The Memoir My Dad Wouldn't Write

Henry Dumas was a gifted poet and fiction writer who was killed in 1968. Since then, my father (and now I) have executed Henry Dumas's estate. Listen as I lead my father and his good friend, renowned poet Quincy Troupe in a conversation about Dumas and how Quincy's friendship with Toni Morrison helped to propel Dumas's work into the public sphere. * NEW Preserving Our Family Elders’ St...

Most people don't know that I didn't meet my dad in person until I was 11 years old. Why? Listen and find out! #podcast #oralhistory #BAM #BlackLivesMatter The Memoir My Dad Wouldn't Write is a radically honest conversation between a daughter and her dad. My dad has had an incredible life as a poet, activist, professor, and cultural worker. He wouldn't write a memoir, so this series of conversatio...

Audio Essay: “The Ghost of Henry Dumas” Our beloved Henry Dumas was shot & killed by a NYC transit cop in 1968. Since then my father has lovingly edited the work he left behind. I am my father’s daughter. Here an audio essay of the print version I published in the Yale Review. If you would like to support the continuity of this podcast, get on our exclusive list for creatives who earn FREE gif...

New Podcast! Sankofa For Henry Dumas Today marks 58 years since Henry Dumas was shot to death at the age of 33 by a New York City Transit Police officer. My father, Eugene Redmond, met Henry Dumas in 1967 when he became a teacher-counselor and director of language workshops at Southern Illinois University's Experiment in Higher Education, in East St. Louis, Illinois. Dumas’s riveting story is one...

My 84 year old Dad is a Black Arts Movement poet. The Black Arts Movement was the artistic component of the Black Power Movement. Black Studies was the academic response to the Black Power Movement. In this episode, we finish our discussion of how he came to be an architect of Black Studies in U.S. universities. The Memoir My Dad Wouldn’t Write is a radically honest conversation between a daughter...

My 83 year old Dad is a Black Arts Movement poet. The Black Arts Movement was the artistic component of the Black Power Movement. Black Studies was the academic response to the Black Power Movement. In this episode, my Dad discusses how he came to be an architect of Black Studies in U.S. universities. * The Memoir My Dad Wouldn't Write is a radically honest conversation between a daughter and her...

New Podcast! “How A Poet Heals At 83”. My superhero of an 83 year old Dad is out of rehab and back home! In this episode we talk about what healing looks like now. * The Memoir My Dad Wouldn't Write is a radically honest conversation between a daughter and her dad. My dad has had an incredible life as a poet, activist, professor, and cultural worker. He wouldn't write a memoir, so this series of c...

My superhero of an 83 year old Dad is presently recovering from back surgery in a rehab facility. In this episode we talk about how he wound up here and what his goals for healing are. * The Memoir My Dad Wouldn't Write is a radically honest conversation between a daughter and her dad. My dad has had an incredible life as a poet, activist, professor, and cultural worker. He wouldn't write a memoir...

In the words of the great American poet Gwendolyn Brooks: " We are each other's business ; we are each other's harvest; we are each other's magnitude and bond. In this episode my dad details some of the many jobs he had and how he moved from laborer to academic. He also shares how his income was always a communal offering to his family. As he reveals how his ingenuity placed him in better and bett...

In 1966, SIUE officially began an East St. Louis special program named “ Experiment in Higher Education ” (EHE). This program was established through federal funding and provided financial support to disadvantaged students for their first two years of college . This was my dad's first teaching job. This is where he received crucial mentoring and set collegial patterns in motion that would characte...

My father met a woman who would forever shape him as and artist and a man. She became a signature mentor, and provided him with character building guidance that he still draws from to this day. That woman, was the great African-American dancer , choreographer , creator of the Dunham Technique, author, educator, anthropologist, and social activist Katherine Dunham. Dunham had one of the most succes...

After the murder of George Floyd, the world has responded in an unprecedented wave of protests. My dad has lived through several massive surges of political fervor like the current one. These “surges” are often  (but not always) accompanied by “consciousness raising.” What does it mean to come to consciousness? My dad and I discuss how he came to consciousness amid a time of national upheaval...

After the murder of George Floyd, the world has responded in an unprecedented wave of protests. My dad has lived through several massive surges of political fervor like the current one. These "surges" are often  (but not always) accompanied by "consciousness raising."  What does it mean to come to consciousness? My dad and I discuss how he came to consciousness amid a time of national up...

What comparisons can we draw between the 1960’s and now within the context of the Covid 19 pandemic? I’ve been observing social distancing from my 82 year old dad, but I was eager to talk with him about how to use history to cope with the current health crisis.

What is it like to love a home it feels like the world despises? For my Dad, East St. Louis is at the end of that question. In this episode we move further up his timeline through the turbulent 1960's and into East St. Louis's slow transition from manufacturing hub to prime example of why he is so strongly pro-reparations.

On August 5, 2019, writer, editor, and Black genius, Toni Morrison transitioned to ancestorhood. My father knew the iconic writer well. This is a special episode where he discusses Toni Morrison from his unique point of view.

My dad has seen how stories are shaped by who writes them and who publishes them. As a journalist and expert at almost every level of the field -- typesetting, editing, reporting, column production, and sales -- his insight into how the 20th century's news industry shaped culture is fascinating!

My father left the Marines with the intention of becoming a news man.  It was the dawn of the 1960's and print journalism was in its hey day. He became the first Black editor of his university's newspaper. There was also a "Newness" in Negro political thought.  My father attended the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, and witnessed the birth of the U.S.'s most explosive decad...

It was the final half of the 1950's. The U.S. was basking in the glow of its Ozzie and Harriet delusions. It was a culture in deep denial and in no way prepared for the sea change of a decade it was headed toward. In many ways my dad, Eugene B. Redmond was the same. He'd joined the Marines after less than a year in college. He was a young man in flux. A young man in prelude to a breakthrough. Like...

As a man who came of age in the late 1950's, my father has seen conceptions of manhood evolve and evolve again. In this current political moment, full of revelation and retribution, my father and I talk about how he was "taught" manhood through the examples around him. (Plus we explore the tradition of nick naming in the African American community.) CALLING ALL STL METRO ELDERS! Are you over 60 an...

My dad's upsouth childhood included the Mississippi river in a way that seems inconceivable now. From fishing it, to swimming it, to being baptized in it, to making love next to it, the river figured largely in the lives and imaginations of post war East St. Louis. In this Mississippi river themed episode, we're joined by photographer and colleague, Jennifer Colten to hear and see what the river m...

The ability to protest for Black dignity, and for justice was something my dad learned early on. He is a member of the generation that created the modern "demonstration." As he moved in to manhood in the final years of the 1950's, listen to what his earliest protest experiences taught him, AND MORE!

This is a special remote episode. Listen as my father and I travel the actual roads where he came into contact with Red Foxx, and The Ike Turner Ikettes. Listen as he calls back into existence the bustling post-war Black East St. Louis of his childhood.

67 years before Michael Brown jr. was murdered in Ferguson, my father was teen hearing about Emmett Till being lynched by white men. In this episode, he talks about how this news and the community events that happened afterward made a life long impression. Go to www. FemininePronoun.com to read the creative non fiction I wrote about this pivotal time and to see how story telling, podcasting worksh...

East St. Louis's Black community of the 1940's and 50's was a swirl of influences. Most Black people were recent migrants from the south or the children of southern migrants. They were a new citified version of Blackness, and with that newness came the stresses and pressures of urban life. A closer physical proximity. A different economic competition. More access to drugs and alcohol. More violenc...