The Dilemma of Representation in Folklore Studies: The Case of Henry Truvillion and John Lomax
by Patrick B. Mullen
Journal of Folklore Research, Vol. 37, No. 2/3, Special Double Issue: Issues in Collaboration and Representation (May - Dec., 2000), pp. 155-174
The Dilemma of Representation in Folklore Studies: The Case of Henry Truvillion and John Lomax
by Patrick B. Mullen
Folklorists always have faced the problem of how to represent the people with whom they conduct field research, but the problem was not foregrounded in the scholarship until the 1970s and 1980s, when ethnographic disciplines experienced a theoretical shift toward reflexive ethnography, cultural representation, and the social construction of reality. Folklorists are now thoroughly reexamining how folklorists of the past represented the individuals they interviewed and recorded, and an important new dimension of representation has emerged: namely, the representation of the representer. This may sound like a postmodern hall of mirrors, but common sense lies at its base: in studying the way cultures are portrayed, the role of the folklorist and the context of the scholar must be part of any assessment; this is particularly important in reexamining the past.
When John Lomax was recording African American singers for the Library of Congress in the 1930s and 1940s, he brought certain assumptions with him to the field research and to his subsequent writing about the artists and their cultures. His attitudes toward race, for example, have been explored by David Evans (1982), Jerrold Hirsch (1992), James McNutt (1982), Nolan Porterfield (1996), Jeff Titon (1987), and Charles Wolfe and Kip Lornell (1992). In turn, these authors have created various representations of Lomax in their publications.
Collectively, these scholars have done much to describe the abstract cultural beliefs and values that influenced the way Lomax perceived African Americans; not enough, however, has been written about his specific relationships with black people and how they helped create, maintain, and alter his worldview. The abstract "-isms" romanticism, pastoralism, paternalism that undoubtedly influenced his assumptions have been identified, but they were not static and monolithic entities that determined his behavior toward and representations of African Americans; rather, they were part of dynamic processes that changed with the experiences of a lifetime.
In order to offer a closer examination of the processes of cultural representation in folklore studies, I concentrate here on the specific relationship John Lomax had with Henry Truvillion.[1] My investigation into this relationship has been greatly enhanced by the recollections of Henry Truvillion's son, Reverend Jesse Truvillion, whose own memories of Lomax suggest the unique perspective of the "subject" on the processes of folklore fieldwork and representations of "the folk." Jesse Truvillion's recollections about his father and his childhood in the Big Thicket of East Texas2 (this volume) provide a unique perspective. Ethnographic scholarship usually only provides one view: that of the ethnographer.
Jesse Truvillion's essay, however, gives us the family's view of Henry Truvillion not only as singer, but also as father, husband, minister, worker, and community member. We can see beyond John Lomax's limited representation of an African American folk singer and instead view a fuller portrait of a human being. This portrait is itself, of course, a cultural representation based on memory and emotional attachment, but it has incalculable value in helping us understand Lomax's representation as it contrasts with Jesse's perspective on his father.
John Lomax portrayed Henry Truvillion in ways that fit white views of African Americans at the time; in examining their relationship and Lomax's publications and recordings about Truvillion, I join with Hirsch, Porterfield, and other scholars in constructing an image of John Lomax as a folklorist that, at least partially, is based on my understanding of Lomax as a person. The dilemma here is the tendency to view white folklorists of the past from the perspective of late-twentieth-century attitudes toward race. As Nolan Porterfield points out in his biography of Lomax, "Those [racist] attitudes, although indefensible from an enlightened point of view, were nevertheless commingled with a sensibility which complicates any effort to dismiss him as a simple racist" (1996:169). Lomax's attitudes toward race were complex and changed over the course of his life; they were based on nineteenth-century cultural assumptions about blacks, his emotional early childhood experiences, his formal education, and social and fieldwork contacts with blacks from different socioeconomic milieux. A constant in his life was the conviction that his interest in African American folklore and culture was based on sound moral and ethical principles, that he was interested in the well-being of his black informants and of African-Americans in general.
Despite perceptual gaps between today's folklorists and those of Lomax's generation, there are cross-generational similarities in concern for the well-being of people from other cultures. In the past, in particular, these concerns were too often expressed in hierarchical and condescending ways; but many, perhaps most, folklorists from the 1930s to the 1990s have tried to understand and communicate respect for other cultures to each other and the general public. Another cross-generational similarity is that folklorists then and now have been influenced by ideological concepts of folklore and the folk in the ways they represent African Americans. Lomax's generation made mistakes, and mistakes continue to be made today, but growing scholarly self-awareness is a positive development in solving the dilemmas of representation.
