TO ACTIVATE, TO FREE OTHERS: a calling.

Still spinning from this past Monday (Martin Luther King, Jr. Day) when I was given the Legacy of A Dream Award at The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. — It was surreal to say the least. I gotta thank all of my family, friends, colleagues, mentors, and teachers who came out. You made the evening so special.

A line from my acceptance remarks, “Let us wake from our deep deep sleep so we no longer have to dream and can experience in our waking state the beloved community...”

Thank you Georgetown University and President John J. DeGioia for selecting me for this honor. Summarized from their website, “Each year, the "John Thompson Jr. Legacy of a Dream Award" is given to an inspirational emerging leader... since 2003, the award has been given to civil rights icons, children’s rights advocates and other #humanitarians."

In one of the photos you'll see me with Dikembe Mutombo who reminded me that I have a lot of growing to do!

And all the remarkable beings who I get to work with at One Common Unity — There is so much important work to do... feeling grateful and inspired. - Hawah Kasat (Jan. 26, 2019) 

Hawah Kasat honored (r.) receiving the Legacy of A Dream Award at The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. January 20, 2019. 

"The journey we are on is long and sometimes it can feel overwhelming. The question today is what will we choose to invest our time, energy and resources in?

Life is both short and long. It is long because during our time we can make a huge impact on future generations… if we spend our time wisely and are other-centered instead of self-centered, then we have the opportunity to correct the injustices in the world.

It is short because that time, which we have, moves by really fast and if we aren’t paying attention it will be over before we know it.

I encourage all of us, to never forget that it’s never too late for us to begin dedicating our life work to something beyond selfish interests.

The solution to the violence and division in this world may begin with being caring, kind, generous, and other-centered BUT our work cannot end there. The institutional violence which inherently breeds inequity must be addressed. Both of these paths require more than just good intentions, they require us to fundamentally change the ways we live and with unrelenting focus transform the very systems that perpetuate violence." -Hawah Kasat (Jan, 20, 2019)  

EIGHTEEN 

"One has to live this life within their vision to speak this truth. From legacy to knowledge of how things work is how intelligently vision is carried by people, who hold the vision given them into their individual futures. In our mother's carrier (her womb) we lay in the waters knowing. Remembering is how we learn who we are, and how we manifest that dream becomes legacy. It is a cycle of unlearning visionaries move within..." - Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories [Jan. 30, 2019]  

One Common Unity

Hawah Kasat honored receiving the Legacy of A Dream Award at 

The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. with his family. 

(2019)

Respect for her life.

Born Annie Wilson Lillian Evans in Washington, D.C on this day August 12, 1890, departed physical form December 6, 1967, Soprano Lillian Evanti.

"[Evanti] was the first African American to perform with a major European opera company, but she also maintained deep ties to her native Washington. She graduated from Howard University in 1907, and thirteen years later, moved to Europe, where her professional opportunities were not as limited by discrimination. She made her professional debut in Nice, France in 1924, and while abroad, adopted the stage name Evanti, a more European-sounding combination of her last name and that of her husband, Roy Tibbs.

Evanti returned to Washington periodically and performed on Lafayette Square several times in the 1920s and 1930s, at both the Belasco Theater, one of the few venues in Washington where African Americans could perform before a desegregated audience, and the Roosevelt White House. In 1926, she sang at the Belasco with Marian Anderson as a part of the festivities surrounding the football game between Howard University and Lincoln University..."

https://www.whitehousehistory.org/lillian-evanti

First Negro woman to perform with a major European opera company,

Annie Wilson Lillian Evans of Washington DC.

Jim VANCE, a man's man.

Kimberly Suiter, you excel in poise, and a commitment to give the best to a task, a story; and the deep feeling you give your work focuses the mind to the story. Thank you for the tribute to Jim Vance. He and Marion Barry, the mayor of life, were the deep examples of manhood for thousands of Black boys, men, women and churches across the city who held a standard needed during the dark days of the crack wars and before!

