Life after death

Long before the "post-racial" America heralded by the election of President Barack Obama, and when the country was more deeply divided on ideas of culture and race, Charles Gordone, a Texas A&M educator, actor, director and Pulitzer Prize winner said, "I write out of an American experience. I don't write out of a black or white experience. It's American." During some of the most turbulent times for racial politics, Gordone lived a color-blind life.

Gordone succumbed to cancer in 1995 but his legacy lives on.

The Charles Gordone awards were established by A&M's creative writing program. His life was featured this summer in the Wright Gallery with a series of paintings done by Robert Schiffhauer, assistant professor of architecture. His Hometown of Elkhart, Indiana recently added a historical marker touting Gordone's achievements. His spirit is captured in a sculpture designed by John Walker. The African-American Smithsonian in Washington D.C. will feature Charles and his contribution starting in 2014, and most importantly his legacy is carried on by his courageous wife, Susan Gordone, who will be conducting a stage design workshop with the visualization department January 9-13 to help bring to life her husbands final and unfinished play, The Fugitive.

From an early age Gordone eschewed race explaining, "As a child, it didn't matter to me what race Gene Autry or Tom Mix or Roy Rogers were. And by the time somebody told me, it was too late." Early on Gordone was fascinated by the western theme. He said, "As a teenager, I was made fun of because I liked cowboy hats and western clothes. It was then that somebody informed me that there was no such thing as a ‘black cowboy.' And I remember saying ‘Well there is now.'"

From humble beginnings in Elkhart, Indiana, Gordone rose to prominence as the first African-American to win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama with No Place to Be Somebody which Gordone said, "centered on rural country folk who migrated to the big city seeking the urban myth of success only to find disappointment, despair and death."

Gordone began writing No Place to Be Somebody while acting in Jean Genet's The Blacks where his character sat at the knee of Maya Angelou and acted with James Earl Jones. From humble beginnings, The Blacks went on to Berlin, Venice and played on Broadway for six years.

No Place to Be Somebody pushed Gordone to prominence but also put him at odds with the black separatist and black power movements and as his wife recalls, "they literally drove him out of New York."

The Wall Street Journal said in 1970, "Mr. Gordone is struggling practically alone, beyond the clichés of racial relations."

He spent much of the rest of his life searching for some resolution to No Place to Be Somebody.

After he left New York, Gordone moved westward and eventually to Berkeley, California. There he would meet his wife, Susan, in a racially integrated theatre company. He wrote other plays including a western for the stage, which didn't catch on so his wife told him, "If you're going to write about the west, then you need to go west."

A few applications later Gordone won a fellowship to the D.H. Lawrence Ranch in New Mexico then in 1987, despite Gordone's objections, he accepted a teaching position in the Texas A&M theatre arts program. His talents, race and diversity were needed on the most conservative white public campus in Texas.

In 1989 the Gordones made the trip to Elko, Nevada to attend the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering where Charles immersed himself in the western mythology and joined what is often referred to as the Western Revival. It was through these gatherings Gordone found some most unlikely companions. He invited dancers, poets, artists and singers into his classroom in "American Voices" a program he created.

Gordone found his resolution and his plot in the Western Revival.