John Lomax was born in Mississippi and raised in Texas; he was a product of white southern culture, and his ideas about race were grounded in the pastoral romanticism of the plantation (Hirsch 1992:184-85). Like other white southern scholars, Lomax thought that industrialization, urbanization, and technological change were destroying the southern agrarian way of life, including folk traditions of African Americans. Lomax admired certain kinds of African American folklore as art, especially folk song, but he followed prevailing scholarly theory in seeing singers in evolutionary terms as expressing a more primitive culture. Porterfield quotes Lomax as writing that the Negro was "a simple, emotional, imitative, human being" with "a child's eager and willing adaptableness to his environment." Porterfield then comments, "That sweeping and tragic misconception was his earliest, most deeply held notion of blacks, and it would always prevent him from seeing the basic contradiction: if they were inferior, how could they create the exalted art that he so cherished and respected?" (1996:170).
I think the answer to Porterfield's question lies in Lomax's perception that black inferiority was the source of their great art, that there was a primitive source to African American folk song. Lomax's view of blacks as inferior was combined with a real compassion for their plight; unfortunately, this caused him to treat black informants in a paternalistic way. There is evidence of paternalism in his relationship with Henry Truvillion, but this pattern is most clearly reflected in his relationship with his most famous informant, the black singer Huddie Ledbetter. In their biography of Leadbelly, Charles Wolfe and Kip Lornell paint a sympathetic picture of Lomax, but they question the way he assumed a parental authority over Leadbelly (1992:143-85). For instance, they document the financial control that Lomax tried to maintain.
Lomax both accepted and reinforced generalizations about race. David Evans quotes a 1917 essay by Lomax as evidence of Lomax's "grossly stereotyped view" of blacks:
[T]here surely exists no merrier-hearted race than the negro, especially in his natural home, the warm climate of the South. The negro's loud laugh may sometimes speak the empty mind, but at the same time it reveals a nature upon which trouble and want sit but lightly. ... It is credible, at least, that the negro's self-pity is based on his feeling of race inferiority, a feeling of which he may well be only sub-consciously aware. . . . And it seems further credible that he has come to lump the troubles for which he himself is largely to blame along with the inevitable hardships of his situation until he has grown to regard himself as the victim of hard luck, generally abused by everybody; and, at least in many instances, he seems not averse to nursing his gloom a little, (in Evans 1982:38)
While Evans recognizes that retrospective judgments about historical figures are problematic, he also sees the need to identify racial assumptions that influenced Lomax and other early blues scholars (1982:32-105). There are certainly racist assumptions in Lomax's statement, he seems to be "blaming the victim," in late-twentieth-century terms, but some of his ideas are still found today among social critics, both black and white, who condemn what they see as a tendency for blacks on welfare to self-identify as "victims" (Sowell 1997; Sykes 1992). In addition, like Lomax, two black psychologists during the 1960s posited a black self-hatred based on a perceived sense of racial inferiority (Grier and Cobbs 1968). John Szwed has pointed out how earlier pathological models of African American culture persisted into the 1960s:
. . . [TJhese "culturally different" behaviors (i.e., different from white middle-class culture) continued to be treated as evidence of deviance, as social pathology, as failures on the part of individual black people in the face of oppression; and if these behaviors became recognized as patterned and normative, they were nonetheless treated as part of a deficit culture, a kind of negative culture existing in the absence of a real one. (1969:160)
Pointing out the persistence of these ideas into the 1960s and later does not excuse Lomax's racist assumptions; rather, my aim is to demonstrate an unfortunate continuity in perceptual framework. Lomax identified some real social problems based on racial and class difference, but the flaw in his thinking, like that of some writers today, was in considering them linked to biology, rather than to social factors. However, Lomax's attitudes were widespread in his generation, and he had moral and ethical intentions in his study of African-Americans. Additionally, statements made in 1917 should not be taken as an absolute reflection of his beliefs later in life. I agree with Jerrold Hirsch that we must go beyond the limited goal of identification and condemnation of racism in order to gain an understanding of race relations in historical context (1992:185), Lomax's and our own.
Both Hirsch and Porterfield mention a black friend from Lomax's childhood as an important influence on his attitudes toward race (1992:196-97; 1996:20-21): Nat Blythe came to work on the Lomax farm when he was eighteen, and nine-year-old John Lomax taught him to read and write (Lomax 1947:9-12). They played together, and according to Lomax, he learned his sense of rhythm from Nat. "I came to love Nat with the fierce strength and loyalty of youth" (1947:11). When Nat turned twenty-one, he was given his savings and he left. Lomax writes, "I have never since seen or heard of him. ... As I have traveled up and down the South these recent years, I find myself always looking for Nat, the dear friend and companion of long ago. I loved him as I have loved few people" (1947:12).
