# data[].attributes.body
1619 Podcast Episode 3
Congo Square in New Orleans: video / Afropunk article

# data[].attributes.body
Dave Chappelle interviews Kendrick Lamar
Existentially Dope, an essay about DAMN. by Devon Johnson
The Heart Part 5 video

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Kendrick Lamar - Alright (Official Music Video)

# data[].attributes.body
In this NYTimes article, Wesley Morris (host of 1619 Episode 3) geeks out with an intertextual exploration of the movie Sinners, Cowboy Carter, Kendrick’s 2025 superbowl halftime show, minstrels, blues, and more!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
‘Sinners’ and Beyoncé Battle the Vampires. And the Gatekeepers, Too.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
This moment might call for excessive, imaginative Black art that wants to be gobbled up. That’s Ryan Coogler’s new movie. That’s “Cowboy Carter.” Let’s throw in some Kendrick, too.

# data[].attributes.body
text of the poem created using the erasure technique, whittling down the Declaration of Independence to a statement about the process of erasure in the US

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
U.S. Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith Reads Her Poem "Declaration"

# data[].attributes.body
Readers, writers, and texts

1. Why and how do we study language and literature?

2. How are we affected by texts in various ways?

3. In what ways is meaning constructed, expressed and discovered?

4. How does language use vary amongst text types, and amongst literary forms?

5. How does the structure or style of a text affect meaning?

6. How do texts offer insights and challenges?

Time and space

1. How important is cultural or historical context to the production and reception of a text?

2. How do we approach texts from different times and cultures to our own?

3. To what extent do texts offer insight into another culture?

4. How does the meaning and impact of a text change over time?

5. How do texts reflect, represent or form a part of cultural practices?

6. How does language represent social distinctions and identities?

# data[].attributes.body
Identity
Creativity
Culture
Perspective
Representation

# data[].attributes.body
Internal & external freedom
Crime, criminal, and punishment
Protest & revolution
Beauty, creativity, joy

# data[].attributes.body
- In this unit, students will practice close reading skills using a variety of genres, developing skills they will need for Paper 1.
- There are strong links between Beloved and our other works that can be developed in Paper 2 (e.g. the issue of internal & external freedom in The Thief and the Dogs, and literature as resilience in the poetry of Sipho Sepamla)

# data[].attributes.headline
Learning Engagements & Learner Portfolio Activities

# data[].attributes.subject
Learning Engagements & Learner Portfolio Activities

# data[].attributes.body
-Webquest to help students explore some of the many contextual layers of Beloved, including the Fugitive Slave Act
-Journal responses to each piece studied
-Graphic organizer to facilitate connections among the texts and develop understanding of intertextuality
-Creative writing: pastiche (and follow-up discussion around the concept of transformation)
- Students might interview various adults in their lives about the issue of beauty and freedom - internal freedom to be open to beauty despite the horrors of life (Agata Zolkos)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The John Parker House in Ripley, Ohio. Credit... Tony Cenicola/The New York Times

Underground Railroad

John Parker, a former slave, was a daring conductor on the Underground Railroad. His home in Ripley, Ohio, helps to tell his story.

The John Parker House in Ripley, Ohio. Credit... Tony Cenicola/The New York Times

Eliza was fleeing her captors with her young son in her arms when she was stopped short by the banks of the frigid Ohio River. With the unthinking courage that comes from desperation, she leapt from one ice floe to another, occasionally falling into the freezing water and hoisting herself up, until arriving on the riverbank across the state line. After witnessing her harrowing journey, a white man who should have captured her ended up helping her ashore instead, directing her to a safe house rather than into the arms of her pursuers.

The story of a white man moved to save a slave so tugged at the heartstrings that the abolitionist Harriet Beecher Stowe included a version of it in her novel "Uncle Tom's Cabin." For many who were assigned the book to read in school, the tale of Eliza is their first indelible image of escape from slavery.

The actual flight of Eliza began in Kentucky and ended on the riverbanks in Ripley, Ohio, abolitionists at the time said, making a white character based on a patroller one of the best-known saviors. But the true Moses of Ripley was a former slave named John P. Parker, who helped make the town a major nexus in the path of kidnapped Africans and their descendants determined that their lot in life was not to be thought of as property.

Image

Plaque commemorating where an escaped slave named Eliza crossed the frozen Ohio River with her baby. Harriet Beecher Stowe included the story in her novel "Uncle Tom's Cabin." Credit... Tony Cenicola/The New York Times

Parker helped hundreds of people find their freedom. The exact number is unknown because successful passage on the Underground Railroad meant it was undocumented, Dewey Scott, a docent at the John P. Parker House in Ripley, pointed out when I took a tour there in December. Parker was the rare conductor who, heavily armed, would cross the river into Kentucky and extract refugees who wanted freedom. His memoir reads like an action film: One of his most daring exploits was to deliver a sleeping child from the room of a white captor to parents who had yet to cross the river.

I had never heard of Parker or of Ripley, though I grew up about an hour and a half north of the town, on State Route 68. Fortunately, the story of Parker has not been entirely lost. It lives on, partly in the house and former foundry he owned that has been turned into a museum and a National Historic Landmark.

The red-brick building where Parker worked and lived is, quite frankly, stunning. As I pulled up to it, the late-afternoon sun was setting over the hills in Kentucky, and its reflection in the glassy river bathed the facade in amber from below. Still I wondered, given the modest size of the structure, whether it held enough of Parker to tell his tale. It didn't quite, but Mr. Scott took care of what the house and its relics couldn't. So did "His Promised Land," a gripping memoir sold there based on an interview with Parker, which revealed a man who seemed never to shrink from a challenge.

John Parker was born to a black woman and white father in Norfolk, Va., and was sold from his family to a slave merchant and then resold for profit to a doctor in Mobile, Ala., all by the time he was 10. If the prospect of never again seeing his mother didn't persuade him that slavery was atrocious, watching a fellow member of a chain gang being beaten to death convinced him that the institution was evil. Still, his time with the doctor wasn't the worst that forced labor had to offer: He learned a trade (working at a foundry) and the doctor's children sneaked him books and taught him to read.

Parker made sure to avoid the same fate of my own forefathers who toiled in the hot fields of the Deep South. When he learned that the doctor planned to sell him at auction, he persuaded a woman named Elizabeth Ryder to buy him, and he promised to repay her with earnings from a foundry. Because he had learned a trade, the widow could lease him to the foundry, earn money on his labor, and anything above the promised amount of the lease would be his to keep. The arrangement was common, but resulted in freedom only for some.

Rather than stay in the South, Parker settled in Ripley, making enough money to build the home next to his workshop, to marry and to raise children there. His career as a foundryman is the stuff of lore. He obtained a patent for a part that was in demand at tobacco factories, and became one of the richest men in the region, at that time a major trade hub in the United States.

He constantly risked it all for what he called his "war with slavery." The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 strengthened penalties for those who helped people escape slavery. For that reason, perhaps, he rarely sheltered runaways, and a tour of his house does not feature the crawl spaces and secret passageways that some on the Underground Railroad do.

What it does contain are the sort of exhibits you'd expect: a mural detailing accomplishments like Parker's appearance at a world exposition for a part he created. But the real story lay in the relics from the foundry that are on display and adorn the home. Some door hinges on the ground level (an item that I'd never thought of as decorative) are from Parker's foundry. Tools made from the foundry are shown as well. The stairs at the front entrance were made in the foundry, too; they just needed a fresh coat of paint.

In Ripley, Ohio, the home of John Rankin, a clergyman who hosted Underground Railroad refugees. Credit... Tony Cenicola/The New York Times

And there is plenty that isn't made from the foundry but tells his life. The house does its job best in the room made up to appear as it would have in Parker's day, complete with Ivory soap and a brush. The hardwood floors, in poplar, are from the original construction.

I peered from the window to look at the river. The sheer homeyness of the space highlighted a lovely domestic life that he and his wife risked daily.

On the lower level sits a boat that doubles as a frame for a series of paintings depicting Parker's life. The craft is one he took night after night, combing the river for people who needed a hand on their way from a slave state to a free one.

Parker may have been a warrior against slavery, but he was not a lone one. Many who escaped stayed with one of the more than 300 people in Ripley estimated to be in service to the Underground Railroad, making it the largest network in the region. The Ripley chain included John Rankin, a clergyman who hosted the refugees and is the town's best-known participant in the Underground Railroad; his house, which has been restored and is open to the public, sits on a large hill now named for him. And of course nearby Cincinnati has no shortage of sites to visit, like the Harriett Beecher Stowe House, or the fantastic National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, stocked with a replica of a slave cabin and immersive programming.

Door hinges in Parker's house were made in his foundry. Credit... Tony Cenicola/The New York Times

The fervent belief in the fundamental freedom of all people, regardless of color, was built into the foundation of Ohio. The land within the state's bounds was originally settled as part of the Northwest Ordinance, the federal statute that set forth a westward expansion that would be propelled by settlers' own grit rather than that of enslaved laborers. The first American settlement was created in 1788 in Marietta, Ohio, farther east along the river, and its residents outlawed slavery when the territory became a state 15 years later. Ohio's free status ensured that refugees fleeing to the North would have to cross the state's southwestern border, a formidable river.

These days, the rich history of the land along that border is largely hidden, when you drive along the water. Along Route 52, I stopped at a diner where nobody asked if you wanted your grilled cheese sandwich on whole wheat or seven-grain, nor did they ask what sort of cheese you wanted, because it was assumed the answer would be American. I passed a town called Utopia, whose boarded-up windows and stillness suggested it was anything but. There was another called Higginsport, which was a bit more pulled together but still contained an assemblage of buildings in disrepair.

Somewhere around there, I saw it: the Confederate flag. It was on the wrong side of the Ohio River (notwithstanding the short-lived occupation by a Confederate general that was mainly a looting mission).

That flag flying so close to the river represented both abolition's triumph and its failure. The borders between states may have become less significant, and the river is little more than a lovely landscape, complete with migrating birds. Yet it also means that even in Ohio, the flag of the rebel army, which fought for the right to keep people in bondage, flies. The whole of America may be a free state but it is still tainted with the residue of the institution that the state's first settlers knew was a sin.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
In Ohio, a Warrior Against Slavery (Published 2017)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Underground Railroad John Parker, a former slave, was a daring conductor on the Underground Railroad. His home in Ripley, Ohio, helps to tell his story. The John Parker House in Ripley, Ohio. Credit... Tony Cenicola/The New York Times Eliza was fleeing her captors with her young son in her arms when she was stopped short by the banks of the frigid Ohio River.

# data[].attributes.body
The words of spirituals were a system of codes of communication between slaves.

Connection: Songs from Harriet film (overlaps with spirituals, conceptual & historical contexts):
Stand Up: https://youtu.be/sn19xvfoXvk & https://youtu.be/g3HICKj-4Zs

Goodbye Song: https://youtu.be/rOmjkPXNYGI

# data[].attributes.body
This novel by Toni Morrison will be the core text for this unit, supplemented by interviews with the author.

# data[].attributes.headline
1619 Project & pieces by Nikole Hannah-Jones

# data[].attributes.subject
1619 Project & pieces by Nikole Hannah-Jones

# data[].attributes.body
Podcast link
Response/challenge to the 1619 Project, particularly about claims related to the Revolutionary War: link to article
It's Time for Reparations article & visuals

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
From the Magazine: ‘It Is Time for Reparations’ (Published 2020)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Nikole Hannah-Jones explains the history of economic injustice and argues that if black lives are to truly matter in America, the nation must finally pay its debts.

