African Survival Page the African Continuum
| THE MAN IN THE KNIT CAP Alsayanne Hasseye brickmaking/building from Timbukto at the Smithsonian Institution Folk Life program photographed by Jim Johnston in 2004 Yarrow Mamout is the first African in America to be the subject of portrait art by major painters. Jim Johnston is bringing Yarrow Mamout to Montgomery County on February 28 Jim Johnston, a Washington DC attorney and avid history researcher and author, is talking to the Montgomery County Genealogical Society (100 Maryland Avenue, Rockville) on Wednesday, February 28, 7:30 p.m. Last February 5 year his article on Yarrow Mamout, “The Man in the Knit Cap” painted by Charles Willson Peale in 1819 and James Simpson in 1822, was published in The Washington Post. A talented and famous African of Fulani heritage, literate in Arabic and father-in-law to an African American woman, Polly Yarrow (husband Aquilla) for whom Yarrowsburg, in Washington County, Maryland, is named, the African Yaro Mahmoud was skilled at several crafts, including brickmaking, and was probably once employed at Antietam Ironworks in Washington County. In his research, Jim Johnston contacted many people in the Washington County area beginning (as we all do) with the archivist of the Western Maryland Room at the Washington County Free Library in Hagerstown, John Frye. It was there that he learned that Polly Yarrow’s home was marked on an 1879 map of the county. Jim’s research also took him to the descendants of Ninian Beall, including George and Thomas Beall co-founders of Georgetown, and Samuel Beall, owner of Antietam Ironworks and slaveholder of Yarrow Mamout. Samuel’s son Brooke Beall inherited Yarrow. Yarrow was manumitted by Brooke’s widow. The connection with the Beall family brought Johnston to Jefferson County, West Virginia, to search the relationships of the Beall-Washington families here. It was Beallair, the home of Lewis Washington, that was a significant aspect of the John Brown raid in 1859. Perhaps not coincidentally, Jim’s article in the Washington Post (full text http://users.rcn.com/jimjohn/Knit.htm ) notes that Rev. Thomas Balch praised Yarrow Mamout in a sermon in Georgetown in 1859 – although he had died in 1823. The Simpson portrait of Yarrow hangs in the Georgetown Library, wearing a knit cap. After publication of the Washington Post article Jim Johnston received messages from people noting the African significance—the textile coding—of the hat. Jim stated: “Two different people have mentioned the cap to me. One said he saw caps of that style in a ceremony initiating boys to manhood in Sierra Leone. The other said she saw caps like that in television show about Liberia. Since that is generally where Yarrow came from, I'm sure that's where he learned the design." |
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| The Antietam Ironworks, where Yarrow Mamout worked while enslaved, has many African traditions associated with its history and archaeology. This publication is the only social history of African American workers from a primary source who was a blacksmith and minister, Rev. Thomas W. Henry (1794 - 1877) original graphic courtesy the Enoch Pratt Free Library, Baltimore |
| Bibliography of sources on Africa in the Americas Published thesis on African ironmaking (pdf) by Jean Libby Ethnic Studies M.A., San Francisco State University, 1991 |
Call for National
Holiday March 10
Designation
for Harriet Tubman
please join Debra M.
Johnson:
debramj@gmail.com
to join in this effort.
Holiday March 10
Designation
for Harriet Tubman
please join Debra M.
Johnson:
debramj@gmail.com
to join in this effort.
| Quilombo Country SYNOPSIS, CREDITS, FESTIVALS, BIO AND FILMOGRAPHY ©2006 Quilombo Films ● 73 mins. ● Digital Video ● www.quilombofilm.com info@quilombofilm.com ● 212.260.7540 Macumba dancers spin. Santa Maria, Itapicuru. Brazil, once the world’s largest slave colony, was a brutal and deadly place for millions of Africans. But many thousands escaped or rebelled, creating their own communities in Brazil’s untamed hinterland. Today they navigate the hazards of the modern world. “Quilombo Country” (“Quilombo” is an Angolan word meaning “encampment”), which ranges from the Northeastern sugar- growing regions to the heart of the Amazon rainforest, portrays these contemporary communities, and includes examples of material culture such as hunting, fishing, construction and agriculture; rare footage of local musical performances; syncretic Umbanda and Pajelança ceremonies; Tambor de Crioula, Carimbó and Boi Bumbá drum and dance celebrations; and Festivals of the Mast. Also included are frank discussions of political identity, land rights, and racial and socioeconomic discrimination. “Quilombo Country” is narrated by Chuck D, the legendary poet, media commentator and front man of the iconic hip hop band Public Enemy. Credits Directed, produced and photographed by Leonard Abrams Assistant Director: Shirli Michalevicz Assistant Producer: Eduarda Ribeiro Narrator: Chuck D Festivals “Quilombo Country” has/will appear in: Black Cinema Berlin [Winner: Best Documentary]; Cine Las Americas Film Festival, Austin, TX; Document 5 International Human Rights Film Festival, Glasgow; Durban International Film Festival; E. Desmond Lee Africa World Festival, St. Louis, MO & Lagos, Nigeria; Human Rights Nights Film Festival, Bologna; Independent Black Film Festival, Atlanta; New Orleans International Human Rights Film Festival; Pan African Film Festival, Los Angeles; Rio International Ethnographic Film Festival; San Francisco Black Film Festival; Vancouver Pan African Film Festival; and the Zanzibar International Film Festival. About the Director Leonard Abrams is a writer for print as well as a filmmaker, and an editor of both. He published and edited the East Village Eye magazine from 1979 to 1987, created the multiracial hip hop club Hotel Amazon in 1988, and since then was Music Editor of Details magazine [NY] and US Editor of Soul Underground [London] and Masthead literary magazine [Melbourne]. He began traveling in Brazil in the early 1990s and started this, his first major filmmaking effort, in 2001. His transition to motion picture media comes from a desire “to tell stories in a more direct fashion, more like the original storytellers did.” Filmography This is the director’s first film. |
| Macumba dancers spin. Santa Maria, Itapicuru. www.quilombofilm.com news: award winner now available on DVD |