Welcome
By the River Center for Humanity is located at 1306 Water Avenue, one block east of the Saint James Hotel. Our back entrance faces the Alabama River. Visitors have access to the Butterfly Park and the Riverfront Park City Walk as well as a breathtaking view of the Historic Edmund Pettus Bridge.
About Us
By the River Center for Humanity is a “mixed-use” creative incubator developed to provide for local performers and artisans a show-case to promote their talents, arts, crafts and merchandise.
It is Our Mission to encourage and allow small business owners, artists and performers to promote their services to a larger market of consumers through our gallery, and retail gift shop and monthly open market events. It is also our mission to provide educational classes in business and offer to the public; presentations, workshops, exhibits, performances, demonstrations, documentaries, specialty tours and interactive experiences.
The founders and supporters of By the River Center for Humanity are humble servants from all walks of life who had at one time or another made a personal commitment to serve humanity. We thank God for blessing us with both the space and opportunity to be of service to the citizens and visitors of the Selma – Dallas County area.
Soul Prints Interactive Experience
Let The Healing Continue...
SOUL PRINTS is an interactive dramatization that enable participants to gain a greater understanding of the embedded trauma of the Middle Passage and slavery.
Sister Afriye We-kandodis passionately believes that the study of the slave trade and the enslavement of Africans often occurs at scholarly or organizational levels that can overshadow and ignore the unhealed emotional and spiritual wounds of Africans and their descendants living in the Americas and Caribbean.
In June 2005 thru the grace of God and the blessings of her Ancestors, Sister Afriye was inspired to create and conduct “Foot Prints of Our Ancestors,” an interactive dramatization that enable participants to emotionally connect with the embedded trauma of the Middle Passage and slavery.
Using sound, movement, and performance Afriye is able to create an unconventional-healing space to guide participants through the spiritual and emotional releases that can suddenly surface and go unattended during an academic study of the topics of slavery.
Sister We-kandodis has received hundreds of letters and cards from participants who shared how this stimulating and soul-searching presentation was a life changing experience for them and their families.
In May 2008 Sister We-kandodis realized that this dramatization not only encouraged participants to embrace and learn from the past it also inspired them to move forward in the process of healing themselves and uplifting all of Humanity, it was then she decided to rename this magnificent healing piece to “Soul Prints of Our Ancestors and Ourselves.”
Each experience ends with an open forum where groups of different races, nationalities, religions, traditions, and ages can talk about the intense pain of slavery and the effects it has on us even today and the spiritual healing of not just African Americans but Humanity itself.
Heart to heart soul to soul
Conversations of Turth, Hope & Love
We Cannot HEAL What We Are Not Willing To Talk About.