Jim Vance modeled a grace and masculinity many broken men paid close attention to. These two men walked through the streets during the most violent of times with assurance in the deep places of their being. People paid attention to what they said, did not say and did not need to say but embodied and shared with the collective.

Jim Vance was studied.

Blacks in the District remember with more than fondness, with a deep inability to relate how it felt to see him on screen every night not taking shots at Major Marion Barry. If you bring it up it evokes, as I am now, tears in some, in others a look that says it all.

With deep sadness he will sustain many a Black man with his deep warrior, his impeccability of thought and action in his death. These are my words. 

Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories 
July 30, 2017  

Kimberly Suiters, ABC news journalist, her tribute to Jim Vance July 22, 2014.

Story of a Man: Jim Vance

Jim Vance, news anchor based in Washington DC.

One of the solid men of the city at the showing of the mural at

Ben's Chili Bowl in Washington DC, June 2017.

For a lot of Black men in Washington DC, Jim Vance has been looked up to for some unobvious reasons. He held his authority as a man, for starters! He is the direct descendent of the difference between being powerful, and having authority, and the how to be both was in his demeanor. 

A lot of cats stopped him in the streets to get a sense of how he overcame his addictions, and with a depth of feel to his way of assuring pain, he would easily probe with a story or two into what made the weak man before him wince with how truthful it is be a vulnerable in the public eye, and in private. 

He was respected during the controversy around Mayor Marion Barry's time period under fire in jail. Of all the journalists we watched Jim Vance. He never open his mouth to join the critiquing, and tearing down of the mayor-for-life! We looked in his eyes, probed deep into his demeanor and knew this man had substance worth talking about, and emulating. He modeled manhood for those who did not grow up with the examples; for men raised by women something drew their attention to the men around them raised by men, and saw the sharp contrasts without shame. Vance made something of himself, with his flaws, and shortcomings, to learn from himself, and share easily with others. 

In his presence, the lessons he learned he gave as Medicine gifts to the needy, those curious about themselves, and for those discovering ways around the deeper hindrances to fullness he made the impossibility of the odds against them surmountable! - Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories 6/23/17  

Evil Overcomed.

"Restoration of the soul is more important. Success is tangible evidence of triumph by the work of the hands. It is the spirit of a man detractors are closely looking at. They want to see the shards their words left within you. What they cannot feed upon, or refute is a restored soul once busted, a character strengthened by Spirit!

That defeats an enemy." - Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories 6/23/17

3 Looks at U.S.

Katea Stitt, program director for WPFW radio for Pacifica Radio. She is also the daughter of saxophonist Sonny Stitt.

Walter E. Fauntleroy, former Congressman, with DC.'s shadow senator,

Eleanor Norton Holmes, powerful activists from DC.

Rev. Walter Fauntleroy (I probably missed spelled his name, sorry) and Eleanor Holmes Norton, our shadow Senator and advocate for change and empowerment for DC residents. My father, Herbert L. Woods, and the Reverend were prominent and effective in the 1960's in the Civil Rights movement. My father were close in this work. Daddy was the Chairman of C.O.R.E. in Washington DC, in those days. That perspective and relationship, that was one of many that shaped many, and formed within me a strength I work from those days until now... - Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories [May 30, 2017]

Dick Gregory

PLIGHT and DEMISE

I have met Dick Gregory in Washington DC a few times and held conversations and twice during a radio interview on Pacifica Radio (www.wpfw.org) I spent time with him listening deeply, as you are supposed to do around the Elders, who know things important to the way Life moves. I read his book, "Nigger" when I was a teenager. Maybe a decade or more ago, I heard him tell an interviewer white people created the word, nigger; they owned it and from that and the rest of the statement made it come to me I should do a seminar with whites only, and give the word back to them. Return ownership is what I would call it.

