Just across the street from The Yard, sits Sankofa Video, Books, and Cafe. For nearly 30 years, Sankofa has provided an expansive selection of film and literature on the global Black experience, but it has also long been a community center for Howard University students and residents of northwest D.C.

For this episode of On The Yard, MSRC Director Dr. Benjamin Talton pays a visit to Sankofa Cafe and sits down with owner, storyteller, renowned filmmaker, and Howard alum Halie Gerima. They discuss Gerima’s films focused on the lives and experiences of people of African descent, including titles such as Black Lions, Roman Wolves and the cafe’s namesake, Sankofa. The conversation also delves into the commodification of Black stories by the film industry, Gerima’s experience filming in Ethiopia during the 1974 upheaval, and his experience teaching at Howard University.

Episode Guide:

00:00 Welcome to Sankofa Cafe

01:09 Meet Haile Gerima

01:46 Storytelling vs. Filmmaking

07:35 Black Cinema And ‘The Plantation Economy’

11:44 Sankofa Film And Symbol

15:23 Building A Community Institution

16:36 Halie’s Picks

21:04 Howard Years

25:36 Filming During Revolution

29:27 Ethiopia Identity Politics

31:36 Sankofa Community Power

34:38 Black Lions, Roman Wolves

38:17 Black Press Solidarity

39:42 Sankofa Cafe Farewell

On the Yard is a production of The Moorland-Spingarn Research Center at Howard University and is produced by University FM.

Black stories aren’t made to be for entertainment

04:35: Entertainment is an industry by itself, but I think when you think of our story as entertainment, we do injustice to it, in my view, because we have not begun to tell our story. We have been people who've been robbed our stories. Our stories have been completely undermined, dwarfed, and to reclaim our story, I don't think we can do justice to it if we keep thinking entertainment. I think our story should be just a story, and the outcome should be it's from its own inherent originality and genuineness instead of forced entertainment.

Storytelling is the real battleground for Black stories

10:03: The issue here is, I think, especially Black people cannot afford to be entertaining because, fundamentally, all the contradictions are from the very idea of robbed people of their story. The story is the battleground. To me, the issue of race in America, and its crux, the crux of that issue is story, not being in charge of your story in the end.

Films as a staircase for growth

11:54: Every movie is a staircase of my own evolution and growth. And so, for me, without the films, the short films I did that are very dear to me in the sense they are my vehicle of growth in spelling cinema, trying to put my story cinematically.

• The Moorland-Spingarn Research Center
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• Sankofa

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By the early 1970s, Black residents comprised nearly 73% of Washington, D.C.’s population, making it one of the most prominent majority Black cities in America.  As a testament to that identity, residents in D.C. nicknamed it “Chocolate City.”

Chocolate City was a rare urban space in the 1970s where Black-owned businesses thrived, go-go music dominated the radio stations, and Black people held genuine political power. Standing at the intellectual heart of this world was Howard University, the nation's most prominent HBCU, which featured as a crown jewel of Black academic and cultural life training generations of lawyers, physicians, artists, and activists who shaped the city and the broader African diaspora.

On this episode of On the Yard, MSRC Director Dr. Benjamin Talton sits down with Sonja Woods, university historian at MSRC, Howard alum Abdur-Rahman Muhammad, and Dr. George Derek Musgrove, associate professor of history at the University of Maryland and co-author of Chocolate City: A History of Race and Democracy in the Nation's Capital.

The discussion covers the cultural touchstones that built Chocolate City and the figures who were transformative to D.C., cementing it as not just a political capital, but as a capital of Black intellectual life. They also discuss Howard University’s place in the city as a gathering ground for some of the most consequential Black thinkers, writers and scholars in the world.

Episode Guide:

00:00 Chocolate City Origins & Guest Introduction

03:34 Defining Chocolate City

05:12 Democracy Returns

08:45 The Art, Music, and Culture of Chocolate City

16:31 Howard University Shapes the City

18:13 Black Flight Tipping Point

22:15 Remaking Howard in 1968

26:28 Three-Year Campus Struggle

28:53 President James E. Cheek’s Howard Legacy

34:45 Working Beyond Political Party Lines

37:45 Reagan Visit and 1983 Protests

42:37 Jesse Jackson and D.C. Statehood

45:22 Final Reflections and Wrap

On the Yard is a production of The Moorland-Spingarn Research Center at Howard University and is produced by University FM.

