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In This Issue...
- Mama Linda Goss
- Profile Dylan Pritchett
- Poem for Charleston, SC
- Summertime Storytelling
Founders
Mother Mary Carter Smith (1919-2007)
Mama Linda Goss (BOD)
Board of Directors
Karen Abdul-Malik, President
Saundra Gilliard, President-Elect
Sandra Williams Bush, Secretary
Gwendolyn Hilary, Treasurer
MaryAnn Harris, PhD., Past President
Jimmy Caldwell
Janice Curtis Greene
Steven Hobbs
Executive Director
Vanora Legaux
Editorial Committee
Sharon Holley, Chair
Lynnette Ford
Linda Cousins-Newton
Tonja Caldwell
Donna Washington
Dr. Joyce Duncan
Contributing Editors & Photographers
Linda Cousins-Newton
Donna Washington
Sharon Holley
Lynette Ford
Eleanor Anderson
Virginia Lathan
Sylvia Davis
Oni Lasanna
Oba William King
Dr. David Anderson
Mission
The National Association of Black Storytellers, Inc. (NABS) promotes and perpetuates the art of Black storytelling--an art form which embodies the history, heritage, and culture of African Americans. Black storytellers educate and entertain through the Oral Tradition, which depicts and documents the African-American experience. A nationally organized body with individual, affiliate and organizational memberships, NABS preserves and passes on the folklore, legends, myths, fables and mores of Africans and their descendants and ancestors - "In the Tradition..."
Vision
We envision strenghtened communities through the telling, collecting, owning and institutionalizing of our stories.
Beliefs
We believe that communities are empowered through storytelling.
We believe we need to own and tell our stories by collecting, creating, publishing and archiving the oral histories of black life in America.
We believe that we must enrich our neighborhoods by developing programs and performances that share our stories, culture and history; and, address contemporary social justice issues.
We believe in institutionalizing storytelling in underserved environments by creating curriculum and guidelines that are unique to our art form.
We believe that we must sustain the tradition of Black Storytelling by listening and blending the voices of our elders and youth.
We believe it is our responsibility to provide both traditional and innovative tools of action in order that our members may be the best stewards of the Black Storytelling Tradition.
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 PROFILE - Mama Linda Goss: Then and NowBlackstorytelling is our education, our learning tool. It is about our survival.
From a little miss standing by the gatepost, twiddling her braids and listening to her grandfathers entrancing stories, in the foothills of the Smoky Mountains there in Alcoa, Tennessee, neither Mama Linda nor her elder storyteller mentor ever dreamed how far those deeply-planted storytelling seeds would take her.
Indeed, a decade later she found herself a student at Howard University arduously researching and investigating the whole idea of African folktales. Among her mentors were recordings by Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee, Ella Jenkins, and an album, The Hand Is On the Gate featuring James Earl Jones.She relates that she was also influenced by the works of Sonia Sanchez, Nina Simone, The Last Poets, Amiri Baraka (the former Leroi Jones), and The Last Poets.
I was taken by storm by the Black Literary Arts Movement and would tell stories in the Howard University Student Center. People would say, Boy, you need to tell these stories onstage! so thatsort of led me to seek out storytelling as a career.
Bemoaning the lack of Black storytellers in the myriad lineup of other artists for an upcoming program at the Institute for Arts and Humanities, Dr. Stephen Henderson, (the noted scholar/author of the classic, Understanding the New Black Poetrya must-read per Mama Linda) sent out the word through her husband, playwright/scholar, Clay Goss, Where are the Black storytellers? Here I Am!! Mama Linda immediately responded, and the rest is Blackstorytelling herStory.
She found herself on programs with great ones like Gwendolyn Brooks and Sterling Stuckey and auditioning for Bernice Reagon. What impressed her was their humility, supportiveness, and constant encouragement. Storytelling then, she muses, was about cooperation, not competition. When there was professional competition, it was a good-natured learning experience. Everybody was really so uplifting because it was quite important to promote, preserve, and present Black culture. That was the
essence. Say it loud; Im Black and Im proud! Here we are, folks. We must respect and preserve our culture.
Fast forward to 1983 when two outstanding Black women griots, Mother Mary Carter Smith and Mama Linda Goss having echoed Dr. Hendersons clarion call, Where are the Black Storytellers?!! founded the NABS Festival followed the next year by the birth of the full-fledged organization when multitudes of Black storytellers from across the nation and world enthusiastically responded to their call.
