The Spook Who Sat by the Door (1969), by Sam Greenlee, is the fictional story of Dan Freeman, the first black CIA officer, and of the CIA's history of training persons and political groups who later used their specialised training in gathering intelligence, political subversion, and guerrilla warfare against the CIA. For the purposes of this talk we will concern ourselves less with the paramilitary aspects of the film, but rather with the way in which the power of perception can be a force for liberation and how the Bahá’í concept of the Pupil of the Eye--a term used to refer to the spiritual perception of people of African descent--is framed within the context of the film. The term 'spook' has multiple meanings: a ghost or spectre; a spy or covert agent; and a derogatory way to refer to black people. What the film does is to use the term subversively to describe how African Americans have occupied a seemingly passive, subservient position in the minds of the dominant culture. This dismissive attitude overlooked the active power of observation which the black community utilized to learn the behaviour and attitudes of the dominant white community and then to formulate effective modalities of survival based on that information, while the white community remained largely unaware of the inner life of African Americans. It is this capacity to stare deeply into the soul of America, to recognize its contradictions; it's fissures and moral inconsistencies that is an indispensable mechanism for eradicating the scourge of racism. As the Bahá’í writings so eloquently say: "truthfulness is the foundation of all human virtues."

Masud Ashley Olufani is an Atlanta-based actor, mixed media artist, and writer whose studio practice is rooted in the discipline of sculpture. He is a graduate of Morehouse College, and The Savannah College of Art and Design where he earned an M.F.A. in sculpture in 2013. Masud has exhibited his work in group and solo shows nationally and internationally. The artist has completed residencies at The Vermont Studio Center; The Hambidge Center for Arts and Sciences; and Creative Currents in Portobello, Panama. He is a 2020 South Arts Cross Sector Grant recipient for Elder, a site specific installation created to coincide with the redevelopment of the historic David T. Howard School in Atlanta. Masud is a 2018 Southern Arts Prize State Fellow; a recipient of a 2015 and 2018 Idea Capital Grant; a Southwest Airlines Art and Social Engagement grant; and a recipient of the 2015-16 MOCA GA Working Artist Project Grant. He is the creative director of Blocked: A Global Healing Project, a multimedia performance created to memorialize spaces marked by the trauma of the transatlantic slave trade. As an actor, he had a recurring role on the BET series The Quad and has appeared in numerous television shows including Greenleaf; Being Mary Jane, Devious Maids, Satisfaction, and Nashville. He is a featured actor in the film biopic All Eyez on Me. He is the co-host of the PBS news based investigative journalism show Retroreport, premiering nationally in the fall of 2019. As a writer, Masud has published articles for Burnaway; Bahá’í Teachings; and is a featured contributor for the Jacob Lawrence Struggle Series catalogue, produced to coincide with a major exhibition of the Struggle Series paintings.

To view the video visit the YouTube channel https://youtu.be/POY-ll0Oys4