Why the fascination with the iconic Sankofa?

Image source: Berea College

The Sankofa is an image of a bird turning its head back to grab what is left behind. It is a pictorial symbol that depicts a West African proverb; a common English translation is "Go back and fetch it". Today, the interpretation is "Go back and get what is lost in order to protect the future". Jimmy White, my husband, has been fascinated with the Sankofa since I have known him. His fascination has become a fascination of mine as well. Why exactly are we so taken with the Sankofa?

I like to think of our fascination with the Sankofa as a call beckoning us from our past. So much culture and history were lost to us through slavery and the Jim Crow era that followed slavery in the United States. To find a little piece of our eradicated history that is not a source of shame but something to take pride in is worth us grasping it and our holding onto it. Through DNA testing, Jimmy and I both have ancestral links to West Africa, the origin of the Sankofa.

When Jimmy and I married, one of my gifts to him was a wedding band that I designed with symbols of the Sankofa dancing across its face. The Sankofa on his ring is not the bird looking back, but rather the heart-shaped Adinkra symbol. To me, this Adinkra symbol represented Jimmy and my willingness to listen to our hearts and claim the love that we found in each other. The ring was made by a jeweler that I found by way of searching on the Internet. I have since lost contact with that particular jeweler.  Jimmy and I also used the concept of the Sankofa in the designed of our wedding program. The wedding program was trifold. From the front of the program, on each flap was either a picture of my profile or Jimmy's. From the rear of the program, the back of our heads could be viewed.  Our wedding program later became the inspiration for a logo that we use with the museum, as pictured on the left.

Looking back, moving forward
Photo courtesy: Aurolyn White

In designing the 5K Run / Walk and Health Fair logo, I chose to use a bird reaching back for a heart and also drew the bird's body so that it formed a heart as well. The heart shapes are symbolic for a healthy lifestyle. The bird reaching back for a heart is symbolic of the importance of taking the time to visit health care professionals, to help protect your lifestyle on planet Earth. Another way to interpret the 5K Run / Walk and Health Fair logo is to love your body through living a healthy lifestyle. Last year we used the motto, go back and fetch your health; this year we are using the motto, promoting a healthy tomorrow while protecting the past.

Image courtesy: Aurolyn White

Establishing the Jim-Ree Museum is an extension of the Sankofa, going back and fetching a culture and history that had been lost to us. The museum is our way of looking back, gathering up what artifacts and facts that we find to preserve it for future generations. The common saying, "You have to know your past to understand the present," says it all.

Go Back and Fetch Your Health

Tomorrow.  It's that promise that I often make to myself when I realize that time is getting away from me. Whether the goal is to clean my closet, to plant a garden, or to make a medical appointment, I often don't realize until the day is winding down that time has won out. Cleaning a closet and starting a garden, if done today or tomorrow, are the type tasks that can be put off forever because they are not mandates for life; they are lifestyles. On the other hand, making and keeping a medical appointment, that dreaded medical appointment, can be lifesaving. 

I recall an old adage from my childhood: Tomorrow never comes. 

When tomorrow becomes today, I want to be apart of it. 

Jim-Ree Museum includes a run / walk and a health fair as a part of its Juneteenth JAAM 2018 Celebration to commemorate taking care of self through having an active lifestyle and through having health checks.  Our health fair logo is a sankofa reaching back for a heart. Our theme is go back and fetch your health. 

Is it possible to actually go back and fetch your health? Yes! The first steps to taking charge of your health are to be active and to have health checks.

Juneteenth JAAM 2018 Health Fair is June 2, 2018. The day starts with a timed run / walk at 8:00 AM followed by a fun run / walk at 9:00 AM. This is the inaugural year for our virtual run. A virtual run is included for people who would like to participate in the run / walk but cannot be there. There will be a water slide and refreshments for the participants. Following the run / walk is the health fair (10:00 AM to 2:00 PM).  #JuneteenthJAAM2018

Thankful for Choice

          During this season of thanksgiving, one of the things that I am most thankful for is freedom of choice. Access to medical care and information gives me the opportunity of informed health choices. Am I making the right health choices? I certainly hope that I am.

          Jim-Ree Museum is having its third annual health fair June 2, 2018 from 10:00 am to 2:00 pm. We are thankful for all the doctors and other care givers who volunteer to make this event possible. The health fair is a community outreach effort to do health care checkups and to disseminate information about health-related concerns. Each year we lose family, neighbors and community leaders to illnesses that may have been prevented through informed choice. So many people believe that they cannot control their inherited diseases, diseases that have plagued their family members over the generations, so they do nothing to help themselves and put their well-being in fate’s hands.

          My family doctor, George Cleland of Athens, Georgia recently visited his birth home in Ghana, Africa. While there, he did a health check, seeing roughly 200 people one afternoon. What grabbed my attention about the visit was that Dr. Cleland revealed that all the villagers he saw that afternoon suffered from high blood pressure and that some of their blood pressures were so volatile that they needed immediate care. 
          “High blood pressure,” I questioned? I was just a little taken aback. I always have believed that high blood pressure was a result of a combination of the big three: stress, obesity, and salt. I incorrectly assumed that Africans did not have the abnormality, high blood pressure, that so many African Americans have.

          Dr. Cleland said, “All the villagers are very, very skinny. Only the wealthy is fat there. The villagers that I saw are all poor. They get plenty of exercise. They walk everywhere. Their high blood pressure issue is related to their salt intake.”