Hirsch interprets this quest as Lomax's "search for a lost world" of the nostalgic pastoral South (1992:196), and I do not think it is too farfetched to imagine that Lomax symbolically "found" Nat in the black informants with whom he developed friendships. His childhood friendship with Nat could be continued on an emotional level with someone like Henry Truvillion.
Lomax's emotional bond to black people can also be seen in some of his fieldwork encounters. At a southern prison camp, Lomax asked for the names of members of a singing quartet. One of the men responded:
"My name's John Lomax."
"That's my name, too. Why are you bringing our name to such a place?" I demanded.
"Jes' got inter a little trouble." He looked embarrassed. "The jedge jes' give me two years."
"Where did you come from?"
"Holmes County, Mississippi, near Durant."
Holmes County was also my birthplace. That boy's mother may once have rocked me to sleep. (1947:141-42)
The emotional closeness is clear in Lomax imagining a common mother figure, but the southern paternalism is equally apparent (Hirsch 1992:196-97, Titon 1987). Henry Truvillion too had been born in Mississippi, and Lomax may have felt some of this same kinship toward him. John and Alan Lomax first recorded Henry Truvillion singing worksongs in 1933, and they mentioned him in print the next year in American Ballads and Folk Songs, spelling his name "Trevelyan" (1934:14). The book included the texts of three songs attributed to Henry Truvillion: "Tie-Shuffling Chant," "Nachul-Born Easman" ("Casey Jones"), and "Shack Bully Holler" (1934:14-17, 34-36, 45- 46). Later, John Lomax included descriptions of Truvillion and excerpts of his songs in a recorded lecture, "Adventures of a Ballad Hunter" (Lomax, in Library of Congress, n.d.).
Several of Henry Truvillion's chants and songs, "Unloading Rails," "Tamping Ties," "Possum Was an Evil Thing," and "Come On, Boys, Let's Go to Huntin", are included on a Library of Congress recording (Botkin n.d.). More extensive descriptions of Truvillion came out in Lomax's 1947 autobiography, Adventures of a Ballad Hunter, which includes a ten-page section about one of his later visits, in either 1939 or 1940, to Truvillion's house (1947:253-62). Since Lomax's 1933 visit, Henry Truvillion had become a preacher and was interested only in singing spirituals, not secular songs, but gradually Lomax asserted his authority over the fieldwork situation and was able to talk him into singing work songs and allowing his children to sing their play songs.
Lomax considered Henry Truvillion one of his most important discoveries: "... [D]eep in the piney woods of Texas, I had found another great singer . . . equally interesting and productive of songs and rich tales" (1947:253). He wrote of Truvillion's "authentic and artistic mastery of [the] medium" of Negro work songs (1947:262). He went on to describe his collecting from Mr. Truvillion:
In 1934 Alan and I had followed Henry into the East Texas timber lands where the Wier Brothers were cutting lumber. He was the boss of the track-lining gang, and his calls and songs had made interesting and beautiful records. I was still eager to save for the Folksong Archive all that Henry Truvillion had stored away in his "rememberance." (1947:253)
His descriptions of the place and the work indicate some of Lomax's romantic notions about African-Americans as "the folk": Originally Wiergate, on the Sabine River, was a Texas sawmill community in the midst of a great dark forest of pine that stretched through what was No-man's Land between Texas and Louisiana. There Henry Truvillion, as foreman of the railroad gang, followed the lumberjack crew through the forest with new spurs of track, laid and moved by his crew as needed. Out along these spurs thundered cars loaded with yellow pine logs. The cars rolled on Henry Truvillion's rails. He was the boss, and all day long, the year round, he kept the men moving by his songs and calls. Railways must be built to drag the big logs to sawmills miles away; the work must go on. (1947:255)
To a folklorist of Lomax's generation, the folk had to be isolated, so the "great dark forest of pine" within a "No-man's Land" was an appropriate setting for the singing of folk songs (Filene 1991:605, Hirsch 1992:188, 193). Lomax clearly had set out to find isolated groups in order to fulfill his scholarly conceptions: "Our purpose was to find the Negro who had had the least contact with jazz, the radio, and with the white man" (1934:xxx). Through his collecting and publishing of cowboy songs and African American work songs, Lomax was one of the first American folklorists to romanticize masculine outdoor occupations as an appropriate context for folklore (Hirsch 1992:199).
