✨“Come celebrate with me that everyday something has tried to kill me and has failed.” ✨  Lucille Clifton, brilliant poet

Education and Liberation

In the Spotlight

Listen to this fascinating discussion about the history of Black female chefs and food entrepreneurs in The Big Easy (New Orleans), with author and educator, Zella Palmer, endowed chair and director of Dillard University’s Ray Charles Program in African American Material Culture. In the interview, Professor Palmer breaks down how Black women culinary queens “turned their oppressor into their customer,” and illuminates how white women appropriated Black women’s recipes and commercially exploited them.

How did Thanksgiving become a national holiday?

Thanksgiving was a time for enslaved Blacks to run away.

Scholar’s Corner: 

Is there a war on campus activism now?

Who is Benjamin Netanyahu?

South Africa calls for Netanyahu’s arrest and files a referral to the international Criminal Court. Israel pulls its South African envoy.

Culture

Books

Jada Pinkett Smith has released her much anticipated book, Worthy, and it has become an instant best seller. With her Red Table Talk show, Jada became a force to be reckoned with. Here’s a candid 2019 article that foreshadowed the book. And, yes, it appears that she has her husband’s unqualified support. In discussing his wife’s book, reportedly, Will Smith said, “I love you endlessly.”

News

In Memoriam:

Remembering Rosalynn Carter who championed mental health and helped transform the contemporary role of first lady. She was a global figure who remained enamored with her hometown.

Rosalynn Carter’s remarkable friendship with a Black woman, Mary Prince, who was wrongly accused of murder.

Fashion

In Memoriam:

Radcliffe Bailey, a celebrated visual artist and son-in-law of the highly esteemed photographer and filmmaker, Gordon Parks, dies of brain cancer at 55.

Also, tomorrow is so-called “Black Friday,” historically, a huge day for discount shoppers. Consider shopping with Black designers.

Food

Thanksgiving, pumpkin pie, and abolition

Sports

Naomi Osaka is a tennis superstar and a fearless champion for mental health

Science

The science and benefits of reading

Mental Wellness

Trigger warning: This one might hurt, it might be painful, because it goes straight to the core—straight no chaser. If you need to cry, cry because we have to be honest with ourselves: “Heal before having children so your children don’t have to heal from having you as a parent.” (Taken from “6 Non-sexual lessons every mother must teach her daughter.”) Therapy helps us process our pain because we want to minimize intergenerational trauma when we can!

More on intergenerational trauma or epigenetics

Find your purpose and find some peace

Tips for ferreting out negative thoughts

Humor

Find peace for Thanksgiving; don’t fight with family!

Maybe set some ground rules. LOL

Do you know what cuffing season is? It’s not necessary, so be careful.

Heal Our Community

*Mood, Dance, Haiti, and Katherine Dunham

Dr. Rhonda Sherrod

Mental Wellness and History

Dance is an important part of African and African American culture—and for good reason. In addition to providing a remarkable mode of expression and a wellspring for getting more in touch with one’s identity, it strongly factors into good physical and mental health (as a form of exercise).

Katherine Dunham and Haitian History 

The irrepressible Chicago-born scholar/anthropologist and dancer, Katherine Dunham, traveled throughout the Caribbean, Africa, and South America to study African diasporic dancing, as well as the African influence on dance and movement in the Americas and all over the world. She was an astute student of African movement/kinesthetics, who also studied the meaning and origin of different movements and how they have been used in ceremonial rituals. She spent considerable time in Haiti, and her 1936 ethnographic academic fieldwork there centered Haitian dance, culture, and history. The work became the basis for her 1937 master’s thesis at the University of Chicago. Dunham’s extended stay in Haiti was the start of a lifelong fascination, and love affair, with the first independent free Black nation in the Western Hemisphere.

The Haitians successful quest for freedom angered western powers who found many “justifications” and ways to horrifically interfere with and punish the nation. In 1893, famed abolitionist Frederick Douglass, who had served as United States Consul General to Haiti, complained that, “Haiti is Black, and we have not yet forgiven Haiti for being Black…After Haiti had shaken off the fetters of bondage, and long after her freedom and independence had been recognized by all other civilized nations, we continued to refuse to acknowledge the fact…and treated her as outside the sisterhood of nations.” France demanded reparations from Haiti (for defeating them!) and from 1915 to 1934, the United States invaded and brutally occupied Haiti, committing all kinds of human rights and political atrocities. So, Dunham would have been engaged in her research as American soldiers were in the early stages of demobilization.

