- [Announcer] Live from your Public Media Studios, WVIA presents, Keystone Edition Arts, a Public Affairs program that goes beyond the headlines to address issues in Northeastern and Central Pennsylvania.

This is Keystone Edition Arts.

And now, Erika Funke.

- Welcome to Keystone Edition Arts and a program in which we'll explore the history of our region from the ground up, literally in and through the creative vision of black artists then, and now.

You're invited to join the conversation by calling +1 800 326 9842, by sending an email to keystoneedition@wvia.org or on social media #keystonearts.

Paul Lazar prepares the way for us.

- [Paul Lazar] There are several organizations in our region that have a mission to preserve and share the African-American history of our area.

Organizations like The Little Bethel Historical Association, which focuses on the restoration of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in Stroudsburg, so that the early history of people of color can be shared and understood today.

Just North of Scranton, the Destination Freedom underground railroad walking tour of Waverley explores the lives of the small villages abolitionists and formerly enslaved settlers.

In Montrose, the Center for Anti-slavery Studies is focused on the activities surrounding the anti-slavery movement as it transpired in this part of Pennsylvania and is dedicated to promoting research and preservation of this history, as well as educating the public.

We can learn more about The Underground Railroad from Freedom Bound, which focuses on people and places and like Cuming County and as part of a public art project that like Cuming College art students worked on.

The website provides access to oral histories, detailed information on historical sites and resources.

These are a few of the organizations in our region dedicated to raising awareness of the African-American history in our area.

For Keystone Edition Arts, I'm Paul Lazar.

(serene music) - On June 19th, 2010, they dedicated at a historical marker in Williamsport, to Julia C. Collins, teacher and author, who's said to be one of the earliest African-American female novelists in America.

And likely the first to have her novel published.

"The Curse of Cast" or "The Slave Bride" was serialized in the Christian Recorder, the oldest existing periodical published by African-Americans in the US.

At the start of 1865, Collins called out to her readers, "There is a vast work for us to do."

And for her, the work was twofold, imagining the new nation into being, a nation that shall shine forth as a star, with each and every one working to develop their capacity, to think with originality, educating their creative imagination especially through reading.

Such unbounded idealism invariably meets the realities of history though.

And we'll explore the tension with three creative and educators.

Dr. Juanita Patience Moss, author and historian, here to speak with us about her father, the eminent coal sculptor, C. Edgar Patients, Professor Jerry Wemple of the English Faculty at Bloomsburg University, award-winning poet and editor.

We also spoke with Reverend Anthony Grasso, CSC, Professor of English at King's College and published poet.

You were invited to join the conversation by calling +1 800 326 9842 by sending an email to eystoneedition@wvui.org or on social media at #Keystonearts.

Dr. Juanita Patience Moss is an educator, author of nine books, including a historical novel, "Created To Be Free".

She spent her career in education as a teacher of high school biology.

She received her MBA from Fairly Dickinson and was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Humanities from King's College.

Historical research centers on black soldiers in the civil war who service with white regiments had not been previously documented.

Greetings, Dr. Moss.

Welcome back to your home turf here in Northeastern, Pennsylvania.

- Thank you very much.

I'm delighted to be here.

- We just heard Julia Collins, the 18th century African-American author and teacher, inspiring her readers to imagine the future and a humane and vibrant new nation.

Your father and uncle were drawn to visionary thinking in their own way, it seems.

They carved from anthracite coal, and exact scale model of the symbol of the 1939 World's Fair, the Trylon and Periphere, representing the dawn of a new day and the world of tomorrow.

They spent a whole month working on it, didn't they?

Without a commission.

The remarkable sculpture was on exhibit at the World's Fair.

And you say, you remember seeing it on your father's desk many years after that.

So it must've meant a lot to him.

From what you write about your family, It sounds as if your great-grandfather was driven by a vision of a new day, which he found in this place.

Tell us about that and him and what drew him here.

- Okay.

When he was 17 years old, he was a slave in Edenton, North Carolina.

And at that time, the Yankees penetrated the South and blacks were hearing all across the South that if they could just reach the Yankees, they would be free.

And my great-grandfather and his brother escaped from slavery and joined the Union Army.

When the war was over, his brother went back to North Carolina but my great-grandfather, had to go to Pennsylvania in order to get his last pay.

And then he remained there.

He was working for a horse breeder and my great-grandfather used to take the horses to their new owners, came up into Pitts ton and he fell in love with the area, went back and met his wife and his young family and settled in that area where he remained until when he died in 1930.

His son, Eric, was the one who started the coal carving business.

When he decided that he wanted to become a miner.

And the father said, "No, no, "you have to have an eighth grade education."

And all of the children were able to get their education and my grandfather went into the mines at age 14, injured his arm when he was 17 and started just at that young age of the coal carving business.

