Born: January 25, 1950, New York, NY
Died: September 28, 2016 (age 66 years), Christiansted, U.S. Virgin Islands
While
recently searching through my hardcopy files for some documents, I
found a letter from Gloria Naylor, dated January, 2004. Like so many
other things, I had completely forgotten that I had it. I believe it may be of interest to those who have followed her work, so I decided to publish it here.
Previous to that, Gloria had sent me a copy of one of her books, titled Mama Day (1988), in which she wrote the following message:
"To Barbara Hartwell-
In admiration of your strength and courage. And evidence of my belief in the power of the human spirit."
Gloria Naylor 11/2000
At that time (2000) I had not read any of her work, nor had heard of Gloria Naylor as an author. I later learned that she was best known for her novel, The Women of Brewster Place, which was also made into a TV movie with Oprah Winfrey (NOT a fan....but not relevant to this report.)
Apparently, Gloria had read some of my reports on the Internet, and on my website, which first came online earlier that year.
Gloria also sent me a very generous donation to support my work. I contacted her to say thank you, and she told me some of her story about being harassed by shadowy spook characters, which included assaults by directed energy weaponry.
I considered her a friend, and I'm sorry that I never had the opportunity to meet her in person, though we both wanted to. She lived in Brooklyn, NY and at the time of our first contact, I was in Woodstock, NY. We corresponded by e-mail and phone calls for a few years, but when I relocated to Maine in 2003, by this time we had lost contact, as these things tend to happen.
I received her letter in January, 2004, and I spoke to her on the phone a few times after that. Here is the letter, which refers to her book, titled 1996, which later became popular among researchers and victims of the government's mind control programs.
I have not read the book. By the time it was published, I had again lost contact with Gloria, as tends to happen in my life. But I will always remember her as a kindred spirit and caring person who offered support for me and my work, both materially and morally. I was blessed to know her.
Here is her letter.
January 12, 2004
Dear Barbara,
I hope this letter finds you well and I want to wish you the best for the coming year. I got your new address from your website but there was no e-mail notation and I didn't know if the old e-mail address at ulster was still good so I decided to write through the regular mail.
I told you some time ago about a book that I was planning to write about my experiences. I did so and it's going to be published in June of this year. It's called 1996 and my new publishers think that it's going to cause quite a stir. I use both fiction and non-fiction to try and bring the reader into the immediacy of what it means to have government intrusion into our privacy and into our very heads.
I write about you in the book and give your website in the addendum. I'm hoping that this will help to bring your cause to the attention of my mainstream readers. But I want to reach other readers within the mind control community and so I'm asking for your help in the best way to reach them through the internet and through media outlets that are sympathetic to this issue.
I've already done some research starting with the Mind Control Forum and believe that the Art Bell Show has a good deal of promise for reaching a large audience. Are there others? What magazines or journals would be good candidates for reviewing the book? So far I have Nexus Magazine on my list. I've also joined a mind control discussion group and will tell them about the book when the time comes. Are there other groups you believe I should investigate? In short, I'm trying to plan a strategy where I can reach both activists and victims with my story. I believe that it's a story that each group, for different reasons, will want to read.
I have to admit to you that I'm a little bit afraid when this book comes out. One editor who knows me well and had turned the book down said, “This is scary. And if Gloria publishes this, it will ruin her career.” Maybe, she's right. But what these people are doing is wrong, and if telling my story, at the risk of being called crazy, will shed some light on their darkness then I'll just have to try and manage my fear and go forth.
I hope to hear from you when you get a chance with some suggestions. In case you don't have my e-mail address anymore it is XXX.
I wish you all the best, Barbara. Stay strong. You've been an inspiration to me.
Gloria
EXCERPT FROM:
Fiction as Autobiographical Resurgence: A Black Feminist Autoethnographic Analysis of Gloria Naylor's 1996
It was one of the worst kinds of Human Rights Abuses: Gloria also mentions a few cases of women who formed a forum called “Citizens Against Human Rights Abuses.” The main women crusaders who launched this forum against the NSA and other Govt. Agencies are mentioned as Barbara Hartwell, Eleanor White and Cheryl Welsh. Naylor tries to search for a community with whom she can associate herself on the pretext of “shared experiences of victimization” (Kumar, 2016, p. 207).
This, as Naylor believes, would help her create an experiential bond with them, and help her gathering sufficient strength to combat with the mainstream stereotypical-cum-hegemonistic power structures, and finds these women:
"The first was Barbara Hartwell, who had worked for CIA and was now blowing the whistle on them for the abuses she experienced under the MK Ultra program. MK Ultra ran from 1950s to the 1960s officially, and was a research program that tested the effects of LSD and other biological agents on unwitting victims to see if the drugs could be used for mind control and behavior modification. The second story that intrigued me was Eleanor White's. She had done extensive documentation on the unclassified technology that could be used to produce microwave hearing as well as synthetic telepathy. The third woman was Cheryl Welsh, who formed a group called Citizens Against Human Rights Abuses. Welsh had done exhaustive research on the background and history of mind control in government experimentation. Eleanor White and Cheryl Welsh designed their websites for people who simply will not believe that this technology has existed or that the U.S. Government would have a hand in tormenting unwilling subjects with it." (117-118)
In honor of Gloria Naylor,
Barbara Hartwell
May 23, 2024