Pensively looking back, Mama Linda remarks, Now that I am 67, about to reach 68 on August 18, I still want Blackstorytelling to be recognized today as being done through NABS and also through scholars such as Dr. Caroliese Frink Reed in her recent dissertation on Blackstorytelling as well as Linda Humes
who has also ardently been work on a doctoral dissertation on this important field of our culture. But all of this time since I have been out therethe 70sthere is still an ongoing struggle for
Blackstorytelling to be recognized as a traditionbecause it is; It needs to be recognized and valued as more than entertainment. Blackstorytelling is our education, our learning tool. It is about our survival.
READ MORE Mama Linda
Profile on NABS Festival Director
Dylan Pritchett
(Interviewed by Sharon Jordan Holley)
I first met Dylan Pritchett at the 4th Annual In the Tradition..National Association of Black Storytellers Festival and Conference in 1986 at the DuSable Museum in Chicago, IL. It was his first festival and my second. He had traveled to the festival with his colleague, Dr. Rex Ellis from
Williamsburg, VA.
Dylan joined NABS as an experienced storyteller, actor and musician having horned those skills at the Colonial Williamsburg site in Williamsburg, VA. A member of the Fife and Drum Corp since the age of 11, Dylan developed storytelling and African American History programs for school groups and visitors through a $400,000 AT&T grant for African American Interpretation. He saw storytelling as a way to teach history and it became a part of all educational programs.
Continuing his membership in NABS, Dylan joined the Board of Directors in 2002 and held the position of President from 2006 until 2008. In 2008, he took on the leadership as Festival Director for NABS In the Tradition Festival and Conference. In this role he brings forth the question, What is the one moment/concert that stood out at the festival? The answer is what he focuses on to recapture the atmosphere and energy at the Festival and Conference. He is insightful in coordinating the locations and
venues that significantly impact the African American experience for the storyteller and the audience.
Dylan sees the future of Blackstorytelling tied to how creative we can be to tell our stories. We have to write and publish our cultural stories because it is relevant to who we are. As he puts it, our traditional old stories are goodthey work. We just need new audiences. Affectionately called John Henry by Co-founder Mama Linda Goss, Dylan acknowledges that there is no other organization on earth like NABS. You see it in the way we pray for and support each other.
He is the author of The First Music Illustrated by Erin Bennett Banks, August House, 2006. He is also writing a novel, The North Forty.
Telemaque
Your tree still stands
No plaque marks its significance no banner bears your name
Yet the story
rooted in your strength
stands where the tear-stained eyes
Of your churchs children can see and remember
From wood you built the tools of a carpenter easy in your hands
the gifts of language easy upon your tongue
yet one claimed your body as if you were less than flesh and blood
and you took his nameVesey
From the nation that claimed your place of birth you added a forename
finding power in naming yourselfDenmark
The ancestral gift of your golden name was never heard
Yet you knew who you were
Your spirit Akan your blood Ashanti your heart the souls rhythm that pulled you up
To live to lead to fight to die for the heritage still fighting
In the same place where your voice was stilled
where now voices still
scream for justice fight for honor cry out for hope
Charleston
Where your tree still stands
Telemaque
 For Charleston, and Denmark Vesey by Lyn Ford
SUMMER STORYTELLING HIGHLIGHTS
Summertime and storytelling fit together like peas in a pod. It is a perfect activity to engage youth who are out of school for the summer and to peak the interest of adults who seem more relaxed. Many libraries enhance their reading programs with storytellers.
Donna Washington notes:
Summer reading is upon us! Storytellers prowl the country making stops at libraries in many communities helping to boost literacy, and encourage kids to get excited about reading.
My attitude about summer reading is: If the audience outnumbers me, its a show.
Sometimes it is standing room only, and sometimes, as was the case this summer in a library in Washington, D.C., there will only be a single grandmother and her granddaughter. The granddaughter did not want to be there, and she was upset her grandmother made her sit there right up until the moment the storytelling began. You couldnt have pried her away after that. Other children gathered as the storytelling continued until there was a small group sitting joyfully in the childrens space.
There are also adults and kids who are near the storytelling space, but who havent actively joined the storytelling. Many are nonetheless listening from different parts of the library.
Sometimes we deal with screaming toddlers, parents who have clearly come to visit with other adults and are not bothering with their children. Some kids become enamored of us and want to walk up and touch us. Sometimes they stand up and participate loudly, run around the room, start crying because they are sleepy, or other sorts of things.
Despite the perils and pitfalls of summer library shows, they are worth doing. Librarians say that books circulate after we visit, and you can hear kids retelling our stories to people who were not fortunate enough to hear us.
So, even though it gets hairy sometimes, embrace the summer library work. They need us, whether they realize it or not!
