Behind the Scenes of the Harlem Renaissance: Insights from Victoria Christopher Murray

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How y'all feeling?

Let me tell you about y'all.

Y'all done went through the snow.

I don't know if you're supposed to be at work, but you here.

But my name is Ramonda Young and I am co owner of Mahogany Books with this amazing man back here, Mr.

Derek Young.

Yep.

Been in business.

Now in April, it'll be 18 years, right?

Yes, 18 years in business.

And in June, we'll be married 23 years.

So this is the whole thing going on.

I love me some hymns.

So anyway, let me stay focused, but just a little bit about Mahogany Books.

Like I said, we've been in business for 18 years.

And we started 18 years ago in our one bedroom apartment in Alexandria, Virginia.

And the whole premise was, how do we make black books accessible no matter where you live?

And this is before all the book banning got to the level that it is now.

I'm from Tulsa, Oklahoma, and I grew up maybe two miles from Black Wall Street.

Let me see a show of hands.

Or if you're familiar with Black Wall Street.

Okay.

Black people.

Okay.

I grew up two miles from Black Wall street, and it was never taught in my school books.

I never knew it was there all those years because they kept that history from us.

And if you know about Black Wall street, there's innovate.

So many innovators.

There were black people who owned hospitals, dry cleaners, banks, schools.

I mean, you name it, we had created it.

So I always tell people, if I had known those type of thought leaders and innovators were two miles from my home, how much more confident I'd be, how much more bolder I would be, how much taller I would walk.

Because if they did it, I already knew that I could do it.

And so when I think about Mahogany Books for us, I didn't want anybody else to not have access to their history because somebody else didn't think it was important enough.

Right.

So we think it's important enough.

So we said we're going to make those books accessible.

So that's one of the reasons why we exist.

My husband had access to black books.

He's from dc, Proud.

You know, he got all south, south, easy, all that, you know, from dc, I'm from Oklahoma.

So that's a whole other got country mouse, city mouse thing going, I guess, huh?

Mm.

But again, it was important for us.

So every time we have events like this, it just.

It never gets old because you guys took time, intention and resources to be here tonight for this little bookstore that was started with a dream and a laptop in an apartment.

And here we are 18 years later, still making these books accessible, still making spaces for us to have conversations and be ourselves.

And so I just want to say thank you.

Give yourselves a big round of applause for being here tonight.

It is important to us.

And I want to give a special shout out to this library.

It's funny, we've been 18 years and we've done so many events here over the years.

So it's just a blessing and a gift for us to still have this space, still have this relationship.

So let's give it up to the Oxen Hill branch.

Yes.

PG Library.

Yes.

Thank you, Duane.

Let me tell you something.

Black people be doing something.

The library is officially closed.

But we have a relationship here where they say we'll stay open for you guys for this type of program.

So it means something deep to us to not just be a space for us, but also that the library joins us in this way.

So I'm just grateful that I could see all these melanated faces.

Non melanated.

I don't know who you know, everybody.

Let me just say that.

Get into something.

But thank you.

Thank you for making space for us.

Thank you for sharing time with us.

Thank you for supporting Mahogany Books in such a way at such a time as this.

I'm not gonna go on my have my TED Talk right now, but y'all know what to do with y'all dollars, not just for Mahogany Books.

For so many black bookstores, there are a lot.

There's about 162 black bookstores now across the nation.

It went down to maybe 40 or 50 at one point, but 160 that can ship and host events for you guys.

So even if you have friends in other places, think about how can my dollars go there.

I know people can have your books dropped and droned to you in the middle of the night.

I know who that is.

But also think about, wow, can I use those dollars here?

And impact those bookstores that are in my community that host spaces and events like that?

Think about that when you consider purchasing.

So anyway, that's my TED Talk, but thank you guys for being here.

So let me get to the.

Y'all didn't come here to see Ramonda.

Let's get to it.

So tonight, I'm excited.

We have two amazing people.

Victoria Christopher Murray is here tonight, so let's give it up for her.

Yep.

Yes.

Yes.

Victoria Christopher Murray.

Actually, I think her first book was out in 2000, and we've been rolling with her almost every since.

And so this is just like a full circle moment for us to have her here tonight.

We've gotten to work with her many times over the years, but I'm excited for you guys to hear about her newest book, Harlem Rhapsody.

Y'all excited about it?

Let me see if y'all really excited.

Okay?

Okay.

I think y'all excited.

