Ta-Nehisi Coates took the stage at Howard University’s Cramton Auditorium to rousing applause on Thursday evening (Oct. 3), returning to his alma mater for the third stop on a national tour in support of his newest book The Message, published Oct. 1 (One World).
Coates, a Howard alumnus and the University’s current Sterling Brown Endowed Chair, fought through fatigue to speak for roughly 80 minutes with Graduate School Dean Dana A. Williams (MA ’95, Ph.D. ’98) on a litany of topics, including his days as a Howard undergraduate, his literary career to date, and the moments that compelled his latest project.
The Mecca’s Impact on The Message
In his role as the Brown chair, Coates instructed the Zora Neale Hurston Advanced Writers’ Workshop during the summer of 2022. Coates decamped for Dakar, Senegal, while teaching the course, but offered to submit for critique an essay detailing his feelings on visiting the African continent for the first time. That essay would become the opening portion of The Message.
“Of course, the semester ended, and I was not done, which was par for the course for Ta-Nehisi Coates at Howard University,” he quipped. “I’m back, I’m here, I have the assignment!”
Coates credited Howard for helping develop much of his worldview, and said the University continues to inform his writing philosophy.
“We’re in a tradition,” Coates said. “[Frederick] Douglass Hall is named after somebody. And this man published a narrative – he was a writer, beautiful writer by the way. And he wrote at a time that he had siblings still enslaved. And he wrote at a time when at any moment, somebody could have dragged him back into slavery.”
“We didn’t get here by being safe. Our ancestors were not safe. So, what right do we have to our safety?” Coates continued. “I have larger responsibilities, and once you understand it that way – that it’s not just me – it’s like okay, what we’ve got to do is what we’ve got to do.”
The desire to mentor more writers in that tradition is what ultimately led Coates back to Howard. “Part of becoming a professor and a professor here was the recognition that I am not enough,” he said. “It really doesn’t matter how I feel about my skill. One person can’t do it, two people can’t do it, three of us can’t do it. We need more. And I came here for that because this is the place that made me.”
Students Asked, Coates Answered
Coates conducted a student-only question-and-answer session to conclude the event, fielding queries ranging from his choice in diction to how he cultivated his writing talents as a Howard student.
Junior journalism major and economics minor Noah Jackson asked Coates how he views the concept of growth when evaluating historic and systemic inequities. “As a writer who covers these issues so significantly, how do you measure progress in these issues?” he questioned.
Coates responded that over 250 years of American chattel slavery, Black Americans had scant evidence of progress, but they resisted nonetheless. “When you see that, it becomes a question of how you want to live,” Coates said. “If I thought the world was ending next week, what do I want to be doing?”
“It’s not that [progress] is irrelevant in terms of the larger struggle obviously, but it is irrelevant in terms of what I have to do,” he added. “There are other people in other fields who probably have to think about that a little different, but as a writer, I have to do what I have to do.”
First-year psychology major Ameerah Martin expressed concern that The Message’s readership will be limited to those already in agreement with Coates and his ideas. “What makes people interrupt their bigotry long enough to genuinely change and indulge in the other side of the spectrum?” she asked.
Coates estimated that about 10% of the population “aggressively” disagrees, but there remains a huge swath in the middle who have yet to be persuaded either way.
“Our target is that broad middle that you’re trying to activate, that you’re trying to get to care,” he said. “And the only way I know how to do that [is] to practice my craft at the highest level I possibly can.”
“That’s why we go over those words, that’s why we go over those sentences,” Coates concluded. “Because if we can haunt people – we can get our craft to a certain level of that poignant in our politics – we might be able to see some change.”
Student attendees were provided a copy of The Message, courtesy of the University’s Moorland-Spingarn Research Center (MSRC). MSRC director Benjamin Talton, Ph.D. (BA ’96), was Coates’ classmate at Howard, and the two remain close friends.
“Ta-Nehisi Coates is a truth-teller in a moment when we desperately need truth-tellers,” Talton said. “I’m very, very proud to call Ta-Nehisi Coates my fellow Bison, but I’m even more proud to call him my brother.”
Senior television and film major and playwriting minor Rachel McCain formally introduced Coates and Williams. McCain was a student of Coates during his 2022 summer workshop, and again during the fall semester in a course on writing non-fiction essays. (Coates and Williams announced that he will return to campus in November to instruct a seven-day writing course; registration details are forthcoming.)
“Having him as a professor has fundamentally changed how I approach my writing, and I am forever grateful for both of those experiences, and the friendships and writing partners that have come out of them,” McCain said. “The ability to disseminate factual information artfully is a powerful skill, and one that Professor Coates absolutely possesses.”
“Professor Coates represents all that is best about Howard University, and he represents what is best about our students and thinking about how they can make an impact and a difference in the world,” said University provost and chief academic officer Anthony Wutoh, Ph.D. “We are so proud and so honored that he has gifted us with this night, and this is really a gift to our students.”
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