# data[].attributes.headline
Intertextuality & Storytelling: Sinners, Beyonce, Kendrick, Blues, Spirituals, and more!

# data[].attributes.subject
Intertextuality & Storytelling: Sinners, Beyonce, Kendrick, Blues, Spirituals, and more!

# data[].attributes.body
"some of our most popular Black artists are still contending with its ghosts, still clashing over the stories we’re telling about how we got to this moment and who helped us arrive."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
‘Sinners’ and Beyoncé Battle the Vampires. And the Gatekeepers, Too.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
This moment might call for excessive, imaginative Black art that wants to be gobbled up. That’s Ryan Coogler’s new movie. That’s “Cowboy Carter.” Let’s throw in some Kendrick, too.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Toni Morrison Refuses To Privilege White People In Her Novels!

# data[].attributes.headline
Kendrick Lamar's 2018 Grammy Performance

# data[].attributes.subject
Kendrick Lamar's 2018 Grammy Performance

# data[].attributes.body
Watch on YouTube

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Watch Kendrick Lamar, U2 & Dave Chappelle Open The 2018 GRAMMYs | GRAMMY Rewind | GRAMMY.com

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
For the latest episode of GRAMMY Rewind, we return to the unforgettable moment when Kung-Fu Kenny opened the 60th GRAMMY Awards.

# data[].attributes.body
Excerpts from "The Case for Reparations" and Between the World and Me
Coates' opening statement in House hearings on reparations
Mitch McConnell's statement the day before the Congressional Hearings

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Ta-Nehisi Coates On The Case For Reparations | All In | MSNBC

# data[].attributes.headline
Kendrick Lamar 2022 New York Times feature

# data[].attributes.subject
Kendrick Lamar 2022 New York Times feature

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Kendrick Lamar’s New Chapter: Raw, Intimate and Unconstrained

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In partnership with his longtime collaborator, Dave Free, the greatest rapper of his generation is pushing himself — commercially and creatively — onto unexpected terrain.

# data[].attributes.headline
Podcasts: Seeing White, Revisionist History, White Fragility

# data[].attributes.subject
Podcasts: Seeing White, Revisionist History, White Fragility

# data[].attributes.body
Scene on Radio's Seeing White series
White Fragility podcast/interview
Counterargument to White Fragility: article

Revisionist History episode: Miss Buchanan's Period of Adjustment

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Skip to Main Content

Join Pushkin+

Gain access to ad-free versions of 20+ podcasts from the Pushkin library along with exclusive bonus episodes and other member benefits.

Revisionist History is Malcolm Gladwell's journey through the overlooked and the misunderstood. Every episode re-examines something from the past - an event, a person, an idea, even a song - and asks whether we got it right the first time. Because sometimes the past deserves a second chance.

You can now stream episodes and watch bonus video content on Malcolm Gladwell's YouTube channel!

Most Recent Episode

Malcolm tells the story of how his parents and their friends sponsored three Vietnamese refugees, in the aftermath of the Vietnam War. And wonders: do we underestimate the value of...

Season 7 Season 6 Season 5 Season 4 Season 3 Season 2 Season 1

The Host

Malcolm Gladwell is president and co-founder of Pushkin Industries. He is a journalist, a speaker, and the author of six New York Times bestsellers including The Tipping Point, Blink, Outliers,...

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Revisionist History | Pushkin Industries

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Skip to Main Content Gain access to ad-free versions of 20+ podcasts from the Pushkin library along with exclusive bonus episodes and other member benefits. Revisionist History is Malcolm Gladwell's journey through the overlooked and the misunderstood.

# data[].attributes.body
The passage she reads is midway through Chapter 26 ("anybody white could take your whole self...")

She talks about so many of her many-layered influences: Margaret Garner, women/motherhood, choice (TATD connection!), denial of humanity, the "rationale for the ghost," the past, personal/racial/national history, black "self-flagellation," her position as a famous author, etc.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
RARE Toni Morrison interview on "Beloved" (1987)

# data[].attributes.body
Brown Skin Girl music video
Black is King, a film by Beyonce (trailer)
Love Drought + Sandcastles, live at 2017 Grammys

Articles about Beyonce's work
THINK article about colorism and inclusion
Article by bell hooks on Beyonce's Lemonade

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Beyoncé, Blue Ivy, SAINt JHN, WizKid - BROWN SKIN GIRL (Official Video)

# data[].attributes.headline
Toni Morrison and Junot Diaz NY Public Library

# data[].attributes.subject
Toni Morrison and Junot Diaz NY Public Library

# data[].attributes.body
32:00: Junot introduces the idea of animals and the “thin line between animal and human”

She talks about Paul and the Chicken (spoiler alert)

38:30: moves into her motivation, inspiration for Beloved--starts with the “milking” of Sethe by schoolteacher

Margaret Garner

1:08:00 in the questions portion

Addresses clarifying the history of race within United States and literature…

Postulates that the black men who previously wrote and became famous were proliferated based on their disdain of white people.

She wants people to remember that there was a time before this ability to speak out against racism when racism and self-hate could eat away and kill people.

1:14:00

Addresses storytelling and the supernatural in her family

# data[].attributes.body
Kara Walker, Simone Leigh, and others!
Black Contemporary Art
The Utterly Original Bill Traylor
Jacob Lawrence
Brazilian Art (and the muzzled figure)
Kerry James Marshall
Derrick Adams

# data[].attributes.body
White Ships / Black Cargo

complementary line from poet, Adrienne Rich: "This is the oppressor's language yet I need it to talk to you"

# data[].attributes.body
Faulkner as inspiration for Morrison
Concept of internal/external freedom
Morality

# data[].attributes.body
Editors Kimberly Drew and Jenna Wortham have said repeatedly in interviews that they were inspired by Toni Morrison's Black Book. It looks at contemporary Black culture and includes art, photos, fashion, essays, recipes, playlists, screenshots of tweets from "Black Twitter" and so much more! A great complement for the heavy discussions about race in America because it encapsulates so much JOY and the power of creation in response to trauma. It is over 500 pages from over 150 contributors.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Nonfiction

"There Are Black People in the Future," a billboard installation by Alisha Wormsley in Pittsburgh. Credit... Alisha B. Wormsley

When you purchase an independently reviewed book through our site, we earn an affiliate commission.

BLACK FUTURES
By Kimberly Drew and Jenna Wortham

The best way to read "Black Futures" is, frankly, as slowly as possible. At over 500 pages, it's heavy, literally and figuratively. Every page of this oversize illustrated book is dense, even when it's just a few lines of white print on black background, or a sepia portrait of Representative Ilhan Omar. The book's curators, Kimberly Drew (the former social media manager at the Metropolitan Museum) and the New York Times Magazine culture writer Jenna Wortham, advise that "like us, this book is not linear," nor is it meant to be read as such; you can enter and exit the project on whatever pages you choose. This freedom creates a literary experience unlike any I've had in recent memory - once you start reading "Black Futures," you are somehow endlessly reading it, even long after you've devoured every page. An offshoot of the Black Futures Project, which "started a few years ago as a direct message exchange on Twitter and has evolved into a shared desire to archive a moment," the book is filled with essays, interviews, art, photography, poems, tweets, memes and screenshots, all celebrating the infinite expansiveness of Blackness. With contributions from Black creators like Kiese Laymon and Solange Knowles, Samantha Irby and Hanif Abdurraqib, "Black Futures" succeeds in answering the incredibly heady question it poses for itself: What does it mean to be a Black person around the world, then, now or in the future?
[ This book was one of our most anticipated titles of December. See the full list. ]
I am not Black, and I imagine it's a fundamentally different experience to read this book if you are. But still I read it with a powerful sense of urgency; its messages can and should speak to anyone. Drew and Wortham recommend reading the book "alongside a device so you can search out names and terms that intrigue you. See where they lead." That's where so much of the pleasure of "Black Futures" lives: in getting lost down rabbit holes, learning more about, say, Black trans visibility or Black farming or Black hair. The brief chapters reach in seemingly infinite directions, each one a portal into what could be an entire book on its own.

Once you start reading "Black Futures," you are somehow endlessly reading it, even long after you've devoured every page.

Black art is so often relegated to stories about the past - or, rather, stories we think are from the past, as if the Voting Rights Act weren't still deeply relevant today - or stories of trauma, death and pain. "Black Futures" does indeed include stories of grief and tragedy, with odes to Sandra Bland and a museum display of jars filled with soil from lynching sites. I didn't expect to be so touched by a chapter about how Black people are affected by ocean justice, and yet I read those seven pages over and over. "Now you know what I know," the marine biologist Ayana Elizabeth Johnson writes. "Perhaps now you will see this is your fight too." It's a question any non-Black person inevitably comes back to again and again throughout the book: If you know the fight, will you join it?

[ Read an excerpt from "Black Futures." ]
But "Black Futures" goes beyond the public sphere to offer a more prismatic and private view of Black life as well, in recipes for "fried pig ears, for snackin'" and coconut sweetbread, rituals for self-compassion, photo essays of Black folks at dance parties, memes written for and by Black people. It feels like a blessing to be let in on these moments of joyous intimacy. You feel thankful for being offered entry.

"Black Futures" doesn't try to encapsulate the whole past and present of Blackness around the world, but instead, to give us an impressive start, a blueprint for this moment and the next, for where Black folks have been and where they might be going. It's a document that could flex and change with time, that could have endless editions attached to it as Black life moves apace. For now it serves as a living and breathing memorandum, and a pressing reminder that anyone anywhere can - must - join the fight.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
A Peek at the Variety, Wonder and Trauma of Black Life, Then and Now (Published 2020)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Nonfiction When you purchase an independently reviewed book through our site, we earn an affiliate commission. BLACK FUTURES By Kimberly Drew and Jenna Wortham The best way to read "Black Futures" is, frankly, as slowly as possible. At over 500 pages, it's heavy, literally and figuratively.

# data[].attributes.body
This season dissects Beyonce's visual album over 11 episodes, with supporting visual guides. Connections to the themes and imagery of Beloved, including: the way the past & present are intertwined, the lasting impact of slavery, folklore, motherhood, and more

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Listen to this episode from Dissect on Spotify. Surprise! Season 6 is dedicated to Beyoncé's masterwork Lemonade. Through in-depth, highly researched analysis, we follow Beyoncé on her transcendent journey from subjugation to freedom. Today we unpack the visual album's opening chapter "Intuition," which features the song "Pray You Catch Me."

# data[].attributes.headline
Beyonce's Grammys Tribute to African Diaspora & Spirituality

# data[].attributes.subject
Beyonce's Grammys Tribute to African Diaspora & Spirituality

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
In her Grammy performance on Sunday night, Beyonce styled herself as not one but at least two religious icons: Oshun, a Yoruba deity from West Africa, and the Virgin Mary. Beyonce, draped in yellow, recalled images of the Yoruba goddess of fertility and love. Her ornate gold headdress drew comparisons to the halo that frames depictions of Black Madonna.

The performance, hailed by some as an ode to motherhood and by others as a call to black America, is also a continuation of Beyonce's use of African spirituality, specifically traditions that have spread across the world through the African diaspora. Yoruba culture and religion spread from West Africa to the Americas through the Atlantic slave trade and today are part of religious traditions in South America and the Caribbean.

Oshun, one of more than 400 orisha, deities of the Yoruba pantheon, is known as Ochún or Oxúm in Latin America. The goddess makes an appearance in Lemonade.

