This is the transcript for this podcast episode.
Allen Wolf:
Welcome to the Navigating Hollywood podcast. My name is Allen Wolf and I’m a filmmaker and an author. Navigating Hollywood encourages and equips entertainment professionals to live relationally and spiritually holistic lives. If you work in entertainment, visit navigatinghollywood. org to discover how you can get involved. Today we’re joined by Joseph Holland, who is an author, a playwright, the former commissioner of housing for New York State, an attorney, entrepreneur, speaker and the subject of a 30-minute film I wrote, directed and produced Harlem Grace. Welcome, Joe.
Joe Holland:
Allen, it is great to be here, so appreciate the opportunity to be on your podcast.
Allen Wolf:
It’s great to have you, after naming everything that you are doing, that you’ve done. You know I think of you as a Renaissance man. Have you heard that description of yourself before?
Joe Holland:
I have, and in all humility, I think that is a wonderful thing to say about me. I have been involved in a variety of activities, initiatives over the years.
Allen Wolf:
Well, out of all the things that you’ve done, what gives you the most joy?
Joe Holland:
I am a creative at heart, I have to say, from my time as an English and history major. I was at Cornell University decades ago and I developed a passion for writing. Since that time it has grown, it’s flourished. I started writing poetry when I was in college and then that transitioned to playwriting and I had two professionally produced plays here in New York City. And then I got into ministry. I started and ran a homeless shelter in Harlem and then I applied my creativity to helping the men through a new program called Holistic Hardware, where I was taking biblically-based principles and challenging them to apply those principles to their daily lives so that they could build self-sufficiency and independence. And then it transitioned into narrative writing, nonfiction, self-help. Just a couple months ago I had my sixth book published. I’m not a full-time writer, I’m still a lawyer and a businessman and a businessman but I do get the most satisfaction and most joy out of that creative dimension of my life.
Allen Wolf:
Your father was the first Black president of the New York Stock Exchange and the ambassador to Sweden Did. His accomplishments put big expectations on your life.
Joe Holland:
I would say no. I had a great relationship with my father and I was certainly inspired by his trailblazing career. In fact he’s one of the 120 trailblazers that I have in my book Make your Own History. But when I was growing up I was into my own thing. You know he was out doing his career, but I a positive influence because he was committed to excellence through hard work. I just remember his dedication and his work ethic and his perseverance and I thank God that some of that filtered down into me and I love the opportunity to carry on dad’s legacy in that way.
Allen Wolf:
Well, it’s amazing to think that a little over 30 years ago, when I was a film student at New York University, I asked you if I could make a film about your life, which became Harlem Grace. What were your thoughts when I made that request?
Joe Holland:
Allen, I have to say I was very surprised because at the time I was still early in my Harlem career, as your film illustrates. I didn’t have to come to Harlem. As we already talked about, my father had some accomplishments and I had some academic attainments, with two degrees from Cornell and then a law degree from Harvard. So I had some other doors, career doors, open to me. I had a job at a Wall Street law firm where I had worked during the summer while I was in law school. That door was open to me.
Joe Holland:
But because I am a man of faith and I really believe in divine guidance and I had a sense from God that there was a different direction for my life, and that’s when I decided to not go to Wall Street, where I could have worked in a law firm, but to 125th Street, which is the center of Harlem, and open up a solo law practice. And I was working hard at that, as well as outreaching to the community through the homeless shelter I started and in other ways. And that’s why, when you made your request, I was so involved with what I was doing. I was like why would anybody want to make a film about what I’m doing? A film about what I’m doing. But even as I was surprised, I was gratified that you would take such interest in what I call the grunt work. I was in the trenches, I mean, every day. I was doing what I could to survive myself and to help others survive and prosper, and so I was very surprised, but at the same time I was pleased.
Allen Wolf:
It’s amazing what’s happened with the film. When it came out 30 years ago, it was a finalist for the Student Academy Awards and the Producers Guild of America Awards. It won a number of other awards than a distributor has been distributing Harlem Grace for the past 30 years. And then two years ago, as I thought about all the issues with homelessness, it struck me that your story continues to have relevance today. I thought people would be inspired by your story, but the version that was being distributed actually looked very old because it had never been scanned into high definition. The music was very dated and the soundtrack wasn’t even in stereo.