This was part of his larger concern with American romantic nationalism: he recognized that the United States could not have become the prosperous and powerful nation it was without the work of millions of African Americans. And though this perspective may be part of his romanticizing, it is also an historical fact. Some of Lomax's romanticism can be seen in a positive light, but his use of dialect spelling in Adventures of a Ballad Hunter reveals a more negative underlying assumption about race. In one instance, Reverend Truvillion begins a story by mentioning that he had collected seven dollars after preaching the previous Sunday. Lomax quotes the rest of the dialogue:
"How much went to you and how much to the Lord," I asked irreverently.
"I takes it all. The Lawd done had plenty; he don't need it."
"What kind of sermon do you preach?"
"That depends. Sometimes my congregation's paralyzed, then I has to revise 'em." (1947:254)
As Henry Louis Gates Jr. points out, by the late-nineteenth century "dialect had come to connote black innate mental inferiority, the linguistic sign both of human bondage (as origin) and of the con-tinued failure of 'improvability' or 'progress,' two turn-of-thecentury keywords" (1988:176). Representations of dialect in literature and scholarship, derived largely from the minstrel and plantation novel traditions, underlined negative valuations. Lomax's use of dialect creates a definite distance between him and Henry Truvillion since there are no dialect spellings in Lomax's speech. In addition, this particular description does not suggest that Lomax thought of Truvillion's coinages as linguistically creative. His use of "revise" for "revive" here, as well as his earlier transcription of "rememberance" for "remembrance" is condescending and chosen for comic effect.
Lomax also puts this bit of speech in Henry Truvillion's mouth: "Yes sir, Boss, I got your letter all right. ..." (1947:253), underlining Lomax's own sense of entitlement. Jesse Truvillion says that he never heard his father call Lomax or any other white man "Boss." There is the possibility that Jesse's memory is faulty in this because it does not fit his present image of his father, but the evidence in Adventures of a Ballad Hunter suggests that Lomax used "Boss" indiscriminately when rendering black speech addressed to him. According to Lomax's records, most black men he encountered in his fieldwork, especially prisoners, call him and other white men "Boss" (for example 1947:144, 150, 151, 172, 176, 178, 179, 180, 190). This usage reflects a common form of address, but was likely not universal. As Lomax generalizes all black men to this position, he implicitly underscores their position in a racial hierarchy.
Another element of racial hierarchy comes in Lomax's attitude toward the art of African American folk song. Lomax clearly appreciated Truvillion's songs as art, but he felt the need to compare them to elite art in order to justify his evaluation (Hirsch 1992:191). For instance, Lomax wrote, "His voice ringing like steel, never repeating himself, his collected calls would make a grand opera" (1947:260). A few pages later, he observes, "[T]hat this music, part of it touchingly tender, has been the product of this labor, should inspire some poet to create a mighty epic as a tribute to the men of toil who helped to build America" (1947:262).
Folklorists today would be more likely to see the singing of Henry Truvillion and other folk performers as magnificent art in itself not needing a literary poet to turn it into another form. In the last quote we again see an example of American romantic nationalism, in which male workers were represented as embodying the best in our national character. This pattern was prevalent in the 1930s, not only among southern scholars, but also among such national figures as Benjamin Botkin (Hirsch 1987). The tendency to compare folk song to western elite art in order to legitimize it did not end in the '30s and '40s; blues scholars of the '60s and '70s often spoke of black blues singers as existential poets (Titon 1993:229), and some positive evaluations of contemporary folk music still depend on comparisons with "elite" music (for example, Texas traditional country singer Don Walser has been referred to as "the Pavarotti of the Plains").
