The Emmett Till Project (ETP) is digital platform commemorating the legacy of the murder of Emmett Louis Till by the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.
EmmettTillProject.com | #EmmettTillProject
Designed by Adrienne Gaither and curated by Myriah Towner, Clarisse Rosaz Shariyf, and Ladi'Sasha Jones
We were thirteen and fourteen, respectively, a chess champion and an emphatic reader. Cousins. The adults trusted Ryan and I to make the journey to 86th street alone to see the new Harry Potter movie. Pseudo city kids. It was the winter of 2012 and my Aunt Nini just moved back to the city from upstate with her new husband and all four of my cousins. Only five months prior, my mother moved my brother and I to Harlem from Florence, South Carolina. All nine of us shared a big apartment on 116th street. We were close.
Ryan and I left the movie theaters with written instructions on how to take the bus back uptown. I was older and in charge of getting us home. After realizing we were well past 125th street and on the wrong bus, we de-boarded at the top of the hill past Amsterdam Houses. As we walked south, animatedly cracking jokes and chomping on cold popcorn, were suddenly stopped by two white men dressed in dark clothing. It was nighttime, after eight, and cold. Not many folks were outside. The two men separated my cousin and I by standing on both sides of Ryan and blocking his passage way to continue walking forward. I thought they were just asshole punks but this escalated in the next moments of our interaction. The number of men multiplied, some in plain clothing, others in police uniforms arriving from every direction. About three cop cars sped onto the curve adding more police to the scene. Ryan was thrown on the grown. Face down. Guns were drawn. Car lights, casting wild shadows onto the sidewalk were blinding as I screamed and shouted in tears for them to let me cousin go. “You got the wrong person! We are kids! His mom is a cop! We are kids!” Several men were on top of him, attempting a synchronized arrest and questioning. I was being and held by two men who were tasked with maintaining distance between my hysteria and the business that was being conducted. Several minutes passed before they lifted my cousin to his feet and began to retreat. We stood holding each other until all the bodies, sirens and guns were gone. We continued to walk in silence before reaching a payphone. I called the house and told the story in tears begging for someone to come and pick us up. My aunt or mother, I don’t remember which one, instructed me to make my way to the McDonald’s under the 1 train and wait there for someone to retrieve us. We did just that. Still in silence except for my two unanswered questions of ‘are you okay’.
My mom, aunt and uncle were all in the van. As they asked questions only I answered. Ryan did not, or could not, retell the story. He was just silent. I was scolded for putting us in this predicament by not following the travel directions given to me. We were scolded for not knowing the right procedure when approached by an officer and particularly our inability to “protect ourselves” on the back end by not getting a name or badge number. I am not sure what Ryan recalls of the evening. He, nor anyone in my family, have spoken to me about that experience since we left the van. That night I ate my dinner in my bedroom plugged into my CD player as usual. This was my first year in the city. My mother didn’t let me travel alone for months and I did not want to.
Saturday, July 2015 | At a cafe on 23rd street, Restless
You never know what the day will bring. In seven days, all your favor can be mocked in contempt. This, I believe, is what makes the prospect of love so alluring. The hope that one day you will find someone to stand with and lay beside through all your good days and the stinky tides to come.
As my nature, in rare form, loves the security of control, this week has loosened my imaginary grips on life. For once, during a time like this, I feel prepared, of sound mind and protected soul. I am prayed up as the ladies in all white like to say. Having learned some time ago that peaceful winds warrant stronger prayers. Everyone cries for help in the dark, whereas my magic tends to shine bright through the shadows. Again, I know I’m protected.
Over the week past, another gleam of love has dimmed. I now know that men make the decision on whether love will blossom and women manage the relationship thereafter. [This is clearly heterosexual speak - my lesbian understandings are for another post.] They are so damn sensitive and scared. Seem to always be in flux about “what’s best” for them. And they heal much slower. I dont have the patience and I’m low on reason to guide, or hand hold, someone to my love. The good thing about dateless evenings is that you can commit to more reading and writing, and for the barely holding on, reflection never overflows.
