Trevalle Ambrose arrived early for his conversation with Positive Impact group facilitator Rico Curtis-Davidson.  He found out he was HIV positive on his 21st birthday.  When he told his family that he was positive they, in his words, “just cut me off.”   One year later, he moved to Atlanta, Georgia with his best friend, Devin Murphy.  Three days after they arrived, Devin died.  Trevalle was alone in a new city, grieving the loss of his friend and estranged from his family.  With the help of Devin’s brother, Trevalle found the medical resources he needed.  His spiritual journey, though, had just begun.  Trevalle would face numerous illnesses – many life-threatening – battle drug addiction, and fight to regain his family’s love and respect.  Looking back, Trevalle says, “I was a mess.  I was a lost soul.”

Now, twenty-one years later, at the age of forty-two, Trevalle is drug free and healthy.  He recently graduated from the Interdenominational Theological Center (ITC) in Atlanta, is a minister for the Church of God in Christ (C.O.G.I.C.), and also does HIV/AIDS prevention outreach for his church.  In addition, he sits on the Ryan White Planning Committee, and is the new chair for the Ryan White Consumer Caucus.

Trevalle speaks openly and honestly about the challenges he faced, and the obstacles he’s overcome, all in an effort to help others understand that their strength lies within and that nothing is impossible if one has faith.

A few weeks after our recording day, Positive Impact Founder Christopher Allers and Founding Executive Director Paul Plate visited the StoryCorps Atlanta StoryBooth to discuss how and why they started Positive Impact.

Paul remembered attending meetings in Chris’s living room about the needs for mental health services within the HIV community.  After the meeting, Paul told a friend “I want to be director of that organization.”  By 1993, Positive Impact was just a sheet of paper, Paul, and a donated office space.  Today, in addition to serving the mental health needs of the HIV community, it also serves people who are dealing with substance abuse and homelessness and includes a strong emphasis on education and prevention.  Chris describes Positive Impact as “an organization that deeply cares about people living with HIV, but also about ending (the HIV/AIDS) epidemic.”

Radio partners WABE and WCLK hosted a StoryCorps Griot reception at the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historic Site during our last week in Atlanta.

The evening started with an hour of hors d’oeuvres, mingling, and live music provided by the Eddie Jaxon Jazz Ensemble.

All four of us (pictured above from l to r: Nadja, Jason, John, Elaine) were in attendance to mingle with participants and other guests from the Atlanta community. StoryCorps Founder and Executive Director Dave Isay came all the way from New York to speak about StoryCorps Griot and play excerpts of some Atlanta stories, which also aired on WABE.

As you can see, it was a full house with standing room only. The reception was the perfect ending to a lovely stay. Saturday marks the last day of interviews in Atlanta, then we’re off to Newark, New Jersey for the second stop on the Griot tour.

Wanda’s aunt is currently teaching her the style of handmade quilting that is unique to the women of Gee’s Bend, a family tradition that dates back to Wanda’s great great grandmother. Pictured below is Wanda’s favorite quilt, called “Lazy Gal”, which was quilted by a member of her family, Arcola Pettway. Wanda’s mother was also a Pettway, which is one of the prominent families among the quilters of Gee’s Bend.

photo courtesy of The Quilts of Gee’s Bend Catalog

Edwin Simmons brought his mother Dorothy to the StoryCorps GriotBooth on Friday, March 16th to interview her about growing up in Harlem. She lived right behind the famous Apollo Theater, which she often snuck into to watch performances. Her nickname back then was “Skinny Dot”, and in high school, she joined a club called “The Tall-Timers”. To be a member, men had to be at least 6′ tall, and women had to be 5’9″. The Tall-Timers would go to dances together so that the women would have taller dance partners.

Dorothy’s husband-to-be was also a member of the Tall-Timers, and Edwin definitely inherited their height. However, StoryCorps does not discriminate against anyone, short or tall, though Dorothy and Edwin did have to squat down for us to take their photos for the archive (seen above). Pictured below are Edwin (still crouching) and Dorothy with Edwin’s wife, who picked them up after the interview.

Lula Joe Williams was an employee of the SCLC and was present in the office on the last day of Dr. King’s life.


Lula Joe
a poem

When I heard the news
That King was dead
My throat opened
Released a pain
At a God deafening volume
My heart
Billy-club beating broken

My legs
Water hose weak
Wishing for one more walk
One more march
With Martin

One more wave
And confident
Tilt of the fedora
One more
Anything

Sometimes I still
Think of that day
Daydreaming with
Eyes still
Tear gas glazed
How he came into the office
That morning
Tired solemn serious
But sweet enough
To wave goodbye to me
Before Memphis

I would’ve waved back
And maybe gave him a hug
And whispered something like
Well done

Had I known

- poem by Jason Reynolds

At StoryCorps, there seem to be less than six degrees of separation. While recording interviews at the Atlanta ACORN office yesterday, participant Shani Franklin (pictured above left with her father Ralph) realized that the young woman who had called her father to arrange the interview was her friend from high school, Farhana Sobahn (below). Farhana is an ACORN Organizer and helped arrange StoryCorps interviews at the ACORN office for the past 3 weeks. After the interview, Shani and Farhana made plans to get together later that night. Just another way that StoryCorps brings people together!

StoryCorps facilitators Jason, Nadja, and Elaine decided to take advantage of Atlanta’s nightlife by attending a play called “False Creeds” at the Alliance Theatre. The Alliance website described the play as “a Western, an historical drama, and an exposÈ of a forgotten and covered up episode in U.S. history. It’s also a deeply personal journey for an African-American young man in search of his roots, and the story of a young girl forced into adulthood by tragedy.” That’s right, we took a break from collecting oral histories of African Americans to go see a play about the oral history of African Americans. Pictured above is the cast of “False Creeds”.

Photo courtesy of www.alliancetheatre.org

Another community organization that StoryCorps Griot has reached out to is the Auburn Avenue Research Library on African American Culture and History (AARL), which offers specialized reference and archival collections for the study of African cultures. The library has been an exemplary partner, hosting at least one StoryCorps field recording a week, filling every interview slot for those days, and even helping fill interview slots in the GriotBooth, which is parked down the street at the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historic Site.

Kerrie Cotten Williams (pictured above left), Archivist at AARL, and Marie Cowser (above right), Community Programs Director for the Historic District Development Corporation, have been the powerhouses behind it all. To date, they have arranged over 20 StoryCorps Griot interviews with participants from the library’s staff and membership, and from the community at large. Both have stepped in to act as interviewer on several occasions. Kerrie interviewed Marie about her activism to preserve the Old Fourth Ward where Marie lives and where both the MLK site and AARL are located. All of us at StoryCorps are grateful for Kerrie, Marie, and AARL’s support of the Griot Initiative in Atlanta.

So we moved to
Sweet Auburn Avenue
Where the lights
Were bright
And the people
Were dark
And I could go
To a store owned
By one of us
Walk right up
To the counter
And say
Hay jack gimme
A colllllllld Coke

And ironically get a
Warm smile
In return

poem by Jason Reynolds