A/V Geeks Lunch 2-25-2022

so so so so so and it just ends hey i'm skip alzheimer welcome to the av geeks lunchtime streaming show um that was beautiful bermuda which was a film that we scanned for the orgone archive orgone o r g o n e um based in pittsburgh and they have part of the mobile brothers collection and that's what that film was from uh that was a film library where you could rent films um based in new york city and i mean that's that's someone's vacation footage i really feel like i haven't seen a lot of vacation footage somebody shot that footage edited it together and then marketed it as a travel log [Music] so it's pretty fascinating but uh you know we saw some fish and i felt bad that i didn't show any films about pet fish yesterday because i showed films about dogs and cats and skunks and owls and etc but not fish so here's uh a moody institute of science film about fish and i say science so here we go enjoy [Music] did you know to be a scientist even when you were very young one of the most important things is to learn how to observe that is to learn how to watch things closely and carefully to see how they are made and how they work by watching fish for example we can learn many wonderful things how perfectly they are made to suit their watery world do you know how fish breathe they take oxygen right out of the water instead of breathing air as we do [Music] notice how easily their bodies slip through the water they can go up they can go down and they have such a good propeller one little flip of that powerful tail and away he goes can you imagine even a speed boat starting off that fast the pairs of fins are for balancing and for steering for slow careful movements or for putting on the brakes and what about the fish's eyes this eye is specially made for sharp vision under water everything about the fish is wonderfully made the muscles glands nerves and bones that go to make up its body but the most fascinating thing about these little creatures is their family life have you ever watched a father and mother fish raise a family it takes long hours of watching day and night to see the whole story but here at moody institute of science our photographer did the watching for us with a camera sometimes he waited for days at a time just to be on hand for some important part of the family history the family life of the blue acara for example kept him busy for many months now the pictures tell us a very interesting story some things may seem strangely familiar almost like ways of our human families the acara's are famous for their family life and when you see some of the wonderful things they do you'll understand why these fish are devoted to their babies like our fathers and mothers are devoted to us the parents share all the duties of having a family right from the start they do everything together choosing a place for the nest comes first the acara's like to lay their eggs on a flat smooth rock and it has to be nice and clean it may take hours to clear a place for the eggs removing pebbles with the mouth is rather slow business but no matter how long it takes it's all done with special care the accara's even scrubbed the rock to be sure it's absolutely clean mrs accara sweeps the rock's [ __ ] and span using her fins as a broom for tiny plants grow on the rock that would harm the eggs then it's time to lay the eggs father a cara follows close behind covering the eggs with the fluid that will make them fertile so the eggs will grow into new little baby fishes the female deposits the eggs one at a time and sticks them to the rock with a substance like glue so they won't wash away over and over the nest filling all the empty spaces only the sense of touch tells her where to put them yet she never makes the mistake of putting one on top another when she is finished there are several hundred eggs in the nest all neatly arranged and so close together that each one is touching another right away one of the parents begins to fan the eggs so the water moving over them will keep the eggs clean and while one fans the eggs the other stands guard never for a moment are the eggs left unguarded fish eggs would be a tempting meal for any of their neighbors fanning the eggs is tiring work and every few minutes the parents exchange places the one on guard has a chance to rest his fins and to snatch a bite to eat both parents stick to their task without quarreling about whose turn it is to do it keeping the nest clean takes a lot of work all the dirt must be scoured carefully away the white eggs are eaten because they'll never become babies anyway in spite of all the parents can do that happens to some eggs but the other eggs are the object of constant care two or three days after they are laid the eggs will hatch and before that day arrives nurseries must be made ready well that means a lot of digging and moving of rocks or the nurseries are little holes in the sand so the akiras go about digging their nurseries busy and contented [Music] then the big day arrives as the fish eggs hatch father carefully picks one up in his mouth carries it to the nursery and spits it out into its new home father and mother make many trips back and forth and for a while both of them are very busy at first the babies don't look much like fish in their hollowed-out nursery they look more like a spoonful of jelly but they grow rapidly and their shape begins to change their fins begin to develop too well they're still not fast enough to escape from enemies so all the while the faithful parents stand guard over their family some of the youngsters grow bolder and begin to wander off but father and mother pick them up and bring them safely home when danger threatens and the accuracy signal the babies go clear to the bottom to high in the family of bacaras mother and father always work together as a perfect team taking care of their young no they won't desert their babies even when strange monsters come near courage faithfulness and devotion are well demonstrated by the blue aquarius and that's why they are famous for their family life the accara's