Storytelling has been a great adventure for me. I started storytelling while I was still performing as a professional dancer in Chicago, Illinois. I loved stories, all kinds of stories. Stories of the great Ballets, both classic and modern, had stimulated my curiosity and my imagination. The great classics were all about storytelling with light, sound, and conflict – high drama!. Dances tell stories and I learned African dance, Ballet, Flamenco, Jazz, Modern and Hawaiian dance while in Chicago. Every dance style is filled with stories as well as the stories the dance works convey. But when I came to West Virginia to build a new life, my storytelling took a turn.

At the headwaters of the Potomac River, I found a crossroads of cultures, a rich Affrilachian life and all its folklore, heritage, and traditions that appealed to the audience here in the mountains of West Virginia.

Memories of the blackfolks in the Civil War, in the Great Migration, WWI and WWII, Coal, Timber, Industry, Salt, all the Mining. I listened and I learned about more heroines whose stories were not told. So, I began to tell them in historical portrayals, Chautauqua style. I had became familiar with first person historical narrative in 1989, when I built an interactive theater company to tour to schools featuring the great Harriet Tubman and her work on the Underground Railroad. I could apply that understanding to other little known historical heroines.

As I continued to build my scholarship and acting skills, I got a master’s degree in Storytelling from East Tennessee State University. I could fill the need in our community to do more outreach and build new workshops and teach the craft of storytelling. I created storytelling/theater programs and workshops/seminars that inform, educate, and entertain audiences young and old. That is how Voices from the Earth, Inc. came to be, our Not-for-profit theater arts performing and touring academy. I wanted to make historical portrayals of women who have changed the world, especially those from Affrillachia, like Coralie Franklin Cook and Memphis Tennessee Garrison, Carrie Williams, and Rose Agnes Rolls Cousins. Now, I have toured extensively across the US and internationally with my original works.

In 2009, I worked with staff from the US State Department to tour Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, and Columbia, South America to share African American history and culture through arts, education, storytelling, literature, and music. I received the Foundation of Freedom Award from Wheeling Jesuit University for my works on Harriet Tubman which include her participation in the American Civil War.

I am an active member of the National Association of Black Storytellers and with them, I traveled to Ghana in 2015 for Panafest Festival presentations. Bringing the story of Harriet Tubman to Cape Coast Castle on the Atlantic Ocean, the place where so many went through the Door of No Return, where people were held in the stifling dungeons below, made the horrific aspects of capture and bondage very real. That unmitigated brutality was a life changing and deepening experience. I love my people and telling their stories is a great honor and continues to give my life purpose.

I was invited to share music and song with women in Marwa, Tanzania in 2018, just after my mother passed away. The journey was arranged by a dear colleague who felt my unique approach to teaching and performing would be just right for what was needed to bring their work in the village from their remote rural setting to the world. Again, I found such a kinship and bond with the women who spoke little to no English but understood music and its power. This was life changing too.

My historical storytelling presentations include Harriet Tubman, Memphis Tennessee Garrison, Carrie Williams, Coralie Franklin Cook, Ethel Waters, Bessie Coleman, and Eslanda Robeson, Elizabeth Catlett, and most recently Rose Agnes Rolls Cousins.

In all of my stories I incorporate music, rhythm and rhyme, traditional tales, and folklore because those things are part of the cultural context of our historical journey of freedom in America. I enjoy telling tales from all over the world, but especially tales from the African diaspora, folklore, legend, history, fables, fairytales, and myths. We are a storytelling people, a people from an oral tradition, passing on knowledge, warnings and wisdom.