Sacred Places

Posted on December 5, 2016 by Leslye Joy Allen (Ayọ)

Tropical Blue Ocean Water (public domain)

I was among the people supremely delighted at the decision of the Army Corps of Engineers to halt any further construction of the Dakota Pipeline on Sunday, December 4, 2016 until further study of its environmental impact on the water supply in that area. I am not going to preach about the fact that eventually that pipeline would have negatively affected the water supply. You can read my previous blog “A Time of Drought,” to get an idea.

For environmentalists, like myself, this was an incredible victory because for the first time, in a long time, the environment was front and center. The many Native American nations, along with military servicemen and women, environmentalists, and peoples from around the globe were involved in this protest. Often protests of this nature compete with news stories about who-wore-what to some awards show or the endless stories that moan and groan about things some people obviously have no intention of doing anything about, else they would not spend so much time moaning and groaning about them in the first place…

This time something as precious as water was at the forefront; and access to clean water is something that everyone can understand, even when they are less informed about other matters related to the environment…

Now, what I am about to say here might stun a few folks…

What a lot of people often fail to recognize is that in almost every instance where the earth or air or water has been disturbed or polluted, whether it is to extract oil or some other resource or to build some structure, there has almost always been some violation of the sacred, some disturbing of something that meant something precious to someone or to some group of people…

For my Atlanta readers, you might know, or might need reminding, that underneath a portion of Interstate 75-South lies an old cemetery filled with the graves of Black folks, our brothers and sisters. Where Interstate 75-South meets Cleveland Avenue lies a marble marker that designates the graves of roughly 1,700 former slaves who were buried in Gilbert Cemetery which had been created as a burial place for slaves in the early 1840s.

Because the area around this grave came to be known as “Plunkett Town” which was still occupied by poor, rural Blacks as late as the 1960s, the graveyard there did not illicit much concern until work crews from the Georgia Department of Transportation discovered the damaged burial grounds while building Interstate 75. By the time of the discovery, the graves had already been disturbed, and the plans and money to build that highway were already in place. No one considered the graveyards to be more important than building a much-needed highway. What has been left there is a marker letting people who bother to look know that they are driving over a graveyard…

This is exactly what we all have been doing to Native Americans’ sacred sites ever since Europeans arrived on these shores, eventually and forcibly transporting millions of Africans here to perform heavy labor as slaves…

This is not a moral judgement, but rather food for thought. Too often we—and that includes environmentalists as well, and I am just as guilty—do not think of water as anything other than something that will come out of a faucet when we turn that faucet on. And as long as we can pay our Water Bill, we seem assured that when we turn that knob, water will come out…

But go pour a glass of water. Look at it! Say a prayer to it! Respect it!

The Standing Rock protest that has temporarily halted the Dakota Pipeline might not have converted any new environmentalists; I know too well from experience that a lot of people do not want to be inconvenienced in any way, even if that small inconvenience will help clean up the environment, or at least slow down the toxicity of the natural environment…

Yet, we all need to stay on guard because this battle may come up again as a new president moves into the White House in January 2017. However, for the time being, recognize what this protest and this small victory has made us all pay attention to: respect for the dead and for the most precious resource on earth: water. If you are not humbled by this, I do not know what else to tell you except that you will eventually be humbled by this, whether you want to be or not.

Àṣé.”

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 or any blog authored by Leslye Joy Allen, or any total or partial excerpt of this or any blog by Leslye Joy Allen must contain a direct reference to this hyperlink: https://leslyejoyallen.com with Leslye Joy Allen clearly stated as the author. All Rights Reserved.

No Ordinary Man

Posted on October 27, 2016 by Leslye Joy Allen (Ayọ)

By Leslye Joy Allen

Left to Right: Actor & Cultural Architect Charles Reese, Historian Leslye Joy Allen, and Actor-Director-Drama Professor Keith Arthur Bolden (Copyright © 2016 by Leslye Joy Allen. All Rights Reserved.)

When I learned that Mrs. Margarette Bolden passed on to the ancestors on Wednesday, October 26, 2016, I immediately thought of her son, my friend Keith Arthur Bolden. I never met Keith Arthur’s Mama, but I knew her through him. He spoke of her lovingly and often. But then, that is Keith Arthur’s nature. (I call him by his first and middle name.)

