Clinging to the difficult
As I prepare for tonight’s “pre-launch” book event at the 5th Maine Regiment Museum on Peaks Island with a howling nor’easter on its way under a full moon, I am reminded of the wisdom of the great Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke:
We must cling to the difficult.
Now, I don’t do things because they are hard. Lots of times I try to find the easiest path with the fewest obstacles. It’s a short life, and we have stuff to do.
But when something is really important, when it lives in your heart, I think you have to embrace the challenge, whatever it takes.
So it has been from the very beginning with my book, Original City, Original Sin: King, the Klan, and the Fight for Civil Rights in St. Augustine, Florida.
In many ways, this was an audacious thing to pursue. Having identified what I believe to be one of the great under-told stories in American history—a significant gap in the scholarship of the civil rights movement—I became determined to take it on. I knew from the beginning that there were some formidable obstacles standing in my way.
For one, I was not trained as a historian. I’m a journalist. I didn’t major in history, or do graduate work in that area.
But I had a lifelong fascination with Martin Luther King, Jr., a certain radar for unfairness, and a constitutional doggedness that I knew would serve me well.
For another, the focus of most of the journalism I did was sports. Mostly, I had covered games and written feature stories about athletes and coaches. I had written two books before: one on college basketball, one on minor league baseball.
But I had developed a big appetite for stories that combined sports and social justice, and I thought in time I could emerge from what one friend aptly described as the “sports ghetto.”
Historians as a group tend to be—understandably—rigid gatekeepers. They don’t let just anyone into the tribe. Sometimes they regard journalism as something that is quick and superficial. Much of the time, frankly, that’s a legitimate criticism.
But here’s the thing: the classic definition of journalism is “the first draft of history.” So in one sense, at least, a historian is a journalist who doesn’t quit, and I knew I could be that kind of person. I had seen the great Jonathan Eig—one of my biggest supporters with this book—do exactly that.
That said, I knew that the only way I could write this book would be journalistically. Yes, there would be huge piles of reading, visits to archives all over the country, etc.—but the heart of the book would be intimate. It would require hundreds of interviews.
That depended on convincing a number of people to talk to me, many of whom were, for reasons that make complete sense, not inclined to trust outsiders. That didn’t always work, but as I tell my students, good journalism depends fundamentally on “polite persistence.” Here, I also had something of a secret weapon because my wife, Missy-Marie Montgomery, has empathy that flows from her spirit like a waterfall, She often accompanied me on my reporting journeys and helped open many a door. (Honestly, it’s her book, too—not just for paving the way for some of these hard conversations—but for taking a monumental interest in this subject, for devoting so many hours over so many years to candid and precise editing, and for challenging me at every turn to be the best writer and human I could be.)
Another considerable challenge I faced was the fact that I have a demanding fulltime job as a professor of communications at Springfield College. It’s a 4-4 teaching load. I wasn’t going to mail it in. For my own sense of self (and of course for so many students I care about), I had to be good at this job, and that meant a huge amount of time. Still does. And so what that meant was that summers—precious summers—had to be filled significantly with book research. Also, lots of weekends. I got in the habit of waking up very early every day and seizing those quiet hours.
Bottom line: I had to make my life much smaller, confining it almost entirely to three areas. I had to be good with my amazing family. I had to be good with my job. And, of course…the book.
There wasn’t room for much else. Say goodbye to my own sports journalism, a world I loved for many years and one that brought in some nice side income. I had to confine my reading almost exclusively to civil rights in order to navigate the steep learning curve.
I did spend some lovely time with friends, but not nearly enough. Travel for years consisted almost completely of trips between Massachusetts and Maine, coupled with research trips to Florida. That is still a mighty privileged life, I fully recognize.
There was absolutely no guarantee that this was going to work. No guarantee that ultimately I would write a book about which Ken Burns would say:
“Woven with journalistic rigor and lyrical wonder, this is a timely and beautiful book.”
The story just gripped me. It would not let go. It was, I suppose, a crazy thing to do, but I felt like I had no choice. So it took 20 years, more or less.
Now here we are on the precipice of publication, set for October 15. Tonight is a pre-launch event, essentially a preseason game, spring training, if you prefer. But I’m thrilled to do it on Peaks Island, a place I love, surrounded by a community of people who are precious to me.
I can only laugh at the small, totally weird, and slightly difficult things that have been happening in the walk-up to this event.
Like the night of September 8, after the first day of classes, when I decided to celebrate—as anyone would—by taking out the garbage and recycling. I stepped out the back door of the house Missy and I have lived in for 20 years onto what had always been a back stoop and four stairs. Except that late in the day, our sub-contractor had removed said stoop and stairs without notifying us, planning to rebuild it the next morning. Down I plummeted: leading to a couple of sets of x-rays, a CT-Scan, and a (possibly unrelated) visit to the emergency room until 2 a.m. Plenty of pain even now, but fortunately, no lasting damage. All good.
Then there was the little bump in the road when Cambridge University Press got hit by a cybersecurity incident, disrupting many systems, including the book supply chain. I haven’t seen physical books yet, and they are not available for tonight’s pre-launch (though I’m assured they will be for subsequent events.)
Tonight, almost as a preordained mini-challenge, my debut event at a museum that is only a stone’s throw away from the ocean should time perfectly with the arrival of a major nor’easter. The waves right now are simply spectacular. I’m hoping for a veritable monsoon when we get the party started at 6 p.m.
I’m clinging to the difficult, and I’m smiling. It’s all part of the necessary journey.
Comments