Home. My mother shared her plans to move back to Harlem. Back into the apartment I just gained the lease over seven months ago. Seven. The question is not if I should stay or go, but what is next for me in the larger scope of things. I want to go, far away to another Black land. This is an old tale. The recurring trick is working out the dream and where. Nairobi, Lagos, Johannesburg or Port-au-Prince? Where to and why? What is the work and what of sustainability?
I did not get a job that I was willing to take a huge pay cut for. Although the decision did not (or has yet to) make a blow to my ego, I am taken aback as this means I will continue on this stretch of staying put. For now. I’ve always been a busy body, bored and unchallenged by sitting in one place for too long. There’s fantasy in being shaken up and lost. And I love to wander.
I did manage to attend an art opening this week. Titled, Between History and the Body, exhibited at The 8th Floor. Discovered some new artists and have researched their works and stories since. I enjoyed the show although I don’t really expect much from gallery presentations anymore. I visited the new Whitney and really liked the work in the elevator - it helps with not feeling too boxed in. Seeing their collection pieces by William H. Johnson was the highlight. Today, I tried to make my second trip to the Jacob Lawrence show at MoMA. There is so much research there that fully contextualizes the development of american urbanity/industrialization and the very nature of terrorism. The case for reparations is on display throughout the sixty panels and its supporting works. Maybe I can pencil in another visit on Thursday.
Then there’s grandmother. Back home from the hospital yesterday. Memories and time are attacking her, aggressively. Her force as a mother, matriarch and teacher has waned and now I just pray for her comfort and the absence of fear. I sat next to her for three hours last night, rubbing her shoulders, massaging her back when she coughed and caressing her arm through our silence. I love her. She has gifted me with many uncomfortable and hard interviews about her upbringing and I’m grateful for this documentation of her memory. Especially as I continue to work out my understanding of her as a person, a woman who birthed nearly twenty children and loved many men as she floated over wells of heartbreak, neglect and sorrow.
As a child my love for her was shaped by much respect and obedience. She commanded you without any questions or negotiations. Bama loved to read and so did I. As a tween, I would steal from her collection of erotica and admired her for having such an eclectic library. She doesn’t read anymore. Last year I bought her James Patterson’s latest mystery novel and one of my newly acquired edited works of Black erotica (that’s erotica written by Black authors). She misplaced both books in her room by the end of the night. She likes to hide her valuables. She has always been a collector of knick knacks and times past and very weary of the hundreds of sticky fingers she has brought into this world. Her mind in old age and dementia causes her to lose everything - herself and everyone around her included. Even her recollection of my name. There are times when she greets me with a “Hey Lady”, but I am sure it is of the generic sense. Most times.
My mother’s mother. My child will never know.
Tomorrow I will not walk the two blocks to my family’s home on 116th street. Instead I plan to venture out and hang with friends and possibly meet some new folks during a Harlem BBQ in St. Nicholas Park. Sunday will start a new week. I am done with this one.
Post-script to artist talk with Kameelah Raheed on the occasion of her solo exhibition, FUTURE PERFECT / indices & marginalia, at Weeksville Heritage Center
I was so enthralled with Kameelah Rasheed’s research practice and the superb illustration of her archival interventions as not only a process but a creative form, that I missed the opportunity to dive into the aesthetics of the work. In the converstion I prepared, we missed the opportunity to discuss how the installation took shape and for that, I write this review of the exhibition.
Future/Perfect is alive.
Staged from an arhchival dig on the historical neighborhood of Weeksville, the installation amasses epherema, primary and secondary source materials, and other assembled objects that narrates the history of Black American self-determination. The work is full of movement. Time, fact, speculative fiction, space and medium are all employed in this cartography of the Black past. Collection items are taken out of time, pulled out of form and simultaneously restaged as new, past, known, and other. A sculptual technique Kameelah has used in the past to comment on and manipulate the politics of fragmentation, memory, knowledge production, abstraction and public history.