And our conversation host is somebody who's new and dear to us probably the last couple years or so.

Her name is Morgan Menzies, and she is a book influencer and does so many things with books in our community.

Here we do a book switch at our national harbor location and we partner with her to do the book swap.

We just had one last weekend and a lot of people come out.

You don't pay for any books.

You just swap out books and have a good time, get coffee, blah, blah, blah.

Thank you.

Okay, let me have you come and do a test.

No, I'm just joking.

So both of them are in conversation tonight.

So please help me welcome and bring to the stage Morgan Menzies and Victoria Christopher Murray.

Hello, everyone.

How are you?

Don't mind me.

I just decided that I was going to read something, so I just have to find it.

I have to find the part I'm going to read.

How is everyone?

Good.

Good, good.

Thank you for coming out.

It's nice to see so many faces on this cold day.

I know.

Has everyone read the book?

Okay, this will be good.

Is it on now?

Okay.

I'm from New York, so I never, ever need a mic, but except for when they're taping.

So I'm going to read a very, very short part of this novel.

You probably will not be able to follow along with me, only because when I'm reading, I know people will hear it differently than you read it.

So I try to make it a little bit more interesting.

So I don't read all the words, which is why I had it on my phone, but I didn't pull it up in time.

So this is the beginning of the novel Harlem Rhapsody, about the woman who ignited the Harlem Renaissance.

Every time you hear about the Harlem Renaissance, you hear about people like Langston Hughes and County Cullen.

And none of those people would have existed without Jessie Redmond Fawcett.

So we are here to give her her flowers.

So this is when the book first opens up.

The story opens up in October 1919, and she arrives in New York with her mother.

Okay, so I thrust open the taxicab's door, and the moment my T strap heals hit the pavement.

A cacophony of sounds mesmerizes me.

The music enraptures me.

First.

I can't sleep at night.

I can't eat a bite from a Victroller perched near an open window.

The lyrics from Harlem Blues float down, and then Mamie Smith's contralto drifts into the breeze.

The joyous sound of two giggling girls skipping past draws me from the song.

You're just bumping your gums.

A man shouts, and laughter rises from a circle of men dawdling in front of the barbershop a few doors away.

I stand there trying to absorb it all, the patter of a thousand footsteps of men and ladies and kiddies who are rushing past, motor cars chugging and clanking and clicking behind me, honking horns squealing into the air.

This isn't a cacophony.

This is a rhapsody, and my heart races to match its beat.

Jessie.

I face my mother and I'm surprised to see her brown eyes framed with a frown.

She points to my valise on the sidewalk next to hers.

Are you expecting me to carry both?

Oh.

I laugh, and a smile fills her face.

Apologies, my mom, but we're in New York.

I twirl in front of her and my rap coat billows at my ankles.

We are.

She gives me a short nod.

But you're behaving as if you've never lived in a big city.

Well, you can't compare Philadelphia and Washington, D.C.

to this.

New York is everything.

It's music and theater and Come on, my mom.

Carrying my valise, I rush towards the brownstone, but at the first step I glance over my shoulder and my mother stands in the same spot.

In her gold overcoat and matching cloth.

She is as fashionable as any New Yorker, but her eyes are as wide as mine as she soaks in the city's vivacity.

My heart swells for the woman who didn't birth me, but who for the last 25 years has nurtured me as if she had.

You were born from my heart, she told me.

Excuse me, told me since I was 12.

Over the city's music.

I yell out to her, alas, my mom, in the same tone that she used with me just moments before.

At the front door, my hand trembles with excitement and I try to steady the key.

We step into the vestibule and I insert the key.

Before I can insert the key, the door swings open.

Will, welcome to New York.

I study the man that I first contacted when I was a student at Cornell University some 16 years ago.

His mustache has been trimmed just a little since I saw him in August, and there is a bit more silver blending with the jet black of his beard.

As always, he's impeccably dressed in one of his brown three piece suits.

Tonight, though, he's wearing the more formal bow tie rather than the neckties I know he prefers.

The twinkle in his eyes and his wide smile draw me closer, however, just as I reach for him, I remember my mother.

How had I forgotten her so quickly?

Well, that is the effect of W.E.B.

du Bois.

His mere presence emits a magnetic force that is difficult for me to resist.

This is a reminder that now living in New York, I must be measured in my actions.

This will be different from seeing Will on his occasional stopovers in Washington, D.C.

i shift so that my mother can enter our new apartment, but she doesn't take a single step.