Anotherorisha, , features in Beyonce's recent photo shoot announcing her pregnancy. Yemoja, (also referred to as Yemaya in Santeria and Mami Wata in other traditions), is a water goddess and patron saint for expecting mothers. Historians believe slaves combined the concepts of Yemoja and the Virgin Mary in the New World. Some have noted that representations of her cropped up during the Atlantic journey, with slaves calling on her for protection at sea.

Beyonce ended her performance with a line from the Somali-British poet, Warsan Shire, whose words have become a rallying call for another diaspora-refugees from the Middle East and parts of Africa, banned by US president Donald Trump. Beyonce said, "If we're going to heal, let it be glorious. One thousand girls raise their arms."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
At the Grammys, Beyonce paid an epic tribute to African diaspora spirituality

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In her Grammy performance on Sunday night, Beyonce styled herself as not one but at least two religious icons: Oshun, a Yoruba deity from West Africa, and the Virgin Mary. Beyonce, draped in yellow, recalled images of the Yoruba goddess of fertility and love.

# data[].attributes.body
A powerful panel of Black leaders discuss America's past, present, and future through the lens of George Floyd's murder and the resulting protests.

# data[].attributes.headline
Kimberly Drew's (editor of Black Futures) Black Contemporary Art Tumblr

# data[].attributes.subject
Kimberly Drew's (editor of Black Futures) Black Contemporary Art Tumblr

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
chickenbonethrone:

Kerry James Marshall

A Portrait of the Artist As a Shadow of His Former Self, 1980

3:51 pm * 7 April 2019 * 19,472 notes

Amy Sherald
The lesson of falling leaves, 2017
Collection: The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles

(Source: moca.org)
1:01 am * 30 March 2019 * 402 notes

Senga Nengudi
R.S.V.P., 1975
Collection: The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles

Though Senga Nengudi's R.S.V.P. is abstract, its forms suggest a body or body parts-limbs, breasts, buttocks, appendages, wombs. Store-bought nylon pantyhose filled with sand, knotted, stretched, and tacked to the wall mimic the elasticity of skin, tender at life's beginnings and then sagging with age and strain. It is particularly piercing that the crotch of the pantyhose, splayed out vulnerably at the sculpture's center, bears dramatic forces of tension and suspension. The cultural associations of the hosiery and its color identify the body alluded to as black and feminine. Yet the body in question also belongs to viewers: the title of the work, a commonly used French acronym, entreats viewers to "please respond." Nengudi frequently used her R.S.V.P. series in choreographed performances, where the sculptures served as restraints, props, and costumes.

12:57 am * 30 March 2019 * 141 notes
Remy Jungerman
Peepina Devil Maroon A8 (and detail), 2011
27,5 39 inch (70 x 100 cm)

(Source: remyjungerman.com)
7:14 pm * 6 January 2019 * 174 notes

Thierry Tian Sio Po
L'image de l'occidentale dans la peinture caribéenne, 2010,
120x 150, Acrylique, aluminium, tôle, terre, vernis sur toile

8:47 am * 4 January 2019 * 234 notes

Victoria Santa Cruz (Peru 1922-2014 Peru)
Still from Me gritaron negra (They shouted black at me), 1978
Documentation of performance, excerpted from the documentary Victoria-Black and Woman, 1978. Director: Torgeir Wethal; producer: Odin Teatret Film Video. Video, black and white, sound; 3:58 min. OTA-Odin Teatret Archives

(Source: brooklynmuseum.org)
12:54 pm * 20 November 2018 * 383 notes

Sonya Clark (Born 1967, Washington, D.C.)
Twenty-one, 1998
Cloth and thread
5 ¼ x 28 inches
Collection: Cranbrook Art Museum
12:26 pm * 20 November 2018 * 462 notes Close to the Edge: The Birth of Hip-Hop Architecture
Curator: Sekou Cooke
Center for Architecture, New York
Oct 01, 2018 to Jan 12, 2019

Images: PHAT (Nathaniel Belcher, Stephen Slaughter), Harlem Ghetto Fabulous, 2003. Courtesy of the artists; Delta, Exothermic, 2010, Eindhoven, Netherlands. Courtesy of the artists; and Olalekan Jeyifous, Surface Armatures, 2014, Brooklyn. Courtesy of the artist
12:24 pm * 20 November 2018 * 129 notes

Frank Bowling, Greenacross I, 2009. Acrylic paint and gel on paper.

(via nyctaeus)
7:24 am * 16 June 2018 * 710 notes

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
chickenbonethrone: Kerry James Marshall A Portrait of the Artist As a Shadow of His Former Self, 1980 3:51 pm * 7 April 2019 * 19,472 notes Amy Sherald The lesson of falling leaves, 2017Collection: The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (Source: moca.org) 1:01 am * 30 March 2019 * 402 notes Senga Nengudi R.S.V.P., 1975Collection: The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles Though Senga Nengudi's R.S.V.P.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
"I am Beyoncé Giselle Knowles-Carter," sings Beyoncé in "Mood 4 Eva," one of the tracks on her just-released visual album Black Is King. But that's not all she is: "I am the Nala, sister of Naruba, Osun, Queen Sheba, I am the mother."

Some of those names are self-explanatory. Beyoncé is Nala because she played Nala in last year's Lion King remake, for which Black Is King is a companion piece. But by calling out Osun, Beyoncé is once again positioning herself with the Yoruba deity Osun, or more commonly Oshun, and making explicit the visual parallels she draws between herself and Oshun throughout the film.

Oshun's not Beyoncé's first alter ego. Early in her solo career, Beyoncé introduced audiences to an identity she called Sasha Fierce, whom she described as "the fun, more sensual, more aggressive, more outspoken side and more glamorous side that comes out when I'm working and when I'm on the stage." After releasing an album titled I Am ... Sasha Fierce in 2008, Beyoncé officially killed her alter ego off in 2010, saying, "I've grown, and now I'm able to merge the two."

But lately, Beyoncé has seemed interested in playing with a new and different persona. She incorporated Oshun imagery into her 2016 visual album Lemonade, and she has returned again and again to Oshun iconography in photo essays and videos since then.

Here's an overview of Beyoncé's Oshun connection and what makes Oshun such a powerful fit for Queen Bey.

Oshun is a goddess of love and beauty. Beyoncé's been identifying with her for years.

In the Yoruba cosmology of southwestern Nigeria and Benin, Oshun is the goddess, or orisha, of love, sensuality, and femininity. She is a river goddess, and one of her attributes is to bring forth sweet and fertile waters. Oshun is a mother: Her waters were central to the creation of humanity, and she looks after small children before they can speak. She's also associated with wealth and is said to love shiny things. She's often represented draped in yellow.

"Oshun exudes sensuality and all the qualities associated with fresh, flowing river water," wrote Oshun follower Valerie Mesa for Vice in 2018. "Her sparkling charisma can light up a room, and her lush womanly figure suggests fertility and eroticism. Oshun's favorite thing to eat is honey, and her contagious laugh can either put you under her spell or send shivers down your spine." And Oshun, who is said to be jealous, can be vengeful when she is crossed: "Oshun is as sweet as honey," Mesa writes, "but her honey can also turn sour."

In Lemonade (not so coincidentally, a form of sweet water), Beyoncé spends a long interlude submerged in a dreamlike state underwater. As "Hold Up" starts playing, shepushes open a set of doors and emerges in a great flood of water, dressed in a flowing yellow gown, and starts to wreak her vengeance on her cheating man. This moment, Africana studies professor Amy Yeboah told PBS in 2016, is "her emergence as an orisha." It's the point where Beyoncé is reborn as Oshun.

In 2017, Beyoncé returned to Oshun imagery in a photo essay announcing that she was pregnant with twins. The maternity announcement was laced with goddess imagery pulling from different religious traditions, so that at some points in the shoot, Beyoncé is recognizably the Virgin Mary, and in others, she's Venus. But she also drapes herself in yellow and submerges herself in sparkling water, becoming Oshun once again.

At the 2017 Grammys, Beyoncé continued to play with divine imagery from different traditions. In her performance of Lemonade 's "Love Drought" and "Sandcastles," she donned a beaded gold gown and headdress and yellow silk, and as she posed with her dancers, she became variously Mary, Jesus, Venus, the Hindu goddess Kali, and - once again - Oshun.

In Black Is King, Beyoncé ditches any Western references. Black Is King is a love letter to the African diaspora, and while Beyoncé is, as always, representing herself as a goddess in this album, she's specifically and solelythe Yoruba goddess Oshun. She wears Oshun's yellow and shining beads and cowrie shells; she emerges from the sweet water; she surrounds herself with flowers of fertility; she watches over children. She makes her connection to the goddess as explicit as possible: "I am Osun," she sings.

In associating herself with Oshun, Beyoncé is highlighting certain key parts of her image. She's always been an untouchable goddess, and she's always been sexy, but now she is maintaining that her beauty is divine and so is her motherhood, and that they are inextricably linked. She's connecting herself to a cosmology in which beauty and love and prosperity all come from the same source, and she's naming herself as that source.

And she is very firmly, pointedly saying that none of these wonderful things - love, beauty, divinity, prosperity - have to come from the West. They have a source in Africa. Throughout all of Black is King, Beyoncé is putting that source at the center of her work.

We always knew she was a goddess. Now she's telling us exactly which one she is.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Meet the African goddess at the center of Beyoncé's Black Is King

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
"I am Beyoncé Giselle Knowles-Carter," sings Beyoncé in "Mood 4 Eva," one of the tracks on her just-released visual album Black Is King. But that's not all she is: "I am the Nala, sister of Naruba, Osun, Queen Sheba, I am the mother." Some of those names are self-explanatory.

# data[].attributes.headline
Should Beloved be banned? Controversy plays a role in Virginia politics

# data[].attributes.subject
Should Beloved be banned? Controversy plays a role in Virginia politics

# data[].attributes.body
Washington Post article
New York Times article

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Virginia Democratic gubernatorial candidate and former governor Terry McAuliffe, left, and Republican challenger, Glenn Youngkin, after a debate on Sept. 28. (Cliff Owen/AP)

So begins Toni Morrison's classic novel "Beloved."

But the spite in that house at 124 Bluestone Road is nothing like the rage tearing apart the state of Virginia this fall.

Improbably, the governor's race - already spooked by the specter of former president Donald Trump - is swirling around issues of literary merit, educational standards and Morrison's Pulitzer Prize-winning book about the life of a Civil War-era Black woman who kills her own baby rather than see the child enslaved on a Southern plantation.

In "Beloved," the murdered baby's spirit lingers among the living, an insistent, unsettling manifestation of the traumas of slavery. Morrison once explained that she was wary of approaching that difficult subject. "It was a caution based on my early years as a student," she said, "during which time I was keenly aware of erasures and absences and silences in the written history available to me - silences that I took for censure." Those forces of erasure and censure still haunt us.

In the days leading up to the neck-and-neck Tuesday election, Republican candidate Glenn Youngkin has staked his campaign on protecting students from discomfiting books. At a gubernatorial debate on Sept. 28, Youngkin castigated his opponent, former Gov. Terry McAuliffe, for vetoing a bill that would have required K-12 teachers to notify parents of classroom materials with "sexually explicit content." Under that legislation, the parents of more than a million Virginia students would have been empowered to demand alternative assignments for any text that pricked their sensibilities.

Fight over teaching 'Beloved' book in schools becomes hot topic in Virginia governor's race

Youngkin was careful not to mention that the legislation McAuliffe vetoed - twice - was nicknamed the "Beloved bill." But Virginians have been railing against "Beloved" for years. The trouble started in Fairfax County in 2013 when Laura Murphy complained that her son, a high school senior taking Advanced Placement English, had nightmares after reading Morrison's novel.