Which you see my father there in that picture, continuing until his death in 1972.

- It was initially a souvenir and a specific utility pieces, but your father wanted something more.

He wanted to become an artist and realize his creative imagination in his work.

Where do you think that desire came from?

What do you think it meant to him to be an artist?

- Well, I guess he got tired of just making a little trinkets and he he looked at a piece of coal and he said, "Oh I can do something else with that."

And his father probably said, "Oh no, we have "to make a living here.

"We have to make all these ashtrays "and all these paperweights and, and make gifts "and crafts for people coming into the area."

With that bust of George Washington sat in our dining room for years.

I remember that as a kid, I don't know when my father started it, but I know it was finished when it went to the Anthracite Heritage Museum in Scranton.

There it is.

- Wow!

And so he did carve a wide range of pieces.

Realistic works like the elephant and the Mack trucks bulldog.

That was a commission, - Yes, yes.

- But abstract pieces, too like love and stone on stone.

And did you say your favorite is a dolphin?

Do you love the dolphin?

(laughs) - Can you see the dolphin?

- Oh, there it is.

- Can you see it?

There it is, there's the dolphin.

- Oh!

- It's it's mine now.

(Erika chuckles) Can you say that?

- How does it speak to you, Dr. Moss?

Is it, is it this urge to be up and out and free?

- Yes.

Free, freedom.

Yes.

(laughs) I love that.

- But it is exquisite and that's how he would work.

He'd find a block and carve it and then buff it to that beautiful sheen.

- Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

And then he may say, "Oh, that looks like a dolphin, let's call it a dolphin."

But I don't know whether that's what he did, but that's what I'm imagining.

I think when he was doing the abstract work, he just saw like that piece of coal right there.

He just decided, "Let me see where it will go.

"Hopefully it will not fracture."

And a lot of the pieces of coal did fracture.

That geodes belong to me too.

I have that here in my home.

- Wow.

- So I think he just said, "well, "let's see where it's going and I will give it a name."

- I think it was interesting to hear that he also would explore museums and books and look at the work of Henry Moore, who actually was from a mining family in England.

So, there's a wonderful connection there.

I wanted to ask you or suggest that also the American experience we've already seen the George Washington, but there was the slave girl.

And that was described in your book, Dr. Moss by his wife, Alice as representing the origins of the black people in America.

It's a young woman on a slave block and change, the opposite of the dolphin, because she is signaling and that image is signaling her lack of freedom.

So he had Washington Lincoln and John Kennedy.

What are these things like?

The presidents and that image of the slave girl?

What does all this say?

Do you think about his hopes and love of the ideals of dedication to this country and to what the aspirations of the black people of his time might have been?

What do you think?

- I can't, I don't know.

We never had any discussions about anything like that.

So I cannot say why he did that.

- Yeah.

- I don't know - But it just suggests that he had a fondness especially if they weren't for commission on commission, they were spontaneous expressions of his heart.

Today in 2021, what would you say, or what would you hope about his legacy Dr. Moss, and does it relate to your own life and work in any way?

- His legacy is that beautiful altar at King's College.

That was, you felt that that was his premiere work.

It was so happy to have had that permission to be able to do that.

And so when people go to this church and they see that altar and they see the beauty of it, and they remember their ancestors, not only the poor youth family that donated it, but the ancestors of other people who were in the Valley, I hope that they will remember how important coal was at one time.

But when I came along, it was starting to die.

And of course in 1958 with was that Knox coal tragedy and deep mining's ceased.

My father would not have been able to continue the kind of work he was doing 'cause he wouldn't have been able to get those large blocks of coal.

So his legacy is what is left behind for people to see for decades and decades, I hope.

- Thank you, Dr. Moss, we will take another look at one of these amazing visions of his and that Coal Town USA, that large three-dimensional carving of a mining town from decades in the past, a mining town with homes and streets and stores and miners in all great detail.

And the imaginary landscape of Coal Town USA that Edgar patience carved is, we learn from your book, a nostalgic look back at a place that he loved at a place that might only have existed in his heart.

And now we meet Jerry Wemple who creates imagined landscapes in his poetry.

And Jerry Wemple has a clear-eyed vision that often reveals division and pain and yearning and loss in the places he writes from.

Jerry Wemple is a professor of English at Bloomsburg university and a prize winning author of three full length poetry collections including his most recent volume, Artemas & Ark: the Ridge and Valley poems.

His writing, as we suggest, is rooted in a sense of place and the history of the places and people he explores.

Welcome, professor Wemple.

You said to us before that, in your new book, "That Place", "The Place", is as much a character as the characters, Artemas and Ark are.

What does writing out of place in that kind of way allow you to do with your poetry and your poems with regard to us, your readers?