Allen Wolf:
And then I was awarded a grant to restore and update Harlem Grace, which was amazing. We had shot the story on actual film, so I was able to get the original footage scanned into 4K and then I went about restoring it, having new music created, a new sound mix. I’ve been working on it as a side project for the past couple of years until the new version was finally ready for its debut. What was it like for you to see Harlem Grace again after all those years?
Joe Holland:
Once again, very surprised. I loved Harlem Grace and the work that you had done with it. Surprised I loved Harlem Grace and the work that you had done with it, but it was on the shelf, as you said something 30 years ago. I still remember the premiere in New York City and Manhattan that you did and it was just a wonderful experience seeing my life on film, but I had pretty much forgotten about it. I have three kids and when they became of age they were all teenagers. I said, okay, they need to see Hall and Grace. So I remember bringing them together and showing them Hall and Grace, but that had to be a dozen years ago. So when you reached out to me and told me that you were redoing the film, another very surprised moment, but also exciting, because the film has value, not only to me but because of the story that it tells. It has the potential to inspire others to reach out in compassionate ways, to make a difference.
Allen Wolf:
Well, the story starts with you graduating from Harvard Law School and then you decide to move to Harlem, and that’s where the opening scenes of the film portray, and you talked about that decision that you made, moving to Harlem when you had a lot of other opportunities available to you. What went into that decision?
Joe Holland:
A lot of prayer. I had pressure from my parents and pressure from my professors and pressure from my peers to take the conventional pathway, which was to get the job at the law firm on Wall Street. But as I thought and prayed, I did this spiritual process over a number of months, I got a piece, and people didn’t understand it. I was even challenged by this decision I was making to go in a different direction. It was a difficult decision, not only in the decision-making process that I’ve been talking about, but also stepping into an environment that I’m not from. It wasn’t like I was going back to the neighborhood where I’d grown up, because I grew up in Virginia and then abroad. I lived in Europe for three years and then in the suburbs of New York City, and so I was a stranger to the inner city life of Harlem and it was a steep learning curve, and so that made it even more challenging once I got going on the journey.
Allen Wolf:
How would you describe Harlem at that time when you decided to make that move?
Joe Holland:
One of the things I appreciate about Harlem Grace is that you were intentional about capturing the realities of Harlem at that time, and one of them this was the 1980s was homelessness. One of them this was the 1980s was homelessness. Your film, harlem Grace, is about that homeless struggle. One of the early scenes has my character encountering a homeless man on the street. He’s a main character in the film, named Harvey, and Harvey represents that reality of Harlem and other inner cities during that era of pervasive homelessness, which was exacerbated by the crack cocaine epidemic. And so Harvey, like so many others, ended up homeless because of a self-destructive substance abuse habit. You had so many of those individuals plagued by that lifestyle which was really so counterproductive and disruptive, and you had the larger reality of Harlem still not. Then. It got even worse in the 1960s, and so you had row after row of abandoned buildings. You had homeless and others living in these abandoned buildings. Harlem at the time was the classic model of an underserved, hard-hit ghetto.
Allen Wolf:
I remember, when we were filming, being on several blocks where there were just crack vials all over the sidewalk and we had to be very aware of where we were at all times. And even the character Harvey that you mentioned, he has a bag that has all his possessions in it that he carries around, and we had that bag stolen three times while we were making a movie. At one point we left it in the van and someone just smashed the window of the van, took that bag. So throughout the course of the film we had to replace that bag three times. But even at that time, even though it was a little bit later when we were filming it, you can still just really see how Harlem was just in a very hurting place.
Joe Holland:
That just shows that you were experiencing the bitter reality of Harlem at that time. I can’t remember the times when the window of my car was broken and I thought I was parking in safer neighborhoods of the community. I didn’t park in areas where I was told not to go, but yet the window was smashed numerous times. When I reflect on my opening up the homeless shelter, we opened it up in the basement of one church. This was on West 128th Street and after a year the trustees of that church decided okay, you’ve had some time, but we don’t want the homeless in our basement anymore. So it was tough, but our homeless shelter became homeless. We had to find another location, and one block north there was another church. I was introduced to the pastor of that church, but then somebody told me oh, that block is much, much worse than the one that you were on. You don’t want to go to that block. We went to that block and the person who advised me that was absolutely correct. There were some real challenges that we had.