An actor, director, Professor of Drama, and director of the amazing Spriggs Burroughs Ensemble at Spelman College that contains actors from all-female Spelman and all-male Morehouse College, I am highly familiar with Keith Arthur’s phenomenal work with young actors. I had the good fortune to act as a Historical Consultant for him and this group; and the adventure was a lot of fun, and his asking me to do so was a supreme compliment. But on Wednesday, October 26, 2016, Keith Arthur lost his Mama. Yet…

In an act of unwavering devotion to his art and craft, he was up at 1:00 AM on October 27, 2016 for a late night/early morning rehearsal with his actors in the Spriggs Burroughs Ensemble. One day after his amazing mother passed away from her third bout with cancer, Keith Arthur stated that his Mama would want him to keep working and perfecting his art. This behavior might sound unreasonable to an ordinary man or woman, but Keith Arthur Bolden is not an ordinary man.

I have listened to him rave about how good his wife Tinashe Kajese is at acting. “If you want to know how to get into a scene, you watch my wife,” he has said on so many occasions. He could routinely brag about how beautiful his wife is (and she is a real beauty), but he praises her work all the time. In that respect he is quite different from a lot of men. Many men will praise a woman’s cooking and will talk about how pretty she is, or how supportive she is, but rarely do we women get praise for our professions unless the man has discovered some personal use of his own for our particular skills. Even more rare is the man or husband who brags about his wife’s abilities in her chosen profession. Keith Arthur Bolden is proud of his wife—as he should be, because Tinashe is a powerhouse of an actor. He doesn’t mind telling everybody how proud he is of her as a professional. In addition to that, he remains one of the most thoughtful men I have encountered…

When my cousin and theatre veteran Billie Allen passed to the ancestors in December of 2015, one of the first people to contact me was Keith Arthur. When I had no money to attend the theatre, Keith Arthur made sure I saw Tinashe Kajese in the phenomenal play “Serial Blackface” about Atlanta’s late 70s-early 80s missing and murdered child cases; and actor-playwright Terry Burrell in her one-woman show “Ethel” about the life of the late Ethel Waters. (I have to add that Atlanta actor Margo Moorer is also another one of my theatre angels. Margo came and picked me up and took me to the theatre to see Gabrielle Fulton’s “Uprising” and made me take some money.) Keith Arthur adds even more love and light to the best in the theatre tradition. He thought of me and got me tickets all while he managed and directed a college theatre group, while he taught classes, acted in a variety of television roles, while he had the regular duties of husband and father, and while he went back-and-forth to L. A. to check on his ailing mother. I WILL NEVER FORGET HIS THOUGHTFULNESS. So…

When I learned his mother passed away, I thought of the value of good parenting, the value of raising a boy to look for substance in a woman. Mrs. Margarette Bolden had to have been one hell of a woman and Keith Arthur’s dad was probably pretty smart for having married her…and now she has left the earthly plane to join the ancestors…

Keith Arthur would probably tell me that he has made some mistakes and that my compliments here are a bit over-the-top. I would have to disagree. Ordinary men rarely understand much about women, not always because women are that complicated, but often because ordinary men never really ask women any real questions, at least not any questions about what a woman wants to do for a living, particularly if what she wants to do professionally has nothing to do with the man asking the questions. Keith Arthur Bolden is not so self-absorbed and does not fit that description…

I suspect that his mother had a lot to do with his thoughtfulness and genuine respect for a woman’s ambitions and talents. I have little doubt that his tenacity and belief that “the show must go on” (which explains his early A.M. rehearsal) not only comes from the theatre tradition, but also from his mother who battled cancer like a champion, always with a smile and positive attitude. I looked at the photos Keith Arthur would post of her smiling, even though her health was declining. So I thank Mrs. Margarette Bolden for her shining example and also because she raised a man who is not ordinary by any definition of the word. One day at a time, Keith Arthur…Rest in Peace Mrs. Bolden. Àṣé.

A Cautionary Blog for Teachers, Directors, and those in Charge of any kind of Team

Posted on June 3, 2016 by Leslye Joy Allen (Ayọ)

"Weary - Self Portrait" by Copyright © 2013 by Leslye Joy Allen. All rights reserved.

I can never forget one moment in a graduate History class that I took when I was working on my Master’s Degree. (FYI: My former professors at my alma maters need not worry about what I am about to say. I took this class on some other college campus.)

I remember the professor’s instructions. In a small class of no more than ten graduate students, the professor said something to this effect,

“You are to write a five-page review of this book. It must have one-inch margins, be double-spaced, and it must be EXACTLY FIVE pages. I don’t want FOUR and a half pages. I don’t want FIVE and one-fourth pages. It must be EXACTLY FIVE pages. If you do not follow these instructions, I will hand the paper back to you and you will have to do it over. This is an exercise to teach you how to edit with precision.”