In private, he has a favorite profane word. I will keep it to myself because I feel that kind of word usage by a man of this calibre in a one on one conversation with the likes of me deserves secrecy, but the content of the conversation deserves analysis, and introspection. How it is shared builds bridges, or divides a person into pieces to make them think and puzzle, or read, study and learn. It also makes sense in the presence of such men to be cautious of how dangerous they are in real time. Unlike people absorbed into and by cyberspace the hard part of learning from the complexity of ancestors, and the intelligentsia of their people there is the tendency to not listen deeply. I do. I do not come from that form of retardation and limited movement between thought, emotion, intelligence and spiritual activity.

Neither does Dick Gregory. It is why he spoke to me after seeing me in the crowded audience of a local play we'd seen two, or three times at the same venue: a church.

There is a central point in all this. Dick Gregory told me a secret he likes to share with minds opened by discovery over long periods, and those who need their minds open to proceed with life on their terms. He told me the number of newspapers he reads everyday without fail. Talking with him I learned how he ties many things together and peered deep into intent and probed into the words of the concepts governing action, policy, thought, ritual and habit. His presence makes thought. His life and legacy will become many conversations by millions of people.

In these times we are in great danger and we have an unfathomable opponent to intellectual depth, diplomacy who is completely void of maturity, respect for others and an historical grasp upon world affairs in the White House. People like him in the segments of American society who are scared to death of becoming the smallest group in the United States. They believe in the supremacy of white people and will not dissuade themselves from this rhetoric. They are committed to this cause and believe in it the way they believe in their version of God!

The purpose of male dominance cast in the guise of the American Way is as ritualistically demonic in its murderous capacity as is its ability to sabotage all relationships to subjugate the sound of what they fear the most: retribution, karma, and responsibility. The highest virtue of people like this is contempt and that is what Donald Trump embodied in his representation to the world during his nine day trip abroad this month in May 2017 about the United States.

We are in the waning years of dominance as a world power, and are unaware of it.

The best way to convey this to people lost in a world obsessed with their phones and minimal contact with the depths of life, who respond to movies more than the resources available to global thinkers is to refer them to movies. The movie, "Blackway" starring Anthony Hopkins is the one to pay attention to and learn the lessons Americans will learn after we fall.

For the more sophisticated the reaction of world leaders when Trump returned to the States after meeting with him holds all the clues, the indicators white supremacists dance around because they cannot see what the world understands, and holds within the check points weaker countries fortify in their relationship with us. We are feared, yes; but we are hunted as well by those we have stepped upon to become the world leader.

Amongst them all Israel has an ominous predictable tone. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has said Israel has "no better friend" than Trump, appeared to hold the president at arm's length on Monday. Speaking to members of his conservative Likud party, Netanyahu warned that a Trump-brokered peace negotiation with the Palestinians "comes at a price." And while he welcomed U.S. support for Israel, he emphasized that "there is no such thing as innocent gifts."

Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories

May 30, 2017

 

Constance Baker Motley was the first Negro woman elected to the New York Senate (1964),

and appointed to a Federal Judgeship (1966). In this capacity she was the first Black woman.

Frida Kahlo's art Dancing With Death. 

Seeing Misdirection


With all of the highly developed and intelligent people who were exceptions to the rules of expectation I grew up around, who knew my father, who influenced me by example; it has been very difficult for me to follow simple minded people like Donald Trump without feeling disgust. In fact, I don't follow them. I guide them. You don't follow ineptness, or congratulate undeveloped minds in leadership positions. You guide them subtly without their knowledge. In the case of Donald Trump, he is the presidential equivalent of the best white Americans can do after eight years of a Black president, who excelled in all the complex ways a diplomat needs to do government work at the high level of expectation international circles expect. There is no guide for a fool.