          As I digested that information, I thought about my own family. ­­My siblings and myself have high blood pressure. We take high blood pressure medication to control it, just as my parents did. My effort to cut back on my salt intake is to eliminate processed and fast foods from my diet. (I recently added fresh ginger, to help combat my high cholesterol, as a part of my daily regimen.) As I continue to monitor my blood pressure (and my cholesterol), I am contemplating restricting my diet even more by switching to a vegan lifestyle, a move that one of my siblings has already made.

          High blood pressure, stroke, heart attack, diabetes, and prostate cancer are diseases that disproportionately affect the African American community.  Awareness of health resources and treatment of diseases is key for people to make informed health choices. The June Health Fair is an initiative that we hope will benefit people in this community, easing away the dense fog so the light of informed choice gleams through.

          Help support the Jim-Ree Museum by becoming a member or by donating today.   

Common Grounds

I recently learned that the month of October is designated as black history month in the United Kingdom. I was pleasantly surprised because I have always believed that black history month was a celebration in the United States only. Knowing that black history month is bigger than the United States causes an emotional awareness in myself that is quite indescribable; it also makes me wonder about other parallels between the two countries.

The highlighting of a commonality between the US and the UK brings to mind the advice of a former slave, from a book that he authored, From Slavery to the Bishopric in the A.M.E. Church, "My advice to young people is to travel. If you have little, sacrifice and travel to the extent of what you have, and travel with your eyes and your mind open. If you have much, go abroad and take time and spend a month in Paris, a month in Germany, a month in Rome, and a month in London, as I have done. It will pay if you expect a future", William Henry Heard (circa 1928).

Heard, a gem of a fellow from Elbert County, Georgia, made a good life for himself, though his life was not an easy one. Born a slave, he wasted no time in making a way out of no way once he learned that slavery had ended in June of 1865. Persevering through slavery and later the Jim Crow Laws of the South, Heard devoted his free life to helping to uplift others. He was a teacher, a writer, a politician and a minister who later became a bishop in the A.M.E. church.

My advice to people, especially the young, is to read. Whether poor or rich, reading readies the mind for all of the possibilities the world has to offer.


Links
From Slavery to the Bishopric in the A.M.E. Church by William Henry Heard
William Henry Heard Led Former Slaves to Liberia, Africa 

Historic Connection

The site of the Jim-Ree Museum, 24 South Oliver Street, Elberton, Georgia, the former county jail, is noted as a historic landmark for its architecture; however, the building is more than brick and mortar.

On May 9, 1931, the governor of Georgia declared Elberton to be under martial law and ordered the national guard to assist the sheriff in protecting a detainee.  John Downer, an African American, was accused and arrested for the assault of a white woman. As news of the charge sprouted, a volatile crowd amassed, demanding the release of John Downer to the crowd.

The sheriff did not hand his prisoner over to the mob and stood firm. By evening, the mob had grown to approximately two thousand and had bullied their way into the jail.

The local national guardsmen troops grew to include two troops from Monroe, Georgia as well as two national guardsmen from Atlanta. The men from Atlanta came with tear gas. Getting control of the situation, under the protection of the darkness of night, the national guardsmen secreted John Downer safety away dressed in a guardsman’s uniform.

Elbert Parr Tuttle was one of the guardsmen from Atlanta. Elbert Parr Tuttle would later become a defense attorney for John Downer and ultimately Tuttle became a chief judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.

Not a lot is known about John Downer; but, if you want to read more about this historic case the following links are available.

Elbert Parr Tuttle: ChiefJurist of the Civil Rights Revolution

Lynching and the Law in GeorgiaCirca 1931: A Chapter in the Legal Career of Judge Elbert Tuttle

DownerV. Dunaway

An Era Gone

An end to an era was announce this past Sunday, July 2, 2017, at the Blackwell Memorial School Reunion. Since 1991 there has been a Blackwell Memorial School Reunion every two years during the fourth of July weekend, in Elberton, Georgia. Former students of the school would come together, remembering the old times and catch up on the changes that living has brought into each other lives.  Like so many other events, the reunion attracted a specific age group of people; I will not ruminate on why, but simply mention it here.

Funny how time brings about such a myriad of predictable changes and yet we are always taken by surprise when change occurs.

Time, one of the many factors that humans can monitor but not control, has a way of taking charge, making us realize that the cycling of life is a truth and not just an illusion that we witness on a television program. Twenty-eight years after the initial reunion, the organizers of the reunion announced that it was time to bring in the young and because Blackwell Memorial High School was from an era gone by, the name of the reunion would change. No longer will it be known as the Blackwell Memorial School Reunion but rather it will now be known as “Home Coming”.  

Named to attract all age groups, only time will tell if this event will endure. The Blackwell Reunion has made its mark on history and will endure in people’s hearts.  

JAAM Health Fair was loaded with experts who volunteered to make this occasion exceptional. I wholeheartedly thank each one: Dr. Candace Cato (Geriatrics), Dr. Sandra Gibbs (Family Practice Medicine), Mrs. Mindy Goss (Goss Financial and Aetna Insurance) , Dr. Barbara Hamm (Child Psychiatry), Elbert Emergency Medical Technicians, Elbert Fire Department, Elbert Memorial Wellness Center (Nutrition and Physical Fitness), Elbert Police Department, and the Elbert Sheriff Department.