In the grand tradition of past moral panics stretching back through rock music, comic books and girls wearing pants, Murphy got the Virginia General Assembly to write legislation enshrining her vision of a parent-sanitized curriculum for each student. The debate was rife with pearl clutching about naughty words and shocking descriptions. David Albo (R-Fairfax) told The Washington Post that a passage in one of Morrison's books was worse than anything he had seen while living in his college fraternity. "There's not very much stuff that offends me," he said, "and even I was aghast at how bad it was."

Fortunately, McAuliffe vetoed the "Beloved bill" in 2016 and again when it crawled out of the ground in 2017. During the gubernatorial debate last month, he said, "I don't think parents should be telling schools what they should teach."

Republicans have been quick to take McAuliffe's statement out of context, which stands to reason because taking sentences out of context is the essence of their cynical political battle against teachers' expertise and professional curriculum development.

This week Murphy is back doing her best Anthony Comstock imitation in a political ad sponsored by Youngkin. Sitting in a living room, staring into the camera, she says, "When my son showed me his reading assignment, my heart sunk. It was some of the most explicit material you can imagine." A close-up of her wringing hands dares us to imagine just how explicit that material must have been. Bright flames in the fireplace behind her remind us where that filth deserves to go. "I met with lawmakers," Murphy says. "They couldn't believe what I was showing them. Their faces turned bright red with embarrassment."

The perfect distillation of 2021 politics is a banned-book controversy from 2013

Who wouldn't turn bright red with embarrassment for an adult scurrying around the state capitol showing legislators what she thinks are the dirty parts of a canonical novel by a Nobel Prize winner? It's no coincidence that Murphy doesn't mention in her ad that she's talking about "Beloved." Her profoundly destructive argument is the same one used this fall by other Virginia parents objecting to celebrated young adult novels by Jonathan Evison and Maia Kobabe. Such efforts always rest on stripping away artistic and moral context, reducing a book to a few isolated passages and then encouraging listeners to make a visceral, uninformed judgment.

To see how dubious that method is consider a play about a 13-year-old girl who commits suicide after a one-night stand: Who would teach that - "Romeo & Juliet" - to freshmen? If the eye-gouging scene in "King Lear" doesn't give you nightmares, you're not paying attention. And what about Ezekiel 16:17 or 2 Kings 6:28-29? Try reading those Bible passages to Virginia legislators and watch their faces.

The fact is, no great work of art can endure being drawn and quartered for a polemical purity ritual. And that tactic feels particularly crude when it comes to "Beloved," a novel my wife and I have both taught to high school juniors. In our respective classes - in Missouri and Massachusetts - the students were never thrown into the text without guidance, appropriate warnings and relevant historical background. These thoughtful teens knew that what's uncomfortable to read in Morrison's classic wasn't there for White folks to highlight in yellow and lob around with shrieks of horror.

Trailblazing author Toni Morrison was the first African American woman to win the Nobel prize for literature, died Aug. 5, 2019. Her legacy goes beyond awards. (Adriana Usero/The Washington Post)

Morrison worked hard to pierce more than a century of Southern nostalgia as she researched the true story of Margaret Garner, the escaped enslaved person who killed her daughter to keep her from being dragged back to slavery. Morrison discovered the grotesque tools of torture, and the story she told exposed as never before the sexual violence that sustained America's "peculiar institution."

Which is to say, of course "Beloved" contains obscene passages; the obscenity is the point. And young men and women old enough to drive their cars past statues honoring Confederate generals are old enough to get that.

Alas, it's likely that Murphy, Youngkin and their fellow Republicans don't realize that they're echoing 19th-century White readers who demanded that stories about the abuses of slavery defer to their delicate tastes. They were wrong then, and they're wrong now.

Great American novels don't need to come with warning labels, and high schools shouldn't be balkanized into a jumble of students each reading the least offensive books their parents are willing to approve. We're freer than that and smarter than that - or should be.

Ron Charles writes about books for The Washington Post and hosts TotallyHipVideoBookReview.com.

A note to our readers

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Perspective | In the Va. governor's race, 'Beloved' is reduced to its most explicit parts. That's obscene.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
So begins Toni Morrison's classic novel "Beloved." But the spite in that house at 124 Bluestone Road is nothing like the rage tearing apart the state of Virginia this fall.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Poverty Policing Pandemic: A #BlackLivesMatter Grounding Exercise

# data[].attributes.headline
The Black Genius Joint by Nikole Hannah-Jones

# data[].attributes.subject
The Black Genius Joint by Nikole Hannah-Jones

# data[].attributes.body
I love this because it is good to see writers like her and Ta-Nehisi Coates "let their hair down" after reading and listening to their pieces.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Beyoncé can break the internet anytime she wants, and yesterday she did, posting a striking photo announcing her pregnancy with twins to Instagram. Shot by LA and New York-based artist Awol Erizku, that image was just part of a larger set released today, in which she poses underwater and references classical artworks like Botticelli's The Birth of Venus.

"I make things that I want to see in the world," Erizku told The Creators Project in a 2015 interview. "I'm deeply interested in color and composition and how things come together. If you look at my studio, I just take found objects and then I repurpose them so they can have a meaning, and they look like hopefully interesting objects to look at, but deep down inside, it's all from the way I look at the world and how colors speak to me."

His chromatic instinct and attraction to bold floral arrangements mark the photos as Erizku's as much as Beyoncé's. Fans of Erizku's work will notice one of his found objects in the photoshoot: Beyoncé sits atop a red car inflated with flowers, taken from Erizku's 2016 collaboration with Sarah Lineburger, Ask the Dust.

Navigating Beyoncé's website is an experience in and of itself. The browser window features a constantly-changing cast of photos and aesthetics depending on when you reach her site. Every new refresh yields photos from throughout Beyoncé's life, from a picture of her mother's pregnancy to her engagement with Jay-Z to her daughter Blue Ivy kissing her new baby bump.

The photographs are interspersed with words from poet Warsan Shire. The announcement's hashtag-worthy slogan "I Have Three Hearts" heads a few introspective stanzas about pregnancy and motherhood.

Erizku got his BA at the Cooper Union School of Art, went to grad school at Yale, has hosted screenings at MoMA, and is known for a multidisciplinary approach to photography and painting founded on bright blocks of color and utter empathy for the human condition. He's been harrassed and threatened for his work, including calls from a lawyer after publishing series about sex workers in his birth country of Ethiopia.

The Guinness Book of World Records certifiies that Beyoncé and Erizku's initial photo became the most-liked post on Instagram within eight hours, coolly breezing past Selena Gomez's previous record. It boasts over 8 million likes at the time of posting. Below, check more images from the series.

Follow Awol Erizku's work on his website. See the full image set on Beyoncé's website.
Awol Erizku Talks Creative Voice andDuchamp Detox Clinic Nail Salon Paintings Critique a Ubiquitous Self-Care Symbol REJECTED: A Brilliant Treatment For Beyonce's "Countdown" From DANIELS

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Beyonce's Pregnancy Photos and the Contemporary Artist Behind Them

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Beyoncé can break the internet anytime she wants, and yesterday she did, posting a striking photo announcing her pregnancy with twins to Instagram. Shot by LA and New York-based artist Awol Erizku, that image was just part of a larger set released today, in which she poses underwater and references classical artworks like Botticelli's The Birth of Venus .

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
An HBO documentary explores two centuries of art by African-Americans, and the path they forged for contemporary Black artists.

Kerry James Marshall's ''Untitled (Studio)'' (2014) appears in "Black Art: In the Absence of Light," a documentary film directed by Sam Pollard. Credit... HBO

Black Art: In the Absence of Light

NYT Critic's Pick

"This is Black art. And it matters. And it's been going on for two hundred years. Deal with it."

So declares the art historian Maurice Berger toward the beginning of "Black Art: In the Absence of Light," a rich and absorbing documentary directed by Sam Pollard ( "MLK/FBI") and debuting on HBO Tuesday night.

The feature-length film, assembled from interviews with contemporary artists, curators and scholars, was inspired by a single 1976 exhibition, "Two Centuries of Black American Art," the first large-scale survey of African-American artists. Organized by the artist David C. Driskell, who was then-head of the art department at Fisk University, it included some 200 works dating from the mid-18th to the mid-20th century, and advanced a history that few Americans, including art professionals, even knew existed.

Image

The HBO documentary recalls a landmark show "Two Centuries of Black American Art" at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1976. It was organized by David C. Driskell. Credit... Museum Associates/LACMA

The press gave that survey a mixed reception. Some writers griped that it was more about sociology than art (Driskell himself didn't entirely disagree). But the show was a popular hit. At the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, where it originated, and then at major museums in Dallas, Atlanta and Brooklyn, people lined up to see it.

What they were seeing was that Black artists had always done distinctive work in parallel to, and some within, a white-dominated mainstream that ignored them. And they were seeing that Black artists had consistently made, and are continuing to make, some of the most conceptually exciting and urgent-minded American art, period - a reality only quite recently acknowledged by the art world at large, as reflected in exhibitions, sales and critical attention.

Driskell appeared in the HBO documentary before he died last year. "Isolation isn't, and never was, the Black artist's goal," he said. "He has tried to be part and parcel of the mainstream, only to be shut out." Credit... HBO

The HBO documentary introduces us to this history of long neglect and recent correction through the eloquent voices of three people who lived both sides of it: Driskell, a revered painter and teacher; Mary Schmidt Campbell, the president of Spelman College in Atlanta, Ga., and former director of the Studio Museum in Harlem; and Berger, an esteemed art historian and curator. (The film is dedicated to the two men, both of whom died from complications related to Covid-19 in 2020, Driskell at 88, Berger at 63.)

They're surrounded by artists, most of them painters, of various generations. Some had careers that were well underway by 1976 ( Betye Saar, for example, and Richard Mayhew, who was in the survey). Others were, at that point, just starting out in the field. ( Kerry James Marshall remembers being blown away by a visit to the show when he was 21). Still others - Kehinde Wiley (born 1977) and Jordan Casteel (born 1989) - weren't born when the survey opened but still count themselves among its beneficiaries.

The question arises early in the film - in a 1970s "Today Show" interview with Driskell by Tom Brokaw - as to whether the very use of the label "Black American art" isn't itself a form of imposed isolation. Yes, Driskell says, but in this case a strategic one. "Isolation isn't, and never was, the Black artist's goal. He has tried to be part and parcel of the mainstream, only to be shut out. Had this exhibition not been organized many of the artists in it would never have been seen."

The film refers, in shorthand form, to past examples of shutting-out. There's a reference to the Metropolitan Museum's 1969 "Harlem on My Mind: Cultural Capital of Black America, 1900-1968," an exhibition that was advertised as introducing Black creativity to the Met but that contained little in the way of art. And mention is made of artists' protests of the Whitney Museum's 1971 survey "Contemporary Black Artists in America," which was left entirely in the hands of a white curator.

A book of essays titled "Black Art Notes," printed that year in response to the Whitney show, accused white museums of "artwashing" through the token inclusion of African-American work, a charge that has continuing pertinence. (The collection was recently reissued, in a facsimile edition, by Primary Information, a nonprofit press in Brooklyn.) Even before the Met and Whitney shows, Black artists saw the clear necessity of taking control of how and where their art was seen into their own hands. Ethnically specific museums began to spring up - outstandingly, in 1968, the Studio Museum in Harlem.

