The 2012 Distinguished Service to the Humanities Awards

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Face to Face With the Ancient Mayans

HCWDC Intern Reviews the Mexican Cultural Institute's Current Exhibit, Hina Jaina: On the Threshold of the Mayan Underworld

By Priya Dadlani

This past Saturday, I had a chance to visit the Mexican Cultural Institute in Washington, DC which is hosting an art exhibit called Hina/Jaina: On the Threshold of the Mayan Underworld from May 16th- September 22nd. The exhibit is three rooms large and filled with over 50 Jaina style figurines, which were discovered on the man-made island of Jaina off the northern coast of the Yucatan peninsula in the state of Campeche.  From 600-900 AD, this specific location was an extremely important Mayan ritual and religious site, where many sacrificial burials took place. The Jaina style figurines were some of the most interesting artifacts included in the burials on the island, although scientists have proven that the figurines were made in Jonuta, Tabasco- a well-known pottery center over 275 miles away.

The very intricately detailed figurines gave me a chance to get a little bit closer to the daily life of the Mayan people by illustrating their activities, dress as well as strong mythical and religious customs. The insight to the ancient Mayan civilization obtained from these fine clay figurines is unparalleled to any other Mayan artifacts from this time period. The Jaina figurines in the exhibit are especially telling because they depict the Mayans’ relationship between their man-made island, Hina/Jaina,  the underworld and their ancestors. The statuettes also depict life as it revolves around corn cultivation and water. Many of the burials, which included the Jaina figurines, were sacrificial infant burials, believed to bring food and water for all the people.

The Mexican Cultural Institute houses this exhibit on the first floor, and includes many photographs representing Mayan culture. All of the rooms contain many different styles of the Jaina figurines and no two in the exhibit are the same. Each sculpture is displayed beautifully in its own little section with informative plaque that tells the gender, meaning, and dress of the statuette. Unlike some art exhibits that have so many artifacts and paintings clumped together that you can’t stop and focus and really take in the richness of each small statuette, this exhibit gives each it’s well-deserved attention.

Each statuette has a unique face, dress and expression that is somewhere between  horrifying or peaceful depending on which you are looking at. From massive headdresses to jewelry to facial expressions, these little figurines bring the Ancient Mayan culture to life right here in Washington DC. I would recommend that anyone interested in Mayan culture or even in artifacts or art to visit this exhibit because there is none quite like it in our area. These Jaina sculptures are extremely rare and the traveling exhibit came directly from the INAH Regional Museum of Campeche, Mexico.

Apart from the amazing Hina/Jaina exhibit the rest of the floors in the Mexican Cultural Institute house murals painted by Roberto Cueva del Rio, a student of Diego Rivera, in the 1930s. The murals cover all the walls around the staircase on all the levels of the building. Painted with vibrant colors and depicting daily life in Mexico, these murals add to the experience of the Jaina sculptures on the lower level.

DC area residents should take advantage of this opportunity and visit the Mexican Cultural Institute before September 22nd, when the exhibit closes. When most people, including me, think about Mayan culture their minds may go straight to December 21st 2012, the end of the world as predicted by the Mayans' ancient calendar. But instead of connecting the Mayans only with their calendar readings, we could all benefit from learning more about the daily life of the people, their religious traditions, and cultural attributions. Their rich culture surrounding birth, death, reincarnation, corn cultivation, water, gods and ancestors is right at our finger tips at 2829 16th street, in an exhibit that can be explored in less than an hour. And if the world is really going to end in four months, the opportunity to learn more about the people who wrote our fate should be seized by everyone.

Soul of the City at the Department of Human Services

A LOOK BACK AT THIS YEAR’S PROGRAM THROUGH THE EYES OF ONE OF THE PROGRAM’S FACILITATORS

The Humanities Council's Soul of the City program gives young people valuable leadership and communications skills using the humanities disciplines and the city of Washington, DC as teaching tools. This year's participants were the Summer Youth Employment Program employees at the DC Department of Human Services. The program was facilitated by a local poet, spoken word artist, and motivational Speaker Kavon Ward, and two dedicated interns from the University of California DC semester program. This post was written by one of the intern facilitators, recapping SOTC, and his own experiences leading the group.

By Barrett Doo

Looking back, this year’s Soul of the City was a major success not just because of the noticeable impact it had on the program’s participants, but because of what I got out of it as well. The theme of this year’s Soul of the City was “past and present challenges to obtaining equal citizenship.” Using that lens, we were able to create a program that was highly inspiring and exceptionally enjoyable. After the first week it was clear we had a dedicated group of students that were eager to learn and ready to be challenged. It was truly a pleasure getting to know this group over the course of the program and they helped make my summer a memorable one.

