Dear Family and Friends:

The year 2023 has been an incredibly memorable year for me.  We had the George Family Reunion and observed the 40th anniversary of Lessie Jeneatha George (nee Cohen), my beloved grandmother’s transition on June 23, 1983.  The year 2023 also marks the centennial of the George Family’s move to Lakewood, New Jersey as part of the Great Migration.  According to the National Archives:

The Great Migration was one of the largest movements of people in United States history. Approximately six million Black people moved from the American South to Northern, Midwestern, and Western states roughly from the 1910s until the 1970s. The driving force behind the mass movement was to escape racial violence, pursue economic and educational opportunities, and obtain freedom from the oppression of Jim Crow.

For more information about the Great Migration see the following link from the National Archives: https://www.archives.gov/research/african-americans/migrations/great-migration.

This year, I returned to the Federal Republic of Nigeria one of the world’s most compelling nations.  I love its people, energy and the generosity of its many cultures.  The three weeks I spent as a Fulbright Specialist were amazing.  I came to appreciate that my host institution, Lead City University (LCU), is thoroughly committed to educating Nigeria.  Student services are part of LCU’s organizational DNA.  I witnessed this repeatedly during my stay.

I was awarded the American Folklife Center’s Green Fellowship to undertake Playing the Angels’ Game: Exploring the Perspectives of Black Foreign Service Women.  The Library of Congress established the Archie Green Fellowships “to support new research documenting Occupational Folklife in contemporary American and to generate significant born-digital archival collections (audio and/or video recordings of interviews with contemporary American workers, with accompanying photographs and field notes), which will be preserved in the American Folklife Center archive and also made available online to researchers and the public.”

Diplomacy is called the Angels’ Game because the angels were the first envoys from the heavens to the Earth. I have begun interviewing several fascinating women working in the areas of diplomacy and development both in the United States and worldwide.  They have fascinating stories to tell. Please stay tuned to www.generativegaze.org for more details about Playing the Angels’ Game.

I was also blessed to receive the American Folklore Society’s Gerald R. Davis Prize to conduct an oral history project exploring the life and leadership practice of the late Liberian President William R. Tolbert.  The American Folklore Society established the award in honor of Gerald L. Davis the celebrated folklorist, scholar, and activist whose work centered around the study of African American expressive culture and building African American and African communities and grounded in cultural exchange, research, and development.

So many of you supported my efforts and I want to say thank you.  I look forward to many more opportunities learn, serve and grow.  Peace, Dr. G