John Dee Holeman (1929-2021)
From northeastern North Carolina to a Sunday afternoon house party in Durham
I first met John Dee (as he was universally known) when I was working in Ahoskie, North Carolina, in the northeastern corner of the state just south of the Great Dismal Swamp.
I had arranged for the North Carolina Black Folk Heritage Tour to come to Ahoskie one year and nearby Winton the next. John Dee Holeman and Fris Holloway were the Blues musicians in an evening show that ranged from African Dance to spirituals, blues, and high-powered gospel.
I proposed the tour be co-hosted by an established (but all-white) theater organization in Ahoskie and a fledgling black arts organization in Winton. Combining the arts production expertise of the amateur theater organization with the community connections of the black organization seemed like a good way to help both organizations.
But it was 1986 in northeastern North Carolina.
Ahoskie, North Carolina 1986
When I arrived in Ahoskie for my first artist-in-residence gig with the North Carolina Visiting Artist Program, I quickly learned three things:
1) Winton, just north of us, boasted the first black high school built in North Carolina, C. S. Brown High School, est. 1886,
2) Winton had been home to a tri-racial community of indigenous, white, and free black farmers by the early 1700s, (long before the Civil War, and even the Revolutionary War!), and
3) There was not just a color hierarchy within the black community that mirrored that of white supremacists (lighter skin preferred), but a hierarchy of families in the community who had been free since before the Revolution, and took every occasion to look down on families that were enslaved until 1865.
Three School Systems
The year before I arrived in Hertford County, it had three distinct school systems, one for Native Americans, one for Blacks, and one for Whites.
As a Visiting Artist, I was to present educational concerts in the recently integrated public schools. That became an education in itself.
The newly combined county school system was still housed in buildings that had suffered varying degrees of funding and neglect (Black and Indian schools) contrasted with the brand spanking new high school in Ahoskie, built for Whites only–then grudgingly integrated.
The first week of my tenure at Roanoke-Chowan Community College, I wrangled an invitation to introduce myself and give a brief presentation at the county-wide teacher-staff orientation, where a new School Superintendent was to be introduced.
At the time, I assumed the process of integration had simply been too much for the previous Superintendent, but that speculation may be in error.
The United States Supreme Court ordered school desegregation in 1954–giving schools a few years to accomplish it–and here Hertford County was nearly three decades beyond that window.
As I sat in the orientation at a table up front, but just off to one side, the new Superintendent was introduced.
He was a nervous, quiet little man with short dark hair, an ironed shirt and tie, but a rumpled jacket that was just a little too big: he looked like a middle schooler in his father's suit, but his shoes were shined.
He tried to rise to the moment and in a broad, working-class southern accent drawled:
"The most important ingredient in our school system is enthusiasm..."
(he deadpanned, elongating the word 'enthooos-seee-asm')"...have some and pass it on" (pron....pace et own).
The contrast between his doleful delivery and the intended message would have brought John Cleese and every member of the Monty Python gang to their knees in tears. My shoulders started to shake as I stifled the impulse to laugh out loud. I bit the inside of my cheek and looked at the floor. Concentrating.
The Superintendent said a few more things, nothing nearly so memorable–he was looking forward to a wonderful year, his door was always open, etc.–and blessedly sat down.
I was introduced, took the bit in my teeth, and spoke briefly about the work I did, programs I was offering, played a tune, and sat down. Within days, I was besieged by requests from the schools for teaching concerts, which I dutifully scheduled and performed.
That work gave me a tour of an oppressive variety of school facilities, many of which should have been condemned. The students, staff, and communities they served were victims of a color-dependent (racist) distribution of county and state funding. It was shocking.
An Indian School
One Friday afternoon I arrived at an elementary school that had been part of the Indian school system. There must have been twenty classroom trailers parked on the school grounds and the parking lot looked like it had been bombed from the air. The trailer classrooms were sought-after luxuries, as the building itself should have been condemned.
Being guided to the 'auditorium,' I saw classroom window frames all akilter, falling away from the brickwork unable to be fully opened or closed; open bathrooms without doors (or stalls to separate the toilets from each other).
I arrived at the stage to find five traffic cones draped with bright yellow caution tape circling a four-foot hole in the stage floor (caused, I was informed, by an unrepaired leak in the roof that had started two years before).
