Transcript

It’s fall, and that means “back-to-school”. We put together this week’s episodes for the educators in our audience — especially those of you who may be looking for a little Slowdown treatment on those classroom classics, from Shakespeare to Frost. We hope you all enjoy these selections, as learners of any age.

I’m Major Jackson and this is The Slowdown.

Big ideas like democracy, freedom, opportunity, fairness, and justice can sound grandiose through the minutiae of everyday life. Most of us simply try to live our lives with joy and dignity. We maintain daily routines far away from the headlines. We grapple with a personal set of challenges. And so it can be difficult to keep in sight our commitment to shared values.

For this reason, poetry, along with the other arts, have a special function; they tell the stories that underscore fundamental beliefs that make us a humane society. They serve as a measure of how far we have come but also serve as a place to test limits and challenge assumptions.

That brings us to today’s poem “Negro Hero, to suggest Dorie Miller” by Gwendolyn Brooks. It’s a dramatic monologue spoken in the voice of a Navy sailor during World War II. Dorie Miller, a black deckhand, was confined to only clean, cook, and serve food on the battleship USS West Virginia. On the day that the Japanese military dropped bombs on Pearl Harbor, Dorie dragged his injured commanding officer to safety then took up one of the anti-aircraft guns, despite not being trained. He shot down two airplanes. After running out of ammunition, he saved even more lives. He was awarded the Navy Cross. Seven years later, President Harry Truman signed Executive Order 9981 which mandated the desegregation of the U.S. military.

We have since studied the psychological damage of structural second-class citizenship. We know how dehumanizing historical exclusion has been, from swimming pools, whites-only neighborhoods, and schools. But there is something even more demoralizing — fighting for a country in a foreign war that professes freedom, but does not see you as fit to enjoy the fullness of such freedoms.

My grandfather served in a segregated army unit and spoke of such indignities. And this is where Gwendolyn Brooks takes off. Many Americans, of all ethnic and racial backgrounds, have shared in the burden of having our country live up to its ideals. The vision of Brooks’ poem is to enter the complex consciousness of Dorie Miller to understand the toll of saving a nation.

When I teach this poem, I typically discuss poetic tone (amused defiance and inner awareness). I teach Gwendolyn Brooks’ proclivity toward alliteration, each stanza’s ending rhymes, and paradoxical language.

When I last taught the poem, I asked a student to recite the poem. A Southeast Asian-American student could not mouth the once acceptable word “Negro.” Instead, without warning, she replaced the word with human, so that the title was “Human Hero,” and the black newspapers were “human weeklies.” It was heartbreaking. She simply could not say the word that, to her ear, sounded too close to the racial epithet with which we are all familiar. The class then discussed the nature of language and how context and time alter the meaning of words.

What lessons the poem ultimately invites is an exploration of heroism, especially in relation to nationhood faced with persistent racism.

Negro Hero (to suggest Dorie Miller)
by Gwendolyn Brooks

I had to kick their law into their teeth in order to save them.
However I have heard that sometimes you have to deal
Devilishly with drowning men in order to swim them to shore.
Or they will haul themselves and you to the trash and the fish beneath.
(When I think of this, I do not worry about a few
Chipped teeth.)

It is good I gave glory, it is good I put gold on their name.
Or there would have been spikes in the afterward hands.
But let us speak only of my success and the pictures in the Caucasian dailies
As well as the Negro weeklies. For I am a gem.
(They are not concerned that it was hardly The Enemy my fight was against
But them.)

It was a tall time. And of course my blood was
Boiling about in my head and straining and howling and singing me on.
Of course I was rolled on wheels of my boy itch to get at the gun.
Of course all the delicate rehearsal shots of my childhood massed in mirage before me.
Of course I was child
And my first swallow of the liquor of battle bleeding black air dying and demon noise
Made me wild. 

It was kinder than that, though, and I showed like a banner my kindness.
I loved. And a man will guard when he loves. 
Their white-gowned democracy was my fair lady.
With her knife lying cold, straight, in the softness of her sweet-flowing sleeve. 
But for the sake of the dear smiling mouth and the stuttered promise I toyed with my life. 
I threw back!—I would not remember
Entirely the knife. 

Still—am I good enough to die for them, is my blood bright enough to be spilled, 
Was my constant back-question—are they clear
On this? Or do I intrude even now?
Am I clean enough to kill for them, do they wish me to kill
For them or is my place while death licks his lips and strides to them
In the galley still?

(In a southern city a white man said
Indeed, I’d rather be dead;
Indeed, I’d rather be shot in the head
Or ridden to waste on the back of a flood 
Than saved by the drop of a black man’s blood.)

Naturally, the important thing is, I helped to save them, them and a part of their democracy.
Even if I had to kick their law into their teeth in order to do that for them. 
And I am feeling well and settled in myself because I believe it was a good job, 
Despite this possible horror: that they might prefer the
Preservation of their law in all its sick dignity and their knives
To the continuation of their creed
And their lives.

"Negro Hero (to suggest Dorie Miller)" by Gwendolyn Brooks, from SELECTED POEMS copyright © 2006 Gwendolyn Brooks. Reprinted by consent of Brooks Permissions.