The triple threat of Chocolate City
10:22 [Dr. George Derek Musgrove]: It's just an exciting place to be Black. So, it's those three things. It's all of these people, the fact that they're beginning to vote for themselves and put together this really remarkably robust Black Power government, and they're just producing all this artwork. And I'll just add, to put a cherry on top, that Parliament, when it came out with "Chocolate City" in 1975, you know, is really acknowledging all of this. It's saying, look, this is the city where we have the biggest crowds. We do three or four shows a year, and they're all packed and sold out.

Blackness on everyday frequency
13:41 [Abdur-Rahman Muhammad]: When I stepped foot in Washington, D.C. I first came here on a high school trip, I believe it was '78, and '79 is when I actually visited the campus for the first time, and to say it was a culture shock is an absolute understatement. All of these radio stations, no matter where you flip the dial, Black music came out. You turn on the television, the news anchors are Black, the weather person is Black. You're hearing Black music everywhere, Black bookstores, Black little coffee shops.

A global vision for the Mecca
40:05 [Abdur-Rahman Muhammad]: He saw [James Cheek] Howard University as a great institution that could compete with the greatest institutions of the world, and he had a huge vision. His dedication to equity and healthcare, and the medical school and the hospital, he fought great battles, you know, to inaugurate those programs, the Sickle Cell Center, and what have you. He loved Black people. He loved his community, but he didn't tolerate nonsense either.

• The Moorland-Spingarn Research Center
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• Chocolate City: A History of Race and Democracy in the Nation's Capital

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Theater, as a medium, has historically offered unique and groundbreaking ways to illuminate singular visions of and insights into Black life that challenge and move beyond more accessible or commodified forms of representation.

On this episode of On the Yard, MarQuis Bullock, Head of Collections in MSRC’s Manuscripts Division, is joined by special guest Dominique Morriseau, award-winning playwright and author. Morriseau’s work includes the Tony Award-nominated play Skeleton Crew, Paradise Blue, Detroit 67, Confederates, Pipeline, Sunset Baby, Blood at the Root, and Follow Me to Nellie’s.  She's also the Tony Award-nominated book writer on the Broadway musical, Ain't Too Proud – The Life and Times of The Temptations.

Morriseau and Bullock explore  the creative tensions Black playwrights and theater makers may be confronted with as they navigate the impact of historical precedent, what cultural expectations are imposed upon them and their work, how the ordinary rhythms of Black life intersect with the enduring weight of history, and how Black imagination and creativity within theater can accommodate, question, or even resist that entanglement.

Episode Guide:

00:00 Introduction

04:47 Literary Influences and Inspirations

07:01 The Influence of Poetry on Playwriting

08:30 Black Aesthetic and Language in Theater

10:58 Accountability to the Past in Black Theater

14:22 Challenges and Realities of Black Playwriting

23:09 The Politics and Ideology of Black Plays

31:56 The Unique Power of Theater

37:30 Balancing Past and Present in Black Life

42:58 Sources of Artistic Inspiration

On the Yard is a production of The Moorland-Spingarn Research Center at Howard University and is produced by University FM.

The power of theater to reveal unseen realities

03:52:  By interrogating the unique possibilities of theater as a medium, I'm hoping that today we can illuminate how black theater, black creativity, offers singular visions of and insights into black life that challenge and move beyond more accessible or commodified forms of representation.

There is no path to black liberation without confronting black pain
28:42:  There is no path to black liberation or black joy without confronting black pain. And telling black storytellers to skip the pain part is like telling your doctor to skip the journey of the medicine into the healing. That's crazy talk. We are not going to heal if we are not going to deal.

Art always rebuilds broken civilizations

33:16:  Because theater, like it has always done, like art has always done in the past. This is why the past does matter because the past will teach you that art always rebuilds broken civilizations. It's always been the answer. And will again. And so theater is necessary to be a part of that movement of civilization mending and rebuilding.

• The Moorland-Spingarn Research Center
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• Follow playwright Dominique Morisseau on Instagram

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