She expects an introduction.

My mom Allow me to present Dr.

William Du Bois.

Mrs.

Faucet, it is my absolute pleasure to finally make your acquaintance.

He takes her valise.

My mother's smile has vanished.

She steps over the threshold and greets Will with nothing more than a Good afternoon.

Thank you for reading that.

My first question for you is, so you've been writing for 28 years and this is your 30th book.

That's a lot of work, right?

That is a lot of work.

I have been writing full time for 28.

Are you 28?

I mean, you might not have even been born.

I might have books older than you.

You don't.

But my question for you is, what does Harlem Rhapsody mean to you?

And this moment, reflecting on your career.

You know, that's a really good question.

I feel like this is the book that I was meant to write, that I've waited my entire career that everything came to this.

I think it's the most important book I've ever written.

It's important because this is the woman on whose shoulders I stand.

And I had no idea of her name.

It's a woman who needs her flowers.

We need to all be singing her name.

And I just feel so blessed that I was chosen to tell her story.

And so, speaking more about Jessie Redmond Fawcett, can you introduce us to her and the role that she played and some of the individuals that we do know but don't recognize the role that she played in making sure that they have that notoriety?

Exactly.

Well, I like to say that Jessie Redmond Fawcett was a woman of firsts.

She was the first black graduate from the Philadelphia High School of Girls, which is a very well known school.

She was the first black female graduate from Cornell University.

She was the first black woman to graduate Phi Beta Kappa.

And then she became the first and only literary editor of the Crisis magazine, which was the most important periodical in the early 20th century.

So this was a woman who.

She was actually the youngest of seven children.

She did not know her mother.

Her mother died before she was even two years old.

So the woman in the book is her stepmother, who is a white Jewish woman.

So that's a whole story.

That's a whole nother story we could talk about.

But this is a woman who was well educated during a time when.

Think about this.

This is only 50 years after emancipation, just 50 years after the end of slavery.

She graduated from Cornell University and then went on to get her master's as well.

And then when she became the literary editor of the Crisis magazine, she was brought there by Web.

We'll talk a little bit about why.

But he put her in the position.

Is that Kwame?

Hi, Kwame.

He put her in the position of literary editor.

And so she decided to turn it into something.

Something for real.

And so she started going out and discovering people, meeting people and finding people.

And she found Countee Cullen when he was 16 years old.

She found Langston Hughes when he was 17 years old.

I have pictures sometimes that I use and show, and you have not seen these men so young.

She found Nella Larson when Nella had just gotten married, just started working at the library.

All of these people that you know, as fully developed artists, she found them before they had a career, and they have careers because of Jessie Redmond Fawcett.

So it's important for us to start with all of her accolades and to acknowledge who she is independently, because now we'll get into a little bit of the mess.

Yeah, a little bit of the mess.

And that's what people, everybody on Instagram is calling.

They say, ooh, this book's messy.

Ooh, this good.

And I was like, I did not write a messy book.

I didn't.

You did.

I did.

I didn't.

Look, it ain't my fault.

This was on them.

So what mess are you speaking about specifically?

Well, there was a gentleman that you mentioned earlier, W.E.B.

dubois.

And I'm curious, curious about their relationship and how she came to have the role as literary editor.

Yes.

So she met him.

So this was very interesting.

In 1903, her father passed away.

Her father passed away January 3, 1903.

And she was very close to him because he had seven children.

Five of them had died, all during childbirth and all during different points in their thing.

And she was the youngest, and she was alive, and they were very close.

And so she had watched her siblings die and everything, and now her father's gone.

And three years before the end of that same.

Three days before the end of that same year, she contacted W.E.B.

du Bois because she had just finished reading his book, the Souls of Black Folk.

And she finished reading his book, and she loved it.

And she just wanted to reach out to him and to say, you know, my father was trying to teach me some of these lessons, and I learned him through you, through this book.

And it's wonderful.

So thank you.

And he responded and they became.

And I said on npr, I use this term like pen pals, because think about this.

This was 1903, so they weren't on the phone, they weren't hopping in Ubers.

So most of the time they would just try on paper letters.

And so for 10 years, he was her mentor.

For 10 years, he guided her, told her to go get her master's, he told her to go to Paris to study languages.

He really helped.

He helped her to get jobs at Fisk University, where he had graduated.

So he was a mentor to her.

