RACE Plays

Negro men in Lincoln, Nebraska. Historic photographs of black Lincolnites in the early 1900s

Negro women's faces telling stories of their times in the 1940's. It was very different from white life, and what white people in retrospect like to believe about the 1940's. What isn't told is the struggle to live and not get killed by whites, and how deep it was for Negroes.

Old people today are willing to talk about those times remembering how and why millions migrated North from the hell of the South. What has changed in the U.S. is laws. Transformation of the heart lags behind as an ideal, a wistful dream alluding to a promise of equality. Barely concealed has always been the face of the Klan in suits and farm clothes. That dark evil spirit, the bane of Negro life, has catapulted Donald Trump to the presidency and whites to this day insist other things are at play.

Boy, if white folk ever woke up they'd be in the nightmare they pretending ain't there! - Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories (Nov. 24, 2016)

Elegant To Be A Man



elegant Black man exiting his car

Elegance is usually confused with superficiality, fashion, lack of depth. This is a serious mistake: human beings need to have elegance in their actions and in their posture because this word is synonymous with good taste, amiability, equilibrium and harmony.

Paulo Coelho

 

Photographer Pascal Le Segretain

The 70th Venice International Film Festival took place this year in 2013. It is one of the important events of the film industry. Every field of endeavor has its events and milestones and pivotal personalities that shape their industries. I am not familiar with the names of the attendees, but the fashion is incredible and the photography is splendid. Pascal Le Segretain photographed these celebrities.

Natalia Borges
August 28, 2013
27 of 44

Sandra Bullock and George Clooney attend the 'Gravity" photocall during the festival
in Venice

Sandra Bullock and George Clooney
39 of 44

a good CIGAR has its moments

elegant black man at Coney Island in New York by the Sartorialist

CIGAR MOMENT

“The thing to understand about cigars has to do with elegance, timing, impeccability (not for everyone, but warriors get this piece), and precision. The right moment to smoke a cigar is the moment you need to be stilled, to reflect, to be in the present moment and no where else.” – Alowan Chanteh Inyan Wichasha 1.9.13

PIVOTAL IN OUR HISTORY

Bern Nadette Stanis by  Raymond Boyd is the actress known for her role as Thelma in the 1970's black comedy Good Times. It was a hit and a source of Black Pride, but, as many of our thematic shows were at the time, was written by a white man. There were inherent conflicts for me watching the show every week. For one it was funny, and felt good seeing Black folks, and Black issues and emotions on live television, but I could not relate to the struggles of the family in the ghetto. Nor, could I see the relationship I had with my father in the same light as depicted on that show, and many of the shows and movies at the time. What I did do was try to envision myself in those situations to see the world through their eyes without judgement to weigh it and judge it. It was easy with the background of reading and studying I had, and my unique perspective being the son of a Civil Rights leader, and a diplomat.

The big challenge was to learn to not accept the notion that the lives of the show's characters was the Black Experience in its totality. That was hard to do because so much of our story is about struggle, but struggle was not in the context of the ghetto and the cotton fields only. It lived in divers places, and I was a being in the making that took years to become Dawn Wolf, Keeper of Stories! - Gregory E.. Woods 8.11.13

Bert Williams, first true pop star, vaudeville singer 1874-1922

A MAN, the Bear within...

Jackson Johnson, boxer turn of the 20th century.

Jack Johnson informed my young manhood, not as an isolated example of masculinity, but as a contributor to a store of knowledge and access I was already privy to in my father's house.  His story added to the power of being raised by a man to be a man with my other brothers, and little sister. 

How Daddy's sons became know as 'We the Brothers 4' is a story and a reckoning in and of itself!!! - Gregory E. Woods 5.8.13 

MUSICAL CONCEPT MUSICAL GROUP

Meka Arpége & Barshaun

Black men in New York & London

Black man on 2nd Ave. in New York city
by the Sartorialist
http://www.thesartorialist.com/

elegant Black man
Front Row in London, England
by the Sartorialist

BLACK ACHIEVEMENT: Idris Elba, actor

Understand how hard it is for people in pursuit of the development of high skill who live with a vision that requires a commitment to excellence. That calling leads to roads beyond mediocre, and most people are incapable of holding and sustaining that kind of energy for years upon years in the partnership of marriage and friendship. If Idris Elba has a white woman, or a woman from Argentina instead of a Black woman it doesn't mean his relationship with Black women is severed. It is enhanced constantly because of his relationships with Black women's energies from birth to the present is a potent force of reciprocation.

Many Black women, and men often underestimate the value of developmental work, and the value of owning a spiritual consciousness needing to elevate itself beyond belief into knowing. It ain't easy, but it is needed by men and women at certain levels of development and involvement with Life. - Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories

PHOTOGRAPHER: Chris Warkocki's work

models by photographer Chris Warkocki

models by photographer Chris Warkocki

elderly man in Milan by the Sartorilist

Eldership is a complex process of simplicity going through a series of deaths towards the ascension of souls. I stress the plurality of souls because an Elder will deepen his/her life force in such a way that it benefits others making their journeys from immaturity into the depths of Life’s mystery, and passages into the Unknown.

The divinity of a moment of intimacy can expand life or plunge it deeply into the mysteries of beginnings.” ~ Dawn Wolf, Keeper of Stories

Wasicun Sapa

New York woman smoking a cigarette in 2007 by the Sartorialist !!!!

“I have long been baffled by the notion of Black Americans finding and speaking their language as if there is one lost somewhere. In the 1960's it, the notion, awoke something deep within that generation. Back in the 1920's there was a move towards those kinds of discoveries, but there has been no significant advancement towards that end. During the years of slavery history reports the efforts of Africans to keep their languages on the Southern plantations. Each generation had its own challenges, and each generation lost a bit more until it appears to be a glimmer overshadowed by an urgent need to be validated by White Americans. The Cheyenne met Blacks in the late 1800's and called them, in their own tongue, Wasicun Sapa, Black White People. The Cheyenne saw something very clear today's Black American apparently does not, or cannot see…” – Dawn Wolf, Keeper of Stories

New York man's style reminiscent of Thelonious Monk by the Sartorialist in 2007