We have many people to whom we wish to express our deepest gratitude for their generous support and unfailing assistance as we worked to create this book. We wish to thank Timothy Young, curator of Modern Books and Manuscripts at the Beinecke Library at Yale University, for providing us insight into the difficulties of determining precise dates for the donation, processing, and availability of Carrie’s letters. This book, like most contemporary Langston Hughes scholarship, builds on the work of Arnold Rampersad. At the University of Kansas, James Carothers eschewed the far easier “atta-boy” comments for a more thoroughgoing, careful scrutiny of the manuscript when we approached him for criticism. His readings of the book-in-progress were always thoughtful, cogent, and compelling, for which we can’t say enough how appreciative we are. Susan Kumin Harris enabled us to discover more fully the complexity of correspondence as a genre, when she provided a model of her own scholarship on this subject. In the latter stages of book preparation, Clarence Lang offered some very pithy comments on the sociohistorical era from 1926 to 1938. His insightful observations greatly enriched our understanding of the period in which Carrie and Langston lived and wrote. For her thoughtful introduction to the literary critical possibilities of Bowen Family Systems Theory, we are grateful to Cheryl Lester for providing us a heuristic for probing beneath apparent simplicity to discover a more complicated vision of family life. Our debt to Pam LeRow and Paula Courtney of Digital Media Services is simply incalculable. Their preparation of the manuscript in its various stages was always done quickly, efficiently, and expertly. They were absolutely indispensable as they made our job so much easier. Of course, our colleagues in KU’s English Department were wonderfully supportive, including the award of funds for a book subvention. When research questions arose, we depended, as always, on the historical acumen of Deborah Dandridge of KU’s Kenneth Spencer Research Library. And in the eleventh hour, colleagues Nicole Hodges Persley and George E. Gibbs responded to our desperate plea for information on the history of Black theater.
My Dear Boy received its first full consideration at the University of Missouri Press, where two external reviewers subjected the manuscript to a rigorous analysis and concluded that it merited publication. The temporary closure of the University of Missouri Press led us fortuitously to the University of Georgia Press and the editorial expertise of Nancy Grayson. We are especially grateful that she saw the viability of this project and decided to bring it before an appreciative group of scholars, students, and nonacademic readers as a published book. Although retirement cut short her involvement in the process, she left My Dear Boy in the exceedingly capable hands of Sydney DuPre, Jon Davies, and freelance copy editor Chris Dodge. By now, we hope it is abundantly clear that seldom does a project of this kind come into existence without the cheerful assistance of a great many people, institutions, and resources.
I, Carmaletta M. Williams, wish to express my gratitude to those who inspired and helped me personally with the project. Exploring other people’s family systems always demands that one’s own family be examined. During the course of this project, I came to realize how deep were the debts that I owed to those women now passed on to Glory who considered me their “dear girl.” My grandmother Blanche Pinkie Waters Blue stood as a wonderful role model of a fully, self-differentiated woman. My mother, Doris Rebecca Grant, learned those lessons and refused to develop improper triangulation and enmeshment, as she raised five children alone on a nurse’s salary. My Mama II, the late Aileen Walker, had no children of her own but displayed a deep compassion for the children of her heart. My aunts, Jeanette Smith, Jerry Dianne Smith, Marion Jo Waters, and Vickie Jones, appropriately functioned in their family roles. Vickie, Dianne, and my cousin Dorothy Frazier are the sisters of my heart. My own sister, Mitchi Payne, and her daughter Morgan, as well as my granddaughter-daughter Antoinette Jacine, center my life. I love them all dearly.
Of course there are men in my family who deserve a strong acknowledgment, especially my sons Dwight, Jason, and Nicholas. Their journeys to growing into fairly well differentiated men continue.
I am deeply grateful to Dr. Regennia Williams for introducing me to Carrie’s letters. The amazingly positive response to our coauthored essay, “Mother to Son,” in Montage of a Dream: The Life and Art of Langston Hughes, was the catalyst for My Dear Boy. I also send a note of deep gratitude to Dr. Joycelyn Moody. In addition to her friendship, I appreciate the caution in her book, Sentimental Confessions: Spiritual Narratives of Nineteenth-Century African American Women, which offers that the pull of sentimentalism is to convince the reader that the character has the “capacity to form a deep emotional, ethical or psychological alliance with another person or ideal” (10). I want the readers of this book to question that about Carrie by letting her tell her own story. I thank my friend and colleague Dr. Robert Xidis for patiently listening, discussing, and directing me to search for answers. I owe a deep debt to his wife, Dr. Kathleen Xidis, who shared her research and writings on the political history of the FDR administration.
The opportunity to research this project came from wonderful institutional and library support. Johnson County Community College granted me a sabbatical; the Beinecke Library at Yale University was very generous in granting me a research fellowship, and its librarians were second to none in assisting me. I also thank the librarians and staff at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in New York, the Amistad Library at Tulane University, the W. E. B. Du Bois Institute at Harvard University, and the Kansas Historical Society. Their financial and intellectual support and encouragement made this research an exciting and fulfilling adventure. This project could not have happened without the support of Harold Ober & Associates and the Hughes estate. Their permissions to publish the letters and photographs allowed this project to exist.
My deepest gratitude goes to my partner, Dr. John Edgar Tidwell. He supported my vision, encouraged my work and contributed to this book in very meaningful ways. My personal happiness and professional achievement with My Dear Boy are largely due to him.
I, John Edgar Tidwell, wish to acknowledge a number of people who were instrumental in bringing this project to fruition. To coeditor Dr. Carmaletta M. Williams I express my deepest gratitude for the invitation to participate in this incredible journey. Hughes scholarship, it seems, has greatly benefited from our foray into this famous author’s mother and into his life and work as well. To make me a companion in this venture was an extremely generous act. When I was presented with a serious challenge to my physical well-being, Dr. Jon Heeb stepped in and provided me the reassuring care that restored me to a reasonable portion of good health. For his patient, sensitive medical treatment, I am immensely grateful.
For me, the largest inspiration for this book was provided by my mother and my son. On March 3, 2012, sometime after midnight, time stood still for a moment. In that instant, Mrs. Verlean L. Tidwell, my mother, made her transition from this world into the afterlife. Just a month short of her ninety-fifth birthday, she left quietly, quickly, but still all too soon. My personal goal was to present her with a book prominently displaying her name on the dedications page. It was to be a tribute, a clear statement acknowledging my most heartfelt appreciation for her constant stream of prayers, encouragement, and love. I hope that as she looks down from on high she is smiling with pride at what her son attempted to do in her name. I also dedicate my work on this book to my son, Levert Tidwell. As Langston Hughes wrote, life is indeed no crystal stair. It is filled with tacks and other impediments to life. My hope and prayer are that he will find in the example of his grandmother the strength to persist, the ability to be determined, and the sheer toughness to triumph over the pitfalls that beset us.