AphroChic Magazine: Issue No. 10
In this issue, we are beyond excited to share with you all of the things we spent the year working towards, starting with the official release of our brand new book. AphroChic: Celebrating the Legacy of the Black Family Home is the type of book we’ve always dreamed of writing. In this issue we give you a sneak peek into the pages of the book. This year AphroChic made its first foray into filmmaking with a 15 minute short documentary looking at the stories of Baltimore’s Black community as the nation continues to grapple with the COVID-19 crisis. Check out our look at Baltimore and the lessons it has for the rest of the country in this issue’s City Stories.
In this issue, we are beyond excited to share with you all of the things we spent the year working towards, starting with the official release of our brand new book. AphroChic: Celebrating the Legacy of the Black Family Home is the type of book we’ve always dreamed of writing. In this issue we give you a sneak peek into the pages of the book.
This year AphroChic made its first foray into filmmaking with a 15 minute short documentary looking at the stories of Baltimore’s Black community as the nation continues to grapple with the COVID-19 crisis. Check out our look at Baltimore and the lessons it has for the rest of the country in this issue’s City Stories.
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APHROCHIC<br />
a curated lifestyle magazine<br />
ISSUE NO. <strong>10</strong> \ FALL/WINTER 2022<br />
NEW APHROCHIC BOOK \ BALTIMORE SPEAKS \ WEST AFRICAN ROOTS<br />
APHROCHIC.COM
<strong>Issue</strong> <strong>10</strong>. We made it! When we started writing this magazine, we hoped we’d still<br />
be here to write a <strong>10</strong>th issue, but it seemed so far away. <strong>No</strong>w it’s here, and it hardly<br />
feels real. 2022 is drawing to a close and we feel happy and blessed to be here to see<br />
the holidays come, the ball drop, and to welcome a new year. 2022 has been a busy<br />
one. In this issue, we are beyond excited to share with you all of the things we spent<br />
the year working towards, starting with the official release of our brand new book.<br />
<strong>AphroChic</strong>: Celebrating the Legacy of the Black Family Home is the type of book we’ve always dreamed of writing. We take you<br />
into 16 amazing Black homes while exploring our long journey home as Black people in America — a journey that we’re still on.<br />
But the best thing about this book is that we don’t have to just tell you about it anymore. In this issue we give you a sneak peek<br />
into the pages of the book so that you can see what all the fuss is about.<br />
And we haven’t just been writing. This year <strong>AphroChic</strong> made its first foray into filmmaking with a 15-minute short documentary<br />
looking at the stories of Baltimore’s Black community as the nation continues to grapple with the COVID-19 crisis.<br />
Check out our look at Baltimore and the lessons it has for the rest of the country in this issue’s City Stories.<br />
In 2022 we’ve seen amazing work from some of our favorite creatives in every field, all offering us a better look at our<br />
history and culture. World-renowned pianist Lara Downes talks about her journey as a Black woman through the world of<br />
classical music, introducing us to Scott Joplin, whose Ragtime compositions set the stage for the ascendence of jazz. Then we<br />
go from the recording booth to the table, where chef Rock Harper is taking us all to school with his next-level fried chicken<br />
sandwiches. The celebrity chef’s new concept, Queen Mother’s, isn’t just serving up massive, perfectly cooked portions with<br />
its mouthwatering, artisanal sandwiches. It’s pushing us to take a long look at the history behind the stereotypes to see the<br />
role fried chicken has played in bringing our families together since before the Civil War, setting the stage for a billion dollar<br />
industry that targets but does not include us.<br />
Hungry for more, we stay at the table where chef Rashad Frazier of Camp Yoshi is cooking up holiday goodness. The<br />
outdoor chef is coming inside to treat us to recipes for a full holiday meal — with a cocktail for after dinner. Then it’s back into<br />
history where the newly released fashion brand Arthur Ashe is reminding us what it means to live like an icon while artist Jas<br />
