For decades, a dazzling stream of African American artists and authors flowed in and out of 491 Broadway, a loft in New York’s SoHo district owned by Camille Billops and Jim Hatch, whose weekly salons attracted everyone from Ralph Ellison to Butterfly McQueen.
By the time they switched off their recorders for the last time, the couple had logged and published in their journal “Artist and Influence” many of the more than 1,400 oral interviews they’d recorded with Black artists, musicians, writers, photographers and filmmakers. That treasure trove of African American history resides in the Billops-Hatch Archives at the Stuart A. Rose Library.
On Thursday, Aug. 27, actor and composer Clifton Davis will add his voice to that valuable research collection when he is interviewed by bestselling author and Emory University professor Tayari Jones. Their free, public conversation, to be held at 6 p.m. in the Emory Performing Arts Studio, will be recorded and added as the latest installment in a series of live interviews that bridge the gap between those historical voices and contemporary cultural figures. Seating is limited, and registration is strongly encouraged.
This will be the Rose Library’s fourth annual “Billops-Hatch Artist & Influence” event, revived in honor of the Billops-Hatch interview series. Davis, currently starring in the CBS soap opera “Beyond the Gates” (filmed near Atlanta), is an actor, singer, composer, producer, and minister. He has appeared on television shows including “Clipped,” “Madam Secretary,” “Godfather of Harlem,” and “Amen.” Davis also wrote “Never Can Say Goodbye” and “Lookin’ Through the Windows” for the Jackson 5. Tayari Jones is the Charles Howard Candler Professor of Creative Writing at Emory University. She also is the author of five novels, including the New York Times bestseller “An American Marriage,” and most recently, “Kin.”
“Many of the artists interviewed by Camille Billops and James Hatch over the years have had a multi-disciplinary perspective, and Clifton Davis’s long and storied career exemplifies this,” says Elizabeth Ott, director of the Rose Library. “Tayari Jones is a vibrant storyteller who we know will help bring Mr. Davis’s fascinating career and artistic endeavors to life.”
Rose Library views the Artist & Influence series as an opportunity to build ongoing partnerships with Emory faculty.
“This year, we want to place an emphasis on building meaningful faculty engagement within our programs in African American collections,” says N’Kosi Oates, curator of African American collections at the Rose Library. “One way we are doing that is by inviting faculty members to serve as interviewers for our featured guests, bringing their expertise directly into these conversations.”
History of the Artist & Influence series in the Billops-Hatch Archive
Billops and Hatch launched their conversation series, recording on 5-inch reel-to-reel tapes, in the late 1960s in their East 11th Street loft before moving to the SoHo area, where its popularity and the pace quickly picked up. For years they held them every Sunday from 2-4 p.m., and admission was free to anyone who loved the arts, as long as they arrived before the recording started.
Jim Hatch and Camille Billops, pictured at a dinner reception in their honor in 2012.
Artists and art lovers interviewed for the series in the archives include Sapphire, George C. Wolfe, Carrie Mae Weems, Howardena Pindell, Terrence Spivey, Faith Ringgold, Georgiana Picket, Jim Alexander (the Atlanta-based photographer who first placed his papers with the Rose Library in 2014), Wes and Missy Cochran (who sold more than 500 pieces from their African American art collection to the Carlos Museum in 2024), Barbara and Carlton Molette (theater professionals who placed their papers with the Rose Library), and many others.
“The Artist & Influence interview series is a vital resource because it is one of the few oral history initiatives dedicated to documenting the voices of artists of color, particularly African American artists,” Oates says. “Camille Billops and James Hatch recognized the importance of recording artists in their own words.
“Many of the artists and cultural figures interviewed, including Elizabeth Catlett, Ossie Davis, Vertamae Grosvenor, Langston Hughes, and Samella Lewis, have since passed away, making these recordings irreplaceable firsthand accounts,” he added.
Researching with Artist & Influence recordings
Researchers have used the Artist & Influence interviews for various fascinating projects. Ebonie Pollock dove into the interviews as a 2024 recipient of the Billops-Hatch Fellowship at the Rose Library and PhD candidate in the History of Art & Architecture department at Harvard University. At the time, she was studying Black feminist art histories with a focus on Black women sculptors of the late 19th and early 20th centuries for her dissertation.
In a blog she wrote in May 2025, Pollock said her working thesis was that Black artists of that period, particularly sculptors, were largely excluded from the mainstream art market due to the high costs related to producing, transporting, and storing sculptures. She focused on Black women sculptors, and among the Artist & Influence interviews, Pollock wrote that she found references to two Black female sculptors, Augusta Savage and Nancy Elizabeth Prophet, in separate interviews with two significant artists who went to visit the sculptors.
“In the span of listening, a notable parallel emerged between two accounts of Augusta Savage and Nancy Elizabeth Prophet described by Ernest Crichlow and Romare Bearden, respectively,” Pollock wrote in her blog. “Both prominent artists of the next generation, Crichlow and Bearden reflected separately on the two sculptors in the guise of Grecian goddesses or sybils that they found, inexplicably, working out of basements.” (Prophet was instrumental in the founding of the art program at Spelman College in 1934.)
“I am grateful for the opportunity I received to engage with reflections on Black women sculptors as they were perceived by their broader community, which contributes to the ability to excavate their lives and their work from the ‘basement,’” wrote Pollock in closing.
“The archives and special collections at Rose Library are not collected simply to be preserved. They are a living archive that thrives when students, faculty, researchers, and the Atlanta community are able to work and create within them,” says Ott. “Artist & Influence carries on the ethos of Camille Billops and Jim Hatch that art and history are dynamic enterprises, and we invite the Emory community and the public to join us to become part of making history.”
For more information on the Billops-Hatch Archives, send an email to N’Kosi Oates.
—written by Maureen McGavin, senior writer, Emory Libraries
Sidebar:
“Artist & Influence: An Oral History Interview with Clifton Davis in conversation with Tayari Jones”
Thursday, Aug. 27, 6-7:30 p.m.
Emory Performing Arts Studio
1804 N. Decatur Rd. NE
Atlanta, GA 30322
Free and open to the public, but registration is encouraged
Free parking is available beginning at 4 p.m. in the Gambrell Deck located at 1705 Lowergate Drive, Atlanta, 30322
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