devotion to their babies is a wonderful thing but the love of human parents for their children is different and far more wonderful and what children do is important in family life too for god requires that children obey their parents yes watching fish is fun and it can be important too when we watch the living things about us carefully and with patience there are many wonderful lessons we can learn [Music] so moody institute of science uh was uh created by dr erwin moon and the moody bible institute and erwin moon was a not a doctor of any science he was had a religion religious studies degree and he was an amateur photographer filmmaker and a scientist he was kind of hobbies and he used experiment science experiments and he would tour around and do these what he called sermons from science and so um after sputnik launched um moody institute of science saw that there was this all this money coming in from the national defense education act which was uh the federal government's basically trying to bolster science and math uh education among young people so we could keep up with the soviet union and so moody institute of science is like well we have all the science footage so they they took these long 30-minute sermons from science and they edited them down to these uh shorter um 11-minute 15-minute uh things um and this one uh fish family wasn't as um it was more sciencey than uh some of the other ones uh some of the other ones are very skeptical of evolution and basically say could this have happened by accident but this one's more about let's show a film about reproduction so you kind of get those concepts in somebody's in a kid's head and also about family um reinforcing the family aspect of it so it's kind of interesting all right so what do we got lined up here um let's watch a nasa film let's learn about opportunities in xero g enjoy since life first appeared on earth it began a process of adaptation to the extremes of temperature altitude pressure and moisture in the environment life is found in tidal pools beneath the surface of the oceans [Music] in arid deserts and on the tallest mountains [Music] but one influence has remained constant since the first life appeared hundreds of millions of years ago every living organism on earth has been molded and shaped by the continuous pervading force of gravity [Music] with the flights of the skylab space station the questions about man's ability to live and work in the weightless environment of space began to be answered and we had about four major medical experiments that were performed in flight with many little side issues and add-ons the system we expected to change fastest in the body was the cardiovascular system the heart the blood vessels the amount of blood in them and the way they operated so our number one experiment to stress that system and see how it reacted to stress was called lower body negative pressure the theory here is that if an individual sticks himself into again from the feet up to the waist seals his waist with a impervious cloth seal and then sucks some of the air out of the can the lower pressure in his legs causes the blood vessels to expand leaves more room in the in the blood vessels down there and actually results in the the pooling or stasis of a considerable amount of blood down in the legs and this is the same thing that happens to a man when he stands upright in gravity for a long period of time without moving his muscles and the lbnp or lower body negative pressure was a surrogate a substitute for gravity a way to fake the body out and we were in that at four day intervals throughout the mission and from the very first time we ran it it was it was obvious that there were indeed changes and that this was a much tougher test in flight than it was on the ground you felt the change in pressures much more readily but the encouraging thing was that these symptoms were present the very first time we did the test and they didn't get worse as time went on that was the thing we were really interested in were we backing into trouble were we losing more blood or pooling more or in some way was the was the system not responding the way it should and although lbnp was a tough test it wasn't any tougher on day 25 than it was on day five that's the data we really needed there was another major dynamic test or stress test that we used to determine our condition in flight and that was the bicycle ergometer this was a different kind of stress this is a an exercise stress uh you didn't take blood out of the system you simply worked your heart your muscles and your lungs to the maximum capacity that you were able to work them on the ground to see whether they all played together the same way in the absence of gravity our experience on that was completely different from on lower body negative pressure because there was simply no change at all we found that our ability to exercise our hearts ability to move blood around the body the cells and muscles ability to extract oxygen from it and all the processes that that go into a maximum exercise were completely unaffected by zero gravity uh the vestibular tests in flight were also uh quite interesting because here again the results were somewhat different than we had expected or that we had encountered in our preflight testing the test itself was to put the subject in a rotating chair and allow you to spin at some speed on the order of 10 to 30 rpm and then go through a series of head movements you first nod forward then decide back left and forward again until what the physicians call you approach a malaise condition now to a layman that means that you don't feel too good and so when you reach this level of being ready to stop because you just don't feel too good then that terminates the test and we normally found in my own case fairly typical spinning at about 15 rpm i went through 50 to 60 head movements before reaching malaise now in zero g after a few days of adaptation all crewmen have found that we became very insensitive to these motion problems and instead of going at 15 rpm we could go at 30 