And then in 1914, they met, and she was this young, nice looking woman, and he was this older, married man.

And one of the things that I ask people to do when reading this book is to read it with 20th century eyes.

Do you know what I mean by that?

100 years ago.

Think about this woman who didn't even have the right to vote.

Think about this woman who couldn't have gotten an apartment by herself because women couldn't even have their name on a lease.

Think about this woman who had no bank account or financial records.

Wives didn't leave their husbands because you broke up with Your husband, you had to go back home to your parents.

She couldn't even get a lease or anything.

So Jessie was a woman ahead of her time because she had a career.

Women didn't have careers.

And she wanted a career.

And so she was a woman who wanted a career.

And she never saw how she could have be married and have a career.

So she was like, okay, I don't wanna marry you.

She certainly didn't wanna marry Will.

Cause she know he would cheat.

So she, you know, she certainly didn't want him.

She wanted a career.

And then they had this relationship.

And it's not my fault they had a relationship.

I did try to write the book without it.

I considered that.

Well, so can you share more about the letters and the language that they were using with each other and how you were able to read between the lines that there was more there?

Yes.

So I, there are a lot of, I think the best source of information that you can use in writing historical fiction are letters, are the personal letters.

Which is why I've told my daughter that before I check out of here, everything better go like I don't want no letters.

And so my daughter says, but everything is like in the icloud now.

I'm like, you better figure it out because you're not getting nothing until everything is gone.

Because I feel like it's intrusive.

I've read these letters and when he was writing my dearest Jesse and you know, nobody says we're having an affair.

They just say things like I said outside your home last night and looked into the window and wished I could come.

You know, that kind of thing.

That's the kind of thing that you don't write to your best friend or to a co worker.

But where I really found out.

Oh, okay.

Well maybe.

Or maybe you do 21st century letters.

Yes.

This is a whole nother book.

Those are the kinds of books I used to write.

But this where I found out mostly about their affair was through the web biography written by David Lewis.

And it was a Pulitzer Prize winning book where he talked about all the women that WEB had.

But he made a distinction between Jesse and all the other women.

He like pulled her out of the paragraph almost.

And then he said that they were star crossed lovers.

That's very specific, isn't it?

Star crossed lovers.

Do you remember where you heard that?

In high school with Romeo and Juliet.

That's the only time I've ever heard that.

And then he said, so I got what that was.

So I knew how to build a Relationship with that.

And then he said they had a parallel marriage.

That part I didn't get.

I didn't get that part at all.

But I don't know if you remember, at my launch, Abby Phillips was interviewing me.

And Abby said she knew exactly what a parallel marriage meant because she said they had a decade long affair.

She was like, that's a marriage.

By the time you're there.

That long.

That's a marriage.

So that's what she thinks it meant.

I had no idea.

So that's what was happening.

And that's why I knew they had an affair.

I would have never written that they had an affair unless I was absolutely sure, because that changes the character of someone and changes everything.

When I said I tried to leave that part out, I did, but then I found myself with plot holes like, why did she end up in New York?

Even the way she wrote her first novel, it was because of them.

Even the title of her first novel, there is confusion.

She wrote because of them.

Seriously.

It came from their relationship.

And then she wrote a poem.

Remember that poem?

And I won't take it away.

And the last line in that poem, if I had.

And that was one of her most well known poems.

And if I had written that poem in there and not had the affair, people would have said, victoria's just going to leave that there and not explain what that means.

You'll know exactly what I'm talking about when you get to that part.

So there were plot holes.

And even when I was writing contemporary fiction, I always tried to tell the truth.

I always tried to tell the truth of the characters.

And so here we had real people.

I couldn't tell the story and not tell the truth.

And speaking of the real people that we meet throughout the book, the way that you're able to breathe life into each of the characters is very vivid.

And it's like we're transported into the Harlem Renaissance.

And so I wanted to know if you can share a little bit about, like, Langston Hughes and Countee Cullen in terms of their understanding of blackness during that time and how you really, like, get us to see that some of the challenges that we're facing today are.

What they were really the same.

So I did.

That was the best part of writing this book.

Somebody said that Harlem Rhapsody feels like a black family reunion of all of these authors and everything that come to life.

I wasn't thinking about the fact that I was bringing all of these people to life because the focus to me was for Jessie.

But what was so great about her, because she was meeting these people very young.

So they wanted to be writers.

They didn't know how to write.

So not only was she teaching them, but she was helping to guide them through life.

