fact, things like a woman talking about, she was a wonderful woman, she was an actress, mortality and knowledge. I just feel like, you remember that? Only if I knew enough or if I understood enough, maybe I could accept mortality. If I could just get the right perception, if I could just find the thing.

So your movement is a question. If I just had knowledge, I could understand mortality. I could deal with it. And this drill is going on. But he, brilliant. He put that in the score. And that's something we call the pit in the story. It's harsh to look at, and that sound is so grating, but it is justified.

It goes, no, this is not a piece that it's all about gooey emotions. I know people who are not fans, say, it's maudlin and what have you, but, man, it was real. It is real. I'm so envious of the experience. I can imagine, I mean, all of those people being willing to share that level of vulnerability. and the things you learn about the world, about yourself, and not knowing where it was going, not knowing how it was going to be realized. Isn't that amazing?

It really is, remarkable. Generosity, I think, is the word. Those persons, they gave to me some of the greatest things to give. I've tried to honor it. And I think about it a lot now. I think about it. The moment of death now? And you think about the workshops now?

The moment of death. Oh, yeah. Still here didn't stop. It was like a moment where an idea came in close on an idea, but my own life, engagement in the topic, did not stop. Yeah. What do you think about it now? That I should embrace it as being a part of,

it's like my next breath. It's inevitable. And can I, can I normalize the mysterious? And can I know that there was a time before I had consciousness? And it's inevitable there's a time after. All of these things are comforting to me, but they don't take away the deep in the night terror.

What takes away the deep in the night terror is the sound of my husband next to me breathing, evenly. Look at this room, look at this garden. It balances out. When it was first performed, still here got a lot of attention. The New York Times described it as a true work of art, both sensitive and original. But for the last 30 years, Bill has also been churning in his head about the other reaction the piece got. There was a stink about it. There was called victim art and so on. It was confused with identity politics and the quote laziness of our generation our era that art is not something

like utilitarian to be used for social causes or so on art should transcend art has got to be disinterested this is an idea you were disdainful of well i wasn't disdainful quite frank i'm a bit of a snob myself i thought that i was down with it but i thought that it was just in a grand tradition of taking an experience of life and through processes of construction and investigation and analysis, you make something else. Art coming out of your identity as a black man, your art should transcend all those things. It comes out of your experience as a woman, as a person who's been molested. Well, that's pure indulgence and it's cheating. I can think of no different, I can't imagine, you know, so as a Gen Xer, I just, my blood goes entirely cold at the idea

of art that has nothing to do with who you are. Well, now they'd say it starts there, but it's got to climb to the Apollonian Heights to earn its place as great. And we can argue about that. I'm immediately bored. Really? Are you? If you, if you are selling me, what you're doing has nothing to do with you or your life experience, I'm immediately skeptical of it. It seems so dishonest. Well, no, no, you know it's a grand tradition, of course. What is a sonnet form?

It's a disciplined form that has to do with the length of line, rhythm, image, it's disciplined. There are worse things, you know. I mean, how do you feel about a haiku? Fair. You know, haiku is, it's supposed to appeal to the ears, first and then it finds its way through the mind and it goes to the heart. An old saw and one that I quote a lot is Marcel D'Shaal or said art is primarily an intellectual

activity. And by that, and now I don't know, this is, I don't know that I add this or wherever. I mean you tell you're saying your story so many years, you're not sure anymore, but it comes in through the eyes and goes through the mind. And then I say it comes in through the eye, goes through the mind, and if it's really potent, and you and I would agree, it goes to the heart, which is the goal. Now, can I get right to the heart? You know, I think a lot of black music does that. I think it's like when you hear someone just say, ah!

Already, like, what was that sound, you know? And that, I think, is, for me, that's the highest. But it doesn't stop there. And art can do whatever it wants to do. And that's the scary thing about it. Art should be terrifying, and it should be free in a way that surprises. So you make still here, in a context of a culture of death, there's so much death happening in the country.

in your community at the time. And just remember, death is always happening. But when you're young, when you're young and you're pretty and you're going to live forever, you think. So anyways, I interrupt. You think it's quite distant. Well, I mean, listen. And so today it's being remounted,

and I was going to ask you to sort of think about it in these contexts versus those contexts and audience walking into it. Yeah, I laugh because I just floated the idea with my young company. Well, you know about the piece? We made sure they watched the Moyers documentary, and many of them had studied it or heard about it. But a lot of them did not understand the climate that it was made in.

