… That Children Would Know that Black People Have Done Great Things

What does it take to establish a museum? The first thing would be a collection of something: art, books, automobiles. The second ingredient would be a motivated visionary and, finally, money. The Mayme A. Clayton Library and Museum in Culver City meets the first two criteria, being the largest private collection of African-American artifacts in the world, thanks to the vision of assiduous collector Mayme Clayton, who for 40 years saved everything that related to the African-American experience’from rare and out-of-print books, personal correspondence of such leaders as Booker T. Washington and Pearl Bailey, to black films, photographs and even mementos of slave life. The museum didn’t come with an endowment; Clayton’s repository of more than three million items was collected on her librarian’s salary. As an academic librarian at UCLA, she was preternaturally drawn to books and other ephemera. In 1969, she helped establish the university’s African-American Studies Center Library, and began to buy out-of-print works by authors from the Harlem Renaissance. Her collector’s eye was always active. She rummaged through basements and garages, secured morgue photographs from The California Eagle, the Los Angeles-based African-American newspaper founded in 1879, and soon became known among the collector’s community. Her integrity in amassing a cohesive record of African-American history attracted others to entrust their collections to her. These special collections include the Lena Horne Scrapbook Collection, Marcus Garvey Papers and the Oscar Micheaux Literary and Film Collection. Michaeux was the most prolific black independent filmmaker in American cinema who produced and directed 44 feature-length films between 1919 and 1948. Clayton was a film buff who set out to find and store the largest pre-1959 black film collection in the world, which she complemented by collecting large, colorful vintage movie posters dating back to 1921. While the inveterate collector kept stashing away treasures in her garage from floor to ceiling, collectors and curators began to worry about the fragility of the materials and urged her to move them to a safer storage area. ‘I remember about 15 years ago, we went to see her collection,’ Pacific Palisades collector Bernard Kinsey recalls. ‘The first thing I thought is that this is a national treasure and we’ve got to get this stuff out of the garage. She had a signed copy of Phyllis Wheatley’s 1773 ‘Poems on Various Subjects Religious and Moral,’ and you could smell the mold.’ Kinsey and his wife Shirley have amassed their own collection, the Kinsey Collection, one of the largest private collections of artifacts tracing African-American history, which has been on a national tour for the last five years. Upon Mayme’s death in 2006, her son Avery took up his mother’s dream to place her collection for the public to view and study ‘by generations and generations hence.’ Avery consulted with a number of experts, including Kinsey, who taught him how to approach the project. ‘The first thing I said is let’s preserve the materials and then I said to inventory the collection items; it’s so important to have good records.’   The endangered collection was moved out of Clayton’s overcrowded garage and relocated to the former courthouse building around the corner from Sony Pictures in Culver City that Avery had convinced the city to rent for $1 a year. The materials were then decontaminated by freezing and finally cataloged, organized and placed on shelves awaiting public use. Avery inherited his mother’s energy and passion, and in 2001, he quit his high school teaching job to devote himself to the collection and to the museum. ‘Avery had a tremendous commitment and excitement and conveyed that effortlessly,’ says Sue Hodson, curator of manuscripts at the Huntington Library, who worked with him on the recent exhibit ‘Central Avenue and Beyond: the Harlem Renaissance in Los Angeles’ at the Huntington. ‘He had a real ability to sell his commitment to donors and politicians. He was tireless in his willingness and capacity to speak to groups. No matter if he was talking to one person or 500, the story always sounded fresh.’ Indeed, Avery was able to secure the museum space and raise hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations, plus a $250,000 federal grant with the help of Rep. Diane Watson. Sadly, Avery suffered a heart attack and died last Thanksgiving day at the age of 62. Plans for the museum continue under the direction of interim director Cynthia Hudley, a professor at UC Santa Barbara, who grew up in Los Angeles with Avery. She and the board of directors are making decisions about renovating the building and planning symposia, panel discussions and small exhibitions, such as the recent show at the Huntington. The job is daunting, says Kinsey, noting that the breadth and scope of the collection make it unique. ‘But, you have to focus, the museum has to decide what part of the collection will speak to the biggest audience. All of it is stuff unless you put it into context to make people understand the story or value. You have to develop a story.’ Huntington curator Hodson knows that there are many stories to be told. ‘There is so much material at the library, they can do more and more exhibitions,’ she says. For the Huntington show, Hodson and Avery selected stories that were not as familiar as those of the New York Harlem Renaissance. The exhibit focused on jazz, classical ballet, stage performance, literature and the colorful characters who made these stories. There was Herb Jeffries, 96, who was known as the singing cowboy, like Gene Autry. In fact, he and Autry were good friends. Thanks to the movies made by Clarence Muse and Spencer Williams, ‘Black children could go to a Saturday matinee and see the good guy as a black man, taking care of the bad guys and getting the girl,’ Hodson says. ‘Black actors were limited,’ Hodson says. ‘Hattie McDaniel, who won an Academy Award for her role in ‘Gone with the Wind,’ was limited to playing mammies and housemaids, which she didn’t mind. ‘I’d rather play one for $700 a week than be one for $7 a week,’ she’d quip. ‘Libraries like the Clayton have an important role,’ Hodson continues. ‘We must never forget these things.’ The museum will have a ‘soft’ opening in the spring. For more information or to make a donation to the Mayme A. Clayton Museum and Library, visit: claytonmuseum.org or call 310-202-1647.

Theatre Palisades presents the first annual Palisades Playwrights Festival’ four evenings of plays by award-winning local playwrights. Readings will take place Tuesday evenings, March 9, 16, 23 and April 13 at 7:30 p.m. at Pierson Playhouse, 941 Temescal Canyon Rd. The schedule for the Festival is as follows:   March 9 ‘ ‘The Last of the Daytons’ by Diane Grant The universal human longing for family informs this play about how one incident can define and change a person’s life forever. At first glance, family members Melina and Bob, Jodie and Devon might not be seen as ‘normal.’ Not that many people talk to invisible friends, escape from hospitals in pajamas, or collect epitaphs. But this is how they cope.   March 16 ‘ ‘Apogee + 26’ by Richard Martin Hirsch In the summer of 1969, three friends from L.A.’s Westside began a tour of the U.S. in a VW van. Now, 26 years later, one of them has been stricken with a terminal illness, and his former best friend is thrown into a quandary about why their friendship dissolved.   April 13 ‘ ‘Haunted Masters: The Ghosts of War’ by Gene Franklin Smith Three short plays adapted from stories by D.H. Lawrence, Ambrose Bierce and Algernon Blackwood.   April 20 ‘ ‘The Spark ‘ Hannah Senesh,’ a musical with book and lyrics by Noelle Donfeld, music by Sandra Shanin. The action takes place in Hannah’s cell in a Hungarian prison, 1943. Stark reality and memories surround Hannah, a strong-willed young Hungarian Jew captured by Nazis after parachuting behind enemy lines in an attempt to save her Jewish countrymen. Donations are welcome. Parking is free. Contact: 310-454-1970.

