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!

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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

May in the Park, No. 24
Copyright © 2012 by Leslye Joy Allen

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!

The Persistence of Old Models / Old Beliefs

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

by Leslye Joy Allen Historian, Educator, Theatre and Jazz Advocate & Consultant, Doctoral Student

Last month, I had the good fortune to sit down with, break bread with, and drink good wine a couple of times with award-winning playwright, Black Theatre expert, and educator Paul Carter Harrison. I have to thank fellow scholar R. Candy Tate for turning what was supposed to be our first meeting (to trade academic notes and talk shop) into a meeting where we added yet another spirited scholar to the mix. This was one of those rare opportunities we graduate students receive where we can converse with someone who is, arguably, one of the first artists to seriously study Black Theatre and create a scholarly canon that tells us what Black Theatre is and what it is not.

However, I deliberately did not ask Paul about his many books (The Drama of Nommo or Black Theatre: Ritual Performance in the African Diaspora). Among the many things we discussed was his frustration and anger about what he considered to be some younger playwrights, actors, and directors’ pandering to the tastes of White audiences; and an unfortunate dumbing-down of theatre, television and film in an effort to appeal to audiences of all races for the sole benefit of entertainment just for entertainment’s sake. He was not ambiguous at all; he was livid. He saw a disturbing trend where some Black performers decided to cater to what White producers and audiences—even well-meaning White folks—wanted them to appear to be on stage. No more martyred Black folks, he said. Exactly how many times must everything WE do be a response to some other group of people? Exactly how many times must we be characterized as long-suffering and stoic or, for that matter, be the super baadaass Black man who always manages to rush in and save the day? He made his point.

He saw this pandering as something that, while it might be quite commercially satisfying, stifled Black creativity and stunted artistic risk-taking while it simultaneously applauded and rewarded the mundane, the ordinary. He noted that this lack of vision, this lack of adventurousness, would eventually cause a lot of artists to hit a commercial brick wall. He did not bite his tongue about the fact that certain Black stereotypes and certain Black archetypes had become the norm in film, on TV, and on the stage. While Paul is a part of my larger ongoing research, which will not be discussed here, he did make me think about not only why artistic and scholarly risk-taking is necessary for growth, but also why stereotypes are particularly dangerous.

After our two marathon conversations, I thought about how people on both sides of the political and racial aisle, so to speak, hold onto and cling to certain images and ideas about Black people. I have to honestly wonder whether, WE Black folks have any real friends who actually know US; that is, friends outside of our own racial/ethnic group. I am not kidding; I mean this. Aside from the racist who assumes that at any given moment I will be spitting out watermelon seeds or that I have bred babies like rabbits, there are also those White folks that go to other extremes. They are so hell bent on proving that they are not racist that they see beauty and goodness in everything and everybody that is Black—and that is a fallacy as well. Blackness and Black people become a fetish. One of the first things that makes us, Black folks, human is our ability to be great or weak, right or wrong, smart or dumb, honest or dishonest. Any belief, sentiment, or romanticism that strips us of the full range of human expression denies us our humanity, no matter how flattering those beliefs and sentiments might be. It is dangerous to hold onto those kinds of extremes and expectations.

Only a few days after my meeting and hanging out with Paul, one of my History students, a young White male, told me about this funny video he saw. According to this student, someone filmed security personnel in a department store. In the video, all of the security personnel were following all the Black customers assuming that the Black customers would be the customers who would shoplift. However, while security was following all the Black customers, White shoplifters were stealing everything they could get their hands on. Both my student and I laughed, but the humor quickly faded when we began to consider what really happens when someone makes assumptions based solely and purely on race, or I should say, on racism. Now, anyone with half a brain knows that people of all races and ethnicities steal for a variety of reasons. Nevertheless, this video—that I have never seen, by the way—said something else about misconceptions based solely on race.

When people buy into any stereotype it does something more than degrade and devalue the victim of the stereotype, it tells everyone else exactly who they need to victimize or who they need to “not look like” or “not behave like” in order to get away with whatever they are attempting to get away with. I am not going to say anything about Trayvon Martin, this time. However, for all of those frightened and paranoid White folks (and Black folks) who live in gated communities in Florida and elsewhere, I have only one thing to say: Beware of respectable looking young White males who may be walking through your neighborhoods.