rpm the highest speed the chair would rotate and not only that do the go through the full protocol of 150 head movements with essentially no symptoms at all now this is essentially an uh a a situation that was not predicted by the physicians before flying nor is it really fully understood even post flight and is one of the more interesting results in the medical area to come out of the skylab flights skylab medical results have shown that there will be no major obstacles to space flight of several weeks or months duration this is especially valuable to know since the space shuttle and space lab flights will be a maximum of a month in duration once your eyes see something then you relate to it and and you say whatever is above my head is up whatever is below my feet is down doesn't matter whether it's the floor or the ceiling and in fact if you stand there and have this nice sense of rightness that everything is in its place and you turn 180 degrees and stand on your head the whole world turns with you and what was the ceiling now feels like the floor and you know now that the chairs and tables are growing out of the ceiling you wonder why the designers built them that way and all the lights are on the floor so on your your your sense of of relation to the outside world is completely different it's completely centered in your own body and once you get used to this it's kind of pleasant to just play with it to look down the long axis of the workshop head first and it feels like you're looking up [Music] then you rotate around and look at it from between your feet and it looks like you're standing on the top of a deep well and could jump down into it [Music] moving around in it uh is very easy very delightful uh i think it's like learning how to ride a bike it takes you a few days to get the reflexes down right and then you can push off and do somersaults or twists or land with your feet in the right place every time without even worrying about it [Applause] [Music] uh as far as metals melting we metal melted some combinations of metals to form alloys and these turned out that they met the greatest expectations of the experimenters who are working with this on earth in the presence of a gravitational field is that some of the portions of the alloys will form first and in so doing is they solidify they settle to the bottom and you either have to keep it agitated or some other means of keeping these things stirred up or in some cases you just can't do it of course in weightlessness there's no bottom for these particles to settle to and they are very excited about the results of this are getting good homogeneous materials out of these handling of liquids in zero-g is also an interesting problem as you can imagine when you try to take a drink from a cup or something of that nature we of course didn't have cups on board we instead had little drink bottles which expanded accordion style to fill out the amount of liquid that you put in them so you have to do something like that to drink and take special precautions every time you're handy handling liquids now we had a number of science demonstrations on board in which we attempted various means of handling liquids and this is one of the interesting one of the areas in which it was interesting to see the evolution of technique uh develop over the course of the three skylab flights uh for example on the first flight joe kerwin began to squeeze a little liquid out of these bottles and handle it with a straw and uh even to pump air into and out of the water bubble as he wished building on those ideas on the second flight i then began to use hypodermic needles to do a little more precisely and to blow up even larger bubbles and also solve one of the most difficult problems that of restraining and confining this bubble so it doesn't float all over the spacecraft a nice simple way to do that is simply on a little string which we made of dental floss and this is just enough uh force to attach it to the bubble and restrain the bubble so it doesn't fly around all over the spacecraft and then we then generated a number of other experiments using these sorts of bubbles and then on the third flight they did even more fascinating things such as spinning these bubbles up uh causing them to rotate until they finally even reach the point where they would uh fission or separate into two separate bubbles and we're now reaching the point where we're doing experiments that are really of considerable theoretical interest to nuclear physicists who are studying uh similar sorts of breakups in solar systems or in uh cosmological problems it's of interest to cloud physicists who are studying the way in which water drops interact and combine as they're falling down through the earth's atmosphere and so uh handling of liquids in space turned out to provide an evolution through the course of the three flights and eventually reached the point where they're really quite interesting to a large number of uh researchers moving around in zero g was really a very effortless thing uh once you your body became accommodated to the fact that you were weightless it's very much like the sensation you get when you're skin diving or just floating around in the water the handling of equipment we found something rather peculiar but again not too surprising and that is that we found it much easier to handle very large objects objects which on the ground weigh 100 to 200 or 300 pounds very bulky objects much easier to handle that size object than it was the little bitty pieces uh as a matter of fact the smaller the piece of equipment you're working with the more difficult it was because they tended to float away on you and drift off and we had to stick small screws and springs in small pieces like that and make sure that we stuck them to a piece of tape that we had taped to a locker wall as far as maintenance tasks in the future we're going to need some better way than sticky tape i think of of holding the small pieces when you're working on a piece of gear but i think the message that comes across loud and clear is that