There is a pattern of every concept, a structure for every philosophy to be turned into a symbol, and for every belief there is a path. Racism has an ugly stain without beauty. When people Euro-Americans despise exceed expectations whites turn rabid with rage, outraged by the affront to their assumptions of power; of being better than 'them'. President Trump is the backlash to President Obama. Trump's marriage is the low end representation for the White House. Trump's crudeness is the reaction to the educated and cultured and sophisticated Black Americans who represented the country at the highest level with character above reproach for eight years.

This is an established pattern repeated throughout American history with white people in this country. First Nations people and the grandchildren of ex-slaves know these things and know whites better than whites know themselves. We can, but we cannot guide them because they feel and live out deep terrors we are indifferent to, and don't give a good damn about. Even the aggressor, the alpha predator, has weaknesses, and they catch light from the reflection of light cutting through the shadows of their past, their aggressions, their contempt for what holds Life together.

We, as a nation, are near and on the cusp of falling unless we can heal the white people, but we can't and such a thing will not happen without willing participation in what it takes for a nation to heal. With the center piece of our national agenda the dominance of the world and the transgression of our belief in the supremacy of white people our demise is being set in stone by the actions and words of President Trump.

Following the national narrative the folk stories of Europe are the patterns of the concepts traced into Trump. If you are wise enough those stories will tell the story.


Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories
May 30, 2017

Shhhh ...

Lena Horne, a lady, a jazz singer.

Victorian era's illusion about white women was a kind of disdain white men placed upon and within their women, whom they despised despite what they lay claim to. - Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories

Klan

African Native American woman in regalia and her Turkey Wing fan.

Women's March on Washington sign of protest (second story)

"Power words waiting to be said by European women for hundreds of years."

- Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories

Women's March on Washington sign of protest in itself shattered an origin myth from Europe. These words are the undertaking of the first step of a ceremonial approach to undoing what has been done.... photo by Gaby Grebski.

Women's March on Washington sign of protest speaks to the powers

with the voice of the most powerful force created. photo by Gaby Grebski.

The old, the ancient tradition of awakening the womb into action as a tool, a force, an awakened, shaking power to shift the world's forces, the men's essence, and tone the propensity to destroy may have taken on her role! - Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories

VISIT WASHINGTON DC ! ! ! !



Josephine Butler Parks Center in Washington DC with people enjoying themselves.



Josephine Butler Parks Center in Washington DC

The Josephine Butler Parks Center has a significant place in the part of Washington DC it is located near Malcolm X park. It holds a deep feeling of place that people find embraces cultures, opinions, states of being, political persuasions, spiritual communities, and is receptive to the creative spirits that come and perform for audiences as hungry for realism as the artists who perform are meant to perform with hunger and passion for them and the ideals they espouse!  

I think the intent of the establishment grew from its original intent into its capacity to hold the genesis of change within the contradictions of the city over the years. Somehow, that makes sense in a creative way in a surrounding community with deep roots in controversy, overlapping histories that are continually engrossed in deep contemplation about the changing of times.

 

How the Center is connected to the city-at-large is the city's connection to the people who have lived and lived in the city intelligently! - Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories 4.9.16

Josephine Butler Parks Center's main entrance January 2016.

 

ON steps of Lincoln Memorial

Married couple, Terrance Jenkins and April Jenkins by Derrel Todd for Foot Print Fotos.
 (2016) !!!!

 

Symba "HEY YOU"

Looking for some documents I ran across some charts that Al Johnson wrote for SYMBA. This chart is a Cello part for the song "HEY YOU" that did pretty well on the Billboard Hot 100 singles.
It was a pleasure to be in the recording studio to see the magic from Al's mind transform into music.

Click on the link to hear
HEY YOU......Rest in Peace Al.. - Michael Zakee Jones wrote for DC Legendary Musicians 

https://youtu.be/kpH9AzP_P5o ‪#‎DCLM

composer Al Johnson



composer Al Johnson's Cello part for the song song "HEY YOU" that did pretty well on the Billboard Hot 100 singles in the 1970's.