Our first field trip was to the Smithsonian Museum of American History. I had personally put off visiting this museum on my own time knowing that I would be coming with the program. It was certainly a pleasure to tell my roommates later that I spent all day at a museum while they sat at a desk answering phone calls. Although Soul of the City is about the students, I began to realize on this trip just how much I would be learning as well.  The “Slavery at Jefferson’s Monticello: Paradox of Liberty” exhibit that we toured was fascinating, and something that I admittedly knew very little about. It was gratifying to see many of the students were engaged and asking the same questions that I too was wondering about. The highlight of the day was our chance encounter with an impromptu performance and recreation of the Greensboro civil rights sit-ins, in which one of the students got to portray one of the activists!

Participants at a Spoken Word Workshop at the Department
Of Human Services

Empowerment through spoken word was another major theme of the program, and the students  got the chance to observe professionals in the art. These poets served as role models and showed the students the direct results of hard work and determination. I’ll be the first to admit that I was as captivated as they were by each performance. A fictional skit that re-imagined a conversation between Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. took the entire room back to the Civil Rights movements of the sixties, stressing each leader’s different approach towards achieving the same goal. Local poet I-Empress came in and delivered a number of awe-inspiring poems she had written based on subjects that all of the students could relate to, including one aptly titled, “Adolescent Lessons.” However, no speaker captivated the students more than their very own program coordinator, Kavon Ward, whose deeply moving poem about Trayvon Martin became the highlight of the entire program, returning for numerous encores.

Other program field trips that I felt absolutely privileged to participate in were our trips to DCTV and WPFW. While transporting a big group of students to each location was a challenge, the end result was more than rewarding. Seeing real television and radio stations in action was fascinating, and not only did the DJ at WPFW give a shout out to Soul of the City, but a documentary showcasing the program will later be featured on DCTV!

Our last field trip was to our nation’s capitol, where afterwards the students were able to meet with Washington, DC Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton. Although the meeting was brief, it allowed the participants to see that there are people working towards creating the legal equality they had been learning about throughout the program. The opportunity to actually meet DC’s lone representative was a truly monumental moment. 

The awards ceremony at the end of the program was admittedly bittersweet, but watching the students speak and present on what they had learned over the course of the program was profoundly satisfying. Since I had been there every step of the way, hearing the participants talk about how much they had grown was really rewarding, and an acknowledgment that they had had just as great of an experience as I did. 

Public Screening of "African American Pioneer Muslimahs in Washington, DC Part One!"

A Fascinating Look at the Lives of Muslim Women in DC

From a Press Release...

This one-hour screening is a fundraiser for POI television featuring the 50 + years journeys of three women (Sisters Baseemah Beyah, Aidah N. Sabir, and Shukriyyar T. Nisar) in their 80s and 90s. They each left South Carolina for Washington, DC as members and singers in the church and transposed their lives by joining the Nation of Islam and later all making their pilgrimage to Mecca as Muslims. These extraordinary, three ladies will be our featured guests for a question and answer segment after the viewing.

A donation of $20.00 per person over 10 years old and $10.00 per person over 65 years old is requested. However, If you cannot attend this exciting event, contributions can be made payable to the African-American Holiday Association, the fiscal agent and 501©3 organization financially handling this POI project. Please send c/o Z Productions, P.O. Box 77344, Washington, DC 20013. We have begun to work on Part Two, so we can continue to tell our stories.

Refreshments will be served before the screening and several, women business vendors will be available before and after the showing. Please try to RSVP and for further questions, directions and/or information call 202-302-4708 or contact zasha121@yahoo.com.

At the Rumi Forum, 1150 17th Street, NW, Fourth Floor,

Near M Street, NW across the street from the National Geographic Bldg.

On Sunday, June 10, 2012, 3:00 to 6:00 pm

President of the Lower East Side Tenement Museum to Speak at the Old Post Office Building

A Reception and Talk With Morris J. Vogel Presented By the National Endowment for the Humanities

Zion Baptist Church Oral History Project

Narrators Reveal a Southwest Centered On Neighborhood Churches, Schools, and Businesses

During the 1930s and 40s, despite the fact that Washington, DC's population was well on it's way to reaching 700,000 people, the city's Southwest quadrant retained the appearance and feel of a small town. The narrators of Zion Baptist Church's "Spoken Memories" oral history project recall this slow-paced, civic-minded community from the shadows of the hulking concrete highrises that now line Maryland and Virginia Avenues. 