In this deconstruction of the archive, lids are removed from boxes, papers are shuffled, texts are pieced together and rights to materials are thrown out the window (except for generous reference bibliography provided by the artist). The imaginary and the body are at play here. The structural diversity and layering within the work challenges the roles of engagement and viewership. Visitors are able to navigate this mapping on their own accord, determining when and where to enter as they pace their reading of the sculpture.
As a curator, there are many lessons to take from the design elements of this work. The way space is asserted, the flow between the negative space and the pulls of intimacy with items arranged along the floor and out of reach. As one moves in closer, you are overcome with soft details that are minimalist in nature. Surfacing new patterns to the beginning and ends of things. Posing questions around how we collect and organize memory and material culture.
This installation is full of sound, evidence of the aesthetics of improvisation, spirituality and futurism deeply embedded within Black survival and cultural production – as decoded by a Black American woman artist/intellectual.
Thanks to the audience comments that shifted the talk towards the aesthetics and texture of the exhibition. It was a much needed shift and I appreciated it.
If we can understand the Great Migration at the turn of the 20th century as a radical spatial imaginary, through this lens, the Black city can be framed as an active collective imagining of utopia. A Black utopia, the pursuit of black humanity and economic growth, a presaged us-ness as full citizens of this America.
The Great Migration, like Reconstruction and contemporary post-racial politics, embodied the promise of America’s benevolence, staging the Black city to fall short of its deliverance of a Black utopia. Fostering a calamity of hope akin to the preacher man’s unholy repetition, “Just Hold On My Brothers and Sisters! A change is sure to come!” As Isabel Wilkerson explains, migration from the south, “... grew out of the unmet promises made after the Civil War and, through the sheer weight of it, helped push the country toward the civil rights revolutions of the 1960s.” And still, fifty years after the Civil Rights Movement, America has sustained its legacy of racial dystopia, inciting another generation to proclaim their humanity in protest. Will the inconvenience and backlash of Black rage further stagnate the road towards truth and accountability for America and her future?
CONTINUE READING THE ESSAY HERE
Jacob Lawrence, The Migration Series (Panel One) - 1941 Caption “During the World War there was a great migration North by Southern Negroes”
How Can Museums Become Spaces that Engage Visitors on Complex Societal Issues?
In response to an article from Smithsonian.com that explores the question of museums being safe spaces for discussions of #BlackLivesMatter.
I don’t believe a “safe space” is what we need from our cultural and art institutions. Spaces of history and culture that are deemed safe are usually skewed toward affirmations of white supremacy and the warped politics of their funding sources. Begging the question, safe for whom, to be addressed.
The work of our museums (as if they belong to the people, wishful thinking I know) in this contemporary moment of resistance is to support the interpretation and documentation of Black rage and youth voices. We are in need of some serious truth and accountability in this time. Lots of love and hard work. Investments in artists and scholars to transcribe these times through art, artifacts, research and documentation is what we need from our museums.
Harlem Race Riots of 1943, Credit, NewYorkNatives.com
With more urgency, these institutions should be grappling with questions of accessibility, representation, and cultural equity.
Besides, art and history are not safe. Great art erupts everything we know and understand to be true. Critical thinking around history can push us beyond our comfort and carefully constructed gazes of the world and ourselves. Both should actually prompt fear. Be scared and lose your presumptions of the Black world when you enter a museum such as the forthcoming African Museum on the National Mall. Enter this place and learn something new. Study an epistolary exchange between artists or view archival prints that illustrate a time and place different than your own. The hope is that you will exit a changed and charged citizen of this pained world.
Safety has always been for whiteness and riches. Blackness is not safe in this America (or France, or Brazil or South Africa). Demand more from your artists and curators - academia lost the integrity game a long time ago.
Why Blackness and its cultural interiors? Because Black survival and art go hand-in-hand, they always have. Because love is one of the most revolutionary things for a Black child to embody for themselves and thy neighbor in a world that antagonizes their very being. Because its crucial for Black culture to be documented, preserved and interpreted to expansion. And because Black folks need to do this work themselves. And continue to write their stories. And develop an understanding of history and Black political thought.