Now, in all fairness, it was a good exercise. I edited and rewrote until I got that paper to exactly five pages. I re-read it to make sure that it still made sense and was clear. I turned it in. When the professor returned the papers, I anxiously turned to the last page. There it was, an A+. Now, this story does not exactly have a good ending.

Before I could tuck my paper away into my book bag, the professor stood before the class and said this,

“The only person that DOES NOT have to do her paper over is Leslye Joy Allen.”

I gasped. Damn, I thought! I did not mind the “A+.” I earned it. Yet, I did mind being singled-out! All of my classmates stared in my direction. A few of them gave me icy looks, others just looked embarrassed. On the way out, I asked the professor if I could speak with him privately.

When we arrived at his office, I told him “Please don’t ever do that to me again.” “What do you mean?” he said. “Single me out like that,” I answered. “But you’re a good student. Good students deserve praise,” he said. “But not at the expense of making other students feel small,” I replied. I left his office.

At that moment, I understood what every student labeled a “nerd” felt like. I was ashamed of myself because there had been a few times in high school when, even though I made good grades, I had been guilty of calling a few super-brainiac students “nerds.”

Over the next couple of weeks in this graduate class, a few of my classmates barely spoke back when I said, “Hello,” and those that did respond, responded rather coldly. I cut back for a while on participating in class discussions. Eventually the chill thawed and I resumed my normal relations with my classmates and with the professor. Yet, I share this story to make a point.

While I did not deserve the coldness from some of my classmates, I also did not deserve to be singled-out in front of them as the only person who followed the instructions. It produced an unhealthy atmosphere where I appeared as the “favorite” of the professor. Even worse, it placed me in the unnatural and untenable position of being the “standard” by which all others were judged. I’ve never cared for that kind of attention.

I hope all of the people who are reading this, those who have some form of direction over any group of individuals, will remember that if there is a high achiever in your group, that you can damage the morale of the whole group by singling out that achiever in a manner that denigrates or undervalues the others. Importantly, you can also dampen the spirits and isolate the high achiever(s), which could destroy the type of unity and the free exchange of ideas that makes for a great class, a great production, or a great team. This is a lesson I have never forgotten.

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 or any blog authored by Leslye Joy Allen, or any total or partial excerpt of this or any blog by Leslye Joy Allen must contain a direct reference to this hyperlink: http://leslyejoyallen.com with Leslye Joy Allen clearly stated as the author. All Rights Reserved.

The Old Souls…

Posted on May 26, 2016 by Leslye Joy Allen (Ayọ)

by Leslye Joy Allen

“Self Portrait” by Copyright © 2015 Leslye Joy Allen. All Rights Reserved.

This blog is just a quick update…I have recently been in touch with young people who belong to, or I should say are in communiqué with, the Old Souls…

Old Souls are those ancestors who have passed on and who regularly communicate with children and other young people in their efforts to keep the majority of us on the straight-and-narrow path…

I cannot begin to tell you how many people I know who are the parents of small children who speak as if they are well over the age of eighty when they speak…All I can say is that it is the Old Souls that speak to and through these children and young adults…

I have also experienced this with the young people that I have taught and/or mentored and/or influenced in some way. Quite often, I hear some pearl of wisdom, some saying or colloquialism that they are much too young to know. It comes out of their mouths as if my/our grandparents or great grandparents are speaking through them…

I have learned to listen to that Old Wisdom coming from young mouths…I have also learned to completely let go of that Western Judaic-Christian tradition that, unfortunately, draws a sharp demarcation between the secular and the sacred…I have known this to be problematic for quite some time. It has taken me nearly a lifetime to BELIEVE it was problematic…

In most of the many varied African cosmological traditions, a problem (or a person who presents themselves as a problem) was there to teach everyone involved in the problem an important moral or ethical lesson…The requirement was to experience the problem and fully learn the lesson and in order to learn the lesson one must be fully human—not holy—but human…

In my own very recent and past losses, I have learned to trust this fully human experience from the young people I have encountered (and by young, I mean post-Baby Boomers) who do not need judgment as much as they need our guidance and love. They do not need criticism as much as they need our support and cushion, as they try and fail and learn from their experiences and failures and successes…

And we must remember and acknowledge that they are not as young as we older folk would like to believe they are…They come bearing the gifts of the Old Souls and we would do well to listen and learn…I have learned to listen. When I do, I often I hear my parents and grandparents voices…Àṣé!

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 or any blog authored by Leslye Joy Allen, or any total or partial excerpt of this or any blog by Leslye Joy Allen must contain a direct reference to this hyperlink: http://leslyejoyallen.com with Leslye Joy Allen clearly stated as the author. All Rights Reserved.