And so Langston, I think, had some of the biggest challenges because he went to New York and he went as a student at Columbia University.

And when he got there, they realized he was black and wouldn't allow him to be in the dormitory.

And so then he had no place to sleep, no place to go.

He ended up at the ymca.

And Columbia University just recently apologized to him, made it a public apology to him about that.

So you're like, it's too late now.

But I kind of thought that was special, that they recognized all the things that they had done wrong at that time, because professors wouldn't meet with him, and he was really miserable there.

But Jesse helped to guide him through the year that he stayed.

So that was one of his challenges.

One of her other authors, Jean Toomer, had been a student of hers here in Washington, D.C.

oh, I forgot to mention.

She taught at Dunbar High School.

And so that's where she was one of the top teachers there.

And he was a student there.

His name was Eugene Pinchback at the time.

So when he decided to write, he decided to change his name.

I think that was a good idea.

And so he became Gene Toomer.

Gene Toomer did not want to be known as a black author.

I mean, like, really, he was really upset about it.

He said that he had more white in him than black.

And he said, I mean, he did, though.

And he said he didn't write the book with his five black fingers, and he didn't write the book with the left side of just the white part of his brain.

So why couldn't he be known as an American writer?

And that actually cost him.

But she helped him navigate through all of that.

She helped Nella Larson navigate through feelings of self esteem and not feeling up to the Harlem elite.

Because this is the talented 10th we're talking about.

Because think about it.

50 years after slavery, these were college educated children, young people.

They all had their issues that we're facing today.

Jessie was the one who not only edited them and made sure they became writers, she helped them navigate through life.

And with each of the writers, we do see a lot of poetry and thinking about the Harlem Renaissance.

Like we think about music and jazz, and in some ways, the music can be poetry.

And so I wanted to know your thoughts on what do you think it was that the writers were gravitating so much towards poetry in the way that they could convey their feelings during the time.

Yeah.

Cause that's where they all started.

But they all ended up writing novels.

So that's what I found fascinating, that they were like, I can't write poetry.

I need 400 pages to tell my story.

But I found it fascinating that they could write poetry and then they could write a novel and they could go back and forth.

And so Jesse as well.

So I think poetry was the way for them to get started as writers and they could do it in a shorter fashion.

And Jesse really encouraged them to be black, to tell the truth of their stories of living as young black people in America, that still wasn't accepting them.

Because while this great thing was happening in Harlem, and it was called the New Negro movement, at the time, we call it the Harlem Renaissance, they were still lynching every black man they could find in the South.

You know, they were still black.

Women couldn't get jobs.

Nobody could vote.

So that was still happening while there was this black pride rising in Harlem.

And it's interesting with what you were just talking about.

So we have the right to vote.

Some are passing, and then others are very proud in their blackness.

And we can almost have your books, your historical fiction books in conversation with one another where you.

Right, That's a good point.

I told you.

Yeah.

Because I wrote the Personal Librarian and the first lady.

Anybody read the Personal Librarian?

So.

Ok.

Thank you.

And so, yeah, I guess the personal librarian, because it was about the same time she could be in conversation with Jessie, and Jesse would be like, girl, you black.

Come on, just be black.

And Belle would say, no, because I have a better life than you.

You can't go to the restaurant across the street.

I can.

So that would be interesting.

It would.

But then we also have Mary McLeod Bethune, and she would just take over.

She would take over the two women and say, look, you all follow me.

You don't need to ask no questions.

Just follow me and I'll get you.

Right.

But there would be no passing.

No.

Yeah.

No, Mary.

No.

Mary was like, we black, and we gonna.

We're proud to be black.

That's right.

Yes.

And another question.

So now, as you think about Harlem Rhapsody, all that it has accomplished, and having Jesse's name out there, have you started thinking about other women whose stories we may not know that you want to bring to life?

Yes.

So I just finished my third novel with Marie.

So we just finished, and we can't say too much about it, but we tell everybody that it's about a black woman and a white woman and the mob.

That's all we can say about that.

And it's based on.

All of this is true stories.

All of these are black women who've been hidden in history.

And so then I'm thinking about some of my what I can do for my next solo.

And I just discovered.

I don't know if it's a big story there, but have you all heard of Sag Harbor?

Two black women.

Two sisters started that.

Oh, you know about that?

Two sisters.

See that famous beach?

It belongs to us.

So I do.

I want to find these kinds of stories, and I think they're especially important now, really important now, as they try to ban everything.