To curate through a Black cultural lens is my work. It is an illustration of my love for Black folks everywhere.
He Loves Black People, All of It: Behind Kendrick Lamar’s ‘Bitch Don’t Kill My Vibe’ and ‘I'
And I Love him too. He, his production team, his participation in delivering love through complex and textured imagery of Black life and Blackness. I rarely watch music videos and am very selective with the work of musicians. There is power in vibrations and melody that make music more than entertainment. It, Black music, is a sacred art form. Much grander than the industry its grown into and the deadly holds of capitalism. Kendrick Lamar is one of my favorite contemporary artists. Like I said above, I Love him, his work and the choices he is making around his music. Today, I sat down to watch the video for ‘Bitch Don’t Kill My Vibe’ for the very first time and rewatch ‘I’, which I have been wanting to comment on since its release. Below are my reflections on both.
‘Bitch Dont Kill My Vibe’
I could elaborate on the interior Black spiritual and religious visuals that are present through the strong color scheme of within the video: white, blue, green and gold/yellow; the wood, the weight of a pew; and the white christ crucifix within a seemingly Black church amongst other things. However, the striking thing about this video is its focus on a narrative of mourning a death in conjunction with some standard rap video symbolism and how the two are closely aligned. The extremes of comedy, celebration and sadness with a dash of sexualized Black women bodies and God. It is a smart yet simply crafted video. And one that is in conversation with the many Hip Hop and R&B videos that deal with the same subject matter (like works by Bone Thugs-N-Harmony, Tu Pac, DMX and so on). Death, mourning and Black spirituality are recurring themes in Black musical genres because we, Black folk and America herself, are still challenged with the question of Black humanity.
Plainly, there are unjust realities to how we die. The Black boy child and man live with their mortality closer to their hearts than any other in this country.
The politics of how we die has a history traceable through enslavement, Jim Crow, western medicine, and imprisonment. Beneath college campuses and financial districts, we are still finding bones and mass unmarked graves all over this America that unveil the legacy of experimentation and inhumanity of Black American life and death. Thus interpretations of said themes in art are important and necessary.
‘I’
I Love Myself. What a great tune for Black folks, all people, to repeat in groove. There are so many words, so many feelings and thoughts around this video and the song itself. Instead of figuring out where to begin and end, my summation is that this is a work of art, protest and prayer. Poet Nikky Finney said to a room filled with Black Gay, Queer and Lesbian writers, that repetition is holy. Within the depths and waters of Black music is survival and I believe this track on repeat can save us all.
In an essay entitled, “100 Madison Avenues will be of no help”, filmmaker, actor and journalist, William Greaves, identifies himself as an Afro-American film and tv producer who does not have the time to be entertained or entertaining. Crucial signifiers in reflection of the contemporary artist today who shy away from the delineations of Black artist and Black art. Opting for a more colorless, transcending, universal, hoky poky summer camp bon-fire positioning as an artist producing work in this America. The Black artist on the new shiny green machine of celebrity and mass appeal; packaging hollow black subjectivity shells for sale. Entertaining and entertained by the democratization of art stardom.
Programming should be built around priorities that foster civilization rather than the fast buck; that foster life rather than death.
Throughout this piece, Greaves charts the landscape of America’s ills from Vietnam to climate change while offering Black leadership in television programming, and the country at large, as a solution to society’s redemption. Clearly outlining the work of the Black producer as follows, “Black producers must redefine Blacks to Blacks and Blacks to whites. We must re-define whites to whites, and not in the sick way some white producers have defined Blacks to Blacks.” Greaves’ writing reads as an artistic manifesto that frames his leadership as an artist, mentor and citizen. The scope of the work he imagines for Black visual producers and image-makers is greater than a dream deferred. It is a radical imagining whose belief in humanity and the arts assumes a futuristic politic of which we can only pray for a diversion in time.
If you are able to get your hands on this text, it is definitely a read that sheds more light on a Greaves as a pioneer, our Harlem giant.
William Greaves, “100 Madison Avenues Will Be of No Help,” New York Times, Aug. 9, 1970, p.81.
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