Lomax's insistence on justifying folk music in elite terms was related to his view of blacks as more savage than civilized (Hirsch 1992:187-88). He thought that the power and beauty of African American music sprang from a primitive source. In the introduction to American Ballads and Folk Songs, he describes a group of black singers thus:
Eager, black, excited faces, swaying bodies, the ring of metal to mark the beat of the songs, tones such as came only from untrained voices, free, wild, resonant, joined in singing some semibarbaric tune in words rough and crude, sometimes direct and forceful, the total effect often thrillingly beautiful. (1934:xxxiii)
In this portrayal he was like other white folklorists and sociologists of his day. For instance, Newbell Niles Puckett saw blacks as at an earlier stage of cultural evolution (Mullen 1999:20); writers during the blues revival also envisioned African American art springing from primitive sources (Titon 1993:225, Mullen 1997:16-19). At times, Lomax's representations of African Americans were influenced by his need to make his books more entertaining for a general audience. Part of Lomax's literary technique in Adventures of a Ballad Hunter was based on his awareness of commercial potential in his writing: throughout his adult life, he wanted to sell books to add to his income (Porterfield 1996:183, 226, 238). In order to make his autobiography entertaining, he dramatized fieldwork encounters with dialogue in a way reminiscent of Zora Neale Hurston's technique in Mules and Men (1935). For instance, in Adventures of a Ballad Hunter (1947) he gave snatches of conversation between Henry Truvillion and himself:
"'Are those your children?' I asked as several pairs of bright eyes peeped around the corner of the house.
'Yes sir, five head; at least my wife says they're mine'" (1947:253).
But part of the dilemma of representation is that the author cannot control an audience's reaction; this passage could be taken in a number of different ways depending on a reader's assumptions. The passage seems, however, to offer readers humor at the expense of Henry Truvillion and his family.
In addition, Lomax, like all folklorists, was selective in what he presented in published versions of his fieldwork encounters. What he left out is significant. In his description of the context in which the work songs were performed, Lomax quotes Henry Truvillion: "I holler an' call some of my best men by name. Chances are I'll call Hank Stevens, Sonny Watkins, Sam Justice, Jim Williams, to git their linin' bars an' go down there. I have to tell 'em where to git it" (1947:257).
Lomax then describes the rest of the action and gives the words to the song, but he does not comment on Henry Truvillion's use of his men's full names. Why not call them by just their first names? Jesse Truvillion told me that this was done in order to show respect for the personal dignity of each man. When analyzed within the context of an oppressed minority culture, the use of full names could also be seen as a means of "signifying," indirectly commenting on the white boss's practice of calling the workers "boys" or only using their first names. But it would be asking too much of a white scholar of Lomax's generation to do the kind of analysis of signifying that Roger Abrahams and Henry Louis Gates Jr. have done (1985:5-9; 1988:64- 88); surely Lomax's lack of commentary reflects the kind of cultural blindness white scholars of the time brought to their understanding
of African American rhetorical strategies.
Not that Lomax was completely unaware of the complexity of race relations; for instance, he was interested in how he was perceived by black informants. On the Library of Congress field recordings from his 1940 visit with Henry Truvillion, Lomax asks:
JL: Henry, going back, what did you think of Alan Lomax and me when we first came to see you?
HT: (slowly) Well, I, I formed it up to be just about what it is. You see, take a fella traveling as much as I have, met all kind of folks, studied humanology a little bit, and I can pretty near tell a man from a burglar for some reason (laughs), if you're a skunk [or not]. I can size up and come pretty near telling if he's a business man or a burglar.
JL: Businessman or a what, a buzzard?
HT: A burglar.
JL: A burglar, oh.
I am not sure this is the answer that Lomax expected or that he understood how cleverly Henry Truvillion avoided answering him directly. He never tells Lomax exactly what he thought of him; rather, he comments on his own skills at observing and judging human character based on his wide travels and extensive experience. Perhaps Truvillion was suggesting that Lomax could have been a burglar out to steal his songs. If Truvillion had any reservations about Lomax at first, the racial politics of the day would not have allowed him to express them directly. Immediately following this exchange, Lomax asks what Mrs. Truvillion thought of the visiting folklorists, and again Truvillion avoids answering. Then Lomax says, "I got the impression that she didn't like us, our looks very much."
HT: (after a pause) She's very, very kind-hearted along there. Anybody's nice to her, be kind to her. . . . You and madam [perhaps a reference to Ruby Terrill Lomax] can just come in, just take charge, go right ahead, she's all right with it.
JL: Of course, I know that now, but I'm talking about way back when you lived up in the quarters of the Wiergate. I remember, I remember you had to shut the door before you could sing about even Zachariah up there.
Henry Truvillion explains that he shut the door in an attempt to keep from being interrupted by drunken men walking through the quarters, not as a result of his wife's concerns about his singing. Truvillion seems to be defending his wife's hospitality and perhaps suggesting that the Lomaxes "took charge" when they came into his home; but in Adventures of a Ballad Hunter, although Lomax mentions Mrs. Truvillion's reluctance about having her husband sing secular songs, he does not give Henry Truvillion's explanation.