I believe that a history untold is a history erased.

So what I've got to do is go find the stories so that they won't be erased.

Because if I hadn't found Jessie, who knows when someone would have told her story.

And if no one ever did, she would have been totally erased.

So now I feel like it's my job to find the untold stories.

I do know that we're going to be up against something because I saw some authors today talking about the Department of Defense, and all kinds of people now are coming after us.

And books are being banned at a faster rate.

So I would expect some of my books.

I know my book Stand you'd ground is banned in some parts of Florida, but go ahead and ban me.

I'll just write faster.

I'll just write faster.

All right, so we're going to open it up to audience questions.

And this is my favorite part.

So if y'all don't start asking questions, I'm gonna, like, call on you.

Actually, if you have a question, can you line up over here?

We'll open up for a few questions.

You have a question?

Don't be scared.

Come over here and line up with me.

Is it not?

Can you guys hear me a little bit?

Okay, you're first.

Hello.

Hi.

How are you?

Sarar Good.

See how these Deltas we represent?

So how do you find these women?

Yeah.

And, you know, it's interesting because how I found Jesse, I always say, Jesse found me.

I didn't go looking for Jessie.

I said, okay, I'm going to have to write this book, and I'm going to have to spend two years with this person because it takes me much longer to write these books than it took me to write Jasmine.

And so I said, what do I want to write about?

And I decided I'd Want to write about a writer.

And I was thinking, oh, New York.

I'm from New York, and I really like the 1920s.

So I found the Harlem Renaissance.

Like, I kind of bumped into the Harlem Renaissance that way.

And I said, that's really kind of cool.

Let me go find some women of the Harlem Renaissance.

And I was just doing surface research, meaning don't.

Don't trust the Internet.

Everything in Wikipedia is wrong.

So seriously.

So, yeah.

Cause it's just regular people making up lies.

It was like fiction.

And so I was googling, trying to find out.

Women of the Harlem Renaissance saw nothing.

Everything was all about the men.

Sometimes Nella Larson would come up, or Zora Neale Hurston.

And then something came up when I said, the women of the Harlem Renaissance.

I heard.

I saw a podcast called Harlem on My Mind by Tremaine Lee.

And so I went and listened to them.

They were all good.

The third episode was about this woman named Jessie Redmond Fawcett.

And it was just 30 minutes, but I was fascinated because they said she discovered these authors.

And I was like, well, how do you discover Langston?

I know Langston, but I don't know you.

And that's how I found her.

So I always say she found me, because I didn't go looking for Jessie.

I went looking for the Harlem Renaissance.

And I just happened to be reading something about black beaches, historically black beaches.

And I saw this thing about Sag harbor and these two women, two sisters.

And I was like, why don't I know that?

So whenever I say to myself, why don't I know that?

I know that y'all don't know that.

And then that's what I want to write about.

Hi.

First, I want to say thank you for writing this book.

So I'm a fan of the Harlem Renaissance.

Oh.

So my first question is, what part of New York are you from?

And then my second question is with the.

I guess, the black elite of that time.

Like, how does that fit into.

That's around, like, you got, what, the Great Depression, Right.

Also that's going on.

So, like, the elite, what is that based off of?

What is the talented 10?

Are you talking about that?

Yes.

Yes.

So I'm from Queens, and I always tell people I got there before the rappers.

So I'm kind of aging myself.

But, you know, Web believed in the talented 10.

And what that was was, think about it.

50 years after slavery, he felt that only about 10% of the black race would be able to go to college, and it was going to have to Be the college educated black people to lead the 90%.

So that's where you got that black elitism from.

And the talented 10th.

And some people say that's still around today.

You know, people say that especially black people who go to HBCUs, they think they're better than everybody.

We do, but.

We do.

It's really bad.

We do, but, you know, they're still around.

We do.

I don't know what it is, but think about it.

For four years, we had people, all black people, telling us we were excellent.

That's why I think every person needs to go to an hbcu, because for four years, you're gonna have somebody telling you you're excellent the whole time.

So that is still around, is your question?

Yeah, I guess I'm kind of struggling with the, like, the lynchings and the like.

Do they send money back down South?

Like, how does that.

Because when I think of elite, I'm thinking of that more of like, you have money, you have a middle class.

Like, what does that look like?

And then what did that look like in the 1920s?

Yes.

And then you have the.

Yeah, the lynchings that are happening.

