magazine of the philadelphia folklore project Volume 18:1 winter 2005 ISSN 1075-0029 ● Imagining Louise Madison ● Self-knowledge ● Waking up the people ● Telling stories Works in progress is the magazine of the Philadelphia Folklore Project,an 18- inside year-old public interest folklife organization.We work with people and communities in the Philadelphia area to build critical folk cultural knowledge, sustain the complex folk and traditional arts of our region,and challenge 3 From the editor practices that diminish these local grass- roots arts and humanities. To learn more,please visit us: 4 Imagining Louise Madison www.folkloreproject.org or call By Germaine Ingram 215.468.7871 philadelphia folklore 8 Self Knowledge project staff By Kathryn L. Morgan Editor/PFP Director: Debora Kodish Associate Director: Toni Shapiro-Phim, Designer: IFE designs + Associates Printing: Garrison Printers [ Printed on recycled paper] philadelphia folklore project board Germaine Ingram Mogauwane Mahloele Ife Nii-Owoo Ellen Somekawa Deborah Wei Dorothy Wilkie Mary Yee Juan Xu we gratefully acknowledge support from: ● The National Endowment for the Arts, which believes that a great nation deserves great arts ● The William Penn Foundation ● The Pew Charitable Trusts ● Pennsylvania Council on the Arts ● Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission ● Independence Foundation ● The Malka and Jacob Goldfarb Foundation ● The Humanities-in-the Arts Initiative, administered by The Pennsylvania Humanities Council, and funded principally Waking up the people by the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts 12 ● Dance Advance, a grant program funded By Linda Goss by The Pew Charitable Trusts and administered by Drexel University 16 I’ve been telling stories ● Philadelphia Exhibitions Initiative, a grant all my life program funded by The Pew Charitable By Thelma Shelton Robinson Trusts and administered by the University of the Arts ● The Philadelphia Cultural Fund Membership form ● The Philadelphia Foundation 24 ● Stockton Rush Bartol Foundation Front cover: ● The Henrietta Tower Wurts Foundation Edith “Baby ● and wonderful individual Philadelphia Edwards” Hunt Folklore Project members and Germaine Ingram, 1993. thank you to all Photo: Jane Levine from the editor As the first black woman the University of there is too large a gap in the hired in many workplaces, Pennsylvania, she has record, when stories are the lawyer and writer Patricia inspired many people, includ- unknowable, Ingram (and Williams has often had cause ing storyteller Linda Goss, Morgan) refuse to be daunt- to challenge bias. She who grew up with a heritage ed, turning to imagination, observes that her actions of family tales in Alcoa, fiction, and art-making, have earned her a reputation Tennessee. In the 1970s, grounded in what they do as someone with remarkable Ms. Goss was in the van- know, but naming too the insight and as a radical trou- guard of what would become tragedies of what is lost. blemaker. But she sees her a storytelling movement, and This spring, PFP will bring perspectives as far from her account in these pages all of these people to various unique: people who find her of her years at Howard stages, and we hope you’ll surprising are simply hearing, University give a glimpse of be there. Ingram’s essay for the first time, some of what it felt like to balance marks the long-delayed the everyday insights and her attachments both to a release of our documentary, common experiences of legacy of Southern rural oral Plenty of Good Women whole classes of people just tradition and to the emerging Dancers, about some of like her, but generally exclud- Black Arts and Black Power these amazing local African ed from—and unable to movements. American women hoofers. speak and be heard in—the Who has the right to call Plenty will be broadcast on contexts of universities and herself a storyteller, a poet, a March 28th on WHYY, after a law firms.1 dancer? Thelma Shelton 10-year effort by PFP (itself a Speaking common experi- Robinson describes how story). Germaine is perform- ences out loud and in unusu- other people were consid- ing her own work on May al contexts can be a danger- ered the poets when she 22nd, as part of PFP’s artists in ous, lonely, and revolutionary was young, and how she residence program. Morgan, undertaking—especially eventually came to claim the Goss and Robinson speak as when such storytelling right to define herself. It part of a PFP program on represents the perspectives takes courage to name your- self-knowledge and story- of people who are disenfran- self in terms that feel right, telling on February 19th, chised and when it chal- that allow dignity, agency, organized as part of Art lenges everyday practice. In and justice. But telling stories Sanctuary’s Celebration of this issue of Works in is about more than self-defin- Black Writing and in honor of Progress, four African ition. All