One wrong step and I'd find myself in the basement with a broken leg. I carefully set up the mics and sound equipment around it, off-center stage.
All the 'Indian' schools were in similar conditions; the Black schools, a shade better; the White schools were pristine.
The Black Folk Heritage Tour
In the early 1980s, the good people at the Folk Arts Section of the North Carolina Arts Council had put together a curated, traveling, one-night festival of African American music and dance, The Black Folk Heritage Tour. As soon as I heard about it, I called them. I asked what would be required to get the tour to Ahoskie.
There was a stunned silence on the phone.
The arts council staff had been beating the bushes to find someone to coordinate a performance of the tour in the northeastern part of the state–with the highest percentage of African Americans–for a couple of years, without success. And here I was calling them! They were delighted.
Entrenched white power structures in Carolina were not at all interested in diversity programming, or in sharing their money, or spaces with Blacks.
Something I was soon to find out quite directly.
As we talked, I learned some matching funds would need to be raised, a hosting arts organization found, a venue and some on-the-ground support secured, and a local contact to spearhead it all.
It sounded doable to me. The college got behind the idea. I secured promotional materials on the tour–glossy brochures, bios and photos of the various performers–and a prospectus from the Arts Council on what was required in local financial and logistical support.
The Tour opened with Chuck Davis and his Durham-based African-American Dance Ensemble. Chuck was over six feet tall and had taken successive waves of drummers and dancers to West Africa to be in touch with the source cultures. Chuck had a commanding physical and almost spiritual presence on stage and a heart that was as big and fully present as he was. The man glowed.
Chuck was evidence of the fact that it doesn't take long to become old friends, if you pick the right people.
From the Ensemble's dancing, chanting, and drumming, the Tour moved on to the Badgett Sisters of Yanceyville, North Carolina. The acapella trio of sisters–Celester, Connie, and Cleonia Badgett–began singing together in 1933 as children under the direction of their father and sang spirituals and gospel songs with close, angelic harmonies, but who were absolutely still on stage.
Their father, and their church, disapproved of dancing and clapping, so even tapping their feet was punishable. Theirs was a somewhat physically repressed, Mountain-style Black culture that I had never seen–a far cry from the Aretha Franklin kind of Gospel that moved to Motown.
From the Badgett Sister's Spirituals, the Tour moved on to Blues with John Dee Holeman and Fris Holloway, friends from childhood who played guitar and piano, respectively. They also patted Juba and buck danced together, presenting a joyous presence on the stage. Their dancing and syncopated hand-and-foot percussion harkened back to the Ensemble's African drumming and dance that opened the show.
Finally, the Tour closed with The Mighty Wonders, a jubilee quartet with full rhythm section, founded in Winston-Salem in 1956.
Altogether it promised to be quite an evening of curated, high-powered (and state-subsidized) entertainment. Perfect for a rural community like Hertford County.
An Unlikely Alliance
I took the idea to Reverend Felton in Winton at C.S. Brown first.
A leader in the Black community, ad hoc director of the arts center, he was very positive about having the Tour come, but between the physical state of the once-abandoned high school and the lack of staff, infrastructure, and volunteers, it was clear to both of us they would need some help to pull it off.
Knowing the community was thoroughly divided along racial lines, my thoughts turned to trying to forge an alliance with the community theater group in Ahoskie.
The theater was a readymade venue, and the theater group was used to promoting events to the White community. The Winton arts group was plugged into all the Black churches, sororities, social service, and civic organizations and could help outreach in their community.
With a first performance in Ahoskie at the theater followed by a second performance the following year at the historic auditorium in North Carolina's first Black High School, the organizations could co-sponsor and co-promote the programs.
It would require a certain amount of gentle stretching and mentoring on both sides, but it seemed like a win-win scenario to me.
The theater group was more experienced with producing shows (albeit by and for Whites only) and could mentor their neighbors while presenting world-class entertainment at a subsidized cost.
Rev. Felton and the folks at C.S. Brown could help with outreach, audience development, and provide volunteers. Whatever hours it might take, I would be the college's contribution and point person with the Arts Council and funding sources.
I drove the idea by Rev. Felton, the Arts Council folks, and my coordinator at the college. With their approval, I took the proposal to a board meeting of the theater group in Ahoskie.