Lomax left another significant part of the 1930s and 1940s fieldwork experience out of his published materials. In an essay about Lomax and his father, Jesse Truvillion writes that the two men told stories, sang songs, asked and answered questions, and discussed issues "with raw frankness, as only two friends would" (1996:24). Jesse told me that his father and Lomax often engaged in heated theological discussions, and I listened to several that are preserved on Library of Congress field recordings. But these discussions are not found in Lomax's autobiography. Instead, we get the kind of dialogue quoted above when Reverend Truvillion says, "Sometimes my congregation's paralyzed, then I has to revise 'em", dialogues that reinforce racial stereotypes.
Although not formally educated, Henry Truvillion, like most lay preachers, knew the Bible well and had given much thought to religious issues. For instance, several discussions between Truvillion and Lomax on the Library of Congress field recordings indicate a more profound awareness of theology on Truvillion's part than Lomax's portrayal of him suggests.
JL: Henry, how long, how long since you've been ordained as a minister?
HT: About fourteen months.
JL: About fourteen months.
HT: Yeah.
JL: Did that cost you anything, to be ordained?
HT: No sir, about fifty cents for gas money.
JL: [Laughs] How many preachers to ordain you?
HT: About eight.
JL:y What did they do, Henry? What was the ceremony? Tell me what the ceremony was.
HT: Well, they wanted to know from me what was the church, the Baptist church. How many churches was there. About the Lord's Supper, you know, in the Lord's supper, how would I give it? Would I give it to the members of the particular church where I was pastor, or who would I give it, who would I give it to? And all like that. Finally, I told them fellas just like Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, told them they would never catch me. I wasn't particular about how I answered them because they hadn't called me to preach. They asked me, would I give the Lord's Supper to just the members of the particular church where I was pastor? I told them I'd give it to everybody present, I'd pass it around to everybody present. They told me that wasn't right; I told them, yes it is, that's the Bible. . . .
JL: Would you give it to the Methodist if he happened to be there?
HT: If everybody present, pass it to him. The Lord's Supper protects itself.
JL: Whites as well as colored?
HT: Yes sir. No respect for a person's color. Pass it around, if he's, if he's, he knows himself. I told them because I read the scriptures pertaining to this here, and explain it to them what it means, then I pass it around. That'll be between just him and his God so that I ain't got a thing in the world to do with it. Jesus passed it to everybody present, ... he passed it to everybody present. Told them, "Take and eat ye all of it. This is my broken body." Told them as he passed the cup, "Take the cup, drink ye all of it. This is my blood I shed for man. ..."
JL: They passed you on that, did they?
HT: Yes, they passed me.
JL: Unanimous vote?
HT: Yes sir.
JL: Nobody voted against you?
HT: No sir.
Truvillion's grasp of Biblical concepts is clear in this dialogue as is Lomax's condescension toward the entire process of ordination in the black church, when he asks if the committee passed Truvillion on a unanimous vote. The new Reverend compares himself to Daniel in the lions' den and Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego in the fiery furnace, explaining through metaphor that he trusts in God rather than in men, even in the preachers testing him, and he applies this same concept to his future administration of the Lord's Supper.
Jesse Truvillion remembers details that also suggest more than was included in Lomax's edited account: "I heard my dad enlarge on this 'protects itself declaration many times, and always with Biblical quotes. Church divisions in churches were, according to him, 'manmade and not God-intended.' Those who serve the Lord's Supper are only servants, he contended. Jesus serves the real Supper, and it is all spiritual" (1996:55). From the recordings and from Jesse's memories, Henry Truvillion's Biblical knowledge and thoughtful consideration of religious issues are apparent.
But Lomax did not reproduce the recorded discussions about religion in his autobiography. The intelligent black minister did not fit the stereotype of the laughing Negro with a sometimes "empty mind" (Evans 1982:38), but the preacher who said he had to "revise" his congregation when they became "paralyzed" did. The intelligent black minister did not stay in his place in the southern paternalistic scheme of things. Here again, Lomax's portrayal of Truvillion may have had more to do with his attempts to entertain readers in order to sell books than with his personal opinions of the man. Lomax had a great deal of personal respect for Henry Truvillion, but his representation of him was limited by his culturally learned assumptions about blacks, just as our perspectives are limited today.
