Community Storytelling
Fred Motley and Karen Williamson share a love for collecting stories from people in their community and preserving them for posterity.
Fred is well-known in his hometown of Danville, where he works as an actor, playwright, and director. After falling in love with drama club in high school, Fred left Danville to work as a culture writer in Atlanta and Washington, DC. It was in DC, during a West African dance class, that he first realized his purpose as a storyteller. The instructor had told him: “You are collecting stories. You are becoming a griot. You are singing the stories, you are writing the stories, you are dancing the stories.”
“A griot, in our cultures, is known as the keeper of the words,” Fred explained.
In 2001, years after returning home, he founded the Danville Storytelling Festival as an “artistic social bridge” to connect the city’s residents. Fred also regularly interprets Thomas Day, the renowned 19th-century Black furniture maker. It was through serving on the Thomas Day House board that he met Karen.
Karen lives in Milton, across the Dan River, in Caswell County, North Carolina. She directs Caswell Arts in Yanceyville. In 2017 and 2018 she collaborated with Fred to launch the grassroots organization and ongoing media series Caswell History Speaks (which recently released a podcast sharing local memories of the county’s Rosenwald Schools.)
Fred and Karen worked with the Virginia Folklife Program to record three “ordinary but extraordinary” stories from people in their community over the last year: with Mack Willis, about his regular walks in the Danville Mall, with Lucindy Williams, about her adventures moving from Raleigh to country life in Caswell County, and with Lynn Jones, about the strength she finds through her love of canning.
“We have been collecting stories from people that won’t be identified as iconic or being famous, but regular, living, breathing people who have traveled life’s journey,” Fred said.
“People that are still integral to the fabric of our community,” Karen added. “Their stories are just as important as the notable people that we’ve been focusing on.”
This project helped Karen develop her skills beyond the interview format and feel empowered to instead “let the stories happen,” as Fred advises. In pursuit of her interests in family genealogy, Karen also decided to interview people from her parent’s generation at the Caswell County Senior Center.
“Having storytelling sessions with people we approached at the senior center was very rewarding,” Karen said. “We discovered it brought people together. They’d say, for as many years as they’ve known each other, ‘Oh I didn’t know that about you!’”
Fred’s decades of experience have convinced him that stories from everyday people “give us everything we need to live.” If you listen, you’ll find the guidelines, survival skills, and roadmaps to make decisions to life our own versions of a good life.
Fred and Karen also know it is the love that is at the heart of every story that effectively connects us to one another.
“This love is not only from person to person, but it could be from thing to person, person to time, place to person. We need love for nourishment,” Fred said.
“The more we do these interviews with people the more we realize that we all have more in common than differences,” Karen said.
“It doesn’t matter what the ‘love of’ is,” Fred added. “That’s the similarity in us as humans, it’s always going to be love.”
Interested in getting started collecting stories in your family or neighborhood? Karen advises to simply start having conversations with your parents, grandparents, or neighbors and document what strikes you. Fred advises if you hear anything that made you lave, make you think or question, or jump for joy—keep it, that’s a story.
Finding Your Roots
A free, two-part series by Virginia Humanities hosted at the Danville Museum of Fine Art and History.
Part 1: Cultural Roots
Saturday | August 17, 2024
Watch videos of the stories Fred Motley and Karen Williamson have collected during their Virginia Folklife Apprenticeship, and learn from artists Dena Jennings and Maurice “Tito” Sanabria about the African roots of Virginia cultural traditions.
Part 2: Ancestral Roots
Saturday | September 21, 2024
This community genealogy workshop features free resources from local historical organizations, mini-presentations, a food truck, and the chance to win an AncestryDNA® kit and genealogy consultations.