anything you can do on earth you can do in space if you just give a guy a place to put his tools and his parts and a place to restrain his body and there's really nothing that there's nothing that you can't do well i think that skylab is an important link between past and future missions it sort of occupies a significant crossover point so we have sort of inherited certain things from the past developed on them and now we have sort of indicated the directions to go in the future projecting on from skylab we see coming over the horizon the shuttle and with the shuttle the capability to take up large modules for the construction of a space station space lab itself as it is presently conceived will provide us with a capability which grows on skylab expands on skylab and provides us with an enormous capability to conduct research in space the space shuttle will offer the first opportunity for routine access to near earth space the space lab module which is being developed by the european space agency will be carried into orbit by the shuttle and after orbital operations return to earth new manned laboratory in space will provide researchers in the sciences government and industry with an economical space-borne extension of earth-bound laboratories work has begun on the assembly of the space lab module which will fit in the space shuttle cargo bay a consortium of european nations has agreed to build and deliver a flight qualified space lab to the united states by 1979. the space shuttle orbiter is scheduled to roll off the assembly line in the latter part of 1976 and will be flown in approach and landing tests so-called alt flights in 1977 the first orbital flight is scheduled for 1979. in the meantime high fidelity space lab simulations have been underway at the johnson space center in houston texas this simulated space lab mission follows a realistic mission timeline for a week of orbital operations during this time the crew members eat and sleep in the shuttle forward section as they would on an actual mission the experiments that are conducted will provide feedback on the layouts space allocations and hardware systems for subsequent flights the experiments will also provide earthbound baseline data for similar experiments that will be flown aboard the space lab no special training or rigid physical criterion will be necessary for shuttle flights or passengers so for the first time a researcher may accompany his experiment into space and return to earth with the results and his precious data the space shuttle and space lab will provide a new national resource a weightless laboratory in space and herein lies a critical point which we must address experimentation without the ever-present gravity factor an entirely new environment a new concept a new context we know from our apollo and skylab experiences that observable physiological biochemical chemical and physical changes do occur during weightlessness in biological chemical and physical systems changes which are at present only partially understood we must remedy this situation by aggressive innovative and radical changes in our thought processes until now all biological chemical and physical thought and indeed all engineering related to these areas has been based on concepts in which the gravity component was always factored into the equation the time has come for us to think in terms of the advantages of not having this gravity factor to contend with and to consider the benefits that might accrue due to its absence we have perhaps only scratched the surface and seemingly find ourselves in a situation reminiscent of the discovery of penicillin in 1928 by sir alexander fleming the full impact of his accidental finding was not realized until many many years later and so it is with no gravity that a new frontier in science has been broached the full impact of which awaits the ingenuity of scientists in the shuttle era and beyond [Music] but for all the complexity and awesome capabilities these are merely tools their real value will be determined by the investigators and experiments that will be flown the weightless environment aboard the shuttle will open the door to space wider than ever before and hopefully will stimulate new research into one of the least known phenomena of the natural universe zero gravity not since life first emerged from the oceans into the alien world of dry land and air has there been a more fundamental challenge to adapt to a new environment this new weightless laboratory will provide scientists with the first opportunity to accompany their experiments into space and respond in person to the challenges of the future um yeah so um excuse me skylab uh all that wonderful footage uh some comments were saying like oh they're just goofing off up there there's um so there were some actual experiments that were done and the goofing off is actually for um educational purposes um and we see this with the shuttle missions they do this as well where they do they show different aspects of what life and space is like for school kids to get them interested in the space sciences they do a lot with toys a whole lot of stuff with toys because those are easy concepts for kids and adults to understand so it's kind of a pr thing they do those goofy things they're actually doing some things that are related to chemistry biology manufacturing etc so all right um i have a film set up on the telecity behind me and this is um because i willfully forgot to show films for black history month and i have quite a few films that are pretty great in that regard and this one is is great it's called from these roots and it's a documentary about the harlem renaissance and yesterday we watched weapons of gordon parks and gordon parks talked about when he ended up in harlem how magical it was and you know what a fascinating culture and how vibrant it was and this film is talking about that um so here's uh from these roots it's 30 minutes long but it's still pretty great there's a lot of still photography in it but it's a lot of stuff you're not going to see anywhere else so um