 

Memorials: black blood, red land



Lincoln Memorial & the Washington Monument by Kimberly Suiters, ABC news reporter (Sept. 1, 2014)

That is the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument on the right. Now that running trail I believe is on the Virginia side of the Potomac River. African slaves built these buildings, these tributes to achievement.
The land was once the ancestral home of the Anacostia, the Piscataway nation and a few other tribes. Of the tribes in Washington DC proper the Anacostia were wiped off the face of the Earth, our Mother by the whites. The Piscataway are small, but presently living in the area. There are six nations in Virginia. The other Indians, myself included, hail from other parts of Turtle Island. - Gregory E. Woods (Dawn Wolf) Muskogee, African & Absaroka (11/23/15)

 

FACE PARIS

Paris Hilton

"Facing the self is as dangerous as facing a gun. The idea of self tangled with the myth of what is prestigious and refined about Paris, France goes to the core of an elitist quality of life in the Washington DC area." - Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories 3.1.13

This Art

Le Bustiere

November 26, 2013 

Hush now!
November 23, 2013 

Free African Business Man early 1800's

2 women & a little boy

"Imagine listening to Beethoven with the prepossession that C is a good note and F a bad one; yet this is exactly the standpoint from which all uninitiates contemplate the universe. Obviously, they miss the music." - Aleister Crowley



Yarrow Mamout portrait by Charles Wilson Peale,
1819 was a former slave, property owner, brick layer in Georgetown, DC

Yarrow Mamout, the slave who became a Georgetown financier

By Colbert I. King February 13, 2015


“Old Georgetown had a curfew against blacks being on the streets at night, but the curfew was lifted on Christmas Eve to permit African Americans to go around caroling at the houses of the wealthy.”

— James H. Johnston, “From Slave Ship to Harvard”

Yarrow Mamout, a former slave, entrepreneur and Georgetown property owner, is the “man who never was” in a city in full-throated celebration of Black History Month. Today, nearly 200 years after his death, Mamout looms large as one of the best, mostly unknown stories in our nation’s capital.

Mamout’s biographer, James H. Johnston, laid it out in his book and in testimony last month before the Old Georgetown Board, a little-known three-member panel appointed by the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts to review proposed renovations and construction of Georgetown properties.

 

Time was, as Johnston reports, the Georgetown area was more than 30 percent black. A slave market was located on P Street. Nearly 1,500 slaves and more than 200 free blacks lived in Georgetown, according to the 1800 census. The number of blacks in Georgetown grew from there, but in the 1950s a combination of adverse public policies and gentrification would drive most of them to the other side of Rock Creek.

 

Johnston’s appearance before the Old Georgetown Board on Jan. 7 was prompted by an application submitted by a developer to construct townhouses at 3324 Dent Pl. NW, property once owned and occupied by Mamout.

 

Mamout’s story, if not his property, is worth preserving. His likeness already is. His portrait, rendered by James Alexander Simpson, is on display in the Peabody Room of the Georgetown Library. Artist Charles Willson Peale, painter of the Founding Fathers, also captured Mamout in an 1819 portrait.

 

However, it’s what Mamout did with his life that makes him remarkable.

 

He was unusual from the beginning. Enslaved at 16 and brought to Annapolis from Guinea in 1752, Mamout, a Muslim, could read and write in Arabic and write his name in English.

 

He was kept in slavery by Samuel Beall, who owned a plantation in Takoma Park, and later Beall’s son, Brooke, who lived in Georgetown. Mamout gained his freedom, after 44 years as a slave, when he was 60. But he never left Georgetown.

Johnston describes Mamout as a brick maker who earned top dollar for his work and “a jack of all trades” who made money making charcoal, loading ships and weaving baskets. He earned enough not only to acquire the Dent Place property but also to become a financier who lent money to merchants.

He owned stock in the Columbia Bank of Georgetown.

