About Leslye Joy Allen (Ayọ)

Leslye Joy Allen is a fourth generation native of Atlanta. A historian, oral historian, dramaturge, consultant, and environmentalist (better known by her middle name "Joy"), she holds degrees in History from Agnes Scott College and Georgia State University. She is a charter member of Agnes Scott College’s Alpha-Theta-Psi chapter of Phi Alpha Theta National History Honor Society and is a former Coca-Cola Foundation Museum Fellow at The Atlanta History Center. She was a 2015-2016 Southern Regional Education Board (SREB) Dissertation Fellow and Scholar. She specializes in twentieth century Georgia History, Atlanta History, and Performance Arts History with a specific emphasis on Theatre.

No Pedestals

Posted on September 28, 2012 by Leslye Joy Allen (Ayọ)

by Leslye Joy Allen

If you love someone

the worst place for them

is a pedestal, which

was built to hold

statues, figurines, bric-a-brac,

and yet, it cannot hold anyone you love

or expect to love,

as these objects of your affection, always and

too often, fall from these podiums and break bones and smash

images, sturdy and fragile, that never

could withstand that inevitable tumble to earth where you knew

they would eventually land,

that is, if

you ever really expected to embrace them and immerse yourself in

the fullness and richness and contradictions of

their humanity, rather than in that narrow space of where you assumed

them near perfect, a space

that you could never even occupy yourself

nor in the cement plaster idolatry of

the legend you

imposed on them.

Please, no pedestals.

(I have been blessed with wonderful teachers who have insisted that my being a historian had nothing to do with my ability to write something other than history. Much love & respect to my two favorite Partners-in-crime: Poet-Professors Dr. Waqas Ahmad Khwaja & Dr. Steven Guthrie of Agnes Scott College.)

Leslye Joy Allen is proud to support the good work of Clean Green Nation. Visit the website to learn more about it: Gregory at Clean Green Nation!

This Blog was written by Leslye Joy Allen and is protected by U. S. Copyright Law and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. Any partial or total reference to this blog, or any total or partial excerpt of this blog must contain a direct reference to this hyperlink: http://leslyejoyallen.com with Leslye Joy Allen clearly stated as the author.

The Debt

Posted on September 8, 2012 by Leslye Joy Allen (Ayọ)

by Leslye Joy Allen

from Birmingham to Bahia from Sapelo to San Juan

women black brown bronze tan men black brown bronze tan

looked away from more than we will see paid for more than we will collect

scholars scrubbing Miss Anne’s floor scientists slapping rags on shoes

teachers taking Mister Charlie’s orders architects covered in coal dust

Coloured women Coloured men

braided our hair held us in barbers’ chairs

amenned, fanned on hard church pews shop-talked at fraternal meetings

heard bedside prayers slipped us quarters

fragrant of Crisco and rose water pungent with Old Spice and cigars

admonished us with switches early-rised us to duties

and quick-witted wisdom ordered us home by dusk

We We

whose breath their hopes are hung on whose breath their hopes are hung on

owe them owe them.

(I have been blessed with wonderful teachers who have insisted that my being a historian had nothing to do with my ability to write something other than history. Much love & respect to my two favorite Partners-in-crime: Poet-Professors Dr. Waqas Ahmad Khwaja & Dr. Steven Guthrie of Agnes Scott College.)

Leslye Joy Allen is proud to support the good work of Clean Green Nation. Visit the website to learn more about it: Gregory at Clean Green Nation!

Thank You Onesimus of Boston (by Way of Africa)

Posted on August 30, 2012 by Leslye Joy Allen (Ayọ)

By Leslye Joy Allen

Historian, Educator, Theatre and Jazz Advocate & Consultant, Doctoral Student

“The irony and glory of being a person of African descent is that when you study your people’s history, along with their many contradictions and foibles that they possessed like all other human beings, you also learn how much your people contributed to the well-being of the people who abused and mistreated them.” – Leslye Joy Allen, Copyright © 2012

The year was 1721. The city of Boston experienced one of the most serious outbreaks of smallpox in its history. One Puritan minister, the Reverend Cotton Mather—best known for his participation in Salem’s witchcraft trials—watched his male slave Onesimus with continued curiosity. Onesimus, who was born in Africa, had been in the company of people suffering from smallpox, but he never contracted the disease and became sick.

