magazine of the philadelphia folklore project Volume 25:1-2 summer 2012 ISSN 1075-0029 • Kathryn Morgan • Remembering ancestors • Beauty is as beauty does • We cannot keep silent • Community supported art • Art empowers • Midweek hairdo Works in progress is the magazine of the Philadelphia Folklore Project, a 25-year-old public interest folklife agency. We work with people and communities in the Philadelphia area to build critical inside folk cultural knowledge, sustain the complex folk and traditional arts of our region, and challenge practices that diminish these local grassroots arts and humanities. To learn more, please visit us: www.folkloreproject.org 3 From the editor or call 215.726.1106. philadelphia folklore project staff 4 Kathryn Morgan (1919-2010) Editor/PFP Director: Debora Kodish by Debora Kodish and Marilyn White Program Associates: Selina Morales + Thomas Owens Program Specialist: Toni Shapiro-Phim Designer: IFE designs + Associates Printing: Garrison Printers 6 The ancestors are alive as [Printed on recycled paper] long as they remembered by Linda Goss philadelphia folklore project board Yvette Smalls: Beauty is as Beauty Does 8 Rechelle McJett Beatty Carole Boughter Interviewed by Caroliese Frink-Reed Barbara Grant Fariha Khan Ife Nii-Owoo Mawusi Simmons Ellen Somekawa William Westerman Cultural Exchange 12 Dorothy Wilkie we gratefully acknowledge support from: 16 Announcing a New Community • The National Endowment for the Arts Supported Art Program • Pennsylvania Council on the Arts • The Philadelphia Cultural Fund • The William Penn Foundation Cover: Boycott leaders Duong Nghe 18 We Cannot Keep Silent • The Pew Center for Arts and Heritage, Ly and Wei Chen lead their fellow by Helen Gym, Ellen Somekawa through the Cultural Management Initiative SPHS students in a chant “We have the • The Pew Charitable Trusts power to make change!” at the one-year and Joan May Cordova • The Philadelphia Foundation commemoration of the December 3 violence. • The Douty Foundation Photo: Harvey Finkle • The Allen Hilles Fund 22 Midweek Hairdo • The Henrietta Tower Wurts Foundation by Katrina Hazzard-Donald • Stockton Rush Bartol Foundation • Union Benevolent Association • and wonderful individual Philadelphia Folklore Project members 24 Isaac Maefield: Art Empowers Interviewed by Debora Kodish We invite your support: thank you to all 30 PFP turns 25 Visit our website: www.folkloreproject.org Be our Friend on Facebook 2 WIP 2012 Summer from the editor For 25 years PFP has been part of a address violence. It was at a PFP At our 25th birthday celebration, collective effort to cultivate what is gathering that Katrina Hazzard-Donald Board co-chair Ellen Somekawa spoke best in our communities. We have first shared the story about how she eloquently about our work. She talked acted from the belief that folk arts— learned about the metal plate in her about being Asian in the U.S. and tiring people’s hard-won knowledge, Daddy’s head—and about a problem of the question. “Where are you wisdom, and practices—can carry that community members took into from?” which all too often feels like a 3 From the editor forward radical hope for a better and their own hands. code for “You aren’t really from here.” more just world. In a world torn by violence, other “You are other.” She spoke of a Call this folk belief: the conviction folk arts offer alternatives. Losang different way to understand who we 4 Kathryn Morgan (1919-2010) that together people can do more than Samten lived in Tibet before Chinese are: “PFP is about creating a by Debora Kodish and Marilyn White we can do alone. Exhibitions in our crackdowns forced him and his family Philadelphia where ‘Where are you gallery, developed by participants in to flee. Losang creates a mandala at from?’ means ‘Who are your people?’ our Folk Arts and Social Change PFP every year: a practice of peace and ‘What is your grounding?’ ‘Who is a loving-kindness, breath of life and source of wisdom?’ ‘What is it that 6 The ancestors are alive as residency program and described in long as they remembered these pages, provide examples of what hope, shaped from generations of nourishes your strength and pride and by Linda Goss collective action can accomplish. We contemplation. He paints a mandala of love of justice?’ Many of us have been Cannot Keep Silent evokes (and colored sand, its intricate patterns torn from our homelands or had our representing spiritual truths. The languages and cultures ripped from Yvette Smalls: Beauty is as Beauty Does advances) the struggle of immigrant 8 beauty is inevitably temporary: us—whether in our generation or Interviewed by Caroliese Frink-Reed students in a Philadelphia high school. The voices of these young people and impermanent but still profound. We generations past. But PFP works so their supporters call on us to demand may be surprised to find that we can that more and more of us can say, 12 Cultural Exchange and practice accountability and an carry it inside us. This exiled art makes ‘Here and now, I am from a expansive vision of community. momentary sacred space in unimagined community that I am helping to build. I Developed by Asian Americans United distant places (like our hearts). am from a place where we have the 16 Announcing a New Community (AAU), the exhibition will be open Patience, Losang teaches. Don’t turn power to define our own sense of Supported Art Program through December 2012. Cultural away. Stay and see how we are ourselves, where we grow in Exchange, the exhibition on display last changed. However little we know compassion and strength through about Tibet or bloody history or struggling for justice for all 18 We Cannot Keep Silent winter, showed how revolutions begin violence or Buddhism or Dharma, we communities.’ That is the kind of by Helen Gym, Ellen Somekawa in everyday actions, and in the take in some part of this—and perhaps Philadelphia I want to help build.” and Joan May Cordova relationships and community we build together, over years. feel a way forward. With your help, PFP begins the next People featured in PFP programs At our 25th Birthday Bash, we 25 years. May we continue to find 22 Midweek Hairdo over the last year provide homegrown began a new tradition, an annual ways of using folk arts and social by Katrina Hazzard-Donald examples of both exemplary practice gathering to celebrate and advance this change to build the beloved and the transformative power of folk work in folk arts and social change in communities of our dreams. arts. Call them vanguard workers, which we all have a part and a stake. ­ — Debora Kodish 24 Isaac Maefield: Art Empowers revolutionaries, and clairvoyants. Dr. We inaugurated Folk Arts and Social Interviewed by Debora Kodish Kathryn Morgan showed how family Change awards, named after four stories are antidotes to racism and people who have taught us and changed us, and who embody aspects 30 PFP turns 25 other toxins. Yvette Smalls showed us how to see beauty in ourselves and of our vision and values. (Kathryn how living into beauty could be Morgan is one of those we honored in transformative. They changed our lives. this way.) We plan to use this annual Linda Goss, who has been “waking up event to reflect on what and who we the people” with stories for more than value, and why, and where we go from 50 years, reminds us both of the need here—together. And we hope to use to keep their memories present and of it to strengthen our capacity to work our responsibility to build on their against the forces that divide and teachings. diminish community power. We Teachings come from many thank you if you were part of this directions. Disturbing histories stay remarkable event this year (and we with us, calling us to consider how we invite you to come next year.) 2012 Summer WIP 3 Kathryn Morgan (1919-2010) | by Debora Kodish & Marilyn White >in*memory< Kathryn Morgan, 1970s. Photo courtesy Friends Historical Library/Swarthmore College 4 WIP 2012 Summer athryn Morgan’s ground- and Ph.D (1970) from the University named in her honor by Swarthmore’s breaking book, Children of of Pennsylvania. In the 1970s she held Black Alumni Association, recognizing Strangers (1980), was the first visiting teaching positions at Bryn her contributions to the lives of work of African American Mawr College, Haverford College, African Americans at the College. In family folklore by a folklorist. the University of Delaware, and the 2000, a scholarship was established KWhat a voice, and what stories. If she University of California at Berkeley. in her name to support Swarthmore hadn’t known about Caddie Gordon, Other professional affiliations students interested in Black Studies. Kathryn Morgan her great-great-grandmother, whose included the National Council In 2009, the Kathryn Morgan legacy is recounted in the volume, of Black Studies, the Association Poetry Festival was established at she would have had to invent her, of African and African American Swarthmore. Students read selection (1919-2010) Morgan said. Read the book. From Folklorists, the National Afrocentric from Envisions, a book of her poetry, the first sentence, this is anti-racist Institute, and the Philadelphia Folklore illustrated by artist and Swarthmore work. Work that builds strength Project, upon whose board she sat colleague Syd Carpenter (2003). and power in the face of fear and in the early 1990s. She taught and Morgan was named to the Circle of all that is ugly. In her writing, and spoke widely on African American Elders by the National Association in her life, Morgan showed how to folklore, history, and culture. of Black Storyteller at their 25th be courageous and righteous, true The first African American woman anniversary gathering (2007) in a to enduring values, accountable to earn the Ph.D.