The theater in Ahoskie opened originally as The Richard Theater in 1906 as a nickelodeon and was remodeled as The New Richard movie theater in 1927. The New Richard Theater closed in 1962, but in 1969, the Woman's Division of the Chamber of Commerce managed to lease the building, established a Gallery Theater board, and a small army of volunteers set about cleaning it up for the occasional community theater production.
They extended the life of the theater, but it continued to be for Whites only.
Four years before I was hired at the college, in 1982, the theater group managed to buy the building and with the support of the Town of Ahoskie, local businesses, corporate donations, dedicated gifts, and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, among others, renovations began in earnest.
Just after we produced the Black Folk Heritage Tour, during 1987-88, the lobbies were renovated, new heating and air conditioning were installed, the stage was rewired, an electric board was installed, and a permanent sign was erected.
At the New Richard Theater, Whites sat downstairs, used the front entrance, had access to popcorn, drinks, concessions, and bathrooms–while for the same price–Blacks were confined to the balcony, entered up a rickety wooden staircase from the back alley to a separate ticket booth, and had no access to concessions, or bathrooms. The staircase to the downstairs was boarded up.
The Gallery Theater Whites-Only ticket booth sat inside the lobby of the theater.
Blacks had never crossed the front threshold or seen the theater lobby. And there was some question–even with The Black Folk Heritage Tour coming– about whether they would.
Before I went to make a pitch to the theater group, to get a better sense of what I was dealing with, I walked around to the back alley and considered going up those stairs to what had been the Black ticket booth. But it looked too dangerous. I stood there for a long time looking up those steps, absorbing the weed-infested broken pavement of the alley, before turning back to Main Street.
The Pitch
I knew what I was proposing would be a stretch for the theater group and prepared carefully–turning up in a coat and tie of course, guitar on my back, the imprimatur of the college, and individual folders prepared to give each board member containing glossy brochures, my business card and tour information.
I introduced myself as a representative of the college (the main economic engine still functioning in town) and made a pitch for the Tour itself; co-sponsorship with the fledgling Winton Arts organization, and two tour presentations (in successive years) with the first at the theater in Ahoskie, and the second at C.S. Brown in Winton.
After about twenty minutes, I asked for questions. The board was quiet. Without a single question or expression of interest, the board agreed to take it under consideration, and I was dismissed. It was a hostile roomful of white women.
About eleven o'clock that night, my phone rang. It was Jim Lash, the newly hired artistic director for the theater, an employee of the board, and an ally. The meeting had gone long, by hours. He didn't say hello.
"You want to know the first thing that was said after you left the room?"
"Sure."
"WELL!!!"
a board member commented in disgust,
"He just wants to turn us into the BLACK theater."
As if there could be nothing worse.
I sweat that a little. However, I had mentioned in my presentation that if they could show they were serving the entire community, their diversity statistics would raise their status as grant applicants with a State Arts Council that was committed to serving all North Carolinians.
The metrics of the Arts funding rubric were working against the little all-White Ahoskie Theater club. And they knew it. Though I didn’t know it at the time, they were also in the midst of applying for National Endowment for the Arts grants to renovate the building, a second–possibly more powerful–incentive.
People will tell you, "You can't legislate morality," and they're right.
But you can make behaving morally or immorally either profitable or costly. There was a real chance their decision would prove costly for the theater.
I had somewhat unwittingly presented them with a decision gate that the Arts Council knew about and approved. Turning down The Black Folk Heritage Tour (when I was going to do almost all the work) would cost them status at the State level, something I implied, by lightly touching on the project improving the diversity statistics (for a group with a long history of exclusion).
Only in retrospect did I realize the barrel I had put them over. They had to choose, one way or the other. They could be heroes or scoundrels, but nothing in between.
There was no gray area, only black and white.
By the end of the evening, after much discussion, the board voted in favor of the project (including a 'yes' vote from the woman who had remarked about my wanting to make it a "BLACK theater!"). It was touch and go all the way.
Taking the victory and working closely with Reverend Felton and one theater board member, I quickly moved forward with the community organizing, planning, and fundraising. I coordinated soliciting ads for the program booklet and tried to drum up support from local businesses and corporations.
It was mid-September and we were aiming for:
Black History Month, February 1987
After months of meetings, organizing, enrolling innumerable community groups, churches, and Black sororities and civic fraternities to provide snacks, meals, housing, selling advertising, and having the program books printed with the local ads included, all the pieces were in place and we eagerly awaited the night of the performance.
