Published May 18, 2016
The Undefeated is finally with us. The website that bills itself as “the premier platform for exploring the intersections of race, sports and culture” launched Tuesday after a long time in development. If you think 33 months from birth to first day of publishing stories required patience on the part of those involved — and those waiting to read those stories — consider this quote from managing editor Raina Kelley.
“It’s only been the past 125 years that African-Americans have had any regular access to the printing press,” Kelley said. “All real forms of expression African-Americans excelled at when we didn’t have access to the printing press, we want to bring back into the fold. We don’t want to limit to the written word because [African-Americans] have not wanted to limit ourselves to the written word.
“One of the fears is that people are going to think that everything is going to be a screed against institutionalized white power, like “Letter From Birmingham Jail,” or somber and guilt-inducing. If we need to do that, we can do that. But we didn’t want to place limitations on ourselves. We wanted to get this blank slate. We want to be able to push boundaries with spoken word, music, whatever. … We want to match subject matter to the form we think fits it best.”
The video “We Are The Undefeated” released before the launch made it a pretty good bet that those words about not limiting the site’s coverage to the printed word wasn’t idle talk.
Kelley’s comments reminded me of Alice Walker’s “In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens” and Walker’s exploration of the roots of her creativity.
Walker puzzles over this as a young woman, until one day she is standing in one of the Smithsonian museums, looking at a quilt displayed with a note that reads, “an anonymous Black woman in Alabama, a hundred years ago.”
Right then, Walker knew exactly where her artistic sense had come from: her mother and her grandmother and the women who came before them.
Though they had not received the education Walker had been privileged to earn at Spelman College and Sarah Lawrence College, they were every bit as creative as she was discovering herself to be. In her grandmother’s quilts, in her mother’s lavish gardens were bountiful expressions of artistry – expressed through the vehicles that were available to them as poor, uneducated black women in the Jim Crow South.
Walker’s recognition of her foremothers’ creativity leads her to ruminate on women’s artistic traditions in general – from the domestic arts of quilt making and gardening to the few written texts that have been passed down by women. Walker sings the praises of Phillis Wheatley, the slave who is widely recognized as the first African American writer, male or female, and she wonders about Frances Harper, Nella Larsen, and her patron saint, Zora Neale Hurston.
Source: Alice Walker: “In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens”
Kelley’s remarks took me a long way back — to my discovery of Walker and the rich soil from which her collection of essays grew. They took me back to another point in time — early in my journalism career, and my too-slow recognition of how white most American newsrooms were, and how that shaped coverage. Kelley’s words reminded me of the many uncomfortable moments along the way toward a greater appreciation for the privilege to participate in journalism in ways inaccessible to so many from birth.
Her comments resonated with me for many reasons — because I’d read Alice Walker all those years ago, and Toni Morrison, and “Letter From Birmingham Jail,” and Ralph Wiley, and Harry Edwards, and because I’d read and heard Michael Wilbon, Howard Bryant, and Bomani Jones, and Jemele Hill, and Ta-Nehisi Coates, and J.A. Adande, and others (but not enough). Kelley’s point of view connected with me after years of following social media accounts that underscore so many truths behind what she said, and what Walker wrote, and even what was stitched into that quilt in Alabama that we cannot see with the naked eye, and certainly not the closed one.
In two days, The Undefeated has published powerful stories, including “The Waco Horror,” which will sicken and outrage even those who are well aware of the history of racism and lynchings in the Southern U.S. — even as it gives us an early look at The Undefeated’s promise of unconventional storytelling.
At a time when thousands of former journalists are working in other fields because of the ever-shrinking number of opportunities to earn a living telling stories, it’s exciting to see a new outlet emerge, even if it was a long time in coming. Having hustled to meet daily deadlines throughout my career, covering all of my adult life, I’m mindful of the fact that the work is just beginning for The Undefeated, even after its 33 months of preparations.
I wish them well, and much success in their constant gardening and quilting.
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