a conversation with
JANUS ADAMS
I first encountered former NPR arts correspondent Janus Adams, like many of us do, by hearing her voice on the radio. She describes her weekly WJFF program, “The Janus Adams Show,” as a conversation about “race and courage” — and it could just as soon be “grace and courage,” as these two words seem to define her. We spoke on her couch in the afternoon at her home in Sullivan County, New York. My conversation with her was long, emotional, and at times painful, even transformative. It went on for so long, that we sat the last 30 minutes of it in near darkness, neither of us getting up to switch on a light. I later discovered that so much of what we spoke about was, in a way, encapsulated in a speech she gave at SUNY New Paltz in 2018. For the sake of brevity, I’ve centered this interview on that speech, that message, and how it rings even more true today.Interview and Portraits MICHAEL MUNDY
Michael Mundy: Janus, thank you so much for speaking with us today. After visiting you the other day, I walked away from our discussion with something so powerful that has stayed with me. So, I’d like to pursue that today, which will possibly encompass a significant number of things we spoke about. You’re part of the distinguished series of speakers at SUNY New Paltz. You had a talk in 2018 entitled, “Know When to Leave the Plantation Behind.” Would you talk to me about that? Tell me what that meant to you.
Janus Adams: When I did that speech, Trump had already been elected. I was looking at what was happening, and one of the things that struck me is one of those that are difficult — not difficult to talk about, but that I know can be sensitive.
MM: Can you elaborate?
JA: I was driving around the Hudson Valley and noticing what I felt to be far too many Confederate flags — and this in New York State! On a common-sense level, you say, “Okay, I know this country is as racist as it can be.” But this is the North! The likelihood of a Northern family not losing anybody in the Civil War was probably less than point one percent. So many men were killed during that war, that almost every family was touched. Everyone was affected. To think that Northerners would be erecting these monuments to traitors of the very flag that they are purporting to be so enamored of.
They are contradicting themselves and don’t even see it. But what they do see is the value of racism and how important that is to them.
MM: So, is this sort of a mindset you are addressing?
JA: That was on my mind when I decided to do this speech, “Know When to Leave the Plantation Behind.” The actual phrase comes from my grand-uncle, who was a native of Saint Kitts, West Indies. He was an organizer of the plantation workers. My grand-uncle was out there organizing, and he gets word one night that they’re coming to kill him, and that he had better leave then or else. Now, this isn’t in the era of slavery. This is the era of neo-slavery called segregation and colonization. And so, that night, he gets on a ship and comes to the United States. As he is coming into the New York harbor, he writes a letter to my grand-aunt, telling her that he sees the Statue of Liberty. He talked about his dreams of America and said he knows he will succeed. “I know I will make it because you love me so.” That’s the letter, he writes.
MM: How fascinating. What did your great-uncle end up doing?
JA: He becomes an attorney and has a devil of a time because not only is he a Black person, but he is dark,
darker than my complexion. The darker you are, the worst you’re treated. He had an awful time, but he does become a lawyer. But after becoming an attorney, he decides he wants to be a minister. He became one of the first African Americans in the Lutheran conference and moved up in the Lutheran Church hierarchy. I asked him why he left the law behind, and all that he said was, “I wanted to save them before I had to defend them.” So that is my grand-uncle, Cyril Lucas. He was the one who told me, “know when to leave the plantation.”
He said that to me, when I was in graduate school.
MM: What was the context when he said that? Was he relating a story of his life, or was he applying it to something in your life?
JA: I’m going to say he was doing both. Once I began journalism, I was fortunate to have been able to record a lot of my elders. My great-uncle was telling me about his life because I had asked about our family history. We were also talking about what I was going through at that point, and some of the overt racism that was happening to me.
MM: How did you connect that with what’s happening today?
“BLACK PEOPLE WERE STOLEN, KIDNAPPED, SHIPPED. EVEN IF YOU WANT TO SAY, ‘WELL, WE DIDN’T DO THE KIDNAPPING.’ BUT YOU DID THE BUYING.”
A: So with all of that — in the midst of Trump, in the midst of this accelerated re-segregation of America, in the midst of these Don’t Tread On Me symbols and the Confederate flags… Do you know what America’s problem is? It has never left the plantation behind. It is still stuck there. Even the nonsense about Black people having a slave mentality. No! White people have a slave mentality. White people created American slavery. White people created what the plantation would be, not Black people. What Black people did was do every-thing they could to survive. That’s the root of that speech.
MM: When you deliver the speech, you are so generous, compassionate, and calm. It’s almost a contradiction of what you’re telling people. How can you manage to be just that, while living in a country that has treated you so poorly, let alone your entire family and race?
JA: First of all, thank you. Secondly, when I speak, and when I write, I try to do so from the point of healing. That’s the mission to confront history: to put us on the path of acknowledgment, atonement, and some kind of activist healing. And so, I’m in the activist healing mode. I’m hoping to help other people get there. My job, I feel, is not to make excuses for the country, not be revisionist in terms of the horrors of it, but to give people the fuel that they need to do exactly what I’m talking about — recognize it, to confront it, to atone for it. Then bring themselves to the point of healing from it so that we can all move on. Know when to leave the plantation behind. It’s time.
MM: I couldn’t agree more. I have a two-part question, what do white people need to do to leave the plantation behind, and what do Black people need to do to leave the plantation in your view?
JA: I think that that is something that each person has to figure out where they are and what their circumstances are. That’s the first thing. It’s like standing up in an A.A. meeting and saying, “I am an alcoholic.” But then beyond that, for each person, it’s about where you are. I can’t say to everybody what you should do. I can’t tell you. But I can tell you that you must do something.
