This is an excerpt from the print edition of Dirty Linen Magazine #97 (December 2001/January 2002). The magazine is available on newsstands and by subscription.

Common Ground on the Hill
Each One Teach One
by Pamela Murray Winters

"Good morning… Are we ready to dance?"

Well, not really. A motley crew slouches in the pews of this chapel: mostly female, mostly white, and mostly not looking like we're accustomed to any footwork fancier than swapping pumps for Pumas after work. But off come the shoes and socks and sweaters —and a few inhibitions — and we're on the stage, stretching our minds as well as our muscles.
Our instructors are from Baltimore's Sankofa Dance Troupe. Their skin is darker than ours, and their bodies are younger. Teenage girls show us the moves. Teenage boys pound out rhythms on the lead drum, the accompaniment drum, and the juju — or basic rhythm — drum.
"Sankofa" is an Akan (Ghanian vernacular) word meaning "reaching back to go forward." It describes some of the moves we learned — thankfully, no one was injured — but it's even more evocative of the message of this class setting. We are at Common Ground on the Hill, a two-week summer arts camp that aims to change lives.
Founder and current artistic director Walt Michael reached back — to the idealism of his 60s youth — to integrate his belief in social justice with his love of the arts. As a minister's son, he understood the value of good works. "While I was at Western Maryland College," he recalled, "I did voter registration in Columbia, South Carolina, and worked in Appalachia — McDowell County, West Virginia — for three summers. I came of age musically and politically at the same time."
In the 1970s, Michael concentrated on his career as a hammered-dulcimer player, working with the groups Bottle Hill and Michael, McCreesh, and Campbell. But he never ignored his urge to foster social justice; it was just a matter of finding the right avenue. By 1993, said Michael, "I was at the top of my game musically and old enough to be taken seriously," so he offered his alma mater, Western Maryland College, a proposal "for a traditional music and arts camp with that mission of bringing people together."
Among his first instructors and participants were folks he'd known in college who had lost that "political thing" they once had; "they really resounded with this chance to rev their engines."
And among the ideas to take root in that first year, in addition to the usual classes and workshops on instrument playing, songwriting, and the like, was a choir.
"Walt's vision was to have one activity where there was no class going on so that everyone could take part of it, teachers and students," said Shelley Ensor, who's conducted the gospel choir from the beginning. The choir meets at the end of the day, after everyone's individual classes are done, and performs on Friday night of the first week. "Amazingly enough," said Ensor, "many of the members only sing gospel music when they come to Common Ground. By the end of the week, they're singing gospel music as good and better than choirs that have been doing it all their life."
Common Ground also offers an orientation that explains the camp's mission, as well as classes on culture — such as the one on Native American spirituality taught by Randall Daniels-Sakim — and dialogue.
"My first year as a student at Common Ground," recalled blues singer Lea Gilmore, "I heard about this guy who would be teaching a Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X class, using the works of these great men to spur an honest dialogue on race relations. Someone said his name was Dr. Ira Zepp. I said to myself, what? What can a white man tell me about race relations? So, I arrogantly went into the classroom, and there sat this tall, older man with the most humble spirit. I sat and listened. I was ashamed at confronting my own prejudices. What this man said during that weeklong class — and what he allowed us to say — changed my life." Gilmore has since taught classes with Zepp and is now first vice-president of the Common Ground on the Hill Board of Directors.

This is an excerpt from an article in Dirty Linen #97 (Dec. '01/Jan. '02). Read the full text in the magazine, available via subscription or on newsstands and in bookstores.