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FEBRUARY 2006

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.#

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