I reached down into my bag and pulled out a black wig. A trained actress, I had done my research. I knew that blond wasn’t fashionable in Harlem in the sixties, and if I wanted to get noticed, I’d have to look the part. “That’s right, baby,” the hair stylist said as she fit the wig over my head, instantly transforming me into a conservative sixties housewife. “Come ready to work!”
As for costumes, we got lucky. Yvette, a friend and fellow Howard alum who had been in a few productions with me back at school, was working in the costume department. She took extra care to make sure we had the flyest clothes—some vintage pieces that really put us in the moment of Malcolm’s movement. “Put these gloves on,” she said before sending us off. “Nobody had long acrylic hook nails back then. They see that and you’re going to the back.”
The true hustle came when it was time to jockey for a position up front. Getting there wasn’t such a hard thing to do: we just ducked and dived and excused our way toward the front, then were escorted the rest of the way because of how we were dressed. Staying up front, though, was an entirely different thing. There we were, giggling and wiggling and ready for somebody to yell “action!” when all of a sudden one of the buildings working as a backdrop to Malcolm’s speech started smoking. “All the extras back up!” a man yelled into a bullhorn, as a line of set assistants spread their arms and motioned us back. Tracie and I weren’t having it, though; we locked arms and refused to move. “Do you know what it took for us to get up here?” I asked out loud. “This is our spot. We’re not going anywhere.”
We stood firm, even as fire trucks roared onto the scene, even as the firemen told us to step away from the sidewalk, even as that smoke billowed up into the air. “They gonna put that fire out and I’m going to be right here,” I insisted, grabbing Tracie’s arm a little tighter. I didn’t care if it was a five alarm; I wasn’t going to leave my spot. “My mama took time out of her schedule and dropped me off, she ain’t got no money and she paid seventy five dollars for this ticket,” I yelled. “She gonna see me in this movie!”
By the time they gave the powers that be the all clear—nothing happened to the building; there was smoke but no actual fire—Tracie and I were standing right there in front of Denzel, on the front row. Evidence of my hustle? Watch Malcolm X closely; in that scene, when the camera pans out to the audience, guess who you’ll see? Me and Tracie, front row and center. The camera stops on us for a hot minute, and later, while Malcolm is talking, you can hear us, too. Listen closely for “Yassir, preach, Malcolm!” That’s me and my big mouth. For the longest time, my mother would perch herself on her bed, right in front of her television, with the remote between her fingers, pausing the scene so she could see her baby’s face staring back at her.
That’s what hustle gets you. Giving up isn’t ever an option for me; whatever the obstacle, best believe I’ll run headfirst through it, climb over it, or crawl under it to get exactly what I want.
• • •
Despite all the newfound success, there was one professor who was thoroughly unimpressed with my onstage antics: one Professor Vera Katz, an older woman with a shock of red hair and a rasp in her throat. Even today, she emails me notes on all the projects I work on, and sometimes she even calls. Leaning on all the bravado she possesses to get me to understand where she’s coming from, she’ll say, “Taraji, I see you thinking. I love it. I love it! You’re always thinking. Your eyes tell the truth. I see your moments before the lines. I see where you’re coming from. It’s beautiful.”
This is music to my ears now, but her accolades were a long time coming. I gave Professor Katz hell when I was at Howard, and she gave it right back to me in spades. Every time she opened her mouth to tell me how to be onstage, I would grimace and give her Black Girl attitude that screamed, “You don’t know me! You don’t know my struggle! Power to the people!” I’d be so disrespectful to her—show up late to her class, talk all through it when I bothered to be on time—she would kick my ass right on out. “Miss Henson, you look really cute in your thigh-high red boots and your matching jacket, but you’re late. Get out!” she would say, pointing at the door.
Still, I wanted her approval, because she was the main one at Howard who refused to give it to me. It doesn’t matter if practically an entire audience of hundreds of people stand on their chairs and jump and holler and scream your name as they cheer you wildly on, you will notice only the one person sitting in the chair with her lips pursed and her hands clasped on her lap, giving you a dead-eyed stare that screams, “They may be impressed, but I’m not.” That was Professor Katz. She was thoroughly uninspired by my hustle and made a point of letting me know that when it came to the craft, I was more con artist than actress. “Go deeper!” she would yell, interrupting my class monologues to chastise me for leaning on tricks to grab the attention of my peers. Always my instinct would be to talk loud, throw my body into it—to make the scene, the lines, grand. But Professor Katz would have none of it; she saw a deeper actress. A thinking actress. She insisted that I consider what happened to my character in the moments before the scene, so that when I opened my mouth, I was responding not to what I’d memorized from the page, but to the emotions the experience conjured. “No, no, no, I don’t believe it!” she would yell, interrupting my lines. “You’re clever and you make good choices, but what’s behind those choices? What does your character want? You have to think like humans think. Don’t stop thinking just because somebody wrote the words on a page. You’re not a robot. You still have to think!”
Understand, getting ripped apart and torn to shreds was frightening in front of a classroom of peers who audition and fight for the same roles as you. But Professor Katz didn’t care about such things. To hell with my ego. She seemed to take great pleasure in drawing blood.
Our conflict came to a head over my portrayal in a play penned by a fellow Howard alum, Guinea Bennett, a good friend of mine who, after graduation, went on to found the Soul Rep Theater Company in Dallas, Texas. Guinea and I were members of a collective of crazy, artsy seventies babies who dressed alike, listened to the same music, and, in the way that kindred spirits do, created together. We even had our own monikers, cherry-picked from names popular in our birth decade: Leroy, Tyrone, Juanita, Suge. I was Cookie Gwendolyn Jones. Yes, “Cookie.” We called our little collective Soul Nation, and Guinea wrote and produced a play for us, Cracking Up, about a group of girls in college dealing with heavy issues such as pregnancy, drug dealing, and several other societal ills surrounding our campus—a play so beautifully penned that the Howard drama department agreed to let us produce it on its stage. That play was a hit; we sold out every night, with students from the fine arts department and beyond lining up to come see us. My character was a standout: I had blond braids and was loud and brash and in-your-face, and I got all the laughs of the night with my one-liners. I was the star. And every night when I stood up on that stage and took a bow, I would say a silent, Yeah, take that, Vera Katz. You’re always giving me all that flack in your class, but look what I did. I’m all they talk about . . .