I learned that the more I gave away–the more diverse and decentralized the pool of volunteers was–the more people felt ownership of the event.
Had I done it all without help, I would have had an empty theater. By giving jobs away, we created a community of interest off-stage and throughout the community that translated into 'their people' coming out to support it: their families, children, friends, congregants, and associates.
All of them!
The Night of the Tour
The tour bus that brought the performers and sound crew from a rally point in Raleigh, pulled up in the early afternoon.
After we got the musicians settled, the sound crew in place, the tech rehearsals and sound checks all done, as we lost the light, the mood in the theater darkened. It began to pour a freezing rain. It was a miserable night, hardly fit for a celebration.
After one of the Black sororities had fed the company a dinner of soul food, homemade desserts, salad, and snacks (a meal to rival any restaurant in the area), the company grimly retired backstage. I went to the lobby to join my wife, my coordinator from the college, his wife, Jim Lash, and Mary Anne McDonald from the Folk Life Section of the Arts Council.
Show at 8:00
At 7:00 o'clock, there we stood–looking through the glass doors of the theater at the crunchy sleet and rain falling steadily into the puddles that had formed out front–dressed for success and expecting failure.
At 7:10, a car pulled up in front of the theater and, into the shelter of the marquee, umbrellas popped open and a small group of women and men climbed out. They were dressed for church: women in pearls, hats, gloves, high heels, and hose; men in suits and ties. Looking sharp!
Another car followed. Then another, disgorging similarly clad audience members.
Successive groups slowly began streaming through the front doors, shaking the water off their umbrellas, and walking up the slight incline from the street level to the back entrance to the auditorium.
None of them–nor any member of their families, living or dead–had ever been allowed, let alone welcomed, through those doors before. Ever. This was their first look at it. And they'd dressed for it.
Their heads swirled around looking at a lobby they had never seen, taking it all in, walking like kings and queens.
I stood in the lobby passing out programs, welcoming people, smiling, shaking hands, thanking people for coming. As the house filled to overflowing with very well-dressed Black people, I realized that the only Whites were in the lobby, ushering folks into the theater, serving them.
As eight o'clock came, the incoming flood of audience members slowed, and the house began to settle. The feeling in the building was emotionally really powerful. I stood in the lobby and privately wept–just a few tears, but we had earned them.
Here we were, six white people and a community of Blacks who had overcome whatever misgivings they had (and the weather), to show up and take possession of the theater for the night.
No theater board members came.
None of the other white faculty or college administrators came.
No member of the White business community came, though some had sponsored ads in the program.
The back of the Whites-only policy was going to either be sustained or broken that night. Roughly seven hundred black people came out in forbidding weather to have a good time and break it. All dressed up for church. It was an honor to be present.
And, following the distinct possibility of it being a disaster, as the freezing rain continued outside, the show was transcendent.
All the performers knew they were coming to an all-White theater; they knew more Blacks lived in northeastern North Carolina than anywhere else in the state. All our hopes were high, but the weather threatened them.
As each new act walked out on the stage to face a sea of Black faces in that full house, their hearts simply exploded. Given the demographics of the state, this was likely the first all-Black audience they had ever faced.
They rode the energy of their own people taking unapologetic possession of a place where, until that night, they had never been welcome. The performers were not showcasing Black cultural contributions for curious Whites. They were not exotic to these people. They were home.
And we all knew it.
They played to the moon and back. We all became friends that night, but it would be a few years before I would have some off-stage time with John Dee Holeman again.
A House Party in Durham
I served my term-limited four years as a Visiting Artist in North Carolina at two different institutions, beginning in Ahoskie and ending in Fayetteville.
When my tenure was up, I moved to Durham, which–with the imposing exception of Duke University–was a mostly blue-collar town with a historically well-organized and politically active black community. And it was there, on the black side of Durham, that I spent one of my most memorable afternoons with John Dee Holeman.
Holeman's middle name, Dee, is a phonetic spelling of the initial D from John D. Rockefeller's name–chosen I think for the same reason George Washington Carver got his name, or Martin Luther King–an aspirational citation of someone rich or famous.
John Dee had a ten-day West Coast tour planned and his family and church were throwing a Sunday afternoon fish fry at his house as a sort of send-off.
