Local resident Dr. John E. Fleming has spent much of his life working to bring visibility to American history — in particular, African American history — via his five decades as a historian who has helped establish museums throughout the U.S.
Now, after retiring from his most recent position as director of the National Museum of African American Music, Fleming’s focus has turned inward to his own personal history; his memoir, “Mission to Malawi,” was published this spring.
The book details Fleming’s service in the early years of the Peace Corps — during which he was the only Black American in his cohort — against the backdrop of the U.S. Civil Rights Movement. It also provides a snapshot of Malawi, an African nation that, at the time of Fleming’s service there, was newly independent, but still influenced heavily by colonial rule and racism.
Weaving together those two concurrent histories from Fleming’s point of view, “Mission to Malawi” serves as the remembrance of a young man’s deepening understanding of the need for social change through a global lens, and how it ultimately affected the course of his life.
Fleming spoke with the News recently about writing the memoir, which spans the years 1967 to 1969. With the events depicted in “Mission to Malawi” having taken place nearly 60 years ago, Fleming acknowledged that the book’s completion would have been more difficult had he not been a prolific letter-writer during those years. As he explains in the book’s preface: “I was a voracious writer because I wanted my family and friends to write to me, as it was my only form of communication.”
Likewise, he said he was lucky that those to whom he wrote then — including his mother, and future wife, Barbara Fleming —were diligent at saving his letters.
“It’s really sort of funny; as a historian, you’d think you’d remember historical facts as they happened — and it turned out that wasn’t exactly true,” he said.
Fleming wrote the first draft of the memoir without the aid of letters, and later, organized the letters chronologically and read them. The letters allowed him to revise his first draft and improve upon his memory.
“I was very fortunate to be able to find those letters. … The first draft is quite different from what the final manuscript turned out to be,” he said.
Though he said the letters he’d written in his youth didn’t deviate wildly from his own memory, they did contain vital insight into what he felt from day to day, as well as his perspective on his experiences then compared to his perspective now.