A Messed-Up Religious Narrative

Posted on April 1, 2016 by Leslye Joy Allen (Ayọ)

On Easter Sunday morning, 27 March 2016, I received a rather cryptic text message from Facebook. It read as:

“Facebook Safety Check: Are you affected by the explosion?

Reply SAFE if you’re ok or OUT if you aren’t in the area.”

I got nervous. I went online to look up if there had been any explosions. I did not find anything on the Internet that said anything about a recent explosion. I found older stories about bombings and terrorist attacks in other parts of the world from last year, but not one for Easter Sunday in 2016. Then I really got paranoid…

I rarely use my smart phone for anything other than an occasional phone call. I almost never use apps—don’t exactly trust them—and I was slightly worried that this Facebook text might be some hoax going around to see how many people would respond to such a strange message. If I respond, I thought, I am going to end up with some computer virus…

Reluctantly, I replied “OUT” to the Facebook text. Whoever (or whatever) sent the text would know that I was not in or near this explosion wherever it was, I thought to myself.

I checked the Internet again in about an hour. The news reports began coming in, stating that some group of Muslim terrorists was claiming responsibility for an explosion in Lahore, Pakistan that killed a minimum of 72 people, and injured over 300 people who were celebrating the Christian holiday of Easter, which commemorates the resurrection of Jesus (Yeshua), the Christ. The murder of Christians by Muslims would again frame much of the news coverage. The religious narrative would—at least superficially—be a Muslim versus Christian narrative. That narrative is messed-up…

I have never visited Lahore, Pakistan. Yet, one of my former professors was born there. Indirectly, my association with him, a man who I consider a mentor and good friend, has introduced me to many people located in or from Pakistan. I am proud to say that I have given academic advice and encouragement via my Facebook inbox to many young men in Lahore who are either going to college or planning to attend graduate school. So, Facebook, for what it is worth, obviously assumed that I, an African American woman who is from and located in the United States, might actually be located in or near Lahore, Pakistan. This time Social Media’s interpretation of who (or even what) I was taught me a lesson via an obvious scan of my Facebook Friend list…

I am not Muslim. The natives of Pakistan that I personally know and those I am in contact with are all Muslims. They are Muslims who constantly pray for peace, and who condemn the heinous acts of extremists and terrorists, and who also speak out against racism and sexism and religious intolerance. The American news media, however, has conveniently forgotten to tell Americans that the splinter group that broke away from the Taliban, named “Jamaat-ul-Ahrar,” killed as many Muslims as it has Christians. In fact, the majority of those Pakistanis who died in the attacks on Easter Sunday in Lahore, Pakistan happened to be Muslim.

CNN’s provocative and rather misleading headline was “In Pakistan, Taliban’s Easter Bombing, targets, kills scores of Christians.” To be sure, scores of Christians died in that awful attack. Yet, to ignore the random acts of violence by groups like this (including ISIS or ISIL) that have, honestly, killed more Muslims than Christians is to perpetuate a religious narrative that can get us all killed, have all of us turning on each other instead of talking to each other.

If you have half a brain, you know that to single out any group of people as the sole source of your problems is to also invite a group (any group) outside of that definition to do all manner of harm to you. This all reminds me of the time when one of my history students hipped me to a video where all of a particular department store’s security guards were watching all of the store’s African-American customers. Yet, while those same security guards were scrutinizing the Black customers, there was a small band of White patrons who were shoplifting at the store.

I am only a historian and academic. Yet, I am one who knows that when people do not do their research, when they fail to look below the surface, when they do not think outside the box, when they succumb to easy answers and easy stereotypes because those stereotypes make them feel safe or superior, all of us suffer. With an Internet that contains volumes of information—some tainted information, and some that is accurate—there is really no excuse for you or I not knowing anything and not questioning those easy answers that our bought-and-paid-for media and politicians and pundits hand to us on a regular basis.

Do not be a fool. Do your work. Do your research. Now some people reading this will be upset or annoyed by my comments. Religion for many people is, after all, a cultural, national, and often racial marker. After all, the first terrorists my people knew were so-called Christians wearing sheets, lynching and torturing Black bodies and burning crosses on Black families’ lawns. I would hate to think about my ancestors enduring that on Easter Sunday. Àṣé!

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 or any blog authored by Leslye Joy Allen, or any total or partial excerpt of this or any blog by Leslye Joy Allen must contain a direct reference to this hyperlink: http://leslyejoyallen.com with Leslye Joy Allen clearly stated as the author. All Rights Reserved.

Leslye Joy Allen

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

Category Archives: History

No Ordinary Man

The Old Souls…