Cotton Mather had, years earlier, asked Onesimus why he did not get sick. Had he ever had smallpox? Onesimus replied, “Yes and No.” He told Mather that he had endured a procedure when still in Africa that forever cured him of smallpox. He explained that you took a thorn and punctured the pustules of a person who had smallpox; the smallpox fluid that came out of the pustules saturated the thorn. You then took the thorn and rubbed the smallpox juice into the skin of a healthy person. Occasionally the person who had this procedure done would become mildly ill for a short time, but once they recovered, they would never have smallpox again.

Onesimus noted that this procedure had been done for centuries amongst his people—the Garamantes—in Africa. The Garamantes appear in the written records of the Greek historian Herodotus in the 5^th century. Herodotus considered them a great nation. We know about Onesimus and his African ethnic identity, along with his people’s knowledge of inoculation and immunization from Cotton Mather’s letters to government officials and physicians. Initially, when White Bostonians learned that Reverend Mather had gotten this information from his African slave Onesimus, they said that what Mather was suggesting to them was nothing more than “African Witchcraft.” Eventually the desire to stay alive outweighed White Bostonians’ racism, and people there began to receive inoculations against smallpox. Go figure.

Take the time to consider that the only thing that has changed about immunization and inoculation procedures is the instrument medical professionals use to perform them. Some scholars argue that an early form of smallpox inoculation had been developed centuries earlier in India. Indeed, the Chinese developed a method of blowing the scabs from smallpox sores up healthy people’s noses, which was successful. Yet this method was not as effective as the introduction of smallpox “juice” into the skin of healthy people. Suffice it to say that there obviously was a continued exchange of ideas between Africans and Asians. Needles have replaced thorns used by early Africans, but this nearly ancient science was accurate and well on its way to perfection long before any European or Euro-American doctor ever set foot on the North American continent. If you and your children are healthy and have never suffered smallpox or any number of preventable diseases, then thank an African slave named Onesimus. Thank the Garamantes of Africa.

Books:

Instead of a video game or $200.00 sneakers, give a kid (and yourself) a book! The story of Onesimus and Cotton Mather is located in numerous books. Mather’s own medical book, diaries, and letters all give credit to Onesimus. However, there are several other books worth reading.

Invisible Enemies, Revised Edition: Stories of Infectious Disease by Jeanette Farrell (for children age 12 and up), (Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2005)

1001 Things Everyone Should Know About African American History by Jeffrey C. Stewart, (Three Rivers Press, 1998).

The African Background in Medical Science: Essays on African History, Science and Civilizations by Charles S. Finch, (Karnak House, 1990).

Blacks in Science: Ancient and Modern (Journal of African Civilizations; Vol. 5, No. 1-2) edited by Ivan Van Sertima, (Transaction Publishers, 1990).

Leslye Joy Allen is proud to support the good work of Clean Green Nation. Visit the website to learn more about it: Gregory at Clean Green Nation!

What I Learned About Creativity from My Worst Subject

Posted on June 27, 2012 by Leslye Joy Allen (Ayọ)

By Leslye Joy Allen

Historian, Educator, Theatre and Jazz Advocate & Consultant, Doctoral Student

I do not typically write about Education per se. Two of my favorite bloggers ModernDayChris and Matt Wilson of Everything Needs to Change do the best writing about the subject, particularly the education of children in our public school systems from Kindergarten to 12^th Grade. This essay is not so much a critique as it is a reminder about something often forgotten when conversations and analyses take place about what is wrong or right or that needs fixing in American education overall.

First, let us be honest. Not all American public education is flawed; it is often unequal based on race and/or socioeconomic factors. It can also suffer from certain regional economic problems, which are beyond the scope of this essay. The quality of American higher education runs the gamut from mediocre to the best in the world. Yet, there are certain actions and habits that can help any student regardless of the quality of that education. Of course, the best education nurtures these habits. So here goes…

For the record, I was possibly the world’s worst Biology student. After routinely making grades of “A” in subjects like History and English, I nearly flunked Biology in high school. I will not bore you with the stories about my nausea and headaches when I had to dissect some dead animal preserved in formaldehyde—That is a whole other essay by itself. When I had to take Biology in college, I determined that I needed to not only study, but also come up with some creative ways to study. After getting a lousy two out of twenty identifications correct on a Biology Lab Practical Exam, I arranged a meeting with my professor. (For those of you who have forgotten what a lab practical is, it is simply a test where you identify bacteria, amoebas, and other items physically located in a biology lab, many of which are under a microscope.)