Knight shows us ourselves from another angle with his quiet yet beautiful portraits of Black women. Celebrity designer Mikel<br />
Welch takes us into the Hamptons resort he’s created in his New York apartment. And in Civics we celebrate the results of a<br />
historic push for voter registration, looking at how our vote saved American democracy and why this year it’s more important<br />
than ever. Then we finish with a look at the Woman King, Viola Davis’ triumphant yet controversial work of historical fiction,<br />
taking the opportunity to question who is really responsible for teaching history and where does the problem with how our<br />
stories are told really lie?<br />
2022 has been another long year. It’s easy to feel worn out. We get tired too. But we also get inspired by our culture and our<br />
community, our music, art, and history. Most of all, we get inspired by every chance we get to share it all with you. So welcome to<br />
the end of 2022. We hope this issue helps you sit back, put your feet up and relax. You’ve earned it.<br />
<strong>Issue</strong> <strong>10</strong>. Still can’t believe we made it…<br />
Jeanine and Bryan speaking<br />
Jeanine Hays and Bryan Mason<br />
Founders, <strong>AphroChic</strong><br />
Instagram: @aphrochic<br />
about their new book,<br />
<strong>AphroChic</strong>: Celebrating the<br />
Legacy of the Black Family<br />
Home, at the Future of Home<br />
conference in Manhattan.<br />
editors’ letter
FALL/WINTER 2022<br />
DEPARTMENTS<br />
Read This <strong>10</strong><br />
Watch List 12<br />
The Black Family Home 14<br />
Mood 24<br />
FEATURES<br />
Fashion // Arthur Ashe 32<br />
Interior Design // Hamptons Elegance Meets NY Style 42<br />
Culture // West African Roots 54<br />
Food // Queen Mother's 62<br />
Entertaining // Home for the Holidays 68<br />
City Stories // Baltimore Speaks 80<br />
Civics // Black America's Voting Revolution 90<br />
Sounds // History in Sound 96<br />
PINPOINT<br />
Artists & Artisans <strong>10</strong>4<br />
Hot Topic 1<strong>10</strong><br />
Who Are You? 116
CONTRIBUTORS<br />
Cover Photo: Jeanine Hays and Bryan Mason<br />
Photographer: Patrick Cline<br />
Publishers/Editors: Jeanine Hays and Bryan Mason<br />
Creative Director: Cheminne Taylor-Smith<br />
Editorial/Product Contact:<br />
<strong>AphroChic</strong><br />
<strong>AphroChic</strong>.com<br />
magazine@aphrochic.com<br />
Sales Contact:<br />
Ruby Brown<br />
ruby@aphrochic.com<br />
Contributors (left to right below):<br />
Patrick Cline<br />
Chinasa Cooper<br />
issue ten 9
READ THIS<br />
The <strong>AphroChic</strong> brand is built around storytelling and a focus on deeper meaning. The books we're<br />
highlighting in this issue have that idea of storytelling at their core, too. Ice Cold: A Hip-Hop Jewelry History<br />
looks at jewelry designs from the 1980s to today, and how each piece helped define identity and tells a story<br />
of self-expression. Hebru Brantley's eponymous first book also examines the upbeat and affirming story<br />
of how Brantley went from a graffiti artist to a super-nova-hot painter, sculptor, and designer collected<br />
by everyone from Jay-Z to Lebron James. At the heart of his work is the idea of restoring innocence to the<br />
depiction of Black youth. Country music has always been a genre known for its storytellers, and Black<br />
Country Music - the first book on Black country music by a Black writer - finally gives African American<br />
musicians their due. The book examines the history of Black country music, and how Black artists and<br />
fans are changing what country music looks and sounds like today.<br />
Hebru Brantley<br />
by Hebru Brantley<br />
Publisher: Rizzoli. $55<br />
Ice Cold: A Hip-Hop Jewelry History<br />
by Vikki Tobak<br />
Publisher: Taschen. $79.99<br />
Black Country Music:<br />
Listening for Revolutions<br />
by Francesca Royster<br />
Publisher: University of<br />
Texas Press. $24.95<br />
<strong>10</strong> aphrochic
Celebrate Black homeownership and the<br />
amazing diversity of the Black experience<br />
with <strong>AphroChic</strong>’s newest book<br />
In this powerful, visually stunning book, Jeanine Hays and Bryan Mason explore<br />
the Black family home and its role as haven, heirloom, and cornerstone of Black<br />