Yeah, that's what was so weird.

Like, W.E.B.

du Bois was the first black man to get his PhD from Harvard, yet he couldn't go into most restaurants.

Think about that.

Yeah, right, right.

I guess that's kind of the struggle, like in my head.

Yeah, the head.

That was their life.

That was in my book first ladies.

Mary McLeod Bethune used to have to ride in a colored car to go from Florida to D.C.

to see the President.

She was going to see the President of the United States, but she had to ride in the colored car.

So they had a life.

See, we have this life that we have forgotten the way it was for them.

I mean, think about that.

They had money, but they still were black.

And they still couldn't go into a restaurant.

They still couldn't go into a store.

They still had to switch to the colored car.

When they got to Washington, D.C.

they still had to do that.

That didn't change.

You could be elite.

You were still black.

I don't know if I answered your question.

Her stepmother was Jewish.

So that's an interesting point.

Let me talk a little bit about you coming over about her stepmother.

So I wondered why her stepmother, who was a widow, so her father was a widower with seven children.

That's a black man.

Then this white Jewish woman was a widow with three children.

So I kept wondering, why in the world would a white woman marry A black man with.

They got a baseball team now with all those kids.

But why would you marry a black man Right at the rise of Jim Crow, all of the stuff that you were just describing.

And I couldn't start the book until I knew that, because her mother was going to be a big part of it.

And I was like, why would she marry this?

We're talking about the late 1800s when they got married.

And it took me three weeks.

I was talking to my agent.

We were like, well, maybe Jewish and black people were treated the same.

It was crazy.

And then something made me go to the census.

After about three weeks, I went to the census.

Her first husband was black.

She just was gonna marry black people because she was an integrationist.

Have you ever heard that term?

I had never heard that term.

After abolitionists, then, after slavery ended, they became integrationists.

They believed in the full integration of the races for equality.

They felt that was the only way to get equality.

So Bella Huff, that was her name, she was gonna integrate the country by herself.

Cause she had three children with this black man, and she was gonna have three children with that black man.

If she had married again, she would have had three children with him.

So, yeah.

So she was a Jewish woman, which plays an important part in Jessie's being raised and how she was raised.

Hi.

Hi, everybody.

So it wasn't a question.

I wanted to respond to what she was saying, because I'm from Washington, D.C.

born and raised.

My great grandmother was born in Washington, D.C.

in 1906.

So she, you know, would tell us stories about, you know, Washington, D.C.

is a segregated.

Yeah, still is.

Right.

And so my brother and I were just having this conversation the other day, and we were talking about.

I said, you know, when you're white, when you're rich white, you live here.

When you're poor white, you live here.

You know, they separate.

But when you're black, like in the Lee Joy park area in Washington, D.C.

or the Shaw area in Washington, D.C.

the rich black, the poor black, the working class black, all of the black people lived together because they couldn't live anyplace else.

And so that's kind of, you know, to what she was talking about.

You know, the things that we had to endure that maybe.

Of course they didn't because they had a bigger stress.

So.

Yeah, well, they had freedom.

They could live any way they wanted to.

Right.

Yeah.

You know, or marry two black men.

Right.

Okay.

Okay.

I couldn't believe it.

I spent all that time trying to figure out, why in the world would she Marry the.

A black man.

That's.

Cause that's what she did.

Hi.

So I'm a Brooklyn girl.

Brooklyn and the house.

And my question is, I guess New York related.

How much of a character is New York in the book?

That is one of the things that I'm proud.

I'm very proud of, is people say they feel like they are in Harlem when they read this book.

I spent five weeks in Harlem to write the book.

And it's really interesting.

I was telling somebody today that it's 100 years later.

So of course, it's not the same, but some of the buildings are still there.

The church was still there.

The building where she lived was still there.

But Harlem, the streets of Harlem, pulse, they have an energy by themselves, and it's still there.

And so I stayed in Harlem, and I did all of my research at the Schomburg, which was the library of the Harlem Renaissance.

It was called the 135th Street Library that then.

And in fact, my second stop on my tour, I got to sign at the Schomburg Speak in Shine.

And that was crazy because they only let, like, real authors, like, you know, people who would write important books there.

And so they were.

They had to read the book.

They knew I had done my research there, and they had to read the book.

And they were like, do we really want this, you know, person here?

And I was.

And so they said, well, what about another library?

I said, nope, Schomburger bust.

That's it.

