Little Sally Walker

Instructions:

Everyone circles up with one person in the middle
The group sings, “Little Sally Walker walking down the street, she didn’t know what to do so she stopped in front of me.”
The person in the middle skips around the inside of the circle during the song. When the lyric gets to “stopped in front of me,” that person stops in front of someone in the circle.
The song continues, “Hey girl do your thang, do your thang, now switch.”
The person in the center and the person in the circle dance throughout this second verse before they switch places.
The person that was in the center is now in the circle, and the person that was in the circle is now in the center and skips around the inside of the circle.
Repeat (ideally until everyone has a turn).

Modifications:

It’s unclear to me if, in the traditional fashion, the two dancing people are supposed to mirror each other or do their own thang.

Praxis (why + theory):

Little Sally Walker is another game that is engaged and passed down throughout Black culture. Much like hand clapping games, the rhythmic cooperation of Little Sally Walker cultivates a dependence and intimacy between each participant.

The experience facilitated by the game feels distinctly Black, akin to how

Roger Abrahams (1970) describes differences in African American and Euro- American performer/audience styles.... He says that creative vitality comes from a source outside the individual. This energy is called into play by the performer and his performance. The individual performer is regarded as the instigator of action only. He is not appreciated necessarily because he is so much more talented than the group. He is appreciated for his ability to bring the group into the performance, thus sharing the energy source (Hale and Bocknek 95).

Abrahams’ description informs my own perspective on the Blackness of games like Little Sally Walker. In my dissertation I write about how embodied knowledge of holistic freedom, transcendent joy, and spiritual connectedness—that long preceding slavery—was stored within African and Black bodies, as evident in the histories of the Flying Africans who never fully forgot their capacity for flight (Hamilton), the Samba that intertwined Yoruban spiritual traditions (Browning), the ring ceremonies (and later ring shouts) of Nigeria, Dahomey, Togo, the Gold Coast, and Sierra Leone (Stuckey), and the circle rituals from the Congo region (Stuckey) that are embodied by Black children’s circular rhythm games (McKissack). Each of these legacies established the ground on which cross cultural exchange occurred and kinship communities were built, informing Black folks’ “self-generative nature of their impulse toward freedom” (Stuckey 5) that produces and amplifies their resourcefulness, creativity, joy, and connectedness (Brazier 106).

Black joy inspires possibility by allowing people to combine their light. And, too, our ancestors’ light shines through us.