February - Black History Month

The connections between storytelling and Black History are profound and inseparable.  Indeed, there would be no such field of knowledge as Black History (or really ANY history) without the timeless art of storytelling.  When we consider storytelling in the context of Black American History, however, we find more than an art or a pastime.  We are able to trace the survival of a people through an era of uncertainty, shame, and often-unspeakable ills.  We are able, through telling and listening to stories, to witness the evolution of a culture honed from spirit, strength, and subversion of the dominant themes of the day.

In a formal sense, the Black American storytelling tradition likely descended from a role common in many West African cultures, known today by the French term “Griot.”  A griot is a witty individual who serves as the keeper of oral history in a community.  Through storytelling, satire, and song, she or he is able to pass down ancient history as well as comment on current events as they are happening.  Oftentimes griots only marry other griots, thereby keeping trusted narratives and cultural phenomena alive throughout the generations of a family.  Known by many other names in local West African languages, the role of griot can be observed in modern Black storytellers, political commentators, and even comedians and satirists.

One essential reason for the inextricable links between storytelling, or the oral tradition, and Black History is that while American History was being recorded in the books and studied in the educational institutions, Black people were long barred from access to the skills of reading and writing.  Compiling mass illiteracy onto the residual effects of their ancestral uprooting, arduous trans-Atlantic shuttling and eventual influx into the fields of the Southern US and the Caribbean islands, Black Americans had to learn to communicate across language barriers and time warps.  Storytelling, then, emerged for them from the wordless arts of drumming, chanting/singing, dance, and quilting.

Gradually over time and distance, the words of their adopted colonial languages—English, French, Spanish, and various combined forms such as creole and patois—and the structures offered by religion, most notably Christianity and the Bible, became the tools by which Black History was communicated across generations.  It has only been in the latter 20th century that large-scale efforts have been made to balance American historical record with the legacies and contributions of Blacks.

Today, the stories of Black History are not just told from mother to child or teacher to student, but preached in Sunday sermons, spoken in poetry jam sessions, played in jazz and blues clubs, sung in stadiums and concert halls, inscribed in museum installations, rapped and beat boxed on radio and at parties, rocked at reggae shows, and portrayed on stage and in each of our living rooms.  We at StoriesWork invite you to look and listen to the stories told around you this Black History month, through the media listed above and more!  There is still much to experience and learn.

Melissa Murchison-Blake
Guest Writer