My professor informed me that he typically set up everything in the lab on Saturdays. I asked if I could come by on Saturdays. He said that I could, and that I could stay as long as I wished so that I could examine and take notes about all of the items in the lab. Off to campus on Saturday I went carrying my notebooks and an assortment of colored markers so that I could literally draw what I was examining so that I could study it at home, over and over again. On nearly ten consecutive Saturdays, I also got a chance to talk at length with my Biology professor.

I joked with him that a historian’s brain dealt with a lot, and it did not have much room for Biology. My professor admitted that he had never been a good student of History. We both took note of the fact that History typically tells a story; and it also typically argues a thesis, which is why you can find so many different History books about the same event that argue entirely different positions about why that event happened. This is why Law students typically have to have some academic background in History—History teaches you to see more than one side of an argument. Biology, however, is another matter. That amoeba cell that you just examined under that microscope is going to remain an amoeba cell. You can either recognize it or you cannot!

During these Saturday sessions, I had the opportunity to ask my professor numerous questions about everything in that lab. I swiftly took notes of everything he said. When both he and I were taking breaks from the subject matter, we discussed History, Politics, Performance Arts, and whatever was happening in the news. He quickly discovered that while I would never be a great biologist, I was a good student in History, and a burgeoning intellectual. So, what is my point?

The point here is I listen to students and some educators talk about subjects they describe as not preparing students for the kind of work they will be doing as adults. “Why do I have to take Biology if I am never going to use it?” That is a fair question. Yet, my experience with taking a subject I might not have to use or need to use taught me several important lessons about the intrinsic value of a good education beyond the mere mastery of any particular subject matter.

First, when I made a solid “B” as my final grade for Biology, I knew I had earned it. No one—and I certainly did not—really wants to go back to school on Saturdays. I went back and stayed long hours and it paid off. Second, because I was often the only student in the lab on those Saturdays I was free to speak with my professor without interruption. Technically, I got free tutoring lessons simply by showing up and availing myself of his expertise. Third, my professor witnessed me making an extra effort in a difficult subject. While professors do not grade for “effort” (nor should they), it does not hurt for an instructor to see a student put in extra time in order to master a difficult subject. Fourth, I learned that I could conquer that which was difficult.

I also finally understood lessons that my mom and my uncle, both educators, often emphasized throughout my childhood and adolescence: Education is as much about endurance as it is anything else. And as my mom often stated: You cannot expect a student to become the next Einstein if he or she cannot get along with other students (teamwork) and also willingly and creatively work on difficult subject matter. Importantly, both Mom and my uncle insisted that one of the keys to a good education was the “social” skill of learning how to navigate difficulties and put in extra time without resorting to short cuts or cheating or other forms of skulduggery. Tackling a subject that one is not good at forces a certain level of creativity—that is creativity often born of unorthodox or unconventional ways to retain and master the subject matter, and pass the class.

It is right about now that the folks that know me well would assume that I would go into one of my soapbox sessions about the necessity of arts education in schools, and how the arts make students more creative and help with spatial reasoning and a host of other skills, including enhanced skills in Mathematics and Sciences. Well, I am not going to do that, exactly.

Exposure to the arts certainly enriches and develops creativity; and I have never met an artist that was not creative at something. Yet, creativity is not the exclusive domain of the arts or artists. I have met many individuals who did not have an artistic bone in their bodies, but who were highly creative people. If students are to develop into productive individuals who can think their way through and out of complex problems, regardless of academic discipline, then education needs to not only expose students to the arts, but it should also advocate that creativity—artistic or otherwise—is an essential skill for all academic disciplines. Furthermore, arts education advocacy need not exist on, nor should it lay sole claim to, some creative island minus its other academic counterparts. Perhaps, this is where the real debate about education needs to begin. More to come later…

Leslye Joy Allen is proud to support the good work of Clean Green Nation. Visit the website to learn more about it: Gregory at Clean Green Nation!