 

It’s doubtful, however, that Mamout attended stockholder meetings. As Johnston observed, “The tavern where the bank held stockholder meetings also served as a site for slave sales.”

 

The Dent Place lot is what brings us to this day. Mamout’s home, described as a “log house,” is gone. It was replaced after the Civil War by a wood-frame structure, Johnston said, which was demolished in 2013 after being crushed by a tree.

 

But the property is still there: D.C. land once owned and occupied by a slave brought from Africa.

Not much is known about Mamout’s occupancy of 3324 Dent Pl. because its history is buried — where, to this day, it may remain undisturbed. So, too, Mamout’s body, which reportedly was laid to rest in the corner where he went to pray, facing Mecca. Johnston speculates that Mamout’s final remains may still be there under the earth.

 

Could it be that 3324 Dent Pl. contains artifacts, architecture and a body, as Johnston suggests? Could this plot contain a one-of-a-kind piece of America’s racial history?

If so, doesn’t that warrant recovery and preservation, as recommended by Johnston and some members of the historically black Mount Zion Methodist Church in Georgetown?

 

According to Thomas Luebke, secretary of the Commission of Fine Arts, the Old Georgetown Board reviewed an application for construction on Mamout’s property last week but took no action pending a decision by the city to participate in an archaeology dig at the site. On Feb. 2, the D.C. Historic Preservation Office advised the commission that the Dent property “has archaeology potential, including a potential for human remains.”

 

The Historic Preservation Office said that it received permission from the property owner to conduct an archaeological survey but that the work has to “be pro bono,” without needed mechanical equipment. The office said that it could partner with archaeologists, students and volunteers but that it would have to ask the developer for “some material support” to acquire tools to do “remote sensing, or other high-tech studies.”

Meanwhile, Yarrow Mamout’s remarkable story remains out of sight, and perhaps under the ground, as Black History Month is celebrated downtown.

 

Read more from Colbert King’s archive.

Read more about this topic:
News article: The search for Yarrow Mamout
Colbert I. King: The unsung heroes of black history

 

BEST OF BLACK

Allison Seymour Anchor, FOX 5

black anchor-at-newsbabes, Allison Seymour Anchor, FOX 5

The Hell of a NAME!!!!

"Our words are like drops of water that wear away the stone. A few drops scattered here and there won't accomplish much, but we are aiming our words at a specific target. Just as the Colorado River created the Grand Canyon, together we will create a new landscape where the team in Washington, DC will have a respectable name. (It would be nice if they had a respectful and respectable owner.)" - Yolanda Rowe 7.18.14

Change in Washington DC

In the year of our Lord, July 2nd, 1989 a shift in Catholic consciousness took hold and Imani Temple was formed. It became a living, breathing expression of the Divine Nature in spirit and in substance of a people - seeking to define themselves, for themselves and by themselves. Thank you Archbishop G. Augustus Stallings, Jr., for your guidance, light, teaching, expressive nature and ability to raise the God consciousness of the I am in and through a people longing to be free! - James Watson

MaKRSTN AlecSandRA ibn Bray

MaKRSTN AlecSandRA ibn Bray

nithyananda.net

 Krystan AlecSandRa-Bray

Tantra Meditation Healing Circle

MaKRSTN AlecSandRA ibn Bray

ORMES TEMPLE GODDESSES

MaKRSTN AlecSandRA ibn Bray

TANTRA study group in Washington DC.

is MYSTERY

Drea Lee Modeling

December 16, 2013
Lady in Black gown.

"A woman cannot model or portray what is not within her. Elegance, mystique, impeccability, allure are all mysterious and compelling, but they share a common origin. What they are is what they meant to who taught them to the daughter who became the model of the virtues and attributes of the sacredness of each type of Woman. Mystery isn't created. Mystery is mysterious because of where it comes from and why it comes forth. The man, or the photographer who captures it has but brush against mist, and dreamt of it." - Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories 1.4.14

Jada Fire's classic beauty from behind. . .