culture and life. Through striking interiors, stories of family and community,<br />
and histories of the obstacles Black homeowners have faced for generations,<br />
<strong>AphroChic</strong> honors the journey, recognizes the struggle, and embraces the joy.<br />
AVAILABLE WHEREVER BOOKS ARE SOLD
WATCH LIST<br />
The definition of a Renaissance man is one who is knowledgeable, educated, or proficient in a wide<br />
range of fields. Virgil Abloh was the embodiment of that definition as a trained architect, a fashion<br />
icon, an artist, and one of Time magazine's <strong>10</strong>0 most influential people in the world. His sudden passing<br />
at age 41 left a void in the world of design and a sense of awe at all he accomplished in such a short<br />
time. To celebrate his incredible breadth of work, the Brooklyn Museum is showcasing the exhibit Virgil<br />
Abloh: “Figures of Speech,” through Jan. 29. The multimedia and interdisciplinary event, developed by<br />
the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, is the first museum exhibition devoted to Abloh’s work. The<br />
show focuses on Abloh's architectural designs and his work with space and light, particularly with Social<br />
Sculpture, a full-sized house that is built into the Brooklyn Museum structure. And there are works from<br />
other design disciplines that Abloh embraced, including art, photography, and designs from his fashion<br />
label Off-White, and from Louis Vuitton, where he served as the first Black menswear artistic director.<br />
Virgil Abloh: “Figures of Speech.”<br />
Brooklyn Museum<br />
12 aphrochic
Afro modern decor that creates a sense of connection.<br />
www.reflektiondesign.com<br />
@reflektiondesign
THE BLACK FAMILY HOME<br />
<strong>AphroChic</strong>'s New Book Celebrates the Black Family Home<br />
The following is an excerpt from the book, <strong>AphroChic</strong>: Celebrating the Legacy of the Black Family Home, by<br />
Bryan Mason and Jeanine Hays, and a peek into the couple's home in upstate New York that's featured<br />
in the book. The first of its kind, this book examines the vital role our homes play as places of joy and<br />
respite, while blending history, ethnography, and design in its exploration of 16 amazing Black homes<br />
and the stories that created them. This book celebrates the accomplishments that our homes represent,<br />
while presenting the history of racism and exclusion that surrounds them, and interrogating the Black<br />
family home’s place as a missing character in the narrative of American history.<br />
We all have a story of home, beginning with the first place<br />
that we remember. It travels with us, growing as we grow, written<br />
into our homes with colors, patterns, furniture, and accessories.<br />
In our first book, REMIX, we explored those elements and the ways<br />
that we use them in our homes to tell our story. In this book, we<br />
are excited to explore the story of home itself, those of the families<br />
featured here, and that of African Americans as a whole.<br />
We at <strong>AphroChic</strong> are lovers of history. And while this is a<br />
design book, it’s also a book about history, for as James Baldwin<br />
points out, the past is always with us, and we are formed by both<br />
the parts we include and by what gets left out. For too long, the<br />
Black family home has been left out of the story of America — a<br />
missing character. It’s time to write the full story.<br />
The Black family home is a vibe. More than just a place where<br />
people live, it’s a feeling. It comes from the food that we eat, the<br />
music we hear, the stories we share. It comes from the elders in<br />
our families — the ones who teach us to act right, be quiet, and pay<br />
attention. The ones with the stories, recipes, and lessons that we<br />
never forget. Whether an apartment, a condo, or a house, a newbuild,<br />
or a generational home, the feeling is the same. Home is like<br />
“soul” — indescribable, but you know it when you feel it and you<br />
miss it when it’s gone. Much of that feeling is carried in the unique<br />
aesthetic that defines African American design.<br />
The Black Family Home is an<br />
ongoing series focusing on the<br />
history and future of what home<br />
means for Black families.<br />
This series was the inspiration for<br />