Joe Holland:
I do believe in the Old Testament scripture. This is Psalm 91, where the verse says God will give his angels charge over you, guard you in all of your ways. And so I was on that block that had drug dealers and abandoned buildings and homeless and the kind of block that people would not go down. But never was I harmed. I didn’t suffer any kind of physical abuse or attack. I consider that to be God’s grace and favor.
Joe Holland:
So we were on this block and the word got to me that the drug dealers were upset because I was stealing their clients, right Wow, because I was taking the drug addicts into my shelter and we were cleaning them up, right. They were becoming sober and because of that sobriety they didn’t use drugs anymore. And so the drug dealer saw me as a threat to their business. That threat was issued that they were going to get me. They started on my car, they vandalized it, they slashed the tires, they broke the window and felt like, well, maybe I should take a break from this shelter.
Joe Holland:
I have to say that there was some fear that I was experiencing during those moments. Then there were several men in the shelter who were transforming their lives, who had benefited from the work that we were doing, and they came to me and said look, you need a posse. I said posse, what are you talking about? And these were former drug dealers, so they knew what was going on. In fact, they knew some of the drug dealers who were threatening me. They said whenever you come into this block, you need a posse, you need us around you to walk you into the shelter, and whenever you leave the block, you need that same posse to escort you safely out of the block. Not only did it work with the posse they were right there for me providing protection, but eventually the drug dealers decided to move on from that block and go to another block because of the work that we were doing.
Allen Wolf:
That’s amazing. I remember when I was doing research for Harlem Grace, before I started writing the script, I went to your shelter I feel like it was at five in the morning it was really early when things got started and spent the day with the men at the shelter, and when I left, what struck me is that, more than teaching these men skills, you were really building character and you were building them into being different people in their approach to the world and approach to their lives. And that’s what I thought we needed to still hear today, because you hear so much about how to help people who are homeless or having issues, but very little of it has to do with actual life-on-life investment and really pouring into people’s lives. And so I really appreciated how you were able to do that and capture that at your shelter and how that really helped to transform just hundreds and hundreds of people’s lives.
Joe Holland:
Well, thank you for sharing that and I want you to know that I appreciated your hands-on approach to filming Harlem Grace, because you not only came to the shelter and spent time there so you could understand what was going on, but you did the filming at that site right on West 129th Street. The shelter’s name was Hawk Holmes. You came to Hawk Holmes, you were with the crew there at Hawk Homes. You had some of the residents formerly homeless men it was a men’s shelter were in some scenes there. You really were intentional about capturing the reality of what we were going through by being on site. So I definitely appreciate that. So I definitely appreciate that.
Joe Holland:
And my perspective, Allen, to your point, was not just about providing housing for those who didn’t have it.
Joe Holland:
We called it holistic housing Housing not as an end in itself, but housing as a means to restore the whole person. And so, yes, they needed to come in and have their physical needs met right. So, yes, there was the shelter, and then there was food, and then there was clothing, because there were certain men who had been on the street so long. We had to rip off their clothes and throw them out immediately and give them special shampoo for the shower and then they would come out into a whole new clothing right. So definitely the material needs, but the needs of the men in the shelter went way, way beyond that, and it was about transformation, which meant that we had to restore that whole person, and we did that by paying attention to their emotional needs, their mental needs, their spiritual needs, their employment needs and then, of course, their residential needs, their need for new housing, and then, of course, you know their residential needs and need for new housing, and so it was that holistic approach that really worked well for us.
Allen Wolf:
You mentioned that we filmed the movie in the actual shelter, which was a privilege to have that opened up to us to be able to do that. We also shot it at your home, at your office, and I remember our lead character actually wore some of your clothing your ties, office and I remember our lead character actually wore some of your clothing, your ties. Did seeing any of that feel like opening a time capsule for you?
