How Alpha Kappa Alpha Shaped Kamala Harris; Plus, Bill T. Jones
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Listener supported. WNYC Studios. 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...

And identity, I would say, probably as important to them or, you know, on the same list as their race, their gender, political affiliations, religion, 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? Toni Morrison. Mm-hmm. Sonia Sanchez. Poet. Ellen Sirleaf Johnson, the first woman elected president of any African nation. Mm-hmm. Um...

As well as the first 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 AKA 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 camaraderie and the colors and all of that. How did being a member of AKA change?

shaped Kamala 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 suroral 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

Right.

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, to like uplift

This is the ultimate fulfillment. This is the ultimate fulfillment. Someone said to me on the record, like, Kamala Harris is our ancestors' wildest dreams. The idea that a black woman could rise to that level obviously comes with some, for lack of a 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 historically.

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

by some of this, the kind of mentor-mentee relationships that form out of this. You have a woman named Latifa 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 AKA 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 connection.

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. I think at one point Latifah said, why are you wearing those

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 AKA 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. Yeah.

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... Than for Obama? Than for Obama. I mean, okay, so remember NABJ, Donald Trump, friend to the blacks. National Association of Black Journalists, right?

And I think a lot of people just pointed to her time at Howard and her membership in AKA as 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 a very specific experience.

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. Right.

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 its 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 mobilize 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,

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. But 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, the 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 in college. I was a freshman in college when Barack Obama was elected. OK, 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 and 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's 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 in 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 Chisholm might have. But I found with Obama that he had a similar anxiety about talking too much about race, let alone, let's forget 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. It's all very tense. And then he leaves, goes down the hall, and then he comes all the way back, like 150 yards, and says, in the doorway, and he says, you got to understand, every time I talk about race, 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...

I think that anxiety is very real. 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 trying 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 newyorker.com. More in a moment. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported by Fundrise.

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The gender gap in the 2024 election is historically wide, most notably among young voters. Young men are less likely to vote, but both campaigns are doing their best to change that fact. As the candidates crack open beers on late-night TV and sit ringside at ultimate fighting matches, we ask, what's really driving the gender gap, and what's it say about us? I'm Kai Wright. Join me in Atlanta on the next Notes from America. Listen wherever you get your podcasts. 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.

And Keith Haring 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. Nice to meet you.

Still here. Yes. And 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, Bill T. Jones, about the nature of mortality. ♪

After his partner Arne Zane's death, and after the loss 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 and 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 these sessions.

And they were not primarily people who were dancers. That was a wonderful thing about it.

uh 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 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 i think the very first one was in austin texas and we didn't know what we were doing but i remember one uh

Kajer, old Kajer. I'm an old Kajer now, but Kajer saying, well, I came down here because they told me there's going to be some dancing girls. He was a clown. He was a lovely man. And they all came in. It was like 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 shining. And that's an exercise not many of us actually are so interested in. I mean, maybe now, I imagine there are, but at that time, it was kind of a macabre exercise. To me, it remains a macabre exercise. I can't do it. Really? You can't at all? I mean, but do you dare when you feel most secure in yourself? I said, okay, what would you like it to be? 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-love.

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 who 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 to anything. 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 birth 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. Yes, indeed. 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. Yeah, it's a 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. He goes, "No, this is not a piece that's all about gooey emotions." I know people who are not fans, they 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.

I think about it a lot now. I think about it a lot. The moment of death now? Or 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. Yeah.

And 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 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 frankly, I'm a bit of a snob myself. I thought that I was down with it, but I thought that it was just a grand tradition of taking 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 heart 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

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 art.

And we can argue about that. I'm immediately bored. Really? Are you? If you are telling 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, a haiku is, it's supposed to appeal to the ear 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 Duchamp, who said, art is primarily an intellectual activity.

And by that, I don't know that I had this or wherever. I mean, you tell 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? I think so.

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 people.

So you make Still Here in a context of a culture of death. There's so much death happening in the country and in your community at the time. And just remembering, 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, an audience walking into it. Yeah, I laugh because I just floated the idea with my young company.

Well, you all, 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? And as I say, to the gay men in the room, is your sexuality just next door to being

The kiss of death. How did they answer that? Did they, did they kind of, well, we have prep. Yeah. What? Oh, prep. Oh, I see. Those are drugs you take now before you go out. So I said, so in other words, you don't have to worry anymore because we were worried. We knew that we were risking every time we had sex with anyone that we were, um, 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 a 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 on the stage at BAM.

They never mind my ego about that. Not doesn't matter what the piece is But then they also they also trust me and they definitely trust Janet Janet Wong my associate director and they 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'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. On 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.

uh i'm a big fan of hannah arendt and she says that the project in western philosophy has been quote a study for truth but she says that's not really the case it's not been a study for truth it's been a study from meaning now then we're off now and death forces that to think about mortality does make you think about meaning

Your life's meaning. I think it does. But I think you're probably like I am. I'm not sure if it does for everybody. Well, that's what makes it so hard to think about, I think, for me. What do you mean? To imagine the moment of your death means, forces me to immediately begin to think about the meaning of my life up until that point. Bingo. Our interview today is very revealing to me. I had announced proudly to my staff

Look, I will 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 are so, you've put so much of you into everything. It's striking to hear you say you feel like, I don't want it to have anything to do with me. Well, it's 30 years old. Yeah.

And it's got a synchronous whim, 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 that.

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. That's what Janet says. I mean, I...

I hear you. How do you feel that 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, we'll 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? Even works of art, you say. 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 lotto 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' work, still here, is being performed this week at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. That's our podcast for today. Thanks for listening.

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