i'm happy to show it enjoy drums for the marching men with victory medals on their chest drums for the dead left behind drums were the future they had fought for drums when the black 369th infantry returned from the front in the year 1990. proudly they moved through the streets towards harlem because they had fought gallantly to make the world safe for democracy to black people everywhere particularly the young the future looked very bright [Music] [Applause] so harlem 1920 a little more than 600 acres of land hundreds thousands of black people were coming here particularly from the rural areas of america a few brought memories from africa the indians were here first and the dutch took over then came the english irish then the jews [Music] but then the black started moving in from other parts of new york city and the whites began moving out by the early 1920s harlem was mostly black the remaining white residents feeling threatened began moving to other parts of the city people began calling harlem the capital of black america [Music] during the 20s there were roughly 200 000 black people living in harlem a few lived in stylist splendor on 138th street in houses designed by stanford white unable to break down the walls of discrimination that separated them from the white middle class they formed their own exclusive clubs some were pacesetters of elegance and fashion in the community we actually had a millionaires in our midst her name was alilia walker alias elegance and high fashion were the talk of the entire city she entertained royalty high society and the leading figures in the black community at her harlem town house and also at her palatial mansion at irvington on the hudson [Music] but elijah walker was one in 10 million [Music] virtually all of harlem's population was born and raised in desperate poverty surrounded with hate and hostile rural environments looking for opportunity those who were able left these areas then migrated to a place that was on the lips of black people everywhere harlem new york the capital of black america [Music] in new york we found greater freedom than we had ever known [Music] even though there were places blacks could not go to eat or live even though it was a little more crowded than back home black men and women could walk the streets here unmolested [Music] during those days we strolled a little more than most people any time of day or night you could see young and old strolling up and down lennox and seventh avenues in those days harlem was one of the nicest parts of new york city [Music] the migration here was aggressively encouraged by philip a payton a black real estate man we owned most of the homes in harlem even some of the businesses were black owned [Music] but like today most harlemites worked in menial jobs for white people downtown we cleaned stores and other businesses were porters boot blacks we ran errands we waited on tables we dug up streets and fill them up again it was all most of us could do to make ends meet with the prices rising all the time a lot of talented people were coming to harlem in those days this photographic studio on 135th street was owned by a young photographer who took pictures for all occasions he was a man of many talents a renaissance man his name james van der zee a prime contributor to what has been called the harlem renaissance [Music] his legacy thousands and thousands of pictures [Music] pictures of little boys pictures of little girls pictures of the sunday school of the abyssinian baptist church with its minister the reverend adam clayton powell senior one of the dynamic leaders of this growing community [Music] there sure was a lot of energy here in harlem plenty of hope and plenty of pride take jack johnson for example just a few years earlier he showed everybody that given a chance a black man could rise to the top he was quite a man and a dandy too in those days twice let me fix it i should say while i'm fixing the splice um that jack johnson died about two blocks from here where the archive is in raleigh and i hope in a hospital segregated hospital um yeah anyways some lived way beyond their means trying to keep pace with the roaring twenties [Music] at night the white dandies came up from downtown to enjoy the sights and nightlife and dance all night at places like connie's inn and the world famous cotton club [Music] the orchestra at the cotton club was headed by another talented young fellow edward kennedy ellington or the duke he was the jazz man of the harlem renaissance yes there were a lot of talented black people coming to harlem in those days [Applause] [Music] cat calloway quite a performer [Applause] [Music] and those beauties in the chorus line like josephine baker [Music] and ethel waters they really had the town talking [Music] places like the cotton club catered exclusively to white patrons they paid a good deal of money to extract our humor from us [Music] because my mouth is wide with laughter and my throat is deep with song [Music] you do not think i suffer after i have held my pain so long because my mouth is wide with laughter you do not hear my inner cry because my feet are gay with dancing you do not know or i die a poem by langston hughes a talented young harlem but white america wasn't listening they had come to harlem to be free to let their hair down to frequent a world quite different from their own they liked one of our dancers in particular we called it the thousand they took it downtown and soon it was all over the country in those days there was a young dancer who could make up steps faster than you can say bo jangles his name bill robinson bert williams saw him dancing out in chicago and brought him here to new york even though bert williams famous partner george walker died a few years before in 1920 williams was still one of the greatest comedians in show business williams always wanted to be a serious actor on the american stage but white americans wanted him to keep them laughing [Music] betsy smith came to harlem she had blues to sing there were other songs too songs written by fatswalla