<strong>AphroChic</strong>'s new book.<br />
Photos by Patrick Cline<br />
14 aphrochic
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issue ten 17
THE BLACK FAMILY HOME<br />
Like every part of a culture, design is<br />
shaped by history. The shape of American<br />
history has created a set of needs for<br />
African Americans, which are reflected<br />
in our homes. Much as we have with food,<br />
music, and dance, African Americans<br />
have used design as a way of meeting<br />
those needs. African American design<br />
is uniquely experiential in that it isn’t<br />
defined by look as much as it is by feel.<br />
There are no defined color palettes or<br />
furniture styles. Instead, it uses a diverse<br />
array of approaches to craft environments<br />
that evoke feelings such as safety, control,<br />
visibility, celebration, and memory. Each<br />
of these plays an important role in the<br />
feeling of home that these spaces convey.<br />
When asked what their homes mean<br />
to them, “safety” was the first response<br />
of every homeowner in this book. Life in<br />
America is not safe for Black people and<br />
never has been. While the sense of safety<br />
our homes provide is not the same as<br />
physical security, home is a respite from<br />
the psychological pressures of the outside<br />
world. For that reason, Black homes are<br />
filled with comfortable things and things<br />
that comfort.<br />
Control, as an element of African<br />
American design, is about the ease with<br />
which our creative decisions are made.<br />
Home offers a space that doesn’t have to<br />
be carved out, contended for, or defended<br />
once won. It doesn’t ask us to explain<br />
ourselves, speak for our race, ignore<br />
its microaggressions, or be on call for<br />
teachable moments. <strong>No</strong> one ever asks to<br />
touch your home. In place of all that, home<br />
gives us the control we need to express and<br />
represent ourselves freely.<br />
Visibility and representation are<br />
constant social battles for African<br />
Americans — as much a question of how<br />
and why we’re seen as when and where we<br />
are seen. Home is a place apart from the<br />
scrutiny and stereotypes of white gaze.<br />
And if we struggle to separate who we<br />
are from how we are seen, designing our<br />
homes can give us the space and means to<br />
address those issues in ways that not only<br />
showcase our stories and cultures but<br />
celebrate them as well.<br />
Celebration may be the most<br />
important element of African American<br />
interior design. We do not define our<br />
culture by tragedy and oppression but by<br />
enduring hope, creativity, and joy. The<br />
embrace of color, art, and culture in our<br />
design creates a joyful place where the<br />
stories of a person, a family, and a people<br />
are celebrated and remembered.<br />
Memory is the root of soul, and a vital<br />
part of African American design. Through<br />
design we both retain the past and contemporize<br />
it. Our designs recall the places<br />
we grew up in, our ancestral homes and<br />
“For too long, the Black<br />
family home has been left<br />
our of the story of America -<br />
a missing character. It's time<br />
to write the full story.”<br />
18 aphrochic
issue ten 19
20 aphrochic
issue ten 21
THE BLACK FAMILY HOME<br />
the ancestors themselves, connecting our stories to the stories that came<br />
before. Memory is where African American design starts.<br />
Because of how well it blends eras and aesthetics, African American<br />
design is strongly anti-thematic, valuing personal expression above all<br />
else. Like jazz improvisations or street style fashion, our design aesthetics<br />
are unique to each of us — a multitude of expressions connected through a<br />
variety of experiences that are shared but not identical. Within these experiences,<br />
home may be where we go to feel safe, welcome, and seen, but getting<br />
there has been difficult. Beginning with Emancipation — and even before<br />
— the African American journey to home has been a hard-fought road,<br />
and never a straight route. We have built communities that were burned or<br />
destroyed by white supremacists; owned land that was stolen or from which<br />
