{"value"=>"<p> GENERAL CORRESPONDENCE, 1953-1984 (2.2 lin. ft.)</p> <p>The General Correspondence is divided into Alphabeticaland Chronologicalfiles, and a Publishers and Agentssubseries. The alphabetical files comprise incoming and outgoing letters with attachments. Significant correspondents include his friends and fellow African-American expatriates Maya Angelou, Herman Kofi Bailey, Sylvia Boone, William Branch, Tom Feelings, David DuBois, Preston King, Jim Lacy, Calvin and Elinor Sinnette, and Alice Windom. Other prominent correspondents in this series are John Henrik Clarke, the filmmaker Jules Dassin, Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee, James Forman, Richard Gibson, Gloria Joseph, Woodie King, Paul Mann, William Marshall, Truman Nelson, and Conor Cruise O'Brien.</p> <p>The Maya Angelou correspondence is very personal in tone and relates to family matters, common friends, the Black Power movement and various projects. Herman Kofi Bailey discussed the development of his craft as an artist, his return to the United States in the early days of the anti-Nkrumah coup and Mayfield's influence on the development of his consciousness. He also wrote of his impressions of the \"Black Revolution,\" his conversion to Islam, and his apprenticeship with Charles White and the Hungarian master Francis de Erdely. The Sylvia Boone file includes an 18-page letter on the Ghana coup and its repercussions on the expatriate community. William Branch was a long-time friend of the author. His letters touched on his many activities in the 1970s as a successful playwright, television producer and award-winning filmmaker, and on their respective academic careers in the early 1980s. John Henrik Clarke's letters discussed his association with Freedomways,the fall of Nkrumah and politics in general. The Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee file touches on the screenplay for Mayfield's novel The Hit,the 1969 W.E.B. DuBois Centennial commemorative program, and the PBS series \"With Ossie and Ruby.\" David DuBois's letters brought news of his mother Shirley Graham DuBois in Cairo, of African-American militants in North Africa, of his own involvement in efforts to restore Nkrumah to power, and of his first novel And Bid Him Sing.The author also corresponded with Mrs. DuBois for a brief period after the Ghana coup.</p> <p>Tom Feelings lived the expatriate experience with Mayfield in Ghana and Guyana. He wrote about his expulsion from Ghana, his first impressions of Guyana and the difficulties of resettling in the United States before and after Guyana. James Forman, one-time chairman of SNCC and author of the \"Black Manifesto\" sent pages from a diary he kept while convalescing in Puerto Rico in 1968, and wrote about forming a Frantz Fanon Society in the United States. Also included are speeches and position papers Forman wrote for SNCC and a 23-page carbon copy of a letter to Bobby Seale on SNCC and Black Panther Party relations. The Hoyt Fuller file includes a manuscript of the author's short story, \"The Most Beautiful Fishermen in the World Come from Winneba,\" and several drafts of an essay-review of Fuller's book Journey to Africa.Richard Gibson, a London-based African-American expatriate wrote about Robert Williams and the coup in Ghana, and about his own political activities in Algeria, Cuba and China. The Gloria Joseph correspondence provides a close up view of Mayfield's activities in Guyana. A specialist in elementary school guidance, Joseph also discussed her writings on black women and the feminist movement, and her efforts to launch a Third World women's publication with Johnetta Cole in the 1970s. Preston King's letters deal with personal matters related to Mayfield's departure from Ghana, his own pessimism about Africa's future, and the failure of pan-Africanism as an ideology. King is an African-American political scientist and expatriate who taught at Sheffield University in England and the University of Nairobi in Kenya. He also wrote about his book The Fear of Powerand other works he edited, about his efforts to end his political exile, and about the black power movement in the United States.