Three days ahead of Super Bowl LIX, Kendrick Lamar’s performance was such a hot topic that it made its way into the 2025 Frankie Freeman Inspirational Lecture, SLCL’s annual keynote Black History Month program.
“Would she be team Drake or team Kendrick,” said Ron Austin, author and assistant professor of English at Saint Louis University. He facilitated a fascinating conversation with New York Times bestselling author Victoria Christopher Murray about her latest book “Harlem Rhapsody,” which was released on February 4.
The audience erupted with laughter when Murray was asked who the heroine of her historical fiction drama would have sided with in the Drake vs. Kendrick Lamar beef had she been alive today.
“They are doing some really nasty public fighting, and I don’t think she would be happy with either of them,” Murry said. “She was prim and proper. But I think she would probably side with Kendrick – and she would pull him aside and say, ‘What you are doing doesn’t make any sense, because you are pulling down another Black man. That is unacceptable.’”
“She” is Jessie Redmon Fauset, a high school teacher who changed the course of Black literature – and sparked The Harlem Renaissance – when she became literary editor of “The Crisis,” the official magazine of the NAACP, in 1919.
Fauset is the main character in “Harlem Rhapsody,” a fictionalized account of the real-life culture shifter. “She discovered Langston Hughes at the age of 17,” Murray said. “She published Langston’s first 25 poems. She discovered Countee Cullen when he was 16.”
The main lecture room of The Clark Family Branch looked more like a Delta Sigma Theta regional meeting than a book discussion. Like the late civil rights icon for which the lecture is named, Murray is also a Delta. The room was full of red and DST paraphernalia as Freeman and Murray’s sorority sisters helped pack the talk to capacity to discuss the book that was inspired by true events – including Fauset’s affair with Black thought leader Dr. W.E.B. DuBois.
“I don’t want that to take away from anything these two amazing people did,” Murray said.
The audience was thrilled to learn that Fauset herself was a Delta, a fact that Murray did not learn until she started her research for the book.
“At first I was sad because I didn’t want to write a book about a Delta having an affair, because we are perfect,” Murray said. “And I thought, ‘My Sorors are going to be so mad at me.’”
But the story of the first Black woman to hold the position at “The Crisis,” and to give Fauset the credit she deserves, but is rarely afforded, was too compelling to pass up. She molded literary giants and shifted Black culture in a manner that still permeates the atmosphere more than a century later.
“Harlem Rhapsody” reveals the price that Fauset paid, the sacrifices she endured and the indiscretions that took place along the way – as well as her place in the canon of Black history.
“My hope is that people read this book and take away some message of unity,” Murray said. “How just working together – whether you are Black, white male or a female – much more can be accomplished together.”
The evening also saw Tamia Coleman-Hawkins bestowed with the Frankie Freeman Inspirational Award during the program. Tamia is the founder and CEO of Mia’s Treats Delights, a bakery she started in 2015, when she was only eight years old. Named one of The Root’s Young Futurists in 2020. Tamia is also the author of a children’s book, “Mia Dreams Bigger.” A portion of all items sold through her company go to combat homelessness.
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