Dr. Mayme Clayton:
40 Years
of Collecting African American Works
By Liza Young
In an interview with
Avery Clayton on February 2 in Los Angeles, it was clear
he had found his mission as part art educator (which he was
in the public schools of Pasadena), part preservationist,
part historian and part his mother’s
son as steward of the largest collection on the West Coast
of African American works in literature, music, and movies
as well as photographs, manuscripts, and memorabilia.
After 40 years of collecting
during her tenure as librarian at USC and then at UCLA, Dr.
Clayton’s collection
will at long last find its well-deserved resting place at the
Mayme A. Clayton Library in Culver City, California (part of
Los Angeles), which will be a research based library and cultural
center. This dream has come to fruition aided by three generations
of Claytons, including Avery who is the Executive Director
of Western States Black Research and Educational Center (WSBREC),
which maintains the Mayme A. Clayton Collection of African
Americana as well as the cross-university cooperation of Pepperdine,
UCLA and USC. USC will work on digitizing the collection.
Dr. Mayme A. Clayton, the daughter of pioneers
in Van Buren, Arkansas, was proud of her father being the only
black business owner of a general store, dealing successfully
with both black and white communities. Her parents instilled
in the young Mayme, a love of culture as well as a sense of
adventure. After graduating from Lincoln University in Nebraska
in 1945, Mayme decided not to return home but go instead to
New York where she met her husband, married and moved to Los
Angeles. During the 60s, UCLA asked her to develop a library
for the Black Studies Department, and she became keenly aware
that the attainment of out-of-print materials was not valued
by the administration. The mission of preserving out-of-print
African-American materials fused with her unwavering and passionate
interest in preserving black culture.
Avery recalled how “the collection came
to take over the house,” and had to be expanded to the
garage and eventually to storage areas in Culver City and Los
Angeles. In over 40 years, Dr. Clayton’s collection grew
to 20,000 rare and out-of-print books—a compilation which
includes the only known signed copy of the first published
book to be authored by an African American writer, Phillis
Wheatley, in 1773. The book, described by Avery as the “star
of the collection,” is entitled Poems On Various Subjects,
Religious And Moral. The collection also includes 9,500 sound
recordings; 75,000 photographs which date back to the mid-1800s;
and the largest black film collection in the world dating back
to 1916, including works by Oscar Micheaux, the most prolific
black film maker of all time, who was responsible for the first
Black film—The Exile, 1931.
The strong family continuum
for the Claytons is evident: “I was born to my mother to carry on her
work,” says Avery, who also credits his father for fostering
his dream of being an artist. A graduate of UCLA and an artist
of reknown, Avery holds credentials which make him a prime
candidate for facilitating the creation of the Mayme A. Clayton
Library & Cultural Center. This will be an institute for
showcasing black culture through the treasured collection and
Avery’s artistic vision. His brothers, Lloyd and Renee,
also take an active role in the process, preserving the music
and sports collections, respectively. The Cultural Center will
soon be open to the public.
When asked what some
of the challenges were for himself and for his mother, Avery
indicated that it was not easy to get people within their
own community to embrace the importance of preserving culture,
which is “the measure
of a people.” In his quest to reach out to many communities,
Avery has partnered with the Skirball Institute in a Jewish-Black
Film Festival and is partnering with the Huntington Library
in Pasadena for a major Harlem Renaissance exhibit in 2008
preceded by an exhibit running from February 16 to April 2006.
In speaking of his
mother, Avery indicated Dr. Clayton was “ahead of her time. We are only 42 years
under protection of the law; most of our existence during that
time was based on survival. Now it’s time for people
to embrace this and understand this, and they do.”
His advice to youth
is to live up to the gifts you’ve been given and “Be the best person you can
be at any given moment.” That’s a motto that the
Claytons continually live up to. Look forward to learning more
about the incredible Mayme A. Clayton Collection in Avery’s
upcoming book: Mayme Clayton’s America.#