‘Sunset Sangria for the Dolphins’ will take place at the Pacific Palisades home of animal advocate Karen Dawn on Saturday, March 6, from 4 to 7 p.m. Cetaceans activist Ric O’Barry, the subject of the Oscar-nominated documentary ‘The Cove,’ will speak at 5 p.m. Actor/activist James Cromwell (‘Babe,’ ‘Spider-Man 3’) will introduce O’Barry. ‘Cove’ filmmaker Louie Psyhoyos is also scheduled to attend. Madeleine Bistro will cater the gourmet vegan cuisine. ‘The Cove’ details O’Barry’s mission to expose the dolphin slaughter that has been taking place annually and covertly at a remote location in Taiji, Japan. In the 2009 film, O’Barry, who started his career as a dolphin trainer on the TV program ‘Flipper,’ says he now regrets his participation on the hit series because it ultimately created the market for the sale of dolphins to aquatic parks that spawned the Taiji situation, in which 23,000 dolphins are killed each year. The meat from the dolphins (which contains high levels of mercury) is then sold to consumers in Japan, misrepresented as other forms of fish.   ’I spent 10 years building that industry up and I spent 35 years trying to tear it down,’ O’Barry says in the film. (An interview with O’Barry will appear in next week’s Palisadian-Post. ‘The idea for the event,’ Dawn tells the Post, ‘came about when I congratulated my friend Ric on the Oscar nomination and he said that he was delighted but hoped that some of the attention the film was getting could be directed back to the dolphins and ending the annual slaughter in Taiji. ‘So we are doing this event to raise awareness of and money for Earth Island Institute, the organization that funds Ric’s work.’ Proceeds will help subsidize O’Barry’s voyage back to Taiji, where he plans to stage a celebrity-laden demonstration in an effort to help shut down the dolphin-slaughter site. Ben Stiller, Sting and Yoko Ono are among the celebrities O’Barry is attempting to mobilize. Dawn promises an interesting evening on her scenic patio, overlooking the Pacific Ocean, but there are a few guests that she can not guarantee will make it. ‘We have asked the dolphins to do a swim-by and they are considering it but won’t commit,’ Dawn says, smiling. Recommended donation: $250 per person. Limited capacity: 40 guests. Advance RSVP recommended. E-mail Karen at news@dawnwatch.com

Edith Malek was not always royalty. The ‘Clematis Queen’ ascended to the throne after her years of great appreciation for the ‘aristocrat of climbers’ finally led to founding the American Clematis Society over a decade ago.   Her highness will talk about her favorite subject to members and friends of the Palisades Garden Club on Monday, March 1 at 7:30 p.m. at the Woman’s Club, 901 Haverford.   ’In 1994, I was working at a small nursery in Irvine and one of the local sales reps brought his truck around in which he had several clematis samples,’ Malek recalls. ‘ I thought I was going to pass out and go to heaven. I thought, they can’t grow here in Irvine, but I didn’t let that dampen my spirit. I bought seven three-gallon pots, $28 apiece. That was a lot of money back then.’   Malek’s dream soon turned serious when on a trip to England that same year; she bought two books on the subject. ‘I was reading them and my hair follicles hurt.’   Nobody was talking about clematis back then, Malek recalls. But she kept doing her own thing, and even started presenting programs on the species. ‘I was in my princess stage,’ she says.   ’I realized that I had to help them along, get horticulturalists familiar with the multiple possibilities of this plant.’ A colleague, Gloria Leibach, who was the president of the South Bay Rose Society at that time, encouraged Malek to start a society. ‘She said, ‘I’d join the society if you’d start one.’ I had no idea what I was doing; we started with nine people. Now we have over 350 members.’   For the most part, Malek says that gardeners fall in love with the big hybrid soft flowers, but she is drawn to the smaller ones like the crispa, which are tiny, the size of a marshmallow.   Clematis grow most everywhere in the United States, but with complete comfort in zones 4-11, those with mild temperatures and a little cold chill. The varieties are limited in the warmer zones.   The plants come in a range of rich hues and varied bloom times, which enable gardeners to have masses of bloom from late winter to late fall. While the flowers give a good show in the ground, they also make an excellent cut flower with a two-week shelf life, Malek says. She has some 200 plants in her yard, one-third in the ground and the remainder in containers.   ’I trial them so I can tell our members which ones I really like,’ Malek says. ‘There are more than the jackmanii (the first large-flowered hybrid), and if I don’t try them we’re never going to get beyond the seven favorites.’   Malek has a degree in horticulture, and for six years she ran a floral business until the 1990s, when the economy took a downturn. She then got a job with the Irvine Company; she was the first female gardener on the 80-member team. She proudly recalls that her ‘location’ was Fashion Island, where she took care of the pond, the poplar trees and changing out the concrete planters each season.   These days, she is knee-deep in overseeing and directing the society, but Malek looks back on her floral design days nostalgically. ‘I came out of retirement last year when my daughter got married,’ she says. ‘She told me that I could use clematis in her bouquet, but not to go overboard. This was hard for me because I had been collecting clematis, carefully processing and saving them for a couple of weeks to use in the arrangements. So I started putting in roses and delphinium, and then added just a few clematis. which bloomed into a big clematis extravaganza. I’m all about show,’ she admits. Her daughter loved it.