 Sylvia Davis shared stories at libraries around the state of Louisiana. In addition, she and NABS Member Rosa Ashby Metoyer were cast in the play Housewarming by Phyllis McMillon Clemons. The play was presented in Alexandria, LA as a Juneteenth activity dinner theater sponsored by the Alumnae Chapter of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority.
 Chetter Galloway was at the Woodburn Public Library in Woodburn, OR
Oba William King wowed hundreds of young children at the George Bush 41 Presidential Library and Museum in Texas.
(https://www.facebook.com/bcseagle/videos/10153351486916904)
Juneteenth, an African American Emancipation Day Celebration that is commemorated on June 19th to mark the date in 1865 when General Granger arrived in Texas two and one half years after President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation to proclaim freedom for enslaved African people. Across the country, many cities hold celebrations of Freedom.
Eleanor Anderson of DABS report:
In an effort to spread knowledge about Juneteenth Day, the Detroit Association of Black Storytellers (DABS) held a Juneteenth program at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History (CWMAAH) in Detroit, Michigan. There was drumming and raising of the Juneteenth Day Flag, a welcome story by Baba Jamal Jordan, President of Detroit Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH). The highlight of the day was an outdoor play written and directed by DABS member and playwright Eleanor Anderson. DABS members played the parts of President Abraham Lincoln making the decision to free the slaves under pressure from Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglas,Abolitionist and Southerners. The play was full of Negro Spirituals sung by the cast. Dabs members participating in the play, dancing and making scenery were Genevieve and Johnny Bellamy, Amy Jackson, Berlin Brown, Jatu Gray, Joni Scott and Sheryl Pryor. Nonmembers were Will Cooper, Gayler Turner, Marjorie Perdure, Brunetta Vinson, Karen Bellamy, Cheryl West (Flautist), Mialee Anderson and the members of the 102nd colored Infantry.
Afterwards was a demonstration of the Cakewalk, a history of the song Hambone with audience participation, and playing of the game Juba This and Juba That.
There were vendors, childrens activities, gifts donated by Friends Committee of CWMAAH, music from D.J., free cupcakes, ice cream, face painting and old-fashioned lemonade. The event was blessed by a sprinkle of rain but the crowd remained just the same.
Karen Samuels of Detroit Tell Us USA News Network interviewed Mary Grant, DABS President and Eleanor Anderson. The article can be found on-line June 26, 2015 Detroit Association of Black Storytellers Celebrates 150th Anniversary of Juneteenth June 22, 2015.
The Boys and Girl Scout, STEPS Program, youth and adults attended the program
Blackstorytelling League of Rochester, New York continue to heighten linkage between Juneteenth and the commemoration of the United States Colored Troops. They honored the 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiments various attempts to seize the Confederate stronghold at Battery Wagner, Charleston, South Carolina. This effort is a foundation for a projected deep effort to re-connect African Americans with Watch Night, Freedom Eve.
 Oni Lasana presented her one-woman storytelling program Always Free, A Juneteenth Celebration for the 2nd Annual Juneteenth Festival in Reding, PA.
Tradition Keepers: Black Storytellers of Western New York presented its 12th Annual Storytelling Craw Git On Da Bus as part of Buffalos Pre-Juneteenth Activity. The themes and locations for 2015 included: Aint No Stoppin Us Now WUFO Radio Station; Rags to Riches One Mans Junk Is Anothers Treasure; Whats Love Got to Do With It Greater Refuge Temple of Christ; 40 Acres and a Mule Juneteenth Headquarters. Two buses enjoyed the mystery tour and the stories at each stop.
Ase: Black Storytellers of Chicago held several summer concerts that were well received. The Ase Youth group was also featured.
  
 Sacred Griot Grandmother Edna Lawrence, Vice President of the Griot Circle of Maryland and recipient of the Mary Carter Smith Griots Legacy Award has been diligent in passing of Oral Tradition. On June 11, 2015 members of the Griot Circle: Griot Mother Mary Carter Smith, Griot Janice Curtis Greene/with an e, Griot Shindonna Cooper (R.I.P.), and Sacred Griot Grandmother Edna (Inductee MD Unsung Heroine) were honored by the Maryland Womens Heritage Center. The honorees are among twenty-five MD Women in the Arts on display IMAGES AND EXPRESSIONS: MD WOMEN IN THE ARTS.
The Online Version of SPREAD THE WORD, is released in the Winter and Summer. The printed editions are published in the Spring and Fall (articles, stories, features, photos - submit to Editor).
The Monthly E-News Update NABS MENU is published the first week of the month (events, opportunities, support requests, announcements - submit to Editor).
The Blog, NABSTALKING, is published by the Educational Committee (articles of academic, cultural and social justice interest - submit to Chair).
The President's Message, The FOURTEENTH, is published monthly on the 14th.
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