- Well, it's good to, thank you for having me on today and it's good to join with you once again, I think place really is super important to my work.

I just have always loved Pennsylvania and and particularly the Susquehanna River Valley, where I, for the most part grew up.

We were talking a little while ago off camera that I lived in Florida for a few years.

And I remember the highlight of my year was always when we came back to Pennsylvania and for two weeks it's summer vacation.

And I just, I remember as a kid, when I first got my driver's license and I was back here in Pennsylvania and just going off and driving by myself and hiking places and and just trying to learn about the history and knowing that because of the ridges and valleys, one place is very different from the next.

You can go over a hill or cross the river and people act differently, they talk differently and there's such distinction among communities or at least there was back when I was growing up, which wasn't all that long ago (Erika chuckles) but things have changed a little bit.

- In your collection and an earlier collection "The Civil War in Baltimore", you do bring the historical and personal together in ways that seem to be inextricably linked and the opening poem, isn't it?

Is titled "Frederick Douglas Learns to Read" And of course Frederick Douglas we know was an escaped slave who became a leading abolitionist and author and speaker.

Do you have it?

Would you read it for us please?

- Certainly, "Frederick Douglas Learns to Read" "My was born into a hold called Baltimore.

Being neither South nor North but rather West and East.

He ceased to be a man.

Some say, cease to be.

And furthermore to depend, captured, quantified thus chained like beast.

My mother was a literate soul sold on this bargain.

This deal between God's and God the promise of the serpent, United rather than fallen that became the legacy of this land.

And when the break came, it lingered still splitting every fragments.

This land that is mine was built upon those brains and backs, its history, a paradox.

Both unified and opposed, distorted less than paper only words, hints among the artifacts.

Glimpses just shadows of shadows, all that has been reported.

And here am I a grotesquery to leaning back in wonder.

And here I am a curious curiosity, hoping to not go under."

- Thank you.

Thank you very much.

And it's a poem that has a formal structure.

We won't go there, professor Weber with that but there are lots of opposites North, South, East West father, mother there's the land in its history.

And the key, break.

Help us understand just a little bit of what you're up to here in the poem.

- Sure.

I'm obviously trying to juxtapose these opposites and Frederick Douglass was an opposite, right?

He was a person who had a white father and a black mother.

He does things that are defiant, yet his family, his wife, members of his family, take care of him, rather than punish him for some of his misdeeds.

They send them to Baltimore and that allows him to learn to read.

He has this veil of illiteracy lifted from him and that gives him the motivation and the ability to eventually escape.

And then he, of course, has a lot of his own, kind of idiosyncrasies.

Like his future wife helps him escape and he remains married to her for a very long time.

Yet she never learned to read.

And it seems like they didn't have a really close companionship type of relationship.

So that's kind of interesting, But, and this is just, this poem is trying to reconcile, not necessarily Frederick Douglas, but trying to think about all the opposites when it comes to ethnicity and race relations within the United States and its history.

- Well, thank you and we began in fact, by hearing Julia Collins from Williamsport urging her readers to read, read, read, and wrestle with authors and to come up with their own original ideas.

Would that be the kind of approach you might take with your students when you have literature classes and stuff, is that you want them to open up through the literature, yeah?

- Sure.

I'm always trying to have my students read a variety of works and telling them not everything is for everybody, right?

That you're going to discover authors that you really like.

And when you do, you need to read everything and try to figure out that by that person and try to figure out what it is that you like about them and what it is that makes their work tick?

How is it being put together?

Look at the mechanics of it, not just the meaning but the mechanics of it, especially for students who are are already in majors and trying to figure out, "why is it this appeals to me?"

And sometimes you get people who just don't click quick and that's fine too.

(Erika laughs) - Well, but you do your best.

Well, thank you for that.

And thanks for reading for us.

We have just met two different creative artists whose work is rooted in this place.

Edgar patience knows the hardships and sufferings of the region, but when he surveyed the landscape, he drew his material from the very ground itself and often chose to make works of great beauty like dolphin that we saw.

Jerry Wemple knows the sufferings and the hardships of the region and the country.

And he helps us see the continuing reverberations of our personal and national histories.

The more than two ton coal altar by Edgar patients at King's College that you mentioned, Dr. Moss, may serve as a symbol of the tensions that we feel the beauty and the despair.

The beauty and the struggling.

And that's an art work we encountered now with Father Anthony Grasso of King's College faculty.

(soothing music) - This was once the Memorial Presbyterian church here in Wilkes-Barre founded back in the 1860s.

Now it is the chapel of Christ the King.

And it's the third iteration of the college chapel.

This is a kind of touchstone in a way and it's been one ever since its inception.