While I am sure most of these young White men will not be planning to commit any crime or do anyone any harm, one of them might have decided that since he did not look a certain way that he could get away with certain things. When you buy into and believe those old models and old beliefs, eventually, someone figures out that all they have to do is make sure they do not fit the model. After that, they can get away with anything! And for those folks who might be feeling guilty for believing the worst stereotypes about Black people, the last thing you need to do is stop for some poor Black guy on the side of the road at midnight, just to prove a point.

The majority of us Black people work hard, pay our bills, take care of our homes and lawns, and never ever hurt anyone, but that does not mean that all Black people are saints. If we could just let these old models and old beliefs go, we could proceed in this world based just on facts rather than assumptions. Now, I have a Black elder statesman of Theatre and a young White male student to thank for raising the level of the discussion.

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

12 Lessons…

Posted on March 15, 2012 by Leslye Joy Allen (Ayọ)

…I Learned from My Parents and a Few Great Teachers (Some old advice worth repeating)

by Leslye “Joy” Allen Historian, Educator, Theatre and Jazz Advocate & Consultant, Doctoral Student

BE PREPARED TO BURN THE MIDNIGHT OIL. If you rush and get something done in ten minutes, there are probably ten errors in it. Take your time and do it right the first time.
DO NOT BE AN ADULT WHO IS ALSO A SPOILED BRAT. Temper tantrums and crazy demands are bad enough in children, but completely intolerable in adults. In fact, tantrums and crazy demands will not likely be tolerated by anyone other than an idiot who is a glutton for punishment. No one owes you anything. Get over the idea that because you are sad, financially broke, angry, or frustrated that the world must accommodate your bad mood or your rudeness. Go somewhere alone and be quiet and think about how you got to this point.
DO NOT EXPECT YOUR FAMILY (or SPOUSE) TO CHANGE. Enough said.
TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE BAD STUFF. Remember that there are some memories of bad or traumatic events that will bother you from time to time. Call a good friend who will let you vent, or seek counseling. If necessary, shed a few tears. Yet, do not cry over five minutes. Get back to your work. Do not get into the habit of believing that because you have big problems that you bare no responsibility for your life.
BE DEPENDABLE. No one needs a friend that barely returns a phone call and no employer needs an employee that is chronically late or who does lousy work.
BE INDEPENDENT and take responsibility for your personal and financial life—You are not an adult until you do. Avoid people that do not encourage your independence. People who support your dreams are not supposed to continuously pay your way, but they should be encouraging you to do so.
CHOOSE YOUR ASSOCIATES AND FRIENDS AND MATES, CAREFULLY. Suppose your associates or friends or mates can be defined as any of the following: unreliable, lazy, bigoted, racist, narrow-minded, sexist, uncouth, ill-mannered, elitist, promiscuous, untrustworthy, and/or just plain dumb (you can add your own negatives, if you like). All you need to ask yourself is whether you would want your son or daughter to acquire about half of these characteristics. If your answer is no, then you have no business hanging out with, dating, marrying or mating with any of these folks.
DEAL WITH WHAT IS REAL. Avoiding reality will never change reality. Daydreaming and talking about what you want to do has its limitations. Dream big, but stop daydreaming and get to work.
FINISH WHAT YOU START. So what if what you are working on is going to take five years or more to complete? Work toward that goal with concrete and practical steps everyday, and avoid taking detours. It is not what you say you want to do, but what you actually do that matters.
PARTICIPATE IN THE ARTS (music, theatre, paintings, sculpture, dance, writing) in some capacity. The arts help you remain creative whether you have any artistic talent or not. Creativity, put to good use, will help you solve problems. Occasionally, it will help you forget about your problems when necessary.
This is an old adage, but NEVER STOP LEARNING. Make education a lifelong journey. Always be ready to discover something new.
MAKE SMILING A HABIT. Frowning always turns people off. Smiling helps your appearance and your attitude.

Peace.

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!