Years later, Dunham’s affinity for Haiti would result in her purchasing an estate there that was said to have been the residence of Pauline Bonaparte LeClerc, the sister of Napolean Bonaparte. Napoleon, you will recall, was the military leader of the French colonizers who were defeated during the Haitian Revolution under the brilliant leadership of Toussaint L’Overture and Jean Jacques Dessalines. L’Overture and Dessalines fought and defeated the French, Spanish, and British. After L’Overture’s death, Dessalines continued the fight and the Haitians declared independence on January 1, 1804.

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Over the years, beginning at the very young age of 12, Dunham would author and publish several works in many forms, including a short story mystery. One of her best known writings, is her fourth book, Island Possessed, a book that provides a great deal of information about Haiti’s culture, people, and politics. (Her memoir is called A Touch of Innocence: A Memoir of Childhood.) Dunham went on to become a highly influential entertainer/scholar who used her research on culture and dance to create and choreograph stunning performance pieces that were greatly admired and highly sought after. For decades, her work was in high demand.

A lifelong political activist highly committed to Black advancement, Dunham—often along with her dance/theatrical troupes and companies—traveled extensively all over the world. (At one point, the company included the incomparable Eartha Kitt and Harry Belafonte’s second wife, Julie.) Dunham’s extraordinary theatrical dances involved performing cultural knowledge in various forms, including opera and ballet. Among her many, many other achievements, Katherine Dunham performed on Broadway, with the Chicago Opera, and in several films. She also choreographed films, nightclub acts, and plays, including Windy City, in Chicago, which was said to have influenced the choreography for the acclaimed Broadway musical, West Side Story. She opened several Dunham Schools in different geographic locations, including the Dunham School of Dance and Theatre in New York, where she taught the Dunham Technique, and she trained the National Ballet of Senegal, at the invitation of then President Leopold Senghor. Eventually, an educator at Southern Illinois University, she received innumerable awards, including honorary doctorates, a Kennedy Center award, the Medal of Artistic Merit in Dance by the International Council on Dance, and the Distinguished Service Award from the American Anthropological Association.

Dance and Mood 

Katherine Dunham understood that dance represents an engagement with the mind and spirit, as well as the body and soul. Since dance is a form of exercise, it releases a cascade of endorphins in the brain, and this aligns with the voluminous research that tells us that exercise can play a key role in elevating one’s mood. In fact, research tells us that, for people experiencing mild to moderate depression, exercise can be as effective as an anti-depressant. Also, dance can be very useful in trauma work. For example, people with a history of childhood sexual abuse often find it difficult to possess healthy attitudes toward their own bodies as a result of that horrific violation. In his book, The Body Keeps the Score, psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk writes, “Traumatized people do not recognize their bodies as a source of pleasure and comfort or even as part of themselves that need care and nurturance…” In this interview where van der Kolk discusses his book, he speaks of African concepts that are encapsulated in the African aphorism (often ascribed to the Greeks), that “Man must know thyself.” Unfortunately, the concepts he speaks about are more readily accessible, and more appreciated, in the East, although these concepts are finally gaining traction in the West.

* Disclaimer: Information in The SHE Newsletter is not meant to be a substitute for therapy or psychological treatment. If you are feeling badly, or in need of mental health treatment, please contact a therapist or your primary care doctor; and if you are feeling unsafe or suicidal, please call 911 immediately.

Note: Of course if you suffer from any health condition, you want to consult with your doctor regarding exercise, particularly how often and how strenuous, and, perhaps, consultation on what kind of exercise will be most effective for you.

*This article appeared in the 12/13/2022 edition of The SHE Newsletter. Many have asked that it be reprinted, and as we are entering the holiday season where some may feel a little down, we want to focus on exercise (and history, of course) as a means of helping us heal. So, voila!

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LOVE YOURSELF AND BE THANKFUL FOR YOUR GIFTS

Speaking of Gratitude

The SHE Newsletter thanks you for your wonderful reception and heartwarming support. Our wish is to be a source of enrichment, growth, healing, and happiness. During this holiday season, and always, we wish you self-love, peace, and personal evolution. Most of all we wish you the joy that comes with finding your purpose and pursuing your passion!  Happy Thanksgiving!

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Every single day engage in activities that serve your well-being!

Be Well

SHE (Surviving, Healing, and Evolving)

“Unlocking Healing, Fearlessness, and Freedom”

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