the women in this ODUNDE’s 30th anniversary. American women describe magazine see stories and And Goss leads a 3-session ways that stories can shake storytelling as a responsibili- round-table storytelling pro- things up, challenge the ty. As Kathryn Morgan says gram in the new home that status quo, and keep possi- about her own storytelling PFP is currently rehabbing. (A bilities alive. They also con- mother: we pass on things great chance to share your sider some of the obstacles that ought to be known. We own stories.) There is much facing anyone following an pass on essential stories, more to tell than we can fit oral tradition. stories that are necessary. in these pages, and we invite It is 40 years since Stories about African you to check out the calen- Kathryn L. Morgan first wrote American tapper Louise dar of PFP programs on page publicly about her family’s Madison are just such essen- 23, to visit our website, or stories, handed-down tales tial stories for Germaine call us for more information: of resistance and opposition Ingram. Madison had a www.folkloreproject.org, to racism that had sustained reputation as a great dancer, 215.468.7871. We look for- generations. Insisting on the a solo act, a woman who ward to seeing you. … importance of African was anyone’s equal. These American middle class stories serve as an inspira- — Debora Kodish traditions, family folklore, and tion, and a point of beginning women’s storytelling, Dr. for Ingram’s own dancing, 1 Patricia Williams, The Rooster’s Morgan challenged a wide and for her exploration of the Egg. Cambridge: Harvard range of scholarly and popu- hidden and all-but-forgotten University Press, 1995, p. 93. lar conventions. The first histories of earlier African African American woman to American women tap get a Ph.D in Folklore from dancers. And notably, when 3 < point of view > Left: Hortense Allen Jordan in front of the line, for the Marva Louis show, which she produced and brought to the Paramount Theater, c. 1955-56. Photo courtesy Ms. Jordan. Edith “Baby Edwards” Hunt, c. 1928. Photo courtesy Ms. Hunt. Facing page: Cholly Atkins and Philadelphia tap dancer Dotty Saulters. Photo courtesy Ernie Smith collection. Jeni LeGon and Bill Robinson in “Hooray for Love.” Photo courtesy Ms. LeGon. “Salt and Pepper” (Edwina Evelyn and Jewel Welch). Photo courtesy Theatre Collection, Free Library of Philadelphia. 4 Imagining Louise Madison: remembering African American women dancers by Germaine Ingram Some might judge it a of 1993-94 when our lives discipline, excitement and rather unprepossessing seemed to revolve around the comradeship of producing a celebration—a modest spread mercurial course of “Stepping show like the ones back in the of bagels, cream cheese and in Time,”PFP’s uncommonly day.On that brisk Saturday coffee in the Folklore Project’s democratic and elastic stage morning in November 2004, cramped but welcoming office production that played to survivors of the show came on a crisp weekend morning three SRO houses at the Arts together to celebrate the in November 2004. No festive Bank at Broad and South in public release—after a decade attire— just well-worn February 1994. of wrangling with studios for Saturday-run-the-errands duds, “Stepping”was a revue the rights to screen some caps covering unprimped hair. reminiscent of the stage shows archival footage— of “Plenty of People coming and going in of the 1930s, 40s and 50s Good Women Dancers,”a PFP twos and threes, sharing hugs where African American documentary that recounts the and news of relocations, performers—dancers, singers, journey that “Stepping”took retirements, travels and other comics, variety acts and from spontaneous conception Spersonal tidbits. Friends instrumentalists—regaled in Isabelle Fambro’s basement audiences of all ages. Our peering into old photographs one Sunday afternoon to “Stepping”production was a exhibited on the walls, feathered and sequined platform for a dozen or so stitching an impromptu splendor on an Avenue of the senior Philadelphians, most of patchwork of memories of Arts stage. Laced through the them in their 60s and 70s Libby,Dee, Baby,Fambro, story of the stage production (supported by about an equal Hank, Mike, Dave, and is a tribute to four African number of younger folks, Tommy—all of whom have ranging from teenagers to American women hoofers transitioned since those heady baby boomers), to relive the whose contribution to months in the fall and winter [Continued on next page ➝] 5 imagining louise madison/continued from p. 5 Hortense Allen Jordan confers with musicians during rehearsal for “Stepping in Time.” January 1994. Photo: Thomas B. Morton Philadelphia’s artistic and cultural York City,where as a youngster she her talents in choreography and legacy has been mostly overlooked. picked up tap steps and routines stagecraft, eventually assuming key The women who are featured in from relatives and neighbors.