He was a leading musical arranger of African-American spirituals. He also played stereotyped Black roles in movies
The two lives of Jester Hairston, one of the great composers, conductors, arrangers and scholars of traditional Black music
Last week, I wrote about a book, Forget The Alamo, that argues that the heroic defense of the Alamo and, more broadly, the fight to free Texas from Mexico in the 19th century, were fundamentally about maintaining slavery upon which the cotton economy was based. I watched the 1960 John Wayne movie The Alamo to reacquaint myself with just how that great American legend has been presented and popularized over nearly 200 years.
In the movie there is a character named Jethro, a Black slave owned by and fiercely loyal to Col. Jim Bowie character, played by Richard Widmark. I was horrified. Jethro is an old man with a fringe of gray hair, shuffling gait and subservient demeanor. At the night before the final siege of the Alamo, this fictitious character (Bowie owned slaves but didn't bring any of them with him to the Alamo) is granted his freedom. But Jethro decides to stay and is killed by Mexican soldiers as he throws his body in front of his former master to protect him.
Photo credit: Getty Images
The whole thing was grotesque. But, for some reason, it made me curious about the actor who played Jethro. Who was he? He looked unfamiliar. Demeaning images of Blacks have been a staple of American cinema going back to its origins. But by 1960, surely there was at least a dawning awareness of the changing times. What did this actor think about the role he played? Was he embarrassed by it? Maybe it was just a job.
Finding out who he was would be a start. Thankfully, that information was at the tip of my fingers via Google. I learned that the actor's name was Jester Hairston. He was 60 years old when he made The Alamo and had played small uncredited parts in many movies over the previous 20 years. His filmography listed the roles: "Black Man in Jail," "Shantytown Man," "Preacher," "Singer," "Witch Doctor," "Black Janitor," "Train Porter," "Plantation Slave," "Butler." "Butler," "Butler." In the early 1950s, he had a role on Amos 'n' Andy television series. Altogether, it is a depressing roll call of the standard characters that Black actors and actresses were limited to playing well into the late 20th century.
Photo credit: Getty Images
But Jester Hairston surprised me.
I learned that he was actually mostly just a part-time actor. His main profession and his passion was spiritual music, the traditional music of Black slaves. Hairston was, in fact, a college-educated, highly-respected music arranger and historian of spirituals.
"If you're not a musician, you might be surprised that he's so famous," said Dr. Hansonia Campbell, a recently retired professor of music and Africana at California State University Dominguez Hills. "Most musicians are not, particularly most choral musicians because everybody has performed his music."
"He was a man who had multiple lives," Dr. Campbell said. "One of his lives was as a musician -- as a composer, conductor. arranger and teacher. And then one of his lives was an actor."
One man. Two lives. As a movie actor, Hairston was mostly confined to the stereotyped roles of Blacks in movies. As a musician, he was one of the top choral directors in American movies, a trusted associate of the great film score composer, Dimitri Tiomkin. He arranged the music for the exalted choir singing in such film classics as Lost Horizon (whose soundtrack was Oscar nominated), Duel in the Sun, Red River, Land of the Pharaohs and It's A Wonderful Life. He never got a screen credit for any of it.
"Up until this day, you'll never see my name on any picture by Dimitri Tiomkin," he once said. "Because I'm Black. That's all."
Yet, he wasn't bitter about it. Or, so he said.
"Why carry any hardness or any feelings against people for that," he said. "That was what we had to do in this country to get by. Either do it or don't do it."
Hairston's long life -- he was born in 1901 and died in 2000 -- is a classic tale of race in America with all of its injustices, indignities, compromises, contradictions and absurdities. He took demeaning movie roles and yet proudly studied, promoted and advanced spiritual music -- the soul stirring music that had helped sustain and uplift a people held in bondage.
Photo credit: Getty Images
"I pray over these songs and pray that God will give me some insight as to what was going through the minds of slaves when they created certain songs, what experiences they were going through," Hairston said.
In his book, The Hairstons: An American Family in Black and White, a book about the tangled family tree of the Black and White sides of the Hairston family, author Henry Wiencek wrote, "For Jester Hairston, the spirituals were not just historical artifacts, hateful relics of a hated era. They were hymns of courage, handed down to the generations that needed them next."
Jester Hairston was born in Bellows Creek, North Carolina. His mother moved the family to Homestead, Pennsylvania when he was very young. She worked, so her son was mostly raised by his grandmother, a former slave on a Hairston plantation. The White Hairston had owned as many as 10,000 slaves from Virginia to Mississippi.
"My grandmother was a slave," he recalled. "I wasn't ashamed of it at all. All of the kids I grew up with, their grandparents were slaves."
It was his grandmother who taught him the spirituals that would become his life's work.
Hairston had a hard life growing up. He went to work at age 10, taking a succession of manual labor jobs as he butted up against the solid wall of racial discrimination. Still, he managed to enroll in the Massachusetts Agricultural College (which would become the University of Massachusetts), and eventually transferred to Tufts University where he studied music. He took so many breaks to raise money to pay for college, it took him nine years to get his degree. After Tufts, he studied music for two years at Julliard School in New York.
Hairston found work as a conductor of the famed Hall Johnson Negro Choir. In 1935, he went with them to Hollywood to perform in the film version of Green Pastures with an all Black cast. Afterward, he stayed in Los Angeles where he met Tiomkin.
When he wasn't working on films, Hairston traveled widely, conducting choirs all over the country and lecturing. He gained a reputation as a brilliant arranger of spirituals. At the same time, he continued to take on demeaning film roles.
"I've run naked through more Tarzan movies than anybody has ever seen, yelling 'Bwana this,' and 'Bwana that,'" he once said.
A few years after The Alamo, Hairston arranged a song for a movie that would be the biggest hit. The movie was Lilies of the Field. The song was Amen. It's sung twice by the character played by Sidney Poitier. Except it wasn't Poitier. He couldn't carry a tune -- "Sidney does not have what we call a singing voice," Hairston said -- so the voice that you hear is Hairston's.
He would continue to perform as an actor in two television series and, from time to time, movies. He also traveled the world on State Department sponsored tours to Europe, Asia and Africa, spreading the music and story of American spiritual music.
"You should've seen Yugoslavs sing Rockin' My Soul In The Bosom of Abraham," he said.
He remained active right up until his death at the age of 99.
He once remarked about the roles he played as an actor: "We had a hard time fighting for dignity. We had no power. We had to take it, and because we took it, the young people today have opportunities."
Still, it was sad to see Hairston as Jethro in The Alamo. Sadder still once I learned who he really was, a proud, brilliant man.
There is a documentary* that was made in 2002 called Amen: The Life and Music of Jester Hairston. It was never released but can be seen on YouTube. In it, there is a wonderful scene (51 minutes into the film) in which Hairston explains to a small group of people how he arranged the spiritual, I Want Jesus To Walk With Me, to fit the vivid story he has in mind: of a Black woman at a slave auction who is sold and has her infant taken from her. She is marched off in chains, shoved and beaten by her new owner. She will never see her husband or child again. Watch this scene. It is powerful. It is sorrowful. It is the genius of art. The genius and the art of Jester Hairston.
* Dr. Hansonia Campbell and Lillian Benson were the producers of the documentary.