The 1969 exhibition "Harlem on My Mind" resulted in demonstrators picketing outside the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Credit... Jack Manning/The New York Times

We're talking about a dense, complex history. No one film can hope to get all of it, and this one leaves a lot out. (Mention of the Black Power movement is all but absent here.) Still, there's a lot, encapsulated in short, deft commentary by scholars and curators, among them Campbell, Sarah Lewis of Harvard University, Richard J. Powell of Duke University, and Thelma Golden, the current director and chief curator of the Studio Museum. (Golden is a consulting producer of the film. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. is its executive producer.)

Rightfully, and delightfully, the majority of voices are those of active artists. Faith Ringgold, now 90, wasn't in the 1976 show, or in big museums much at all, because, she asserts, her work was too political and because she's female. (Of the 63 artists in "Two Centuries of Black American Art," 54 were male.) Her solution? "I just stay out till I get in," she says. (And persisting has paid off: Her monumental 1967 painting "American People Series #20: Die" has pride of place in the Museum of Modern Art's current permanent collection rehang.)

Particularly interesting are segments showing artists at work and talking about what they're doing as they're doing it. We visit Marshall in his studio as he explains the many, many paint colors he uses that are "black." We follow Fred Wilson into museum storage as he excavated objects that will become part of one of his history-baring installations. We watch Radcliffe Bailey transform hundreds of discarded piano keys into a Middle Passage ocean. And we tag along with the portraitist Jordan Casteel, who recently wrapped up a well-received show at the New Museum, as she seeks out sitters on Harlem streets.

There's no question that the visibility of African-American artists in the mainstream is way higher now than it's ever been. (Thank you, Black Lives Matter.) A big uptick in shows is one measure. Landmark events like the 2018 unveiling of the Obama portraits by Wiley and Amy Sherald is another.

In an interview in the film Sherald brings up this sudden surge of attention. "A lot of galleries are now picking up Black artists," she says. "There's this gold rush." But where some observers would see the interest as just a next-hot-thing marketing trend driven by a branding of "Blackness," she doesn't. "I say it's because we're making some of the best work, and most relevant work."

In 2018, Kehinde Wiley, left, unveiled his painting of Barack Obama, alongside Amy Sherald's portrait of Michelle Obama, at the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery. Credit... Gabriella Demczuk for The New York Times

The point of Pollard's film, which was also the point of Driskell's 1976 survey, is to demonstrate that, and to demonstrate that Black artists have been making some of the best work and the most relevant work for decades, centuries. But they've been making it mostly on the margins, beyond the white art world's spotlights.

The artist Theaster Gates, who appears toward the end of the film, sees the advantage, even the necessity, of that positioning.

"Black art means that sometimes I'm making when no one's looking," he says. "For the most part that has been the truth of our lives. Until we own the light, I'm not happy. Until we're in our own houses of exhibitions, of discovery, of research, until we've figured out a way to be masters of the world, I'd rather work in darkness. I don't want to work only when the light comes on. My fear is that we're being trained and conditioned to only make if there's a light, and that makes us codependent upon a thing we don't control. Are you willing," he asks his fellow artists, "to make in the absence of light?"

Driskell, to whom this film really belongs and with whose presence it concludes, also leaves the question of the future of Black art open-ended. Around it, he's says, "there's been an awakening, an enlightenment through education, a desire to want to know. On the other hand, in the words of Martin Luther King Jr. : We haven't reached the promised land. We've got a long way to go."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
'Black Art: In the Absence of Light' Reveals a History of Neglect and Triumph

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
An HBO documentary explores two centuries of art by African-Americans, and the path they forged for contemporary Black artists. Black Art: In the Absence of Light NYT Critic's Pick "This is Black art. And it matters. And it's been going on for two hundred years. Deal with it."

# data[].attributes.body
"What would America be like if we loved black people as much as we love black culture?” (Amandla Stenberg, 2015)
Juxtaposition of Google's promotional Black History Month "most searched" video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qyiautg41h8) with this art video by Arthur Jafa.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Arthur Jafa: LOVE IS THE MESSAGE, THE MESSAGE IS DEATH

# data[].attributes.body
New York Times Article: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/24/arts/design/marking-time-review-moma-ps1.html

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
This major exhibition explores the work of artists within US prisons and the centrality of incarceration to contemporary art and culture. Featuring art made by people in prisons and work by nonincarcerated artists concerned with state repression, erasure, and imprisonment, Marking Time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration highlights more than 35 artists, including American Artist, Tameca Cole, Russell Craig, James "Yaya" Hough, Jesse Krimes, Mark Loughney, Gilberto Rivera, and Sable Elyse Smith. The exhibition has been updated to reflect the growing COVID-19 crisis in US prisons, featuring new works by exhibition artists made in response to this ongoing emergency.

On view across PS1's first floor galleries, Marking Time features works that bear witness to artists' reimagining of the fundamentals of living-time, space, and physical matter-pushing the possibilities of these basic features of daily experience to create new aesthetic visions achieved through material and formal invention. The resulting work is often laborious, time-consuming, and immersive, as incarcerated artists manage penal time through their work and experiment with the material constraints that shape art making in prison. The exhibition also includes work made by nonincarcerated artists-both artists who were formerly incarcerated and those personally impacted by the US prison system. From various sites of freedom or unfreedom, these artists devise strategies for visualizing, mapping, and making physically present the impact and scale of life under carceral conditions. Alongside the exhibition, a series of public programs, education initiatives, and ongoing projects will explore the social and cultural impact of mass incarceration.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Marking Time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration | MoMA

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Exhibition. Through Apr 4, 2021. This major exhibition explores the work of artists within US prisons and the centrality of incarceration to contemporary art and culture.

# data[].attributes.headline
"If you can only be tall because somebody else is on their knees..." Toni Morrison

# data[].attributes.subject
"If you can only be tall because somebody else is on their knees..." Toni Morrison

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
White People Have a Very Very Serious Problem - Toni  Morrison on Charlie Rose

# data[].attributes.headline
From So You Wanna Talk about Race by Ijeoma Oluo on the N-word

# data[].attributes.subject
From So You Wanna Talk about Race by Ijeoma Oluo on the N-word

# data[].attributes.body
"And even if people of color wanted to force someone to stop, we have very little power to do so. The important question for [non-black] people is, why would a well-meaning person want to say these words in the first place? Why would you want to invoke that pain that you are privileged enough to not be negatively impacted by the legacy of racial oppression that these words helped create?" (140)

# data[].attributes.headline
Isis tha Saviour: motherhood and mass incarceration

# data[].attributes.subject
Isis tha Saviour: motherhood and mass incarceration

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
subscribe to Louder Than A Riot podcast

subscribe to Louder Than A Riot podcast

Hip-hop loves a hero's come-up - those stories of underdogs who make it to the top. But the culture tends to have a hard time seeing women as heroes, often diluting them into tropes instead: sex symbol, sister, mother.

Two years ago, when Louder Than A Riot editor Chiquita Paschal discovered she had a sister - who rapped - she quickly saw what it takes to push back against those stereotypes. Chiquita's sister, Mary Enoch Elizabeth Baxter, is Philly rapper Isis Tha Saviour, an identity born out of the need to save herself.

At age 11, Mary had to make the impossible choice to either remain in the custody of her mother who has schizophrenia or become a ward of the state. She chose the latter, and was shuffled from institution to institution: group homes, hospitals, behavioral programs and, eventually, a prison stint. Mary had to look for solace in places other than home. She found it in friends, music and the mythology of the goddess Isis.

In this episode, Chiquita takes us on Mary's hero's journey. And together, they delve into incarceration's ripple effects on families like theirs, and how the art of hip-hop can help transform trauma into freedom.
To follow along with the music in this episode, check out the Louder Than A Riot playlists on To connect with us, follow the show on Twitter @LouderThanARiot, or send us an email at louder@npr.org.Apple Music & Spotify. We'll update them every week.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
'Prison To Prison Pipeline': Isis Tha Saviour : Louder Than A Riot

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Hip-hop loves a hero's come-up, but the culture often has a hard time seeing women as heroes. Two years ago, when Louder Than A Riot editor Chiquita Paschal discovered she had a sister - who rapped - she quickly saw how that double standard can take shape.

# data[].attributes.body
Menakem explains generational trauma-that every African American carries. The book discusses in depth, how white people can raise their awareness of their reactions to black bodies, and how white folks can learn to control their own bodies/reactions while in the presence of black folx. KEY: The Five Anchors to calming your body:
Anchor 1. Settle: calm, soothe the mind.

Anchor 2. Notice: what  are the sensations, emotions without reacting to them

Anchor 3. Accept the discomfort and sit with it.

Anchor 4. Stay present  in the moment

Anchor 5. Discharge the extra energy

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies a book by Resmaa Menakem

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The body is where our instincts reside and where we fight, flee, or freeze, and it endures the trauma inflicted by the ills that plague society. In this groundbreaking work, therapist Resmaa Menakem examines the damage caused by racism in America from the perspective of body-centered psychology. He…

# data[].attributes.body
Perspective from Colombia

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Lido Pimienta - "Nada" (feat. Li Saumet)

# data[].attributes.body
There is no liberation without JOY
(time to reframe the narrative!)
6 minute clip from interview

# data[].attributes.headline
Bettina Love on her visit to Ghana and on the term "grit."

# data[].attributes.subject
Bettina Love on her visit to Ghana and on the term "grit."

# data[].attributes.body
Love reflects on her visit to Slave departure point in Ghana and Black Resilience. She explains the degrading nuances of "grit."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Opinion

What a trip to Ghana taught me about education in America

Teachers and school leaders need to abandon teaching students to embrace "grit." In my new book, We Want to Do More Than Survive, I spend an entire chapter explaining how these quick fixes pathologize African-American children and are inherently anti-black. I argue that the idea of grit seems harmless at face value-we can all agree that children need grit to be successful in life, regardless of how you define success-but is actually the educational equivalent of The Hunger Games.

Measuring African-American students' grit while removing no institutional barriers, then watching to see who beats the odds makes for great Hollywood movies (i.e., "Dangerous Minds," "The Blind Side," "Freedom Writers") and leaves us all feeling good because the gritty black kid made it out of the 'hood. But we fail to acknowledge the hundreds of kids who are left behind because we are rooting for what we are told is an anomaly. However, if teachers knew how enslaved Africans made it to the United States and how we as African-Americans fight every day to matter in this country, I believe they would understand why questioning whether African-American kids have grit is not only trivial but also deeply hurtful.

This year marks 400 years since the first documented Africans arrived on U.S. soil in Point Comfort, Va. When we teach about slavery, if allowed to teach it at all, we frame it as a thing that happened to Africa. There is often no mention of Africa before slavery or what enslaved Africans endured to arrive in bondage in the New Americas. To revisit that history is to tell a story of terror, trauma, labor, and, of course, grit.

My revelations about Africa and grit came when I traveled to Ghana in December, especially when I arrived at Assin Manso "Ancestral" Slave River Park (also referred to as the "Last Bath"). After walking hundreds of miles in shackles, captured Africans arrived at the Last Bath, home to the Donko Nsuo, which literally means slave river. There, they were inspected, fed, branded with hot-iron steel, and given the last bath they would receive until they arrived, months later, in the New Americas. Africans who did not survive the trip to the Last Bath were left as prey, tied to trees to be eaten alive by wild animals. Those who made it to the Last Bath were beyond strong; they were determined to live. Once they left the Last Bath, they still had to travel another 34 miles on foot in shackles to the coast of Ghana to be housed in dungeons.

