Interview with Travis Younger
A documentary filmmaker on the trail of a good story is searching for Travis Younger. He wants to find out what really happened when the Younger family moved into their new house at 406 Clybourne Street back in 1959. The escape from the ghetto of Chicago’s “South Side” that was facilitated by the insurance payout from Grandpa Younger’s passing proved to be a turning point in young Travis Younger’s life. The documentary filmmaker catches up with Travis at his present day home in Brooklyn, NYC.
JARRETT: Well Travis, I have to admit that it was not very easy to find you all these years later living in New York City. I figured, perhaps naively, that you would still be kicking around Chicago somewhere. Could you please state your name and age for the camera?
TRAVIS: Sure thing Mr. Filmmaker, my name is Travis Younger, son of Walter and Ruth Younger, and my current age is 66 years young. Pun intended by the way!
JARRETT: Thank you. So if my math is correct you were born in 1950?
TRAVIS: Yes, that is correct. However, had I chosen to hang out in the womb a lil’ while longer… I could have been born in ’51. Suppose I was just excited to get out and see the world. I was born at exactly 10AM on December 21st, 1950.
JARRETT: If I am not mistaken, that places you smack dab in the middle of the baby boomer generation doesn’t it? Some media theorists define your generation as the first “real” TV generation to hit America. You would of come of age in the 60’s. For some of us on the cusp of being classified as what we now call Millennials, that decade surely looks like it was an exciting time to be alive. In hindsight, by peering into the rear-view mirror, did television play a significant role in the social revolution?
TRAVIS: I am glad you asked, considering the context of what I presume we will get on to eventually… Yes, television had a huge role to play in all the changes that took place in society throughout that crazy and chaotic decade. Having seen at least one of your recent films premiere down in Greenwich Village, I know that you are hip to the metaphor that television has serendipitously provided those of us that study the intersections of culture and technology. TV was indeed intricately tied into the race relations that were at the front and center of both my early childhood and adolescence. In fact, it was the “mise-en-scene” of my formative years. I am also confident that you have read some of my papers published in the academic journals, and know that I was befriended with Marshall McLuhan while he was at Fordham back in 67. How else would you have found me in NYC? So when I say “visual space” morphed from the black and white banal and binary rhetoric of dualism, which I might add is the bias of a print based culture, to the technicolor dreamcoat of the Aquarian conspirators you follow me, correct?
JARRETT: Oh, I follow you, but do you think you could unpack that statement just a little bit for us? Especially those in the audience that haven’t the foggiest idea what the Aquarian conspirators get up to in their spare time?
TRAVIS: Yes, of course, it would be my pleasure. You see the Age of Aquarius was all the rage in the mid to late 60s. It is a round about way of referring to the hippies and their flower power movement. Which I might add is extremely relevant to what is happening in America today with the recent election of Donald Trump. You can’t help but run into it, it’s all over twitter with hashtags like #blacklivesmatter and not to mention the recent human rights awarded to those in LGBTQ communities. Colour is a huge deal these days, as it was back in the days of my youth. In a roundabout way… I will tell you that what we are witnessing is the unfinished revolution kicked off in the 60s. Issues of human rights, race and gender equality, ecological transparency, you name it, we are still dealing with a world that has not resolved these things. So as I love to say… “visual space” morphed from black and white, or us and them, into something much richer, more colourful, and rightfully truly inspiring… and television, not mention the cinema, was right there “In Medias Res” on the front lines of change. In the 60s, colour television invaded every living room in America, even those of black folk.
JARRETT: This is great, a perfect segue to my next question! You are now a professor of Media Ecology at Fordham University. Media and race are key components, and maybe, just maybe, if I can stretch the metaphor this far… content fit for a king that residually resides over an intellectual arena of extreme interest to you. I am going to ask you a double-barrelled question, think you can handle it?
TRAVIS: Go for it! Those three little letters P, H, and D have got account for something don’t they?
JARRETT: A doctor with a sense of humour, amazing! How did you become a professor of media ecology, and what happened after you and your family moved into the house at 406 Clybourne Street back in ‘59?
TRAVIS: The moment of truth as it were! That was single handily the best decision my father ever made for us. Excuse me if I get emotional here… that day when Mr. Linder arrived in our living room is forever etched in my memory. I watched in awe as my father went through a metamorphosis, a transformation of heroic proportions. I am surprised by it even more today after recently reading Joseph Campbell’s The Hero With a Thousand Faces. For a young psyche such as mine to be present for an archetypally triumphant moment of the most epic proportions, not just my father, or my family, but for coloured people of all shape and sizes was simply transcendent. I am sure you read the headlines preserved on microfilm at the University of Chicago library? They tried to sue us for moving to Clybourne Park! The case went to the Supreme Court and we won!! The case set a precedent and shortly thereafter the City of Chicago did away with all laws that would impose racial restrictions on the real estate choices available to people of colour. I might add that by a strange twist of fate, our real estate agent stumbled upon old Sweet Dick Willy, ever the low life drunkard, passed out at the train station across town in the business district. I suppose he celebrated his newly minted used car dealership a little too hard. The agent noticed the envelope Willy had under his arm was from his own agency. Upon closer inspection it still had Mama’s name on it in the top right corner as the return address. So he grabbed it and headed back to the ghetto on the south side where we were still packing things up. Prepping for the movers and what not. Turns out that old Sweet Dick Willy only spent half the money that he stole from dad and the rest of it was still in the envelope that Bobo had delivered to him. A long story short, there was enough there to send me to school to study at the University of Chicago, where I did both my BA and MA, before making my way to Fordham to write my dissertation. Beneatha, while dreaming of becoming a doctor, eventually ran off to Africa with Asagaii. She eventually became an ethno-musicologist and spent the rest of her life recording the folk music of Nigeria.