How did the Truvillion family react to what we now perceive as Lomax's condescension toward their father? From everything Jesse Truvillion and his sister Dora Nisby have told me, their father and mother liked and trusted John Lomax and his family. The children never heard any criticisms of John, Ruby Terrill, or Alan Lomax, and they had good relations with the Lomax family during the years when there was contact between them. However, one area of potential strain in the relationship was that for many years the Truvillion family did not know what became of the recordings of their father and the children. According to his autobiography, Lomax usually told informants about working for the Library of Congress; perhaps this was one way of impressing and inducing their cooperation. For instance, he recounts his remarks to a southern prison preacher as follows: "I hope you will preach your favorite sermon to the boys tonight. The Captain has agreed for me to record it, and I plan to deposit the records in the Folksong Archive of the Library of Congress. A thousand years from now people can listen to the words you will preach" (1947:221).
It would seem that Henry Truvillion was aware that the recordings would be housed at the Library of Congress, because there is a contract signed by Henry Truvillion and dated June 11, 1943, in the Archive of Folk Culture, which grants permission to the Library of Congress to publish several songs on a record for the sum of $25. Perhaps there has been a misunderstanding about this information in the family, or the knowledge was lost after Henry Truvillion's death in 1948. Whatever the case, the Truvillion family was not aware of their father's place in the history of American folk song until Jesse Truvillion's accidental discovery of a Library of Congress recording.
In a 1996 essay, he describes the family's response to this "unbelievable discovery" at a friend's home in Upper Ridgewood, New Jersey, in 1963 (1996:23-24; see also this volume). He writes, "Never did we know the role of the Library of Congress. The discovery in the music room in Upper Ridgewood surprised me, and when I called my mother in Texas that night, she, too, was quite surprised" (this volume; see also 1996:24). The Truvillions had heard Henry Truvillion's songs on record before, however. Lomax gave a field recording to Truvillion which, as Jesse Truvillion recalled, became a source of excitement for the family and the community:
Mr. Lomax gave Daddy a copy of one of the recordings. It was a twelve-inch disk, and it was recorded in the woods on the job site, with my dad directing his men in unloading rails and tamping ties. On several occasions hands who had worked with Daddy came to visit, requesting the playing of the record so they could hear my daddy call out their names. This was a big thing in those years. (1996:24; see also this volume)
Lomax routinely gave copies of recordings to his informants at a time when most folklorists did not share field-recorded material with those who had produced it. He knew that playing recordings back to the singers made them feel good about themselves. He quotes the singer Willie George's response: "T'se important,' she said after she heard her records played" (1947:289). Henry Truvillion must have felt a similar pride when he was recorded by John Lomax. Jesse Truvillion had nothing but kind words to say about the Lomaxes when he described his memories of them during taped interviews:
So what you had here was seventy men under the leadership of Henry Truvillion whose field hollers, whose stories, whose worksongs and so forth have been preserved by John Lomax and his family under a contract with the Library of Congress. All of this good information I knew nothing about as a child when I was watching all these recordings take place. I witnessed two kinds of recordings take place: one was the stories that Lomax recorded my father's telling at home in the evening with the whole family in what we called the living room. This was a hardwood floor room, and there were space rugs and so forth around, but the floors were important to the process because this recording machine, [with] which he is really directly recording a record, created hair, looked like human hair; long black strands of hair came off this, what would have been a smooth disk to start with, great big fifteen-inch kind of a thing, with the picture of the dog listening to his master's voice, all of this very fascinating.
In this rural Texas piney woods area, this was a fascinating, very unique kind of entertainment for family to go in and hear the old man tell stories, number one. Number two, to have a quote "white man" in the house, in the living room with all this special arrangements, and with the idea that my Dad is going to tell stories, sing songs, and so forth. And for some unknown reason to the family this John Lomax wants to record it. Well do I remember Mrs. Lomax [Ruby Terrill Lomax] on two or three different occasions; a son of John Lomax [Alan Lomax], I think I remember probably only once. He remembers me much more. We were very young; there are five of us in the family, two boys, three girls. The oldest girl is named Ruby, and she's on one of the recordings singing "Mary Wore a Red Dress" with her dad. In a real way, this was all we knew; the Lomaxes were quote what we call "good white people" in real segregated Texas.
The Lomaxes must have stood out as racially progressive because they came into the Truvillion home expressing a strong interest in the family and their culture. There were undoubtedly other "good white people" in the area, but few white people in East Texas at that time would have thought to record the traditions of African Americans. Jesse remembers other details about the shavings from the recording machine: "Mr. Lomax, as we all called him, gave me a buffalo nickel to 'clean up the hair' the machine left on the floor. The amount of black hair was considerable, but I think my mother was the one who actually swept it up when the sessions were over. The nickel was a gift to me" (this volume; see also 1996:24).