we were driven away; established legal protections against discriminatory<br />
practices, only to see those protections rolled back until today, resulting in<br />
the lowest rate of homeownership among African Americans since the 1960s.<br />
Nevertheless, our journey is etched into the history of America. Its peaks<br />
and valleys have come at some of this nation’s most crucial turning points.<br />
Because of that, it’s a useful way to measure the nation’s social, political, and<br />
economic steps, both forward and back. And yet, it’s a story that hasn’t really<br />
been told before now and it’s important to consider why. AC<br />
Get your copy of<br />
<strong>AphroChic</strong>: Celebrating the<br />
Legacy of the Black Family<br />
Home anywhere that<br />
books are sold.<br />
SPECIAL THANKS TO BERNHARDT,<br />
KOHLER, SHADE STORE, RESOURCE<br />
FURNITURE, PERIGOLD, CAMBRIA,<br />
FISHER & PAYKEL, FARROW & BALL,<br />
MITZI, POTTERY BARN, ARTICLE,<br />
AND TUFT & NEEDLE FOR THEIR<br />
PARTNERSHIP.<br />
22 aphrochic
Global Attic • 312•767•4928 • Chicago<br />
issue ten 23<br />
www.globalattic.com
MOOD<br />
HOME FOR THE HOLIDAYS<br />
This year’s holiday gift guide is all about presents that make<br />
life at home comfy, cozy, and fun! We’ve scoured the web,<br />
the gram and even TikTok to bring you gifts curated for all<br />
of those in your life — your mom who prizes self-care, your<br />
friend who loves to entertain at home, and your brother who<br />
always wants to win on family game night. We’ve not only<br />
found gifts for everyone on your list, but we’ve also made<br />
sure that these items are by Black-owned brands or brands<br />
with strong Black representation. Have fun shopping!<br />
Brown Girl Jane<br />
CBD Gelées<br />
browngirljane.com<br />
$42<br />
<strong>AphroChic</strong> Haze<br />
Yellow Pillow<br />
1stdibs.com<br />
$149<br />
Life, I Swear by<br />
Chloe Dulce<br />
Louvouezo<br />
target.com<br />
$21.99<br />
Sol Cacao 70%<br />
Peru Dark<br />
Chocolate<br />
solcacao.com<br />
$7<br />
Marché Amour Tea<br />
marcheruedix.com $42<br />
24 aphrochic
gifts for<br />
SELF CARE<br />
Yogamatters x<br />
Bespoke Binny<br />
Red Waves Bolster<br />
yogamatters.com<br />
$46<br />
Arami Essentials<br />
Glow Scrub<br />
blkgrn.com $39<br />
Bolé Road Textiles<br />
Dusty Rose Throw<br />
boleroadtextiles. com<br />
$160<br />
Golde Cacao Turmeric<br />
Latte Blend<br />
golde.co $29<br />
Protect Black People Vegan<br />
Leather Duffle Bag<br />
cise.store $175<br />
issue ten 25
gifts for<br />
ENTERTAINING<br />
Jaiye-Plaid Table<br />
Napkins set of 4<br />
$125<br />
meyourge.com<br />
Estelle Amber Smoke<br />
Wine Stemless Glasses<br />
set of 6 $170<br />
estellecoloredglass.com<br />
Homage: Recipes + Stories<br />
from an Amish Soul Food<br />
Kitchen by Chris Scott<br />
$35.49<br />
target.com<br />
Tangerine Baddie<br />
Candle $99<br />
litbodies.com<br />
The Harmata<br />
Apron $75<br />
weardiop.com<br />
26 aphrochic
AAMI AAMI Tray<br />
$49.51<br />
shop.yinkailori.com<br />
Spice by Tia Mowry 12pc<br />
Stoneware Truffle Pepper<br />
Reactive Dinnerware Set<br />
$69.99<br />
target.com<br />
Low Puff Charcuterie<br />
Board $125<br />
noellerx.com<br />
Clipse Salt & Pepper<br />
Shakers ‘Rock White’<br />
$50<br />
seraphichome.store<br />
Shantell Martin Water is<br />
Life Amref Benefit Water<br />
Pitcher $165<br />
amrefbenefitpitchers.com<br />
issue ten 27
gifts for<br />
MERRY MAKING<br />
Basketball Legends<br />
Alphabet Book $19.95<br />
maisonette.com<br />
Kendra Dandy<br />
Tropical Glam<br />
Jumbo Cheetah<br />
Beach Ball $32<br />
mercari.com<br />
Actually Curious Curiosity<br />
Edition Playing Cards $25<br />
actuallycurious.com<br />
Prowler 1st Gen Plate<br />
Skates $99<br />
moonlightroller.com<br />
Nkatha Limited<br />
Edition Wood<br />
Jigsaw Puzzle by<br />
Benny Bing $200<br />
puzzle-lab.com<br />
28 aphrochic
Monopoly Game: Black<br />
Panther Edition $<strong>10</strong>9.98<br />
walmart.com<br />
Grace Deck of Cards by<br />
Kehinde Wiley $30<br />
kehindewileyshop.com<br />
Sizwe Midlength<br />
Surfboard $1,800<br />
mamiwatasurf.<br />
com<br />
Stone Cold by<br />
Hadiya Williams<br />
$60<br />
studiobppco.com<br />
Death of St. Joseph Basketball<br />
by Kehinde Wiley $175<br />
kehindewileyshop.com<br />
issue ten 29
FEATURES<br />
