[Membroj] Gold Is The Shade Esperanto

[Ralph Dumain]

You didn't ask for it, you got it anyway:

"Gold Is The Shade Esperanto" by Margaret Danner
http://www.autodidactproject.org/other/danner-esperanto.html

Esperanto has functioned as a metaphor for other 
things for over a century, if not since its 
inception. I'm looking at how it shows up in the 
black press and in literature. I'm waiting on a 
book from the public library, so I can read the 
poem "First Afro-American Esperantist", by 
Elizabeth Alexander, who wrote Obama's inaugural 
poem! Here's what she says about this poem in an interview:

"Isn’t that a quirky little poem? There actually 
is a first Afro-American Esperantist ­ William 
Pickens -- and there is a certificate that says 
so amongst his papers. He went to Yale in the 
early 20th century. There is such beautiful hope 
in the idea of Esperanto, the wish to communicate 
across place and boundary, and I think I am also 
interested in what we might call Negro esoterica 
­ I love our quirks and oddnesses, our 
particularities, and my poems are sometimes a way 
to make an archive, to preserve them."

Alexander is undoubtedly referring to the 
certificate Pickens received from the British 
Esperanto Association in 1906.  Pickens mentions 
this in his 1911 autobiography (available 
online), The Heir of Slaves: An Autobiography. 
I've yet to see Pickens or anyone provide more 
information about this. He thought it important 
enough to mention at least once, though actually 
his other accomplishments are far more impressive 
and historically significant. But was he really the first?



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