and andy ratzaff a renaissance was in the air in harlem in these two square miles of land there were countless community groups symphony and popular orchestras like those of the cleft club cultural societies black motion picture companies and theater groups like the lafayette players [Music] in 1921 the most exciting legitimate show to open on broadway was the all-black musical shuffle along the hit of the season written by flernoy miller and aubry lyles the show had a carload of hit songs by the prolific songwriting team of noble sissel and eubie [Music] the first musical comedy to use a dramatic storyline shuffle along revolutionized the musical on broadway even most musicals today are based on its pioneering format and style it opened up opportunities for lots of newcomers people like that young football star paul robeson who later became a world-renowned actor and singer on the american stage and then what did she say baby shuffle along had a number of stars but the most dazzling of them all was florence mills now i've got the gypsy blues and i'm sorry that i did with you but there was another side to florence mills another side to the cast of shuffle along the band of duke ellington to all the talented black artists of the twenties another side to the happy people of harlem the side that looked at death violent death and mourned day dawned and soon the mixed crowds came in view the ghastly body swaying in the sun the women thronged to look but never a one showed sorrow in her eyes of steely blue and little lads lynchers that were to be danced round the dreadful thing in fiendish glee [Music] there was a lot of talk about the young poets who had come to harlem and who were expressing what people were feeling about the lynchings in america young poets like claude mckay gave white america a glimpse of what is at the back of the black man's mind [Music] if we must die let it not be like hogs hunted and penned in an inglorious spot while round us barked the mad and hungry dogs making their mark at our cursed lot if we must die oh let us nobly die so that our precious blood may not be shed in vain then even the monsters we defy shall be constrained to honor us though dead o kinsmen we must meet the common foe though far outnumbered let a soul us brave and for their thousand blows deal one death blow what though before us lies the open grave like men we'll face the murderous cowardly pack pressed to the wall dying but fighting back mckay wrote both of those poems there was something different about these young poets they didn't seem to see life in the same way as the older people [Music] though their form and style was traditional english first the content and feeling of their writings was distinctly black the young poet langston hughes had come to harlem from out west he writes about these young people about their thoughts and their feelings we younger negro artists who create now intend to express our individual dark skinned cells without fear or shame [Music] if white people are pleased we are glad if they are not it doesn't matter we know we are beautiful and ugly too the tomtom cries and the tomtom laughs these were the new negroes professor allen locke of howard university wrote a book about them called the new negro in it dr locke leaves us a rich legacy of our history our music our art and literature in the new negro dr lot speaks of a renaissance in harlem outstanding people are represented in its pages people like paul johnson musical conductor honorable poet [Music] aaron douglas painter walter white writer and undercover operative for the naacp richmond bartee sculptor augustus savage w e sculptors dubois philosopher and activist arthur schomberg historian jesse fawcett novelist james weldon johnson poet author and head of the naacp and rose mclendon a leading actress of the lafayette players one of the most distinguished poems recorded in the book the new negro is written by young langston hughes after roaming the black communities of america and the rest of the world working on freighters waiting on tables he captures the essence of the black experience i've known rivers i've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins my soul has grown deep like the rivers i bathed in the euphrates when dawns were young i built my hut near the congo and it lulled me to sleep i looked upon the night and raised the pyramids above it i heard the singing of the mississippi when abe lincoln went down to new orleans and i've seen its muddy bosom turn all golden in the sunset i've known rivers ancient dusky rivers my soul has grown deep like the rivers the depth the vision the genius of these young writers began to appear regularly in opportunity magazine official journal of the urban league edited by the sociologist charles s johnson and in the crisis magazine the official journal of the naacp edited by w.e.b du bois and other publications like the messenger [Music] the writings of the renaissance writers also began to appear in the white publications downtown largely through the efforts of carl van vecton a well-known white writer who took a keen interest in the creative people of harlem they had other benefactors too like casper holstein who established awards and scholarships for them but perhaps the man whose activities most benefited these creative people was arthur a schomburg a black puerto rican whose library collection of books and manuscripts on afro-american and african history is the most extensive in the united states from their study there our renaissance writers began to ask new questions like those posed by the brilliant young poet county cullen what is jungle star or jungle track strong bronze men or regal black women from whose loins i sprang when the birds of eden sang one three centuries removed from the seeds his fathers loved spicy grove cinnamon tree what is africa to me what were the forces behind this surge of creative activity these writers works covered many themes understandably the major recurring theme is race their preoccupation with race did not develop overnight the burnings the