More From This Author:

"An Essay for Teachers Who Understand Racism Is Real"

"Teachers, We Cannot Go Back to the Way Things Were

"White Teachers Need Anti-Racist Therapy"

"How Schools Are 'Spirit Murdering' Black and Brown Students"

"Dear White Teachers: You Can't Love Your Black Students If You Don't Know Them"

There were approximately 40 dungeons in Ghana, West Africa. Though they are often referred to as castles, they are a far cry from the stuff of legends and fairy tales. I visited the Cape Coast dungeon, which stands on a site first occupied by the Portuguese in the mid-1500s. The Swedish, Dutch, and British all at one point in history controlled this site of terror, as they fought each other for the ability to profit from the sale of human bodies.

From the outside, the Cape Coast dungeon looks like a grand tourist attraction with large white walls, lush trees, and the sound of huge waves slamming into the rocks along the coastline. But that beauty is all a façade to hide some of the most hideous and unthinkable terrors of which human beings are capable.

Up to 1,000 male and 500 female enslaved Africans could be jammed into the dungeons at any given time. In dark, poorly ventilated holding cells in the pits of the Cape Coast dungeon, after walking upwards of 200 miles to get there, men and women were held captive in their own waste and served just enough food to keep them alive. The women were routinely raped.

Above the dungeon where the men were held was a church. Next to that sanctuary was a small, dark cell waiting for anyone who resisted their fate. In this hole, they would receive no food, no water, no reminder of the sun. They were simply left to die. After walking hundreds of miles and spending weeks in the dungeons, those who were still alive walked through the "Doors of No Return" to be loaded on ships as cargo. They were shackled to prevent rebellions that were, amazingly, common. After all they endured, all the attempts to weaken their bodies and their spirits, they still fought.

The African bodies that arrived in this country were superhuman. They survived diseases, starvation, beatings, and the human loss of never returning home again.

The Character Lab, founded by grit guru Angela Duckworth, defines grit as "perseverance and passion for long-term goals." Revising an essay repeatedly or not quitting a sport in the middle of the season, according to the Character Lab, are examples of gritty behavior.

But what if your long-term goal is fighting to live, fighting racism? Is 400 years long enough? You cannot measure this type of grit, nor should you ignore it. African-Americans are resilient and gritty because we have to be to survive, but it is misleading, naive, and dangerous to remove our history on both sides of the water from the conversation about grit.

We have rebelled, fought, confronted, pleaded with the courts, marched, protested, and boycotted all just to survive the United States of America. Grit is in our DNA. Ghana taught me that. But grit alone will not overthrow oppressive systems of power. We need teachers, school leaders, and policymakers who have grit for justice. We need educators who understand the legacy of African-Americans' grit-that we have survived because of it, and the surviving is not enough. Black people and brown people deserve the right to use their grit to thrive, not just survive.

Related Video

In 2016, Bettina L. Love, the author of this Commentary, spoke to Education Week about African-American girls and discipline. Here's what she had to say:

Published in Print: February 13, 2019, as 'Grit Is in Our DNA'

Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus.
Back to Top

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
'Grit Is in Our DNA': Why Teaching Grit Is Inherently Anti-Black

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Opinion Teachers and school leaders need to abandon teaching students to embrace "grit." In my new book, We Want to Do More Than Survive, I spend an entire chapter explaining how these quick fixes pathologize African-American children and are inherently anti-black.

# data[].attributes.body
New York Times profile. A long read, but it digs into some of the blanketed ideas that people have about prison reform and also dispels and digs deeper into some of the ideas that 13th hints at or generalizes.

This is also a talk that she did with Naomi Murakawa this summer who wrote a book premised on the liberal creation of prisons.

There is also an interview that she did with Democracy Now this summer about the parallels between the carceral state and COVID's impact in the US.

# data[].attributes.headline
Cathy Park Hong on Culture, Art, and Manipulation of English from Minor Feelings 

# data[].attributes.subject
Cathy Park Hong on Culture, Art, and Manipulation of English from Minor Feelings 

# data[].attributes.headline
New California Laws on policing, incarceration and slavery reparations

# data[].attributes.subject
New California Laws on policing, incarceration and slavery reparations

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Playlist of nine new California laws. Scroll through the playlist above.

In the past, state law only required treatment for nine serious mental illnesses. Even before the pandemic, more than half of Californians said most people with mental health conditions couldn't get the help they needed. Some families even dropped private insurance to qualify for treatment in the public mental health system.

California's new law will expand the list of conditions commercial insurers must cover. It includes medically necessary care for all mental health and substance use disorders.

Watch below as we explain this new California law in 1 minute.

Starting Jan. 1, 2021, roughly 6 million additional Californians will be able to take family leave with the guarantee that they can come back to their jobs.

The new law, by Democratic Sen. Hannah-Beth Jackson of Santa Barbara, extends job protections once reserved for employees of large companies to most workers in California.

Here's the new law in 1 minute.

Starting Jan. 1, California will have its first statewide policy banning police from using a couple of neck restraints: carotid restraints, which temporarily cut off blood flow to the brain, and chokeholds, which temporarily cut off a person's air.

In addition, the state attorney general will investigate incidents in which police kill anyone who is unarmed.

Watch below as we explain this new California law in 1 minute.

Support nonprofit journalism in California

We rely on the generous support of our readers. If you found our work valuable in this crisis-filled year for California, please consider supporting our newsroom.

It was a time of national racial introspection and wide-scale protest. Echoes of then are loud and clear in 2020, and the state's lawmakers were listening, voting this summer to make ethnic studies a graduation requirement for all California state university students.

Here's the new law in 1 minute.

As California has faced its most devastating wildfire season on record, nearly a third of the people on the frontlines have been state prisoners. Despite their firsthand experience, many incarcerated people couldn't become firefighters after being released. A new California law aims to change that and make it easier to hire formerly incarcerated firefighters.

Watch below as we explain this new California law in 1 minute.

A new law - carried by San Diego Democratic Assemblymember Shirley Weber - establishes a nine-person committee to study California's complicity in slavery, develop proposals on what reparations might look like for descendants of enslaved people, and determine who might get paid.

Reparations can take many forms - they could be direct cash payments or subsidized education and healthcare, or assistance for down payments on housing.

Watch below as we explain this new California law in 1 minute.

In 2019 Governor Gavin Newsom more than doubled how much money the state spends on its tax credit for low income workers.

But since its establishment in 2015, the credit has been unavailable for undocumented workers who pay taxes, until now.

Watch below as we explain this new California law in 1 minute.

This year Gov. Gavin Newsom announced the closure of these state facilities. Under a new law, California's three remaining youth prisons will no longer accept newly convicted youth after July 2021. Instead, counties will be responsible for young offenders who've committed the most serious offenses.

Those counties have until July to create plans to incorporate young people into their current juvenile hall and probation systems, but it's unclear how much funding they'll receive from the state.

Here's the new law in 1 minute.

Keep tabs on the latest California policy and politics news

More than nine months after Gov. Gavin Newsom issued the first shelter-in-place order, a new state law will require businesses - and the State Health Department - to report more COVID data.

The law requires businesses to notify employees within 24 hours if they've been exposed at work.

Watch below as we explain this new California law in 1 minute.
All videos by Nick Roberts and CalMatters' reporting team.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Nine new California laws for 2021, explained in 1 minute | CalMatters

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In the past, state law only required treatment for nine serious mental illnesses. Even before the pandemic, more than half of Californians said most people with mental health conditions couldn't get the help they needed. Some families even dropped private insurance to qualify for treatment in the public mental health system.

# data[].attributes.headline
NPR CodeSwitch "What About Your Friends"

# data[].attributes.subject
NPR CodeSwitch "What About Your Friends"

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
subscribe to Code Switch podcast

subscribe to Code Switch podcast

We help our listeners understand how race and and its evil play cousin, racism, affect our friendships. And we're doing it with help from WNYC's Death, Sex & Money podcast. Be a good friend and listen.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Ask Code Switch: What About Your Friends? : Code Switch

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
subscribe to Code Switch podcast subscribe to Code Switch podcast We help our listeners understand how race and and its evil play cousin, racism, affect our friendships. And we're doing it with help from WNYC's Death, Sex & Money podcast. Be a good friend and listen.

# data[].attributes.body
The remains of the last slave ship that came to America have been found. In 1860, the schooner Clotilda brought 110 Africans to U.S. shores, decades after it was illegal to import slaves into the country. The wreckage of the boat was discovered in Alabama’s Mobile River.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
PBS NewsHour
The remains of the last slave ship that came to America have been found. In 1860, the schooner Clotilda brought 110 Africans to U.S. shores, decades after it was illegal to import slaves into the country. The wreckage of the boat was discovered in Alabama's Mobile River. Megan Thompson reports on the search for Clotilda, its history and the significance for the descendants of those slaves.

Aired: 05/23/19

Rating: NR

The full episode is no longer available for online streaming. Why?

Please continue to enjoy extra(s) from this episode.

Problems Playing Video? Report a Problem |

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
PBS NewsHour | How discovery of slave ship Clotilda informs U.S. history | Season 2019

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
PBS NewsHour The remains of the last slave ship that came to America have been found. In 1860, the schooner Clotilda brought 110 Africans to U.S. shores, decades after it was illegal to import slaves into the country. The wreckage of the boat was discovered in Alabama's Mobile River.

# data[].attributes.headline
Genealogy, Modern Day Slavery, Reparations

# data[].attributes.subject
Genealogy, Modern Day Slavery, Reparations

# data[].attributes.body
connections to storytelling, identity, physical/mental freedom

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Genealogist Who Tracks Down Modern-Day Slavery Practices

# data[].attributes.body
Following Harriet podcast: topics include activism, women's rights, resilience
Michael Rosato's Harriet Tubman mural

Songs from Harriet film (overlaps with spirituals, conceptual & historical contexts):
Stand Up: https://youtu.be/sn19xvfoXvk & https://youtu.be/g3HICKj-4Zs

Goodbye Song: https://youtu.be/rOmjkPXNYGI

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Cynthia Erivo - "Stand Up" - Oscars 2020 Performance

# data[].attributes.headline
Collective Resilience: Buddhist community response to violence

# data[].attributes.subject
Collective Resilience: Buddhist community response to violence

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Credit... Rozette Rago for The New York Times

The lotus flower, blooming out of muddy waters, has long been a symbol of rising above suffering. In the wake of Anti-Asian attacks, spiritual leaders hope it can help heal the trauma of racial violence in the U.S.

Credit... Rozette Rago for The New York Times

It is one of the oldest religious symbols: the lotus flower, blooming out of muddy waters.

The mud represents our suffering, pain and delusions, said Duncan Ryuken Williams, a Soto Zen Buddhist priest, retelling the ancient lesson. And the purpose of Buddhism is to rise above.

But there's an even deeper metaphor: In pure water, a lotus flower will not grow.

It is in the mud that the nutrients are found.

Image

"And so our liberation is actually not about transcending or distancing ourselves from trauma or pain and suffering, but it is to acknowledge how we can transform ourselves, our communities, our nation, our world, from all that pain," he said.

This was the symbol at the heart of a national memorial ceremony in Los Angeles on Tuesday, offered by 49 Buddhist monastics, priests and lay leaders for healing amid recent anti-Asian violence across America.

They gathered 49 days after a gunman killed eight people including six Asian women at spas in the Atlanta area, to mark the moment many Buddhists believe the deceased transition to another realm. They met at a place of pain, a temple in Little Tokyo that had recently been vandalized in an arson attack.