And it was like, almost like the last day before we were putting out my tour out, that they said, okay, she could do it.

And that was like, one of the highest honors of my career.

I couldn't believe.

And 250 people showed up in Harlem.

So that was cool.

That was really cool.

We have time for one more question.

One more.

People are like, maybe I'm gonna come to you.

I saw her hand up first.

And then we'll do this.

Your books are signed, but we'll do a photo line.

If you want to take photos, we got VIP treatment.

I'm coming over here.

Okay.

Ms.

Victoria, I have known you since I was, like, 18.

I know she was gonna say something like that.

I could tell as soon as you said Ms.

Victoria.

So that's a.

When I first moved to DC, you met me at a coffee shop because.

My mom knew you.

And so, yeah, I'll tell you why.

But obviously, you have sort of shifted in the genre in which you're writing with or writing about.

You know, when you were visiting my hometown the ladies loved you, but you had much more, like, I think, church books, more romance books.

What has shifted in your writing and your storytelling made me want to do that.

Yeah.

So it's really interesting because I've never in my life written romance.

Like, but people thought my books were romance, but I don't read romance.

I've never in my life written romance.

But people thought that.

And I didn't even know I was writing Christian fiction.

Like, I wrote.

When I wrote Temptation, I just wrote a book.

And then when we were trying.

When my agent was trying to sell it, she tried to sell it to mainstream publishers.

And they were like, oh, it has too much God in it.

You know?

And so she said, well, we'll go to the Christian people.

Cause that'll be better.

And it was worse.

Cause they didn't like the title Temptation.

I was like, really?

Okay, let's change.

I want it to be published so bad.

They could have changed it to Crossing the River Jordan.

I didn't care.

But then they read the first 50 pages, and they were talking about their sex in this book.

And I was like, okay, but see, Black Christians have sex.

But I couldn't get published with a Christian.

So it took two years.

It took a long time.

But I wasn't writing to any genre.

This is the first time in my life that I've really written to a genre.

It's very interesting, right?

And one of the best reviews I ever got was for the Personal Librarian.

And the reviewer said that Marie, my co author, wrote about versatile women in her past.

And that Victoria Christopher Murray is the most versatile writer that he had ever known.

That she could really write anything.

So it wasn't that I had a shift.

I just write what's in my heart.

When I was called and asked to write the Personal Librarian with the co author, I said, sure.

Something new, something different.

I wasn't thinking about historical fiction.

The story sounded great, but it wasn't until I wrote it that I realized how important historical fiction was.

I think of all the genres out there, and especially now in today's times, this is the most important genre to write in.

So I didn't feel like I've shifted.

But if I've shifted, I'm staying.

You don't have to worry about no more shifts.

I'm gonna find every black woman y'all ain't never heard of.

Yes, everyone.

And in 20 years, you gonna know 20 new black people.

And you gonna tell everybody for me.

So absolutely give it up for Victoria Christopher Murray.

Thank you.

So can I say one more thing.

Of course.

This is great.

So thank you everyone for coming out.

One thing people often ask me one of the things I noticed, and I'm sorry you didn't get your question, but people often ask me, what can they do to help a writer?

And black writers really need your help.

But all of us need your help.

And to me, I think there are three things you can do.

The first thing is, Elon Harris told me the only way he built up his following was by having everybody just tell five people.

Just five people.

Word of mouth spreads any book.

And so if you can just tell five people if you enjoy Harlem Rhapsody, that would help so much.

The second thing that I just learned now that's so important and you, I don't know if you knew is reviews.

I didn't know that.

And writing a review can change an author's career.

It changes the algorithm.

So it doesn't matter if you do the review on Amazon or Goodreads, they'll connect.

But if you can write a review for any author, that one review is going to go a long way.

And the third thing is the beginning of the book sales.

The first month is so important because it's like the movies.

If people are going to see the movies, they keep it in the theaters.

The same thing will happen.

And so if you can be ambassadors for us and support the black independent bookstores, because those are the ones who are hand selling out books.

Those are the ones who know the authors and they could say, oh, I saw Victoria yesterday.

If you can do that and tell people they can do that and you can buy their books online.

Like, if you don't think you live close enough, they.

They do have online sales.

So if you could be my ambassadors, I would greatly, greatly appreciate it.

But thank you for coming out tonight because it's kind of cold, kind of cold out there.

Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.

And thank you, Morgan.

I asked Morgan to do this for me.

She wasn't she great.

Thank you.

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