In a short story set in the 1950s, Flannery O'Connor has a black woman lash out at a white woman for giving her son a penny, rejecting the white paternalism she perceives in this Old South custom (1971); the Truvillion family perceived this action in the 1930s as an acceptable kindness. In many ways, the Truvillion and Lomax families operated within the restrictions of racial social institutions of their times. In all of his reminiscences, Jesse Truvillion paints a positive picture of Lomax. 'John Lomax was likeable. He liked Daddy, and he, on several occasions, gave gifts to our entire family. I particularly remember some Christmas gifts from Mrs. Lomax, although I don't remember the years. They were people we liked and they liked us" (1996:24). Nolan Porterfield writes that the Lomaxes sent Christmas gifts to many of John Lomax's favorite informants (1996:480). Although the Truvillions were the most prosperous black family in the area because of the father's position as foreman on the track laying crew, the Lomaxes sent old clothing to them on occasion, a common white practice in the '30s, and one that continued at least into the '40s and '50s when I was growing up in segregated Southeast Texas. This custom fits the paternalistic white southern view of blacks, but it may also suggest the caring attitude of John Lomax and his family toward those they perceived as less fortunate.
There are letters from informants in the Lomax papers at the Archive of Folk Culture in which they ask for money or gifts from Lomax, and on one occasion Henry Truvillion asked the Lomaxes for a specific item. In his 1939 fieldnotes, Lomax says, "When we bade him goodbye at the end of the week he requested us to send him a 'Breeze-case, to carry my Bible in to church and to Conference,'" and in his 1940 fieldnotes, Lomax adds, "When we gave him a handsome solid leather portfolio to carry his Bible in, he said proudly: 'The district superintendents don't look no better.'" Also in the 1940s fieldwork file is a letter from Henry Truvillion written after he received the briefcase, a letter that belies Lomax's stereotypical view of the simple Negro proud of his "breeze-case."
Dear Mr. Lomax
I received your letter was glad to hear from you glad to hear from you at any time, found family and I well. When I got your first letter I was so busy that I haven't had the time to write you, getting the children ready for school, trying to preach too. I have four children going to school now. So when you come you may bring plenty paper and pencils also I have just about wore my Brief Case out so you come or I will be too glad to see you, and will try my best to get some one to sing for you. I will see
my boss when you come it may be that you can come out on the job. looking to hear from you soon
Your friend Family sends love
Henry Truvillion[3]
Since his family was prosperous by its own community's standards at the time, why did Reverend Truvillion ask for the briefcase? Perhaps he was concerned about buying such an article at a local white store, sensing that he would be perceived as "uppity," or perhaps he felt he was owed something for all the help he had given Lomax. In any case, the letter does not project any of the obsequiousness of the stereotyped "Uncle Tom" behavior toward whites.
The Truvillion family's positive view of John Lomax is based on a number of factors: the kindness and compassion of the Lomax family, the personal friendship of the two men, the acceptance on both sides of the reality of race relations at the time, and the subsequent honor brought to their father by the Library of Congress recordings and Lomax's references to him in his publications. That positive reaction to folklorists continues in the Truvillion family's relationship with me. Jesse has often told me how pleased he is with the honor brought to his father's memory by our collaborative publications and presentations at professional meetings. His sister, Dora Nisby, wrote to me after I presented a paper on Henry Truvillion at the Beaumont History Conference in January of 1997: 'Thank you for the honor that you bring to our family by sharing publicly my father's contribution to American Folklore" (personal communication, January 31, 1997).
Folklorists need to reexamine the history of our discipline's scholarship and honestly identify and analyze the mistakes in representation that have been made. In doing so, however, we should not lose sight of the positive relationships we have had with people being studied, nor should we overlook our contributions to cross-cultural understanding. There were problems in the way John Lomax represented Henry Truvillion, but their relationship was remarkable considering the racial restrictions of their time.
The Ohio State University
Columbus
-----------------------
Notes
1. My thanks to Joe Hickerson and Judith Gray at the American Folklife Center for their help with John Lomax's papers and field recordings. Thanks also to Jesse Truvillion and Dora Nisby for sharing memories of their father, Henry Truvillion, with me.
2. In the sixteenth century this area was a huge impenetrable forest and swamp extending west from the Sabine River to the Trinity River, but logging and other developments since have reduced it to a much smaller area north and northwest of Beaumont. Sections of this area have been designated the Big Thicket National Preserve.
3. This letter was typewritten, although Jesse does not remember his father typing and thinks this might have been dictated to his mother or someone else. Another possibility is that an original hand-written version was replaced by a typed copy by Lomax or someone else at the Library of Congress.
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