"We join today to repair the racial karma of this nation, because our destinies and freedoms are intertwined," said Dr. Williams, the chair of the University of Southern California's School of Religion, who helped to organize the ceremony.

"And though the mountain of suffering is high and the tears of pain fill the deepest oceans, our path compels us to rise up like a lotus flower above muddy waters," he said.

Together the ordained sangha, or clerics, chanted and offered mending rituals to heal what has been broken. Some 350 Buddhist temples and hundreds of individuals participated via livestream, from Hawaii to Nebraska to North Carolina.

It was a uniquely American, and uniquely modern, moment. The sangha represented the vast range of Buddhist lineages and ethnicities, including Chinese, Khmer, Korean and Vietnamese traditions, coming together as one spiritual community. A Mexican-American monk serving a Buddhist temple for the Thai community in North Hollywood shared a message in Spanish. About two-thirds of U.S. Buddhists are Asian-American, and many temples are increasingly multiracial.

In the 2,500-year history of Buddhism, ceremonies with such diverse participants across traditions are rare. Laotian Buddhists do not typically practice alongside Japanese Buddhists, or predominantly African-American or white Zen centers alongside immigrant Buddhist communities.

Buddhist philosophy has something to offer in this moment of fear, said Sister Kinh Nghiem, 38, a Vietnamese-American Buddhist nun who came to participate from Deer Park Monastery near Escondido, Calif.

"It is about bringing the human inside of us. Your suffering is also my suffering, and my suffering is no different than your suffering," she said before the service. "If we are openhearted, we are in nirvana."

The leaders lit candles in front of memorials, honoring ancestors. For Yong Ae Yue, 63, a Korean Buddhist mother killed in Atlanta. For Vicha Ratanapakdee, 84, an immigrant from Thailand who was fatally assaulted while taking a walk in San Francisco. For Chinese immigrant coal miners shot and killed in Wyoming in 1885.

For all beings who have lost their lives through racial or religious hatred. The Sikh victims in Indianapolis. The prayerful in synagogues. George Floyd.

They took a ceramic lotus blossom, cracked and broken. Instead of discarding it, they used thin paintbrushes to fill the fractures with liquid gold leaf, following the Japanese artistic practice of kintsugi. The golden lines record the broken history, and adorn it, Dr. Williams explained.

Credit... Rozette Rago for The New York Times

"The notion of repair has to do with acknowledgment," he said. "You can't become free if we do not acknowledge who we are in all of our hurt, in all of our imperfections, in all of our fractures."

The final rite was a ritual of protection, found in Southeast Asian Buddhist traditions. The sangha took long thread, empowered with sacred intentions and emanating from the Buddha as represented on the altar. They connected it to one another and then processed outside to tie it to lanterns that had been broken and burned, binding all as one.

True repair goes beyond legislation, Dr. Williams explained. Trauma is in all of us, in our psyches and our bones, he said, some of it inherited and some of it our own.

"It is less about atoning for sin, and more about trying to take some responsibility based on awakening to the fact that we are multiple, we are interconnected, we are interlinked, and our destinies are very much intertwined, because that is how karma works," he said.

Each of us is a like a precious mirror, a polished jewel, he said, cut in ways that teach and reflect.

Gathering like this, and moving forward, gets to the heart of what Buddhism is all about.

"What is Buddhism?" Dr. Williams asked. "Wisdom times compassion equals freedom."

Wisdom: seeing things clearly, he said.

Compassion: suffering together, feeling one another's difficulties, he said.

And then, freedom.

"Our liberation is actually not done alone," he said.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Repairing Generations of Trauma, One Lotus Flower at a Time

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The lotus flower, blooming out of muddy waters, has long been a symbol of rising above suffering. In the wake of Anti-Asian attacks, spiritual leaders hope it can help heal the trauma of racial violence in the U.S. Credit...

# data[].attributes.headline
Black Pain is Not for Profit by Rene Matic

# data[].attributes.subject
Black Pain is Not for Profit by Rene Matic

# data[].attributes.headline
The #OptimisticChallenge: Decisive Black Joy by Jasmine Johnson

# data[].attributes.subject
The #OptimisticChallenge: Decisive Black Joy by Jasmine Johnson

# data[].attributes.body
Acknowledgement of the body and movement and the way dance is an expression to overcome.

# data[].attributes.headline
OnBeing by Krista Tippett: Robin DiAngelo and Resmaa Menaken

# data[].attributes.subject
OnBeing by Krista Tippett: Robin DiAngelo and Resmaa Menaken

# data[].attributes.body
Link to the podcast page with transcript

# data[].attributes.body
Coming to terms its past role in slavery. This is where a great percentage of slaves were processed before they were sent off to various states.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Charleston, South Carolina, may be known for its harborfront promenade lined with candy-colored, antebellum-style, million-dollar mansions. Or for its she-crab soup, shrimp and grits, fried green tomatoes, and other delicacies on the menus of the city's famed restaurants.

Now a sleek, modern building in the heart of downtown has just opened amid much fanfare, and is set to be one of the city's-and the nation's-most significant cultural institutions.

The building is the International African American Museum (IAAM), located on Gadsden's Wharf, which, from 1772-1808, was the largest slave auction site in the United States.

The museum's June 27, 2023, opening was hosted by former Cosby Show actress and a current dean at Howard University Phylicia Rashad. The Obamas sent virtual remarks, while other celebs and notable luminaries made appearances.

IAAM cost more than $100 million and has been some 20 years in the making. Now that it's here, its staff and team are ready for the whole world to grace its doors.

"We welcome everyone to visit us at IAAM," says president and CEO Tonya Matthews, "to simultaneously hold the sensations of trauma and joy that are woven together throughout our exhibitions, and feel something that is akin to everything."

Why Charleston's newest museum matters

At last count, there were 109 African American museums in 32 states around the U.S., all collecting and preserving the history of people of African descent. The biggest and most comprehensive one of all, the National Museum of African American History and Culture, even sits on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.

(Here are 13 must-visit destinations for African American history and culture.)

But IAAM is particularly significant because of its location. More than 40 percent of all captive Africans were brought into the U.S. here, where they were sold into slavery on auction. They were then sent on to plantations and farms across the country.

In the 1700s, Gadsden's Wharf stretched 840 feet across, about three city blocks, and could accommodate up to six ships at once. Each one carried a cargo hold sometimes full of as many as 700 captive Africans.

Historians estimate that some 90 percent of all African Americans can trace at least one ancestor to the area. Michelle Obama, for instance, tracks two relatives to South Carolina: her paternal great-great-grandfather born enslaved on the Friendfield Plantation in Georgetown, about an hour north of Charleston, and her maternal great-great-great-grandmother, also born enslaved on a different plantation in South Carolina and given as an inheritance to a plantation in Georgia. It is likely that the family's lineage in the U.S. began at Gadsden's Wharf.

This site choice and the investment in the building of IAAM is also part of a larger reckoning happening in Charleston. In 2015, the city removed the Confederate flag from the South Carolina statehouse. In 2018, the Charleston City Council formally apologized for its role in slavery.

And the city has begun to slowly challenge the mainstream narrative around the nature of plantations.

Reconsidering plantation narratives

With their weeping willow trees, deep-set porches, grand columns, and often beautifully cultivated land, plantations have been romanticized in our culture. They are recommended as wedding venues, listed on Airbnb as vacation homes before the platform banned them, and referenced positively and benignly throughout popular culture.

But plantations were places where millions of enslaved Black people toiled in the heat and cold for no pay, little rest, and under often brutal conditions. Many of their grounds still include unmarked graves where the enslaved are buried and have not been acknowledged or honored.

(In Charleston, Black history is being told through a new lens.)

Charleston is slowly changing the narrative of plantations under the direction of the historical interpreters of Charleston County Parks and Recreation (CCPR), specifically through their work at the McLeod Plantation. McLeod is one of the few plantations in the country that centers the stories of the enslaved, telling a fuller and more complex historical truth.

Toby Smith, the cultural history interpretation coordinator for CCPR, says this about McLeod: "This place is a memorial to the life and the times of those who were enslaved here but retained their humanity. This is their moment to be honored, and to be lifted up and to be learned from."

She continues, "What happened here speaks to our humanity, our collective humanity, our history-as Charlestonians, as South Carolinians, and as Americans."

She acknowledges, though, that this new emphasis doesn't sit well with everyone.

"I read our reviews," she says. "And I mean, sometimes people really wear themselves out. You know? 'I wish I could give you half a star.' 'I hate your guts.' Yeah. But what they're really saying is, I'm uncomfortable with this. Right? So there is a resistance."

(Plantations are a traumatic chapter in American history-here's why to visit.)

Still, about 36,000 visitors come to McLeod annually now. And this last year, visitors from 95 countries walked the grounds. Plus, other plantations in Charleston are gearing up to follow in its footsteps.

Tapping into the healing powers of water

Perhaps a new understanding really is taking root, particularly in Charleston. Tia Clark thinks so.

"I feel the shift," she says.

Clark is a native Charlestonian who founded Casual Crabbing with Tia, or "Let's Go Crabbing," rated as one of Airbnb's best experiences in the world. She teaches participants how to fish for crab in Charleston Harbor.

Clark plans to go to the IAAM museum with her mother and her aunt soon. "I am excited, but I know it's going to be super emotional for me." She says this primarily because she is of Gullah Geechee heritage and was raised right in downtown Charleston on Henrietta Street.

While the IAAM tells the story broadly of African Americans and of the global legacy of the transatlantic slave trade, it also tells the story of Black South Carolinians, and specifically of the Gullah Geechees, a unique people who have traditionally resided in the coastal areas and the sea islands of North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. Because they were enslaved on isolated islands and coastal plantations, they are one of the few groups of African Americans to retain foods, language, culture, and traditions that can be traced directly back to Africa.

But Clark says she grew up ashamed of her background.

"I turned my back on my heritage because I thought it was bad," she says.

(Take a virtual tour of South Carolina's only civil rights museum.)

Then six years ago, a cousin took her crabbing for the first time, and she says it was like a baptism and a reawakening. It reconnected her to the culture of her ancestors, who used to crab for sustenance. This brought her back to the water, something she didn't even know she was missing. But now, she spends hours out there, casting her net, often in the wee hours of the morning, watching the sunrise, reclaiming the parts of herself that were once lost.

Even though the story of African Americans starts on faraway shores, one chapter of the story begins on arrival on these shores, along this coastline, in the water.

"It's that water that brought the Africans here," says Smith, who is also Gullah Geechee. "And as Gullah people, the water, we believe, carries our souls to rest."

Maybe, ultimately, the most surprising and profound thing about the IAAM is that by being located at the edge of this historic wharf, it helps bring African Americans back to the ocean, back to the turbulent Atlantic, back to a place of origin, death, sustenance-and now, self-healing.

Tara Roberts is a National Geographic Explorer. She tells stories about the discovery of lost slave shipwrecks on the National Geographic-produced podcast " Into the Depths."

The National Geographic Society, committed to illuminating and protecting the wonder of our world, funded Explorer Roberts' work. Learn more about the Society's support of ocean Explorers.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The International African American Museum reckons with Charleston's history

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Historians estimate that some 90 percent of African Americans can trace one ancestor back to Charleston. The International African American Museum centers the stories of the enslaved.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.provider_name
Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
According to legend, a safe house along the Underground Railroad was often indicated by a quilt hanging from a clothesline or windowsill. These quilts were embedded with a kind of code, so that by reading the shapes and motifs sewn into the design, an enslaved person on the run could know the area's immediate dangers or even where to head next.

