The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Storyteller to perform
Tammy Denease brings Black woman pilot’s story to life
TORRINGTON — Tammy Denease is a passionate storyteller, whose performances depict Black women in many roles — a pilot, a teacher, an activist — and shares their lives before and after their enslavement.
Her next role will take her even higher.
Denease is bringing her live, online performance of Bessie Coleman to the Torrington Historical Society Feb. 23. Coleman was the first Black-Native American woman pilot, who grew up in
the segregated South and ended up in Paris, France, as an educator and aviatrix. The virtual program is set for 6 p.m.
“Gail Kruppa at the Torrington Historical Society reached out to me, to do a program for Black History Month,” Denease said. “I don’t tend to do many programs in February, because Black history is every day. I’m getting people to stay away from it . ... I appreciate it, and why it was invented, but it’s time to move past that now.”
Coleman was born in Georgia in 1892, the daughter of a Black woman and a Cherokee man. Her father returned to the Oklahoma territory to be with his family, while Coleman and her 12 brothers and sisters were raised by their mother in Texas.
“Her mother made the brave decision to raise her 13 children alone; Bessie was the ninth child,” Denease said. “Her mother encouraged her to study and to learn to read, and when the library wagon came to town, her mother made sure she had money for books, so she and the other kids could learn to read and write. She attended a local high school for a time, but had to leave because there wasn’t enough money (for her to continue her education). She also worked, picking cotton to help support the family.
“Her brothers fought in WWI, and when she later moved to Chicago, she learned about women learning to fly planes,” Denease said. “She was inspired by the stories of WWI, and she just wanted to fly. She wanted to be a Negro aviatrix. She just didn’t know she was going to be the first one.”
Coleman got her pilot’s license on June 15, 1921, a date for which Denease is trying to organize a celebration. “She didn’t fly during WWII, but she flew planes from the war. She sailed to France to attend the Federation Aeronautic Institute. She was the only Black person and the only woman in her class. They welcomed her and treated her with respect.”
Coleman’s flying career lasted for five years. She wanted to open an aviation school, but couldn’t afford it, so she performed air shows around the country. “People would line up to see her,” Denease said. “She also went to Hollywood, and ended up doing advertising for a tire company, and she crashed her plane. After she recuperated in Chicago, she went back to flying. She died in 1926, and she was 34 years old.”
Denease chooses her characters when she feels a kinship or some kind of bond with them.
“For example, everyone knows about Amelia Earhart, but Bessie was flying around two years before that,” she said. “There are so many untold stories like that. Bessie and I had similar childhoods.”
Denease grew up in Columbus, Miss., with her great-grandmother, a former enslaved person, and her grandmother, the child of slaves. She heard many stories about their lives in the deep South amid the Jim Crow laws. Those stories stayed with her as she grew older. Her experiences with inaccurate history about the deep South and the fact that so many know nothing about other Black men and women and their impact on the nation, is why she decided to become a historic storyteller, she said.
In Columbus, Denease said, although Jim Crow laws no longer were officially being used, their spirit was alive and well there. “The KKK was still running around, burning houses, crosses . ... It was all going on.
“Growing up, I thought Mississippi’s cotton fields were beautiful, but my mother wouldn’t let me play in them,” Denease said. “I didn’t understand until I got older why my mother didn’t want me in a cotton field.”
When she returns to her hometown for a visit, Denease said, she can only stay a few days.
“It’s the racism, the usversus-them mentality, the idea of Black people only allowed to work in certain places, like grocery stores. ... It’s a beautiful state, but it has so much racism and bias,” she said. “My first day there, I’m very nostalgic, and then something will happen; a racial incident, the way people look at you; the attitude of Black people who’ve never left — it’s internalized oppression. That hurts my heart.”
Denease attended local schools in Hartford, then went on to the University of Hartford to study business, then human services at Manchester Community College. “I didn’t get a degree in history,” she said. “It never occurred to me to do that — I lived it.”
Her own great-grandmother was freed during the “marryin’ season,” a term referring to the age young Black women married, between 12 and 15. “When the great surrender came in May 1865, she was freed, but she refused the 40 acres and a mule of Reconstruction, and she bought 40 acres of land for $80,” Denease said. “That 40 acres is still in our family today.”
When Denease moved north from Mississippi, she learned a lot. “It was somewhat of a culture shock to hear the North telling a lie about history, that the South was bad, and the North was the great hero,” Denease said. “In sixth grade, all they wanted to talk about was Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass. I asked, what about Medgar Evers? He was a hero in Mississippi, but he wasn’t in the curriculum here.”
Denease enjoys her work and believes living storytelling is the best way to teach history. But she wishes more Black people would come to hear her.
“My audiences are mainly white, and sometimes it gets lonely,” she said. “The way history was taught is why we don’t get many Black people ... they don’t want to hear about the trouble and the suffering; it’s denial. I’ve done surveys, and responses from Black people say, ‘I don’t want to hear about how our people are weak.’
“Sometimes I get a little down and think, ‘Why am I doing this,’ and as soon as that happens, someone will thank me, and that it meant so much for them to hear the story,” she said. “It’s positive. Yes, they went through a lot, but it’s about their resilience, their work. It all ties together.”
When she’s not performing, Denease is an educator and guide at the Webb Deane Stevens Museum in Wethersfield. She and her husband, Kelvin, often work together on her storytelling programs. Her daughter Brianna, now 31, has three children.
To register for this program, visit the Torrington Historical Society website at torringtonhistoricalsociety.org/zoomregistration.html. To see more examples of Denease’s work, visit hiddenwomen.org.