</p> <p>Woodie King's file relates exclusively to his adaption of several of Mayfield's works for motion pictures or television. The Jim Lacy file contains a \"friendly review\" of Mayfield's play Fount of the Nation. The actor and director Paul Mann wrote several lengthy letters to Mayfield in 1967 and 1968 about his work, his socialist upbringing, and his association with several prominent black actors. The film project on the life of Henri Christophe is the central theme in the correspondence between Mayfield and William Marshall. The Marshall file also includes some correspondence with John Henrik Clarke on development of the script and with Sidney Poitier on the business side of the production. The author Truman Nelson credits Mayfield's 1961 review in The Nationwith advancing his career after publication of his novel The Surveyor.His later correspondence with Mayfield relates to John Brown's impact on the Civil War and the Reconstruction period, and to the role of whites in a black revolution in the United States. Conor Cruise O'Brien, the \"sixth best-known living Irishman\" according to an Irish poll in the 1970s, was Vice-Chancellor of the University of Ghana during the Nkrumah years. His June 5, 1965 letter to Mayfield offers critical appreciation of the African Reviewand biting criticism of Consciencism or Nkrumahism. His post-Ghana letters (and Mayfield's replies) concern O'Brien's play, Murderous Angels,on the United Nations' role in the Katanga Secession in the Congo. Other O'Brien letters are located in the Academic series.</p> <p>The Robert Slater File reflects his long friendship and sometime business partnership with Mayfield. Calvin & Elinor Sinnette spent several years in Nigeria in the 1960s. Their letters to Mayfield focused on their experiences in Africa, on the killing of Ibos and the ensuing civil war in Nigeria, and on issues of incompetence and corruption among African governments. Other topics discussed include health matters in Africa and in black communities across the United States. Alice Windom's correspondence with Mayfield evenly spanned the years between 1966 and 1984. Two early reports in letter form, written in 1963 and 1964 respectively, provided detailed accounts of African-American mobilization and protest at the U.S. Embassy in Accra on the occasion of the historic 1963 March on Washington, and of Malcolm X's visit to Ghana the following year. Writing variously from Addis Ababa, Cairo, Lusaka and the United States, she discussed the aftermath of the 1966 military coup in Ghana and its repercussion on the African-American expatriate community there, political developments throughout Africa, interracial relationships and revolutionary morality among African-American activists, and the activities of mutual friends.</p> <p>The Letters Sentsubseries begins with a lone file for 1953-1954. There is a gap for the next five years which Mayfield spent in Puerto Rico, and a similar gap for 1961-1965 when the author resided in Ghana. The 1953-1954 file is very instructive in terms of Mayfield's early association and work in the theater, and his membership in the Committee for the Negro in the Arts. In a letter to his parents (1953), he shared news that his play 417 had been produced \"a couple of times\" that summer, and his reaction to the execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. In other letters to Charles Blackwell, a theater producer, and to a partially identified friend (\"Dear Max\"), he expounded on his views on the theater and his belief that \"the next important theater in the country will be in the Negro community.\" Other letters touched on his activities at Camp Unity in Wingate, New York where he performed in Down in the Valley and directed his own play 417. There are also glimpses of his living arrangement in Harlem and the difficulties blacks had in finding apartments on the Upper West Side of Manhattan unless they could find a white friend to front for them.</p> <p>The 1960-1969 file holds a single letter for 1960, about Fidel Castro's visit to Harlem that year, and another for 1961 about Robert Williams's confrontation with the Ku Klux Klan in Monroe, South Carolina. Mayfield's letters from Ibiza, Spain (1966-1967) deal abundantly with the Ghana coup and his various writing projects. Included are letters to Nkrumah soliciting an interview, and to General J.A. Ankrah, chairman of the National Liberation Council in Ghana, soliciting Dr. T.R. Makonnen's release from detention. Makonnen was released and given seven days to leave the country. There are also various letters to publishers and literary agents regarding adaptation rights to his novels, including an unauthorized stage adaptation of his novel The Hitunder the title Mr. Hubert. Mayfield clarified his relationship with Nkrumah in a reply to an unspecified review of Lewis Nkosi's book Home and Exile,which portrayed him as a \"close adviser of ex-President Nkrumah.\" \"I was never either a close or distant adviser to Dr. Nkrumah, nor a ghost writer of any of his books,\" Mayfield wrote on that occasion (Nov. 3, 1966).