MM: I agree. Not everyone is going to march on the front lines…
JA: During the ’60s civil rights movement — whoever you were — if you were sincerely operating in the cause of justice and human rights, there was a place for you. Maybe, you couldn’t be the one getting your head bashed in, like a John Lewis, but you could be the one who
was there to bandage him up, or making sure that you dragged him away from the madness and got him to safety and then tended his wounds. Maybe you’re not the one who can tolerate that blood of Bloody Sunday and many other days and the lynchings. Perhaps you’re not the one who can tolerate that. But maybe you can fix dinner for the ones who are. Or make food bags for those who will take to the march. Or perhaps you can watch their kids while someone else marches.
MM: So the precedent had been set.
JA: There are two phenomenal stories that I love from my studies of the Underground Railroad and history. One is about a man, Arnold Gragston was his name. For whatever reason, he could have escaped, but he stayed by day a dutiful slave, and by night, he was rowing other slaves to freedom. Milla Granson is just unbelievable to me. She held a midnight school to teach people how to read and write, and she would train them on how to write a freedom pass. Then send them out to teach and help others. That’s who we are descended from. And that is what Black people did to leave the plantation even when physically they didn’t. One of the Underground Railroad’s main principles is that once you escape, if you can, you help free somebody else. If you can’t, then you’re part of the committee that welcomes the next one, helps them with food, with clothing, with a place to stay, and a way to earn a living. It’s an essential part of what it meant to be on the Underground Railroad.
MM: Hearing you talk about the past and America with so much pain, I’d be curious to know what patriotism means to you?
JA: We talk about the “land of the free and home of the brave” — nonsense! Don’t give me the mythology. You can tell me about the aspiration, and I will accept that but don’t ask me to have Stockholm Syndrome and swallow everything else whole. I won’t. And because I have left the plantation, I shouldn’t. I mean, how egregious is this thing that America had, where after you steal a person’s life, you have the nerve to call them thieves for stealing themselves. I mean, this hysteria about Blacks as thieves goes back to the plantation. It goes back to saying that if you escaped, you’ve stolen someone’s property, yourself! White people aren’t spoken of as thieves for participating in that.
MM: And yet, so many people will never admit to being a part of that.
JA: I own a pre-printed slave document. So, it shows how institutionalized slavery was at that point. It had pre-printed across the top, “Negro Slaves.” Then it had the subgroups by age (children, teenagers, young people, and then older people) as the categories under each male and female. The names are written in by hand — just the first name — and their value ($50 for this person, $75 for that person). They are summed and totaled with the carriages, watches, and other property of the landowner. And the people are summed and totaled with all the property for tax purposes. So whenever I hear people going crazy about so-called stealing by Black people… Black people were stolen, kidnapped, shipped. Even if you want to say, “well, we didn’t do the kidnapping.” But you did the buying.
MM: Since so much of your life is consumed with research, writing, and talking about racism, how do you deal with this personally?
JA: For my own sanity and my own sense of healing, I would go nuts, if I were in anger mode at every point, and especially because I’ve done the research, and know from a documented sense, what it is that I’m talking about. When I finished writing my book, “Glory Days,” I would have to at night, shower twice to wash away the toxins of American history and to be able to eke
out these nuggets of self-empowerment.
MM: So you believe that silence is complicity in this whole organization of hatred in America.
JA: You know, I always knew that I was going to do a [radio] show beyond the range of Sullivan County, New York. Once I decided to do the show, I would have had to do a different kind of show, one that I could also grow. But I have had such difficulty oftentimes getting guests for my show. Because once people heard that it was a show about race and courage… People would tell me that they were afraid of their neighbors, hearing them talk about certain things. If you hold that in mind for a moment… When the BLM demonstration took place in Callicoon, I had not planned to participate. But I was asked the day before, and I said okay — because that’s what you’re supposed to do. Then to see these waves of people coming up over the hill, from the [Callicoon] Bridge and coming down into the grassy area… It meant something different to me than it may have meant to other people. It was so amazing to me because here were people who were putting their identities out there. So I do think that that’s doing something. That’s why I say I really can’t know what someone’s next step is going to be, but I do know, it begins with one courageous thing — a thing that you did not think you would ever see yourself doing. That’s the place where I think we all have to begin regardless of race. If we’re going to solve this problem, we’re going to be on the side of the solution rather than the side of the problem.
MM: It sounds like the only way to get things done is this culmination of acts of courage. It has been heart-wrenching to hear you speaking about these things. I know your personal involvement with racism was since you were pretty much born. It seems like so much of this was thrust upon you, at times when you didn’t choose to. You spoke at length the other day about being one of the first black students to integrate the New York City public schools.
JA: I was eight years old…
MM: You told me about your cousin, who was famously attacked with an American flag in Boston — just a horrifying image. Here you are, this voice of reason and compassion. You carry yourself with such grace and elegance. I admire you and what you do and am so happy that we have met and have had these conversations. It’s helped me, with just these two conversations with you, grow enormously. My understanding of things and my duty now has become much clearer. So I thank you for that.
JA: So where do we go from here? I think it’s the self and soul searching that needs to be done. It’s the active healing that has to occur, which, back to what we said, is about the acknowledgment. It’s about atonement, and it’s also about looking at our language. You know, so much of our racism and our sexism is embedded in the language. Why is dark, evil, and light, good? Why? You know, just on that little level and the things that derive from that, then you start changing your use of the word, and the term. Doing little things like that can make you more conscious and intentional.