Joe Holland:
Yes, I had to say, well, I’m glad my wardrobe has improved a little bit over the years. Those moments really made it special for me because it wasn’t just about the work that I was doing, right, it was about who I am as a person, right, and I still live in Harlem, and that was 30 years ago. I mean, I’ve been in Harlem over 40 years now. It was 30 years ago when we did Harlem Grace.
Joe Holland:
I don’t live in the same place, but when I look at Harlem Grace in fact the scene when I bring Harvey to my apartment and I give him something to eat and then he goes to the bathroom and decides he has to leave to the bathroom and decides he has to leave, and then he leaves and I notice he’s stolen all the things out of my bathroom I remember that scene so well because it was my dining area, it was my bathroom All of these things really bring it to life for me. It really brings home the truth that we can be blessed with material things through our own effort and hard work, but it really is about sharing those things with others. That’s where the greatest blessing of life comes from and that’s what comes back to me when I watch Harlem Grace.
Allen Wolf:
You had mentioned that that time period captured the grunt work part of your life, and we just mentioned how the shelter helped build the character of the men who were staying there and participating. It struck me that the movie actually, it seems like, also captures a very character building time for your life as well.
Joe Holland:
Oh, yes, that was a time early in my work at the shelter. I mean, that was a time period even though the film was shot in the early 90s. It was capturing a time early in my work with the homeless, when I was still in the process of understanding how can I best serve, how can I make the most impact, how can I turn these lives around. And there’s one scene well, there are a couple of scenes at the shelter that feature what I learned to plant seeds of character development in the lives of these men, and it became holistic hardware, which is a biblically-based life skills curriculum which is just like Harlem Grace, is still alive and well 30 years later. Holistic hardware is as well, and I call it hardware because these are holistic tools that help individuals build a transformative life where, whatever they’re going through, there are 10 tools, from responsibility to vision, to self-esteem, to discipline, to planning. These tools which I learned and this is to your point here this was a learning experience for me. I was developing these tools, applying them to my own life as well as imparting them to the lives of the homeless, and these tools were the key to my success there, as the men were applying these success principles and, sticking to it, they really were able to go on and lead lives.
Joe Holland:
And holistic hardware was so successful that a ministry came alongside me and put it on video so that it could be available to homeless programs and other kinds of outreach programs, such as substance abuse and job readiness, throughout the country.
Joe Holland:
And so over the decades it’s been used in cities across the country and it’s even been used internationally. A minister in Liberia, west Africa, bishop Emanuel Jones, who heard about what we were doing Bishop Emanuel Jones, who heard about what we were doing reached out and we were able to get holistic hardware over to a country that had been ravaged by a civil war the longest civil war in Africa. Bishop Jones was committed to working to help the country recover, and holistic hardware became one of the tools that he used to do that. In fact, he invited me over, I trained some of his ministers and staff in the tools, helped him start a school for the orphans who had lost their parents in the Civil War, and one of the things I’m most proud about is because of my contributions through Bishop Jones in Liberia. He named the school there the Joseph Holland Christian Institute.
Allen Wolf:
Wow, incredible. After the events of Harlem Grace, you eventually became the Commissioner of Housing for New York State. What was that like?
Joe Holland:
I had not really been active in politics. I did serve this was back in the 80s before we did Harlem Grace as a counsel to one of the state senate committees, the housing committee up in Albany. But I was more community focused, grassroots was my work environment, not in the political environment. And so once again I was very surprised when the new governor, governor George Pataki, gave me a call and was impressed with the work that I had been doing with the homeless and in the community, because I not only did the homeless shelter but I did some entrepreneurial work with small businesses, really as a way to create jobs for the homeless and other hard-to-employ people.
Joe Holland:
So I started the first American Express travel office in Harlem. I also started the first Ben Jerry’s, the first in an inner city anywhere in the United States, but it was right on 125th Street in the center of Harlem. I was also instrumental in bringing a body shop retail store to 125th Street. This was an important dimension of my work because at the time Harlem was suffering because of lack of employment opportunities, including the men in my shelter. As a result of that work it was groundbreaking there was some notoriety that I got as a trailblazer in that way. It was through that, my phone rang and it was the governor of New York State offering me to be a housing commissioner for the entire state of New York, running a state agency and providing funds for affordable housing and other services, which was exciting for me because it gave me an opportunity to take what I had learned at the grassroots and bring it into the government sector.