Arthur Ashe | Hamptons Elegance Meets New York Style | West African<br />
Roots | Queen Mother's | Home for the Holidays | Baltimore Speaks |<br />
Vote | History in Sound
Fashion<br />
Arthur<br />
Ashe<br />
How to Be an Icon<br />
What does it mean to be iconic? Is it simply a measure<br />
of fame, like a blue check, triggered by the right<br />
number of followers or metrics citing a high water<br />
mark for influence? Is it something you can purchase?<br />
Will enough money make an icon? Or is it about the<br />
impact that one person can have — those once-ina-lifetime<br />
talents that come and change not just one<br />
game, but all of them? If it ever seems like it’s getting a<br />
little hard to tell, one way to know for sure is to look to<br />
someone whose status is undeniable. A star-studded<br />
alliance of fashion brands, non-profit organizations<br />
and NBA superstars have come together to recognize<br />
someone who never failed to show us how it’s done —<br />
Arthur Ashe.<br />
Words by Bryan Mason<br />
Images furnished by Arthur Ashe<br />
32 aphrochic
issue ten 33
issue ten 35
Fashion<br />
Launched in August 2022, Arthur Ashe is a new lifest yle<br />
sports brand dedicated to the legendary tennis star,<br />
activist, and author. The brand takes its place alongside<br />
fellow tennis-inspired athleisure brands Lacoste, named<br />
for French tennis champion (and originator of the Lacoste<br />
t-shirt) René Lacoste, and the also eponymously-named<br />
Fred Perry.<br />
The partnership that brought this brand to life<br />
paired Jeanne Moutoussamy-Ashe and the Arthur Ashe<br />
Foundation with Jack Carlson, founder of the fashion<br />
brand Rowing Blazers, and brand director Karl-Raphael<br />
Blanchard. For Carlson, the notion of dedicating a sports<br />
fashion brand to Ashe was more than obvious, it was long<br />
overdue. “Who better to represent the United States than<br />
Arthur Ashe?” he asks. “Arthur Ashe has been a hero of<br />
mine for a long time. His icy cool demeanor, effortless<br />
style, scholarly approach to sport, his will to win and<br />
determination to stand up for social justice all resonate<br />
with me deeply.”<br />
The Arthur Ashe line is a much-needed addition<br />
to America’s fashion culture and a well-deserved<br />
remembrance of a true icon that inspired as much with<br />
his life off the court as on. Ashe’s signature style comes<br />
through in a collection of warm-up jackets and bottoms,<br />
polo shirts and caps. All sport an embossed emblem<br />
depicting the tennis star in action, or bold text that simply<br />
reads, “ASHE.”<br />
Ashe’s imprint on the world of fashion comes on the<br />
heels of the indelible mark he made on American culture,<br />
which only began with his meteoric rise in tennis. The<br />
Richmond, Va., native learned the sport on the municipal<br />
courts where his father was the caretaker. Despite<br />
being barred from competing with white students in his<br />
area, Ashe’s skills were impressive enough to earn him<br />
a scholarship to UCLA where he would be named to the<br />
US team for the Davis Cup, an event that he would win<br />
four times, eventually serving as team captain. Over the<br />
course of his career, Arthur Ashe would secure more than<br />
70 singles titles including grand slam singles and doubles<br />
championships at the US Open, Australian Open, French<br />
Open, and Wimbledon. He was the first African American<br />
ever to win the US Open and the Australian Open, and<br />
the second Black person — after Althea Gibson — to win<br />
Wimbledon. And after a lengthy battle with apartheid-era<br />
South Africa, Ashe was granted a visa to play in the country,<br />
winning a doubles title at the 1973 South African Open.<br />
Though his list of championships, records, and moments<br />
of on-court excellence are second to none, far greater is<br />
the effect that Arthur Ashe had on American culture as an<br />
activist, philanthropist, and author. He championed the<br />
cause of heart disease following his first heart attack at the<br />
age of 33, eventually serving as chairman of the American<br />
Heart Association and bringing attention to the hereditary<br />
nature of the disease which, despite his fitness, he inherited<br />
from his parents. After contracting HIV through a blood<br />
