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You didn't ask for it, you got it anyway:<br><br>
"Gold Is The Shade Esperanto" by Margaret Danner<br>
<a href="http://www.autodidactproject.org/other/danner-esperanto.html" eudora="autourl">
http://www.autodidactproject.org/other/danner-esperanto.html</a><br><br>
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:<br><br>
"Isn’t that a quirky little poem? There actually <i>is</i> 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."<br><br>
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), <i>The Heir of Slaves:
An Autobiography</i>. 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? <br><br>
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