Allen Wolf:
You have been quite a trailblazer in your own life and then you decided to write a book about trailblazers. What inspired you to write your latest book? The book is called.
Joe Holland:
Make your Own History Timeless Truths from Black American Trailblazers. And the 120 trailblazers in the book come from research that I’ve been doing over the course of my life, really since my college days. I was a English and history major and before going on to law school at Harvard, I got my master’s in history at Cornell. So there’s been a passion for writing and for history and doing research, particularly in African-American history, and all of that has now manifested in this new book, Make your Own History, because it combines my passion for history and writing with my passion for reaching out and helping others. What I’ve done with 120 Role Models it’s not just about their biographies. They all have great historical accomplishments, Otherwise they would not have made it in the present.
Joe Holland:
And to illustrate this for you, one of my trailblazers he’s known as the father of the Harlem Renaissance, Alain Locke, and he was an academic, one of the early Rhodes scholars, who was African-American.
Joe Holland:
And the success principle that I draw from his life is called Be Creative With your Compassion, Because he was compassionate in reaching out and helping others in the Harlem Renaissance. That was during the 1920s, when there was this movement which he pioneered to move the consciousness of African Americans from that Jim Crow era, where there was segregation, particularly in the South but throughout the nation, to what Locke called the New Negro, which was about a new mindset, a new spirit among the masses of African-Americans. We wanted to see them as strong, competent, enterprising individuals that could move forward and take control of their lives and live in victory. And that was his compassionate approach. And he was creative about it, so creative that he brought in other writers, some of whom I write about in my book Make your Own History, like Langston Hughes and Nella Lawson and Georgia Douglas Johnson, and these were poets and fiction writers who took this theme of the new Negro and brought it to life. It’s important for us to use whatever creative gifts we have in compassionate ways.
Allen Wolf:
I love that. I don’t know if you knew this, but the Harlem Renaissance was very inspirational to me as I made and created Harlem Grace. We actually feature artwork from the Harlem Renaissance in the background of some scenes and then I actually recreate a painting from the Harlem Renaissance using your character, in a scene in the church where he’s wearing a black vest and a white shirt. That’s actually referencing a painting from the Harlem Renaissance.
Joe Holland:
I am learning some important things from our discussion today, Allen, which I really, really appreciate that I didn’t know about the bag being stolen three times. I didn’t know about the Harlem Renaissance influence of the film. This is insightful. That’s one of the themes of my book. It’s about bringing history to life in ways that we here in the present day can relate to it. I talked about Alain Locke being creative in his compassion. I’m really excited to know that you also are creative in your compassion, so thank you for that commitment.
Allen Wolf:
Thanks. You’ve mentioned that you’re a man of faith. Where did your spiritual journey begin?
Joe Holland:
I didn’t grow up as a man of faith. My parents, they were good, hardworking, moral people, but I would not call them religious or spiritual in their approach to life. They did expose me to church. I grew up as a young boy on the campus of Hampton University in Hampton, virginia. My father was president of Hampton University and so there was a chapel on campus, and when there was a special service of some kind, say on Easter or on Christmas Eve, I always felt at the University of Michigan.
Joe Holland:
Before transferring after my first year to Cornell University, I was on football scholarship there and there was a retreat sponsored by two campus ministries that focus on athletes. One is called Fellowship of Christian Athletes, another is called Athletes in Action. They did a retreat. I was invited to come on that retreat and it was during that time I was impacted by what was shared with me about faith in Jesus Christ with me about faith in Jesus Christ, and it was as a result of my time with my peers. I had never really heard the message of the gospel of Jesus Christ from my peers. I was deeply moved by the testimonies that I heard.
Joe Holland:
During the weekend that we were there, some Detroit Lion football players came out to visit us athletes and one of them was someone that I admired because I was a running back and he was a star pro running back. His name was Mel Farr. He was a star with the Detroit Lions and while he was at this retreat, just for a few hours, the pro players were there. He called the half dozen or so of the black players and said, hey, let’s go on a walk. And as we walked around this camp, around this camp, he gave us his testimony of how he was a college player at UCLA and they went south to play Alabama and this was in the 1960s and the town where they were wanted the Black players to stay at a separate hotel because of the segregation of the time, and the Black players were going to protest and boycott.