And I asked them, well, this is what I was thinking, and this is what's in the piece. Can you hang with me? Are you interested in this? What does it mean to you? say to the gay men in the room. Is your sexuality just next door to being

a kiss of death? How did they answer that? Did they... They kind of... Well, we have prep. What? Oh, prep. Oh, I see. Those are drugs you take now before you go out. I said, so in other words, you don't have to worry anymore.

We were worried. We knew that we were risking every time we had sex for anyone that we were... I don't know if It was I had to handle it with a light touch. You run the risk of them feeling somehow they're oppressed. Somehow they're being attacked, you know. Is there an correct answer that Bill wants them to give?

I just want to talk to you like my colleagues, but hey, you're my children. But they were game. First of all, they love the idea of performing at Bam. That's my dream to perform the stage at Bam. So they never mind my ego about not, it doesn't matter what the piece is, you just want to perform a thing. But then they also, they also trust me and they definitely trust Janet. Janet Wong, my associate director, and they want to do something that is, now let me say this. I think they want to do something that's important.

They hope it's important. And I can't say that everything I've done has been important, but I'm, I've been striving for it to be engaged in a discussion that's bigger than the beauty of line. Or how did Martha Graham describe dancers are athletes or acrobats of God? Show me one feed after another. You run Instagram. The things that you see people doing on Instagram in terms of virtuosity are astounding. What is that thing called meaning?

Hmm. Well, I think they want to talk about that place where a meaning and beauty and life and death meet. I'm a big fan of Hannah Arendt. And she says that the project in Western philosophy has been, quote, a study for truths. But she says that's not really the case. It's not been a study for truth. It's been a study for meaning. Then we're off now.

And death forces that. To think about mortality does make you think about meaning. and your life's meaning. I think it does, but I think you're probably like I'm. I'm not sure if it does for everybody. Well, that's what makes it so hard to think about, I think, for me.

You know? To imagine the moment of your death forces me to immediately begin to think about the meaning of my life up into that point. Bingo. Our interview today is very revealing to me. I had announced proudly to my staff,

Look, I'll do this at BAM, but I'm not doing any publicity about it. Really? No, no, no. I have been in the fire, and I know that I will get pulled into it. It becomes about Bill, his HIV, Arnie, AIDS, whatever. And I said, I don't want to do that. Your work has always been so personal. It's so your story.

You have put so much of you into everything. It's striking to hear you say, feel like I don't want to have anything to do with me. Well, it's 30 years old. And it's got a sinker swim, you know, like, I think you get some sense of how raw things were when Arnie died. And then by the time Still Here came about, and then the response that Still Here got, which was great,

great response, but the fight that it started, that, I don't know, people, that fight's gone underground now about victim art and, people leaning into their victimhood and expecting you the audience to come and pay to see them and don't go, you know, that sort of thing. I didn't want to be part of that. I want to be part of the club

that has James Baldwin in it, James Joyce in it. You are in that club, and dare I say, Bill, you won the argument. I think that's the point. Janet says, I mean, I hear you. How do you feel we won? Because I was just talking to her. Because no one's having that argument anymore. No one would call it victim art in 2024.

That's such a foreign concept. Amen. That's left to the relics because you and your contemporaries won that fight. So thank you. That means then Bill close the drawer on that one. still here will have to sink or swim on its own merits. Are there merits there? Is it pure dance?

What is there now in that piece? We're always grappling with mortality, right? That's something... Even works of art, you say. Oh, no. As audience members, we're always, as people, we're always grappling with mortality whether we're running from it or not.

I agree. However, since it is so common, the experience. What distinguishes this particular expression from the many others out there? And that's the balladdle we're playing. Pray for a genius work. Choreographer Bill T. Jones, speaking with WNYC's Kai Wright. That interview was broadcast on WNYC's Notes from America, and Jones's work still here is being performed this week at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. That's our podcast for today. Thanks for listening. The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.

Our theme music was composed and performed by Merrill Garbus of Tune Yards, with additional music by Louis Mitchell and Jared Paul. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Cherina Endowment Fund.