transfusion during heart surgery, Ashe created the Arthur<br />
Ashe Foundation for the Defeat of AIDS, fighting for that<br />
cause as well until his death from AIDS-related pneumonia<br />
in 1993. His 1988 book, A Hard Road to Glory: A History of the<br />
African-American Athlete 1619-1918, spanned numerous sports,<br />
detailing the accomplishments of Black champions in boxing,<br />
horse racing, and cycling from the beginning of the African<br />
American journey in 1619 to the opening decades of the 20th<br />
century.<br />
Ashe’s humanitarian legacy is embodied in the long list<br />
of awards, professorships, and institutes that bear his name.<br />
That list stretches from the The Arthur Ashe Endowment<br />
International Healthcare Worker Training Program to the<br />
Arthur Ashe Institute of Urban Health in Brooklyn, New York.<br />
That level of greatness is impossible to represent with clothing<br />
alone. So in its own words, the Arthur Ashe brand, “aims to<br />
celebrate, educate, and build upon” his impressive legacy. To<br />
that end, the brand has teamed with both the Social Change<br />
Fund, and the Arthur Ashe Legacy Fund at UCLA. Established<br />
by NBA All-Stars Dwayne Wade, Carmelo Anthony, and Chris<br />
Paul, The Social Change Fund seeks to advance the cause of<br />
social equity by supporting brands and organizations focused<br />
on change through a variety of lenses, from arts & education<br />
and civic engagement, to health equity and criminal justice<br />
reform.<br />
The fact of the matter is that there are a lot of ways to be<br />
iconic, and a lot of different thoughts on what it means. But if<br />
you have to choose, there are worse ways to go than to walk<br />
the road laid out by Arthur Ashe. One that sees greatness and<br />
service as one and connected, and that tells us that being an<br />
icon means caring enough to take a big platform and use it to<br />
make room for everyone to stand. AC<br />
Shop the collection at ArthurAshe.com.<br />
36 aphrochic
Fashion<br />
38 aphrochic
issue ten 39
issue ten 41
42 aphrochic
Interior Design<br />
Hamptons<br />
Elegance Meets<br />
New York Style<br />
“I was all about modern,” interior designer Mikel Welch reflects,<br />
remembering a time and place that is not the one he’s currently<br />
in. “I was living in Harlem, you know, it's glitzy. And I think a<br />
part of that seeps in and you almost become a product of your<br />
environment to a degree.” Restored to the present, Mikel finds<br />
himself back in his new apartment in Queens. In this home,<br />
Mikel has made it a point to reverse the process he went through<br />
in Harlem. Instead of becoming a product of his environment,<br />
the celebrity designer is transforming where he is into where<br />
he wants to be — from Queens to the Hamptons, every time he<br />
comes home.<br />
Words by Jeanine Hays and Bryan Mason<br />
Photos by Chinasa Cooper<br />
issue ten 43
Interior Design
Interior Design<br />
46 aphrochic
issue ten 47
Interior Design<br />
A veteran of numerous design shows, from HGTV’s<br />
Design Star to The Steve Harvey Show and The Real Housewives<br />
of Atlanta before becoming a host on Trading Spaces and<br />
later Murder House Flip, Mikel had the right skillset for the job,<br />
but there was just one problem. One of the main challenges a<br />
designer faces when confronted with designing their own space<br />
is how to define their style. It’s a hurdle that anyone who wants<br />
to design their home must pass, but when you design spaces<br />
for a living you have a lot of styles — the hard part is deciding<br />
which one is yours. “It's always interesting to come up with the<br />
story if you don't know it,” Mikel reflects. “Most of my clients<br />
ask for modern. They want leather, they want clean edges, they<br />
want brass. They want to feel like they're walking into the lobby<br />
at the Four Seasons. And so I have to exude that type of design<br />
aesthetic when I'm working with them.” For himself, Mikel<br />
reserves something special, a combination of elements and aesthetics<br />
that the designer fondly, and humorously, refers to as,<br />
“Primitive Modern.”<br />
“I call it that because I'm a person who has an affinity for<br />
things that are old and rustic and have a patina,” he explains. “I<br />
