A Window of Opportunity for Black Lecturers

WASHINGTON —  For 10 months of the year, Darryl Van Leer is just another black actor looking for work. But from now until March, he’s a hot ticket on the college lecture circuit.

Beginning with Martin Luther King Day, celebrated on the third Monday of January, through Black History Month in February, a cottage industry of black historians, authors, entertainers and journalists is in heavy demand. Like retailers between Thanksgiving and Christmas, black lecturers have a six-week window to take center stage and pile up profits.

“It’s really hard to sell the show any time outside of January or February,” Van Leer said, referring to the black history review he sells to campus activities directors. “I’ve got a couple of shows in March, maybe I’ll have two or three in April, but no more after then until they call for bookings in October or November.”

Propped up by book-writing contracts, television popularity or other forms of self-promoting celebrity, black lecturers shuttle from college campuses to community forums to corporate auditoriums from Jan. 15 to Feb. 29. Typically their audiences are large, predominantly white and willing to pay inflated prices.

“I call it black pundit payback time,” syndicated columnist and television talk show personality Clarence Page said with a chuckle. “Our society on the whole doesn’t think about black people and our history. But the white world seems to want to hear what we have to say in February.”

Sensitive about perceptions that they might be cashing in on King’s legacy or black Americans’ struggle, some balance their money-making appearances with talks for reduced rates or free to local groups. “Most of the time I’m going to places like churches and schools where I’m getting no money,” said Mary Helen Washington, a professor of English at the University of Maryland and a noted scholar on African American women writers. “I don’t like the commercialization of anything. Black History Month is about struggle. It’s not about me getting an all-expense trip somewhere.”

For most, however, now is the only time of year to take advantage of public interest in black history, both to educate Americans and to pocket extra bucks.

February is “the big month,” said Eleanor Trainor, who books campus lecturers for Keppler Associates, an Arlington, Va., speakers bureau. “ . . . Schools come out of the woodwork for Black History Month.”

At Indiana University-Purdue University in Fort Wayne, Ind., 3,000 people are expected on Feb. 23 for a dramatic presentation by actor Danny Glover and poet Felix Justice. Calling the black history program “a one-of-a-kind evening for our school,” Irene Walters, the director of university relations and communication, said the university secured a $20,000 grant from a foundation to have Glover and Justice read from the works of Langston Hughes and King.

“It’s not that people don’t care other times of the year,” Walters said. “It’s just they’re so busy and they don’t have time to focus and stop to pay attention at other times.”

Many older black Americans grew up observing Negro History Week in the second week in February, instituted in 1926 by historian Carter G. Woodson to reflect on the contributions of African Americans. During the last 25 years, an increasing number of younger black and white Americans have discovered fresh interest in the subject. Their interest stems from the 1976 expansion of Negro History Week into Black History Month and the 1983 designation of King’s birthday as a federal holiday.

As awareness of Black History Month rises, so too does the need for novel ways to commemorate it and keep audiences coming back.

Historian Anthony Cohen has turned his interest in the Underground Railroad--the routes used by African Americans to flee slavery--into a multifaceted operation that includes his speeches about the foundation he created to restore slave safe houses. Cohen, who is black, said his approach avoids turning off white audiences with stories about the harshness of slavery, focusing instead on the glory of the slaves’ flight to freedom.

“With black history, people must confront issues of race and history that can make them uncomfortable,” he said. “My stories about the Underground Railroad allow them to deal with it in a context that’s agreed upon and that takes a bit of the edge off what could be considered a troubled history.”

His presentations on college campuses led to his writing books and producing a film documentary on the Underground Railroad. It also landed him on Oprah Winfrey’s television talk show. He so impressed her that she hired him to prepare her for a role as a slave in the movie “Beloved.”

“Each and every time Oprah said something nice about me when she promoted her movie, those hits in the media generated interest at universities and community groups to have me come and speak,” Cohen said.

Van Leer’s one-person show, “Power on Earth,” is another popular draw on college campuses. In the 75-minute review of black history, Van Leer portrays figures from the African American experience, including revolutionary slave Nat Turner, blues musician Robert Johnson and former Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. He is booked solid in February, with appearances set for more than 50 colleges in 15 cities.

By March, when the curtain falls on his stage work, Van Leer moves from his home in Nashville to Los Angeles in search of television and movie gigs.

One well-traveled lecturer, who asked not to be identified, said her January-February lecture fees netted enough one year to purchase a small foreign car. Another said he clears his calendar of other obligations and doubles his asking price for lectures every February.

Nearly everyone who hits the lecture circuit has a book to sell or a television show/movie/talk show to promote.

Tavis Smiley, one of the most popular campus lecturers, said he worked with his book publisher to time the release of “Doing What’s Right: How to Fight for What You Believe and Make a Difference” with the King holiday and Black History Month. “For better or worse, and I think it’s for worse, this is the only time we can focus on the contributions of African Americans and the challenges that confront black America.”

Barbara Smith, a black feminist writer and activist in Albany, N.Y., said that being in demand in February is like being “a vampire or mummy. We’re the undead for 11 months of the year,” she said. “Then all of a sudden the crypt is open and we’re allowed to walk among the living.”

As a graduate student and social activist in the early 1970s, Smith helped build a national network of black women’s studies programs. Her four books and critical writings, while often overlooked by white and mainstream groups, has remained popular on college campuses and produce a huge number of invitations for her speeches.

This year, she said, she is planning stops at UC Santa Barbara, Mount Holyoke, Columbia University, Smith College and other campuses. Additionally, she said, her expertise on black women’s studies will keep her busy through March, which is Women’s History Month. “The wretchedness of our tokenizing of black and women intellectuals and cultural figures is appalling and negative,” she said. “We need to eat and live all the other months of the year.”