Joe Holland:
And then one of his teammates, a white player, came to Mel and the other Black players and said let’s pray, let’s ask God to intervene. And he called it a miracle where they changed the hotel owners, the town. They changed their mind and let the black players stay in the same hotel as the white players. He was saying and I’ll never forget this put God first in your life and miracles will happen and things will work out and miracles will happen and things will work out. And I, you know, I never forgot that and that was a compelling moment for me to make my own grew in my faith and I got to the point where I was someone who believed that my faith in God was the most important factor in my life. That was the key factor in my making the move from Harvard to Harlem.
Allen Wolf:
And how did your parents respond to your new faith?
Joe Holland:
My parents were unsupportive of my new faith because they didn’t understand. They had been supportive of me. They had put me through school, they had set me up for a successful career path to walk down. And here I was because of my faith and I made it clear to them it was because of my faith, I was going in a different direction. They had paved the pathway for me and I was taking the road less traveled and they didn’t understand that and it took them a while to be accepting of it.
Joe Holland:
But the gratifying thing was not long before my dad passed. He passed just a couple of years. I think it was three years after I moved to Harlem. He saw what I was doing, making a difference, and he said, son, I understand, I didn’t before, but I understand now and I support this. That was an important moment. And then my mom she actually became a business partner of mine in one of my businesses, the Harlem Travel Bureau. I mentioned earlier the American Express office. We called it the Harlem Travel Bureau and she lived in the suburbs of Bronxville, north of Harlem, and she would drive in just about every day and I never forget the look on her because she was with me at the premiere of Harlem Grace, I invited my mother. She came I remember looking at her afterwards and she was touched by the story that you were able to put on the big screen. That made it special. First, the lack of support from your parents and then having that transform into such strong support.
Allen Wolf:
That’s amazing. At the end of your life, what kind of legacy would you like to leave behind is?
Joe Holland:
because, more than buildings that are constructed and businesses that are launched and run, those writings live on.
Joe Holland:
I’ve written a memoir it’s called From Harlem to Love and now self-help books, particularly most recently, make your Own History.
Joe Holland:
It tells stories of people who live lives that make difference in the lives of others, and some are unsung heroes, people we never heard of before, like Mary Ellen Pleasant, who moved to California during the gold rush of the 1850s and became so successful that she became known by some historians as the Harriet Tubman of California because she ran the Underground Railroad in ways that helped free slaves in that part of the country.
Joe Holland:
I really want to tell not only my own story but also the stories of others in ways that live on and become an inspirational legacy to those who really need to be uplifted. We talked earlier about the Harlem Renaissance, and I like for this book Make your Own History to be a seed for a new Harlem Renaissance. This is 100 years later, so it’s really the centennial of the Harlem Renaissance and there’s still a journey to travel for African Americans in the United States, and I’d like for this history coming to life to be a seed that will help individuals move from whatever life they’re living now to what I call a virtues-driven lifestyle, a lifestyle where they will embrace the virtues that I write about so that they can live the best version of who they are.
Allen Wolf:
That’s great. Well, thank you so much for being my guest, joe. Thank you for the inspirational legacy that you’re weaving right before our eyes. Thank you for all the ways that you’ve just inspired others, all the ways that you’ve been building others up all these years, and I look forward to more people discovering your story and being inspired by who you are and the works that you’ve produced.
Joe Holland:
I appreciate, Allen, you coming along my journey here. Your work here is helping the work that I’m doing, because you’re telling my story in a way that I would not have been able to do. So thank you for your creative compassion.
Allen Wolf:
Oh, thank you. You can find out more about Harlem Grace and Joe’s books by going to MorningstarPicturescom. If you work in entertainment, check out the complimentary courses and other resources available at navigatinghollywood. org. Please follow us and leave us a review so others can discover this podcast. You can find our other shows, transcripts, links and more at navigatinghollywood. org. I look forward to being with you next time.