Bow Tie = Dress in disguise to appear of a higher status

Bear Paw = Follow an animal trail through the mountains to find water and food

Log Cabin = Seek shelter now, the people here are safe to speak with

I can see the promise of such a system. Nimble fingers working in secret, armed with needle and thread, engaging with a visual language, doing their part for freedom. I want to believe it happened. Some do, and maybe it did, but others question the authenticity of such events.

Sharon Tindall is a Virginia-based quilter, educator, and one in a tradition of contemporary quilters who design textile works inspired by this "quilt code."

"When I'm creating a quilt, I'm focused on the purpose of the quilt," she says. "I'm thankful I am able to create something of comfort."

Tindall hopes her handmade quilts hanging in the Johnson House, a crucial station on the Underground Railroad and now a National Historic Site in Philadelphia, embody the spirit of the house and the presence of those who passed through. Built in 1768 in the heart of Germantown, Johnson House's woodwork, flooring, and glass are all original to the house.

"You really get a sense of enslaved people there," she says. "I walked around where they slept, where they ate. You feel their presence. The slaves, the Johnson family who protected them, that presence was the colors in the sky of the quilt. I want to convey a message of hope, freedom, love for the slaves."

Though not all of her quilts are coded, Tindall is a believer and defender of the codes. She recently gave a lecture about them to a full room in Johnson House. Our conversation stretched to weeks as I sought more detailed information about how they were used.

At its center, a quilt is an assemblage of historical and creative cues in the form of fabrics, shapes, symbols, textures and colors. Quilts were often made to commemorate important family events such as marriage, a birth, or moving to a new place. Often made from scraps of old dresses, burlap sacks, and dish cloths, it gives physical, even functional, form to a family or individual's past and present. Tindall uses combinations of cottons, raw Dupioni silks, Swarovski crystals, natural fibers, Malian mud cloth, and even glitter to convey the spiritual, intangible components of her narrative compositions. For Tindall, the quilts become vehicles for the voices and footprints of people running for their lives.

"The orange is life, or light," she explains, pointing at the glowing horizon line on her quilt, The Johnson House. "They could feel or sense light through their struggle of trying to get to freedom."

Prior to 1999, the codes were unheard of even to the African American quilting community. That's according to Marsha MacDowell, a quilt scholar and director of the Quilt Index, a massive online catalog of more than 90,000 quilts. In 1999, Jaqueline Tobin and Raymond G. Dobard published Hidden in Plain View: A Secret Story of Quilts and the Underground Railroad , and the story cycloned through trusted centers of news and knowledge: the New York Times Book Review, NPR, and others. National Geographic and the Kennedy Center developed elementary school curricula that referenced the codes.

None of these institutions questioned the veracity of Tobin and Dobard's story; instead, they published book reviews as human-interest pieces, calling it "captivating" and "fascinating," and the public lapped it up like hard fact. When we see an uplifting story online, printed in Times New Roman, we tend to just accept it as truth. Soon the story has lifeblood independent of its origins, and there's no stopping it.

"Almost every February, stories appear in papers across the country," MacDowell explains, referencing African American History Month. "If you're wondering about our irritation, I think it's more frustrating that the codes keep getting presented as fact."

That is to say, the authenticity of quilt codes is, among other things, a matter of emphasis. Maybe the protocols for experiences of belief versus fact are just different. When a person believes something, they have no need of proof. Not dates, examples, nor firsthand accounts. They don't have to do anything except believe. For something to qualify as a fact, it needs evidence. To define "fact" is no easy undertaking.

Some historians float the issue that many of the quilt patterns cited as directives for enslaved peoples probably did not yet exist during the height of the Underground Railroad, between 1850 and 1860. Based on surveys of quilts made during these years, the evidence for some of these patterns just isn't there, breaking the spell of this captivating story.

Drunkard's Path = Zig-zag as you go along in case you are being stalked by hounds

Double Wedding Ring = Now it is safe to remove your chains and shackles

Sharon Tindall uses a historical pattern made up of triangles and rectangles called Flying Geese.

I asked Tindall what the Flying Geese quilt pattern meant and how it assisted runaways on the Underground Railroad.

"Flying geese are blue; the sky is blue, red and black," she responded. "Follow the geese flying north. If the sky wasn't clear, look for or listen to the geese flying north in the spring."

I was disappointed by her answer because I didn't understand. It came off like verse, or a nursery rhyme. Were they supposed to wait until spring if the sky wasn't clear? Were they literally supposed to follow the geese? How could this interpretation of a quilt block have directed slaves hundreds of miles along a cruel course, across canyons and rivers, all the way to Pennsylvania, Ohio, or Indiana?

Whether or not you believe Tindall's interpretation, you might agree her belief provides poetic justifications for belief versus fact. Quilts allow Tindall to sustain a conversation about these men and women who were valiant, who fought slavery by taking the ultimate chance-running, and maybe even trusting the message on a blanket when everything was at stake-and encouraging others to do the same.

"If people's lives are at stake, then it stands to reason that there would be no trace of the quilts," Atlanta-based quilt scholar Mary Twining-Baird argues. "Of course there is no documentation! Literally, if anyone found out they could lose their lives."

Twining-Baird specializes in kente cloth quilts made on the Sea Island chain off the coast of South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida, but she maintains a firm stance on quilt codes.

She encountered an old quilt that "was stitched like it had been sewn with a crowbar."

"It was a map, of course! The wide woolen stitching lines were roads."

Unfortunately, the quilt was lost in a flood and there are no pictures, which serves as logic for the general dearth of material evidence of quilts codes today. After all this time, they have been lost or have fallen to pieces.

For Tindall, a quilt can be like a prayer. The pretext for her belief in quilt codes is not unlike a person trying to explain or provide supporting evidence for a belief in God. Simply put, she has faith.

"I consider myself a Believer in Jesus Christ, woman of Faith, storyteller and a creator of quilts," she wrote to me. "I have taken the gifts God has given me and I'm returning them back to Him through the quilt codes."

Scholar Marilyn Motz has a definition for belief that seems to fit: "a process of knowing that is not subject to verification or measurement within the framework of a modern western scientific paradigm."

As she points out, "the term belief actually calls into question its own validity." And anyways, "we usually describe our own beliefs as knowledge."

So, if we truly believe something, as Tindall believes that enslaved people running north were guided by the Flying Geese pattern in quilts, we may have trouble seeing the difference between belief and fact.

In every culture, there are beliefs, myths, urban legends, rumors, even conspiracy theories that rise to the status of sacred narrative whether or not they are "true." In many cases of folklore, hard facts may not influence a belief. Such is the case with Kaluli people of Papua New Guinea, who believe the spirits of their dead take up in particular animals, namely pigs and birds. Should we be concerned with hard evidence the Kaluli can provide for these deep-rooted belief systems?

Stories, recipes, personal experiences, and all the things that were whispered to us when we were young often outweigh scientific fact. They matter because we believe them, so, naturally, and sometimes quickly, they become some of the disparate pieces of the systems that define us.

Regardless of the disputed history, it has been twenty years now that Tindall and other quilters have been making coded quilts: glimmering, spiritually charged, stop-you-in-your-tracks, hanging textiles based in deeply believed and debated historical events. Are these quilts harming anyone?

"The risk is that it is not a true story," MacDowell says. "The danger is that you start questioning people's belief systems and how they get their information."

"I've found some people have a hard time thinking or believing anything they cannot see or touch," Tindall says. "I simply ask them, 'Do you think it's possible?' Nonverbal communication, symbols, and secrets are all forms of communication."

Finally enslaved peoples were free to roam without running. Between 1910 and 1920, the African American population of Detroit, Michigan, increased by more than 600 percent. These Americans migrated to the Midwest from the rural South saying Godspeed! to segregation laws and seeking industry jobs during what is known as the Great Northern Migration, or the Black Migration. They carried with them quilts and the stories of an enslaved South.

While Tobin and Dobard were writing Hidden in Plain View in the late 1990s, MacDowell was in Michigan with a group of graduate students documenting African American quilts and recording stories. MacDowell's team recorded almost fifty interviews. No one said anything about a code.

"One woman who was originally from South Carolina but lived in Detroit said she learned quilting as a child in South Carolina. Her mother taught her (as did her grandmother teach her mother) that you always hold a needle pointing in the direction of the North as you quilt it, because that is where opportunities are. Someone else we recorded said that her family hid important papers in the binding of the quilt.

"Now, I would not jump to any conclusions that every African American quilter held their needle pointing to the north, and that is the problem with the Hidden in Plain View book. They jumped to conclusions without documentation."

MacDowell's fellow quilt-scholars posited the subject of her whiteness. Was her whiteness a factor in not hearing that story?

"We had a whole battery of people who were doing those interviews in Michigan, both black and white, and no one heard that story."

MacDowell has done the research. She knows how rampant the story of quilt codes has become. She especially knows that it's out of her hands. While researching quilts in South Africa, she made the acquaintance of contemporary quilters who have-"lo and behold!"-caught wind of the book and started coding quilts of their own.

"There will always be people who believe," she concedes.

Perhaps the code, true or not, is a vehicle for African Americans to explore the trauma they inherited-and the hope. Tindall shared her beliefs on a trip to Liberia, a West African nation originally founded as a colony by the American Colonization Society to repatriate freed and free-born black people from America. There she met weavers who were braiding in a code she herself is using. She felt a kind of kinship.

Nowadays, some African American women make coded quilts for their daughters and granddaughters, and that will keep happening. Whether or not the codes are "real," Tobin and Dobard are responsible for a twenty-year tradition of craftsmanship that has cropped out of a confidence in what they wrote, in the codes. Now the lineage of artisans using quilt codes is robust. For them, the codes are poetry, healing, and, especially, a means of expressing history.
Marie Claire Bryant is a poet, storyteller, and archivist interning at the Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage. She was previously the director of publishing for Cfile Foundation, where she wrote, edited, and published extensively on the topic of contemporary and historic ceramic arts.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Underground Railroad Quilt Codes: What We Know, What We Believe, and What Inspires Us

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
According to legend, a safe house was often indicated by a coded quilt hanging from a clothesline or windowsill.

# data[].attributes.headline
What stories do we tell about Black History?

# data[].attributes.subject
What stories do we tell about Black History?

# data[].attributes.body
John McWhorter explores the stories told (and not told) at the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, DC

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Opinion | The Future of Black History Lives on Donald Trump’s Front Lawn

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
A journey to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture took me places I will not soon forget.

# data[].attributes.body
A British perspective

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Rich Black History That Runs Through Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
“New” Black country music fans aren’t following trends. We’re reclaiming the ones our ancestors set.

# data[].attributes.headline
The Fight Over History: Which Stories Get Told, and Why?

# data[].attributes.subject
The Fight Over History: Which Stories Get Told, and Why?

# data[].attributes.body
Coverage by the NYTimes of the removal of a slavery exhibit in Philadelphia:

National Park Service Dismantles Slavery Exhibit in Philadelphia

How Trump Brought the Fight Over American History to Philadelphia

# data[].attributes.headline
The Power of Storytelling (especially Morrison's)

# data[].attributes.subject
The Power of Storytelling (especially Morrison's)

# data[].attributes.body
from the NYTimes Magazine:

Toni Morrison Was a Master of the Unthinkable

What made her one of our greatest — and most dangerous — novelists was her belief that stories could contain what our minds couldn’t confront.