</p> <p>Following his return to the U.S. in 1967, Mayfield's correspondence dealt with the production of the film Uptight, his many speaking engagements, a short film project based on Margaret Walker's poem, \"For My People,\" the 1968 conviction of Leroi Jones (Amiri Baraka) for allegedly assaulting two white guards at a Newark bank, and the author's own review-essay of Harold Cruse's book Crisis of the Negro Intellectual.The correspondence for the next three years is concerned with the production of Black Hands, his projected autobiography and an anthology of short stories by black writers, his quest for a job in 1971 as a writer-in-residence, and his subsequent relocation in Guyana. Mayfield's letters from Guyana relate mostly to efforts to secure publication of his works in the United States, and to his film project with William Marshall. In 1973, he became embroiled in a controversy around the deportation of two African-American supporters of the Guyanese opposition leader Eusi Kwayana, and wrote to Fidel Castro about the possibility of a scholarship for one of his sons in Cuba.</p> <p>After his return to the United States in late 1974, the author's main preoccupations were with finding employment and his application to the Fulbright Commission. Letters in this subseries for the remainder of the decade relate mostly to the stage production of Fount of the Nation in 1978 and to his screenplay Jesse Mae. His Fulbright correspondence (1976-1977) in this series and the letters he wrote in the 1980s are more general in tone and content.</p> <p>The Chronological Correspondencesubseries consists of occasional letters, both incoming and outgoing. Correspondents prior to 1966 include the Puerto Rican playwright and political activist Rene Marques; Robert Sharpe who wrote the screenplay The Long Night;Gordon Lewis, a Caribbean scholar; John A. Davis, editor of AMSAC's African Forum;Bessie Herd, South African novelist; Richard Hart, one of the founders of the People's National Party in Jamaica; and the African-American journalist William Worthy. Topics discussed include the journal African Review,and film projects based on Mayfield's books. Another correspondent during that period was Kwasi Kumah, a former associate at the African Review.Occasional correspondents for that year include Ayi Kwei Armah, Alphaeus Hunton, Robert Lee and Leslie Alexander Lacy. Non-Ghana-related letters in this file relate to the production of \"Mr. Hubert\" and to Mayfield's publishing projects. Occasional correspondents over the next several years include his personal friend Ivan Spense; the Scandinavian specialist on Africa, Zdenek Cervenka; Dona Richards; the filmmaker Kay Bourne; Rosa Guy; Alice Childress; and Geoffrey Bing. The correspondence for 1968 is mostly personal in nature, with frequent references to Mayfield's acting and teaching careers. His lectures on Black Power and black writing are discussed at length over the next two years. The remaining years in the general correspondence are less substantive, though somewhat informative as to the latter part of the author's life.</p> <p>Mayfield's Correspondence with Publishers and Agentsprovides many insights in the development of his work, and his efforts to get them published. Letters that relate specifically to a particular work are filed with that work in the Writings series. Ruth Aley, Mayfield's agent for many years, handled the Ghana manuscripts and most of his writings until 1975. Bart/Levy Associates handled his contract for the movie adaption of The Hit,while the Tony Ford Agency handled the property rights for The Long Night.Ronald Hobb's file includes a seven page letter from Mayfield on a proposed book dealing with issues raised in Harold Cruse's Crisis of the Negro Intellectual.Ellen Newald represented the author for his screenplays Sammy and Christophe, while another literary agent, Carol Mann, provided critical comments on the \"Gang in Suite 16\" manuscript. The entire Hill and Wang file concerns Nkrumah and his overthrow. In a letter to publisher Lawrence Hill, the author explained his reasons for leaving Ghana and some of the reasons behind the coup: \"You can't have a little revolution, a little socialism - it's like being a little pregnant.\" Paula Giddings was Mayfield's editor at Howard University Press; her correspondence in this file offers extensive comments on the proposed biography of Forbes Burnham. Finally, the Other Publishers and Agents file deals with Japanese and Czech translations of The Grand Paradeand holds some correspondence with the anthologist Addison Gayle.</p>"}