One interviewee remembered, "I missed the church in Southwest because we had strong family ties. All of us had friends and family members at the different churches. My grandfather and one uncle were members of Mt. Moriah Baptist Church. I had cousins who went to Friendship, and friends who attended the Catholic Church, St Vincent De Paul. Southwest was a community because its residents were always together. We all went to Randall Junior High, and we socialized in the neighborhood together. Zion always had church sponsored summer trips to the beach for us. We went to Carr's Beach, Sparrows Beach and a beach in New Jersey. We went on hay rides to the outskirts of Maryland, and we had summer-long Vacation Bible School. Southwest was a meeting place." 

Other narrators also speak of the close link between Southwest's religious community. It was a neighborhood of many churches, and many different religions, but all were bound together through service to their congregants. Long term social bonds, and a general sense of steadiness seem to have contributed to the narrator's memories of Southwest as a tight-knit neighborhood. "I don't see Zion as the family and community church that we had in the past," observed one narrator. "Now, new members join Zion and leave before you can get to know them. In earlier times, Zion had more stability and folks got to know each other. We were a true family and we looked out for one another." 

But old Southwest's character was not to be found solely in it's thriving religious life, but also in the school system and it's ever-observant teachers. One narrator remembered, "Mrs. Peterson was my Principal at Randall Junior High School, so seeing her at church was like seeing her at school. Many of our teachers were also members of Zion. There was Mr. Herbert, who taught at Randall and was a member of Zion. The teachers knew the 153 families of Southwest, so nobody got away with bad behavior. They always made us aware of our conduct." Some years later that same Mrs. Peterson became Assistant Superintendent of the DC Public School system, but her students and neighbors still remembered her fondly for all she had done in Southwest. "She knew the Southwest families," recalled one narrator, "and often assisted them in their struggles."

Schulman's Market at N and Union Streets, SW
Image Courtesy: Library of Congress

Though Southwest is currently experiencing a resurgence in business activity, the urban renewal of the 1950s transformed many of the commercial corridors into residential streets, and many of the storefronts into government office buildings. But in the 1930s and 40s, a thriving small business community contributed to the cohesiveness of the neighborhood. One narrator remembers, "Many members had businesses located in the Southwest. Everything we needed was in our community. We had restaurants, cleaners, barber shops and stores." Another interviewee is more specific; " A lot of our members had businesses on Third Street, F Street, and Fourth Street... ... Someone had a shoe shop. Mr. James Brown had a print shop and used to do all of Zion's bulletins. The Barnes & Matthews Funeral Home was located on Fourth Street. I also remember the drug store, Campbell's Funeral Home, John T. Rhines Funeral Home, Bruce Wahl's Night Club, and a restaurant. Everything we need was within the Southwest community."

Zion Baptist Church's oral history project is valuable to Washington, DC not just because it preserves the history of a venerable religious institution, but because the words of its narrators breathe life into interpretations of archival records. The housing stock, church buildings, storefronts, an d school buildings of neighborhoods such as Georgetown, Capitol Hill, and Shaw serve as visible reminders of what those neighborhoods once were. But in Southwest, where there are only shadows and glimpses of the neighborhood's historical city-scape, we must try to rebuild it in our minds through the memories of those who were there. The next post in this series will examine Zion, and its congregants' transition from Southwest to it's current home on Blagden Avenue, NW.

To view the edited transcript of the Zion Baptist Church "Spoken Memories" Oral History project, visit the Humanities Council's DC Digital Museum. 

Remembering the Godfather of Go-Go

Chuck Brown, Champion of the Humanities

Joy Ford Austin and then HCWDC Board Chair, Don
Murray with Chuck Brown in 2009.

In September 2009, Chuck Brown spoke to the graduating class of Soul of the City at the German Historical Institute about his coming of age and his love of music.  I can still see clearly how the audience of young people, their friends and families listened to his every word and clamored up after to take photographs with him. He was genuine and wise speaking about his values without pretension. He had a story to tell of overcoming adversity and he told it well. His wife, Jocelyn Brown, was with him and he talked about his sons with pride and joy, mentioning his son who played football.  He talked about his life in the city, which he loved, and to whom he gave his greatest gift, his musical genius, bestowing on all of us, the wonderful, infectious rhythms of Go-Go, our homegrown, hometown music that we have and will enjoy forever.

That evening, the Humanities Council of Washington, DC was pleased to give him its Champion of the Humanities Award for his tireless efforts to preserve Go-Go recognizing his creativity and his work with young musicians as well as his accessibility to audiences all over the city and the world.  

Chuck Brown, our Champion left us yesterday but as long a there are people who listen to and love great music,  and who will share and build on his tradition, he will be remembered and appreciated. 

- Joy Ford Austin, Executive Director, Humanities Council of Washington, DC