Returning to campus on Thursday for the first time since her 1995 visit to the University for her acceptance of the Brandeis Alumni Achievement Award, Margo Jefferson ’68 led a discussion on the intersection of class, race and gender with Prof. Jasmine Johnson (AAAS), centering the event around Jefferson’s highly acclaimed memoir “Negroland.”

Having worked as a critic for the New York Times, serving as a staff writer for Newsweek and debuting essays and criticism in New York Magazine, Grand Street, Vogue and Harper’s, among many others, Jefferson said she knew she wanted to keep writing but also knew she wanted her new work to differ in some way from her older work. She compared her memoir to her 2006 book “On Michael Jackson,” stating, “I really wanted to try things in terms of writing techniques, in terms of subjects, in terms of challenges that I hadn’t done before.” She added: “I had been collecting material, and I knew that it was interesting sociologically, politically, emotionally, culturally.”

As she noted in her talk, Jefferson defines the title and concept of “Negroland” as something “meant to convey a series of things moving from a particular time period to a kind of culture.” Starting in the thirties but continuing through the forties when Jefferson’s memoir begins, “‘Negro’ with a capital ‘N’ was a word that became the honorable, the sanctioned, the preferred word," according to Jefferson. "And it reigned until the mid 1960s when ‘Black’ took over.” In reference to the suffix “-land,” she added, “I also wanted ..., by calling it ‘land,’ to give a sense of this particular culture, this world I was part of that was real, but also almost mythological.” Essentially, Negroland “was poised between other lands — both white worlds and other white worlds and other black worlds.”

Not only is “Negroland” different from Jefferson’s other works, but it also stands out as a unique memoir. “Memoirs so often can have this very elegiac, melancholy tone,” Jefferson noted, “I really thought it was to do justice to the subject; I needed a lot of tones and a lot of shifts of perspective and point of view.” She described her memoir as “not an elegy, not a tragedy, not a defense” but instead explained how she views it with an openness as the narrator, focusing on “different stages and modes of consciousness.”

With a Pulitzer Prize winning background in criticism as a book reviewer for the Times, experience in the theater industry and a career as a professor of writing at Columbia University, Jefferson had many experiences to influence her approach to her memoir. She explained that she embraced her previous work ethic throughout the project. “You never can, even if you want to, completely renounce or bury a kind of way you have been working. … As a critic, there were so many things I admire in novels, in plays, in all kinds of art forms.” Jefferson explained that her background as a critic helped to “facilitate her being able to look at other parts of this world” in addition to helping to create a “sense of distance” from “Negroland” as well.

Back at Brandeis for the first time in 21 years, Jefferson reflected on her own experience as an English major and as one of the original members of the University’s first Black Student Organization formed in 1966.

“In my class there were eight blacks, six of us were women. ...We all decided we need to do this, we’re going to do this. ... We sponsored, we invited Langston Hughes, we had meetings where we talked passionately about issues. … That was a time, where the period you are living in history moves you forward.”

She also recalled her involvement in acting, especially memories of earning a role in a play her first year and participating in an off-campus experimental theater group as a senior.

Yet despite her leadership roles as a student, Jefferson explained that she does not neglect the atmosphere of the University in the 1960s: “It was a very interesting time. … Brandeis was very caught up in the New Left, Anti-Vietnam, Civil Rights. … It was very intellectually intense and there was a lot of angst, … angst and depression, a melancholy I would say.”

Jefferson ended her discussion by urging students to pursue social justice causes that they are passionate about. “If there is something you are engaged with, passionate about, find a way,” she encouraged. “Be as independent as you possibly can. … Find your constituency.”