| Issue #33, November 10, 2006 |
Chasing America: Notes of a Rock n’ Soul Integrationist
In the world of crystal-clear HD TVs, filled with hundreds of channels featuring people from all over the globe, grainy images of the freedom marches and civil rights protests from the 1970s appear to be set in the very distant past. It is hard to remember that it was less than forty years ago when Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was brutally murdered on his motel balcony for trying to ensure that people of color were allowed into our nation’s public schools. And even harder still to imagine that the Civil Rights Acts he fought to have passed needed to be legally re-affirmed in 1988, then again in 1991.
Perhaps the most effective way to remember how recently our country decided that Americans of all skin colors could live, work and study together, is by meeting and talking to one of the many pioneers of the movement that helped to bring these decisions to fruition. And not just any 1970s picketer, but a civil-rights pioneer who successfully integrated into White American society, and can eloquently describe the process by which a young, underprivileged man grew to become an award-winning writer, while participating in the greatest civil rights battle in our country’s history. On Saturday, November 11th, at Canio’s Books in Sag Harbor, true civil rights pioneer, Emmy Award and Golden Eagle Award-winning writer and actor Dennis Watlington will read from his recently published memoir, Chasing America: Notes of a Rock n’ Soul Integrationist. Watlington, a Sag Harbor resident, will be on hand to answer questions about his life, his book, and his many experiences writing for film, television, and numerous publications, most notably Vanity Fair and The New York Times, and fighting for his rightful place as not only a great black writer, but first and foremost, a great American writer.
Watlington became an integrationist-in-training at the tender age of eleven, when he was selected to take part in a neighborhood boy’s club that helped its members prepare for and apply to the country’s most prestigious private schools. His mentor and program leader, Chick Griffin, believed “you want the kids they call incorrigible [for the program], because if you can peel back that layer, you will find an incredibly competitive, resourceful person.” And, indeed, Dennis Watlington was one of the most incorrigible with a string of robberies and drug addictions under his belt by the time he reached high-school age. These obstacles plagued the intelligent young man throughout his youth, and eventually led to his expulsion from the program. However, a chance meeting with a trustee from the Hotchkiss School, and the full scholarship to the challenging private boarding school that resulted from that meeting, put him back on the road to success. When legendary writer Gail Sheehy met Dennis as a teenager, she was so taken by him that she wrote a chapter about him, the “spirit inextinguishable,” in her 1976 critically-acclaimed book Passages. Watlington’s friendship with activists such as Sheehy and writer Gail Kopple, coupled with his liberal Hotchkiss and New York University education, molded him into an eloquent, passionate activist for black rights with a penchant for translating his feelings into gripping stories with universal appeal.
In 1979, Watlington wrote and directed his first play, produced by the American Theater of Actors. The play, titled Bullpen, was the play that “Bruce Willis came out of, Denzel had a shot in, Giancarlo Esposito came out of it, that is the play where it started,” he explained. This play was one of the first instances where black themes appealed to mixed audiences, and helped to open the floodgates for black writers, directors, and producers who dreamed of entering the exclusive worlds of backstage Broadway and back-lot Hollywood. After his success as a playwright, Watlington began reporting for Vanity Fair, and also penned scripts for the daytime soap operas “All My Children” and “One Life to Live.” Watlington explained that when he first started writing for television many people thought that it was “loony to hire a black writer to write a White script… I was termed a ‘Blackologist,’ which means that when they had a black theme they would dial me up.”
Now, with his success as an award-winning documentary film writer, with masterpieces such as Zahira, the story of a Spanish girl affected by the 2004 bombings in Spain, and The Untold West: The Black West, under his belt, Watlington is not only a pioneer for black rights, but “one of the beneficiaries” of those rights and privileges for which he fought. Now, fifteen years after the latest Civil Rights Act was signed, our country is once again in turmoil, and our ability to retain many of our rights is in question. During these confusing and daunting times, the words of a true soldier in the United States’ last battle for freedom may be exactly what we need to stay strong and uncompromising, and to keep in mind that once victory is had, the spoils are indeed worth the fight.
Dennis Watlington will read selections from Chasing America: Notes of a Rock n’ Soul Integrationist, on Saturday, November 11th, at 6 p.m. The reading will take place at Canio’s Books, 290 Main St., in Sag Harbor. The reading is free; reservations are not required. For more information, please call (631) 725-4926, or visit www.caniosbooks.com.
–Sabrina C. Mashburn
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