My friend Billy Stevens had played harmonica and keyboards with John Dee over the years and on the spur of the moment John Dee invited Billy to join them and play some music with him. Billy turned around and invited me.
So, on a few hours' notice, there we were–two white boys–shaded under a tarp by a picnic table in John Dee's swept dirt backyard, playing Blues with him while the women of the house and the church were in the kitchen making food. Far too much food. The dust of the swept yard rose around our feet as we kept time.
John Dee kept calling tunes, one after another, and we were right there with him. We laughed, he told stories, we drank a beer or two, and watched the women bring out platters of coleslaw, fried okra, fried panfish, sliced fresh tomatoes, ham hocks and greens, vinegar, hot sauce, sweet tea, and–eventually–cake.
This was their day to cook for John Dee and they seemed to relish it.
It was late spring, but still pretty warm in Durham, and the church ladies had shed their fancy shoes in preference for their stocking feet as they trundled in and out of the house, bringing food and drinks to the picnic table, walking shoeless in the dust in their pantyhose, church dresses swishing under their aprons.
As the music got going, coming out from the kitchen to deliver food and serving platters, they started to dance.
All middle-aged and older, their black church dresses pulled tight across their bosoms, thighs, and bottoms, they swung their hips as they shuffled around in the dust, sassily cutting their eyes at us, laughing, and sometimes singing along. No one was self-conscious about it. It was sexy and wonderfully innocent all at the same time.
We were in the middle of a scene; a vision I will never forget.
I consider that afternoon one of the luckier moments in my life–a life which as I look back on it seems to be filled to bursting with good luck.
When the food was all set-out, we put up the instruments, and with the church women, filled paper plates, balanced them on our knees, and ate, chatting and laughing.
After we’d had seconds, we played until dusk. The women were cleaning up, putting things away, and coming out of the kitchen to dance nearly barefoot in the dust and shimmy as the light began to come in sideways; the sun, to go down.
As we began to wrap it up, we all hugged and shook hands, thanked everyone for the wonderful food, and bid John Dee a safe and profitable trip. He was going to be gone about ten days and expected to bring a ton of money home. They were covering his airfare and putting him up. He was happy, as he usually was, and excited for the trip.
What a day.
The Arts Council: Epilogue
One day in the late 1990s, I found myself back in the State Arts Council offices in Raleigh, chatting up friends in the Folk Life and Community Arts sections, when a man who had overseen the distribution of their Grassroots Arts Grants for more than two decades saw me passing and waved me into his office, greeting me warmly.
Widely known as Jack, he had wanted to be called John, but after decades of Jack, no one could make the switch. I called him John a couple of times and, though appreciative he finally looked dolefully at me and said, "Jack's fine, no one calls me John. It didn't work."
"Been a long time," he said and waved me to a chair. I set my guitar in the corner.
"I don't think you know what you did when you were out there in Ahoskie..."
"That was years ago!"
"Yeah, but I don't think you know the impact of those Black Folk Heritage Tours."
"Why? What happened?"
"Well, most arts organizations compete for the Grassroots money that is available for their county, trying to ace each other out of the funding, fully funding their own programs while stiffing the other groups.
"But–starting the year after the second Tour and every year since–rather than competing against each other, that White theater group in Ahoskie and the Black arts group in Winton get together, well before the grant deadlines, and coordinate their requests for funding cooperatively."They divide up what is available and support each other's requests, rather than fighting with each other and trying to take it all. We don't have to choose one program or organization over the other. They work it out.
"It's not like that across the State. And that wouldn't have happened without you. You did that."
I was stunned.
There was so much white resistance throughout the process and now I came to find out that some of the loudest voices condemning my proposal behind closed doors, were the very people who had been cooperating with their black counterparts ever since.
I consider it an honor to have had even a guileless hand in getting that ball rolling.
But the truth is: I didn't do that.
They did.
And I'm proud of them.
Doing research for this piece, I found out that on March 17 this year, 2024, The Gallery Theater and C. S. Brown Cultural Arts co-produced a Multicultural Arts Celebration. It makes me smile to see it:
"One never knows, do one?" –Fats Waller
We were lucky to be there together. Thank you for joining us for part of the ride.
Scott Ainslie
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What an awesome story! congratulations!
What they said! Thank you for all, Scott.