A Little Girl and “The Nativity”

Posted on March 10, 2012 by Leslye Joy Allen (Ayọ)

by Leslye “Joy” Allen Historian, Educator, Theatre and Jazz Advocate & Consultant, Doctoral Student

For the record, I am a historian and contrary to popular belief, historians are not social scientists. History belongs in the category of the Humanities, as in the phrase “Arts and Humanities.” Art and artists tell stories and so do historians. We just do it in different ways.

Historians analyze and interpret the past. We ask “why” something happened and we ask “how” something happened.

There are as many different angles and answers to those “how” and “why” questions as there are historians. Performance art also does this because no two performances are ever the same; and audience members often see and interpret the same story or song in a hundred different ways.

Yet, I digress.

What I really want to share is a particular story, a story about a little girl who sat in an audience and gave me the best lesson about what the arts, particularly theatre, does for an audience.

I have always been fond of Langston Hughes’ Black Nativity. Many theatre companies in Atlanta have performed this holiday classic over many decades.

I recall seeing many performances of it by Jomandi Productions and many other local Black theatre companies. In recent years, many directors and playwrights have produced their own version of the “Nativity.”

There was yet another re-imagining of this annual story conceived, written, and choreographed by Patdro Harris as part of Kenny Leon’s True Colors Theatre Company’s annual Christmas offering that played in December of 2011 at the beautiful Southwest Arts Center.

Yet, a couple of years ago, I witnessed Black Nativity for perhaps the eighth or ninth time. This time, however, I sat behind a little girl who could not have been any older than five or six years old. I watched her and nostalgically recalled that my first theatre experience occurred on a visit to New York when I was four and a half years old—I saw Sammy Davis, Jr. in Golden Boy. However, the little girl watching Black Nativity did more than bring up fond childhood memories for me.

Sitting in the dark at the Southwest Arts Center, preparing myself for True Colors Theatre Company’s version of Black Nativity, I watched this child’s face break out in a wide—missing-tooth—grin as the music, dance, and dialogue began.

She watched the show with wonder, that kind of childhood wonder where everything is brand new. After the show was over, while I chatted with some folks in the lobby, I watched and heard this child make a dozen comments and ask nearly as many questions:

“Mama, I sure did have a good time.”

“Mama, was the baby Jesus a real baby or was it a doll?”

“Mama what do actors do to make themselves look old?” “

What does “nativity” mean?

How can the same person pretend to be two different people?

The questions and comments from this child kept coming. Yet that is what the arts do—art always triggers the imagination. So I often wonder why some legislators do not realize that part of the reason why schools have difficulty raising students’ Math and Science scores is partially due to the fact that there has been a systematic de-emphasis and de-funding of the Arts and the Humanities.

Being able to memorize and regurgitate information is not a clear example of scholastic aptitude; being able to creatively think one’s way through or out of a problem is an explicit illustration of genuine intelligence. If you think Albert Einstein created his theory of relativity based only on what his science and math teachers taught him, you are dead wrong.

“I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination,” Einstein said.

If you think George Washington Carver did not understand the importance of creativity, think again. Carver emphasized that, “Since new developments are the products of a creative mind, we must therefore stimulate and encourage that type of mind in every way possible.” It is not likely Einstein or Carver would have become the geniuses that they were without a genuine respect for the arts.

That little girl I listened to asking questions in the lobby of the Southwest Arts Center would never have asked the kind of questions she asked her mother had her mother decided not to take her to see a play or a musical.

Black Nativity had stoked her young imagination. When you stoke children’s imaginations, they ask intelligent questions; and when this kind of inquisitiveness is encouraged, they tend to grow up to be adults who ask intelligent questions. When you have adults who know the right questions to ask, you tend to get a community that will demand and possibly get better public policy on everything from city services to health care to education.

So, do your community, yourself, and your children one favor. Take yourself, your children or a child to see a play, a Jazz concert, a ballet, and/or an art exhibit. Now there is no guarantee that you or any child that you expose to the arts will become the next Einstein or Carver, or even a great performance artist. Yet, why not give them a shot at being any or all of the above.

Peace.

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

Social Commentary, History, Theatre, Jazz, and the Environment

Category Archives: Education