Six Historical Facts You Probably Did Not Know About Jesus and Christianity that You Should Know

Posted on May 21, 2012 by Leslye Joy Allen (Ayọ)

by Leslye Joy Allen

Historian, Educator, Theatre and Jazz Advocate & Consultant, Doctoral Student

The name “Jesus” is a transliteration of a more common Hebrew name, “Yeshu’a.” The proper name of the central person in Christianity is “Yeshu’a ben Yosef,” which technically translates as “Joshua, son of Joseph.” For a long period of time, the letter “J” in the Western world was pronounced with a “Y” sound. There is no letter “J” in the Hebrew or Aramaic languages that Yeshu’a ben Yosef spoke.
Historians and other biblical scholars have noted that the FOUR Gospels included in the Christian Bible that detail the life of Yeshu’a ben Yosef cover only FIFTY days of his life. There are no known written records that give details of his life in its entirety.
There were/are over THIRTY Gospels written about the life of Yeshu’a. In circa 180 CE, a scholar named Irenaeus wrote his Adversus Haereses (Against Heresies) where he determined that only FOUR of these Gospels should be included in the Bible. These FOUR Gospels were the Gospels according to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. At the time, Irenaeus and his followers were vehemently against and competing for adherents with Christian Gnostics. Do not confuse Christian Gnostics with “agnostics.” Christian Gnostics were a group of Christians who performed different rituals and who held several different interpretations of the life of Christ and the practice of Christianity.
The Lord’s Prayer was originally recited by Yeshu’a in Aramaic, one of a few languages that Jesus spoke. There are many different translations of “The Lord’s Prayer,” from the original Aramaic. The Lord’s Prayer that most modern Christians recite is actually a version edited and re-written by England’s King Henry VIII, which is why it (and the King James Bible, edited by England’s King James) sounds so much like English poetry from the 16th century. Read some Shakespeare and then read some passages of an Old King James version of the Bible and you will notice the similarities.
The standard practice for punishing a woman who had committed adultery or who became pregnant outside of wedlock, was to take her to her father’s door, bury her up to her neck, and then have the men of the town throw rocks at her head until she was dead. Yeshu’a stopped the men from killing the alleged biblical adulterous woman, daring them to cast the first stone if they too were not guilty of some offense; by so doing, he was stopping this common and accepted practice of death by stoning. Many scholars believe that Yeshu’a was applying the rules of adultery to men. Up until that time, only women were charged with committing adultery. Men had customarily been allowed concubines, particularly if their wives were barren or had passed childbearing age. Yeshu’a surely understood the implications of sanctioning the act of stoning women to death. After all, his stepfather Yosef (Joseph) disobeyed the Mosaic practice of stoning when he learned that the woman, Mary, to whom he was betrothed, was “with child,” a child that Yosef/Joseph was certain he did not sire.
Yeshua ben Yosef was sentenced to death by crucifixion, Rome’s standard death penalty for slaves convicted of crimes. The charges against Yeshu’a were HERESY (going against church teachings) and SEDITION (which is plotting to overthrow the government). Yeshu’a was first tried, convicted, and sentenced to death for HERESY by Jewish Church authorities before he was turned over to Pontius Pilate, the Procurator of Judaea from roughly 26 – 36 CE, for further prosecution by the Roman state.

While the Internet can certainly help you read more about this information and other related topics, the information included here can be found in the Dictionary of Roman Religion, see Lesley and Roy A. Adkins article “Jesus of Nazareth.”; another good source of information is a book called Jesus by A. N. Wilson (London: Sinclair-Stevenson, 1992).

Leslye Joy Allen is proud to support the good work of Clean Green Nation. Visit the website to learn more about it: Gregory at Clean Green Nation!

Leslye Joy Allen

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Author Archives: Leslye Joy Allen (Ayọ)

About Leslye Joy Allen (Ayọ)

No Pedestals

Six Historical Facts You Probably Did Not Know About Jesus and Christianity that You Should Know