Stories have the power to connect generations and bring people together. For long time Detroit storyteller Dwight Gerard Stackhouse, also known as Skip, storytelling has taken him from the stage to a close friendship with James Baldwin.
The friendship between Stackhouse and Baldwin was so close that Baldwin even wrote a poem titled A Song for Skip in honor of Stackhouse. Stackhouse told Stateside he remembers not knowing how to respond back to him.
“My beloved brother, I know your walk and love to hear you talk,” wrote Baldwin in a section of A Song for Skip.
Stackhouse calls the poem a “love poem.”
“But it's also a message in a speech. The essence of which I suppose is: Don’t let me down. Don’t quit,” he said.
But long before Stackhouse met Baldwin, he began his storytelling journey on the stage in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where he served as a pastor for the Jehovah Witnesses.
He recalled going into ministry to make his mother happy, but it wasn’t until after her passing that he discovered his passion for performing.
“It dawned on me that I had been acting like a minister for the better part of ten years, and I thought, I can take this act to a stage,” Stackhouse explained. “So I went to a few auditions. And that was the beginning of my career as an actor.”
The first story Stackhouse performed was about the loss of his mother and how it ruined his life.
“That's not an overstatement. Ruined myself," he said.
It was this performance that ultimately inspired him to write his first book, Mother's Milk: Based On A True Story. But several decades before becoming a published author, Stackhouse found himself performing James Baldwin's The Amen Corner—a play about the role of Christianity in an African American family—on a Detroit stage in 1979, with none other than the author himself in the audience.
"I guess, as they say, the rest is history," Stackhouse.
From that moment on, James Baldwin became 'Jimmy' to Stackhouse, and their friendship began.
“So when I met Jimmy it began as a romantic/sexual flirtation but I've been clear that I'm heterosexual, not a gay man,” Stackhouse stated. “And that didn't matter to him. Didn't matter to me.”
Even though Stackhouse wasn’t able to reciprocate Baldwin’s feelings beyond a friendship, the author asked Stackhouse to join him on the road as his personal assistant.
As his personal assistant, Stackhouse traveled all over the country and met all kinds of people. While Baldwin was often surrounded by iconic figures like Marlon Brando and Elizabeth Taylor, he himself was not an elitist, said Stackhouse.
"I never felt like I didn’t belong there," Stackhouse explained. "And looking back, I just felt lucky. Lucky? Why me? How did I get here? But I’d say that was the moment I realized I was in elite company."
For Stackhouse, the elite company wasn't the famous celebrities or big names, but it was Baldwin himself.
He remembers Jimmy as down-to-earth with little patience for nonsense.
“Jimmy would say that thing that needed to be said,” said Stackhouse. “His anger that would bubble up so often conversely the same level of joy and hopefulness was there with Jimmy and it would bubble up and he would bring hope and peace.”
Like Baldwin, Stackhouse has also experienced seasons of hopelessness and grief, but he said he hasn’t allowed that to give up.
“I have a great deal of hope left in me,” he said. “I have a great deal of love left in me, and I think I now know how to place both of them properly in my relationships with others."
Background reading
Hear the full conversation with Dwight Gerard Stackhouse on the Stateside podcast.
[Get Stateside on your phone: subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or YouTube Music today.]
GUESTS ON TODAY’S SHOW:
- Christopher Johnson, Host for Michigan Public
- Dwight Stackhouse, Detroit storyteller and published author