massacres like this one in east st louis these scenes were branded on their minds forever the east st louis riots occurred in 1917 while the brothers of some of the renaissance artists were overseas fighting a war to make the world safe for democracy some of the writers marched in the famous silent protest parade that took place along fifth avenue the marchers 15 000 black people this parade was our protest against these massacres because of the hostile racial climate of america the silent parade was indeed a courageous act [Music] at the vanguard of the parade were the two most revered and distinguished leaders in afro-american life james weldon johnson and w.e.b du bois these two men were a continuing source of inspiration for the young renaissance writers they provided them with leadership and examples of scholarship their writings nourished the minds of these young artists working out of his office at the crisis magazine dr du bois created an unending flow of information on the black experience his book souls of black folk was required reading for the creative talents of the renaissance the distinguished poet writer and head of the naacp james weldon johnson was the idol and mentor of many writers artists and young musical talents like the tenor roland hayes who looked to him for encouragement one of his most outstanding books was black manhattan it was felt by johnson and dubois that the art poetry and writing of distinguished black people would play a large role in developing black pride and in breaking down the walls of racial discrimination so prevalent in america but the best way to combat racial violence prejudice and discrimination was revealed to the white community of america that black citizens were orderly neat and well behaved and so in the silent parade everyone put on their sunday best shine their shoes wore their best hats in the hope that america would alter its thinking but there were other parades a movement that started here in harlem spread throughout the black communities of the united states at its peak it had a following of six million black people at the head of this movement was the dynamic public speaker marcus garvey he posed another solution to the problem of race in america he had a tremendous impact on the young people of the 20s particularly the creative ones his words let us go home to africa let us go back and leave this cancerous land no political surgeons can cut out this disease six million black people have spoken his ideas caused considerable controversy for the first time in the 20th century the concepts of black pride black nationalism black power were organized into a political movement the united negro improvement association with headquarters in harlem [Music] under the influence of marcus garvey the idea of africa took firm root in the minds of the talented new negroes of harlem in the minds of people like aaron douglas perhaps the most outstanding artist of the period douglas studied in both america and europe but in these paintings found his greatest inspiration in the art of africa [Music] more than any other artist of the period his work symbolized the growing significance of africa to black people [Music] equally important his work reflected the spirit of the renaissance [Music] it is often said that we black people cannot speak of a renaissance because prior to our subjugation into slavery and feudalism we were savages fighting for survival in the jungles of africa but the ancient greeks and romans as well as the sages of the european renaissance had quite a different view of black people even as late as 200 years ago count volney a high official in napoleon's government in describing the african people said in his noted book the ruins of empires there are people now forgotten discovered while others were yet barbarians the elements of the arts and sciences a race of men now rejected from society for their stable skin and frizzled hair founded on the study of the laws of nature those civil and religious systems which still govern the universe [Music] what were the root causes of the renaissance was it the war was it racism radicalism or liberalism was it the roaring twenties was it the dynamic presence of individuals like w.e.b du bois james weldon johnson arthur schoenberg alan locke carl van vetten was it marcus garvey who knows or does it really matter what caused the renaissance much more important is the fact that it was a turning point in afro-american thought and creativity its impact is still being felt today perhaps it is because the renaissance stems from something deeper something very ancient something that comes from the souls of black folks the spirit of survival and liberation indeed a perennial spirit in the history of all mankind a spirit that now flowers in the works of black artists writers social and political thinkers in the works of all who create in the many hollands of america today [Music] so [Music] [Music] so [Music] so um facebook took it down uh that's why i played it at the end big fan of fats waller um and so i hope you know that that uh film about the harlem renaissance was long and it was mostly still imagery it was all still imagery i think but it was still fascinating really amazing in the ripple the cultural ripples from harlem through american culture american popular culture we're still hearing it today with slang music food fashion dance all of that um and so anyways uh everybody have a great uh weekend and we'll be back on monday if you like what you saw you can buy us coffee uh thank you was it william for the coffee yes thank you william so much for the coffee you can go to ko dash fi.com av geeks uh or you can go to avgeeks.com and buy dvds or you can hit the thumbs up button or the like button we love it and we love that you guys tune in and can appreciate when i dig deep and show something that's not a goofy cornball educational film so everybody take care have a good weekend and we'll see you monday farewell um i'm doing a hunt library show about model rockets and 3d printing at three o'clock so join me then bye you