So it was really nice on one level to be able to carry through and see that history survive.

And another Testament is itself is coal altar.

we've worshiped at this altar.

I have, since I've been a Kings for 36 years that's been from chapel to chapel that we've had building to building.

It has survived because of the strength of its substance.

Not the usual thing you'd see in rolled tomato.

Sometimes I think we confuse art with beauty, in the traditional understandings.

It's a nice painting, it's a lovely picture.

It makes me feel good.

And yet we all know that art is also something that's sort of in your face and it's like, it's confrontive sometimes.

And so my own early reaction when I first saw the coal altar was to be a little bit jarred by it.

Because again, my predisposition was to say, an altar should be made of carved beautiful wood or something like marble or something that we set aside as befitting what takes place there.

And so the coal altar sort of does one.

But yet divinity becomes humanity and transforms what we consider the mundane, the human, our physicality, our lives, our food our everyday routines into something sacred and special.

The artist is the one who sees what the rest of us don't see.

Edgar Patience saw the coal could be an altar and having incredible and profound impact on those of us who see it and then those of us who actually worship with it.

Patience saw it and helped us to see.

and we have to engage it.

To me that's the artistry.

And when I think about the experience, certainly of Edgar Patience, the sculptor who was extremely talented, likely self-taught, that began finding out that the slave community in mines other than here in Pennsylvania, but up and down through the South in the Midwest were in forced labor in the mines.

So I think that's why for me, Patience altar is really an amazing, whether he knew all this or not, I certainly didn't, this coal is just an astounding testament to the strength not only of the material itself, but of the darkness of that coal, that industry, that caused so much pain and privation that took the lives of so many and injured so many others, eventually people could overcome that privation.

Some folks still struggle to be accepted to find rootedness here in this community and those prejudices and those things die hard.

And so, there's a reason to pray as well as to hope.

But dims the hope, is it?

We seem as American sometimes not to learn from our history.

Every one of us I'm of Italian extraction.

And we were called names and treated poorly/\ by others who were here before us.

And we seem to repeat that wave, unfortunately.

So it's that little sadness that sometimes dampens the light of hope for me, but then celebrating Christ's death and resurrection at this altar, the symbols of communion, the body and blood of Christ broken like those miners, like those slaves before who were broken, but not undone.

Never overcome, who never lost hope.

Who struggled, strove, pushed, fought like going through the furnace, just like pulled us, refinement.

And the purpose is really to share the human experience which involves and privation as well as celebration, life and success.

- Anthony Grasso, CSC, Reverend Anthony Grasso, professor of English at King's College speaking with us before the monumental coal altar on the Kings campus in Wilkes-Barre carved by C. Edgar Patience, the esteem sculptor of anthracite whose work is in the Smithsonian Institution.

Dr. Moss, when we encounter this massive work excavated from the very earth here in our region, and think about your father's overall body of work.

I wonder if you ever think of the monument in Washington dedicated to Martin Luther King Jr. Dr. King carved himself coming out of this block of granite with the inscription, "Out of the Mountain of Despair, a Stone of Hope."

- Yes.

Yes.

That is beautiful.

- Yes.

- Beautiful.

- And that's what it seemed to me in the sense that there is that tension and Jerry you write so well in your poetry.

You recognize and bring to light, Oh, there's a poem.

You'll have a coal poem about, "Cousin Take My Hand" where you begin with an image that is almost, (thuds) when we read it.

And you take us from the past into Johnny Mitchell walking the streets of Shannon Doors, woke it, I guess, and trying to unite, bring people together in a union people of different backgrounds and ethnicities.

And yet you bring us at the end to the present time and we're still in pain and struggle.

How do you come down about hope and the balance of hope and despair?

- Yeah.

Well, one of the things I always point out in literature classes, I often teach American ethnic literature is that there are commonalities.

I teach, Henry Louis Gates's autobiography "Colored People" which he talks about growing up in the segregated West Virginia of the fifties and sixties.

And then as Reverend Grasso just pointed out, there was a lot of discrimination against Italians as well.

And I pair that with a book by the author, Jerre Mangione called "Mount Allegro" about a Sicilian immigrant family and how much predators was against Lowe's folks.

And I try to tell people, "We're all in this together."

"We gotta work together."

- Dr. Moss, Jerry Wemple, Father Grasso, all of you for watching, we thank you so much.

We want to remind you that the information on the topic is included on our website.

You can find links and so much on wvia.org/keystone.

You can watch this episode or any previous episode on demand anytime or on the WVIA app.

And again, what a thrill to have you all here and to actually visit the altar that you spoke about Dr. Moss.

It was a real privilege to have you here and for Keystone Edition, I'm Erica Funke.

And again, thank you each for watching.

And we urge you to go to wvia.org (upbeat music)