like raw natural stones on things with jagged edges — things that<br />
are imperfect. To me, those are the things that really tell a story.”<br />
Balancing his love of the raw and unrefined, Mikel indulges the<br />
other side of his design nature, the side that knows the higher<br />
ends of the design scale, and walks that road with confidence. “I<br />
do like things that are clean and new,” he confesses. “So I like to<br />
kind of have a marriage and balance of the two.”<br />
New York is not a city known for offering vast amounts<br />
of space in its apartments. So when Mikel’s home clocked in<br />
at around 650 square feet, the designer was neither surprised<br />
nor dismayed. “I think the square footage is what stands out<br />
the most about my home,” he remarks. “Because I really did not<br />
have a lot of space, I needed to make bigger impacts. I focused a<br />
lot on playing with heights,” Mikel recalls. “So you'll see the ceiling-to-floor<br />
drapes around the bed in my bedroom. And in the<br />
living room, behind my sofa, I have the repurposed wood barn<br />
doors, which really draw your eye up. It all helps to make the<br />
place feel a lot larger than what it is.”<br />
The living room is also the designer’s first answer when<br />
asked which room in his home is his favorite. “Hands down,” he<br />
smiles. “It's just cozy when I sit in that space. I'm excited about<br />
the fall and the winter and just to sit and be cozy with a blanket<br />
on my sofa looking at snow falling. It feels like that Hamptons<br />
home I've always wanted.”<br />
“I don't have to make definitive decisions immediately,”<br />
he admits. “It took about eight months for me to even<br />
begin thinking about designing this place.” It’s another happy<br />
departure from the experience of designing professionally — no<br />
deadlines, no expectations, and no rush. “I kind of like to let life<br />
bring me into situations where I stumble upon a piece. And it's<br />
just the perfect piece.” The first perfect piece to set the stage for<br />
Mikel’s earth-toned sanctuary was a dining room table. “And<br />
that was out of sheer necessity,” he laughs, “because I got sick<br />
and tired of having to write on the floor after the first couple of<br />
weeks.” From there, Mikel’s imagination began to wander and<br />
the number of objects in his space began to grow — an organic<br />
yet naturally balanced combination of the raw and the refined.<br />
There are two main decorating benefits that often<br />
attend life as an interior designer. The first is the ability to<br />
keep things from old projects to use in your own home. The<br />
second is the ability to build things that you want but, for<br />
whatever reason, aren’t going to buy. The first is how Mikel<br />
got his bed, “It was a gift, in a way,” he relates. “The bed<br />
construction was part of an installation that I did for the<br />
Hampton Designer Showhouse. At the end of the show I'm<br />
like, ‘Hey, I paid for it. It should come back with me.’”<br />
The second perk is the story behind the designer’s beloved<br />
barn doors. “I made those,” he beams. “I had to drive to Far<br />
Rockaway to find some lumber; I got it delivered. And this is<br />
New York City — I don't have a backyard. So we had to build the<br />
piece in my living room in one day. There was sawdust all over<br />
the place!”<br />
In addition to the functional and the decorative, making a<br />
place that felt like home to Mikel meant bringing in a substantial<br />
amount of art — a category which, for him, is delightfully far<br />
reaching. “That coconut fiber raincoat is one of my key pieces,”<br />
he says, pointing into his dining room. “It's something that<br />
would be used in the late 1800s for a laborer in China who would<br />
have been picking rice, and needed something thick to shield<br />
them from the elements.” Mikel’s taste in art not only touches<br />
on a variety of objects and cultures, but stories, which are the<br />
things that he treasures the most. “For me,” he continues, “not<br />
only is it a piece of art, it's a piece of someone's history. And so<br />
it’s one of my favorite pieces."<br />
48 aphrochic
Interior Design<br />
Another favorite sits on his coffee table, a chain of linked<br />
circles, which have fueled hours of speculation and wonder. “To<br />
me, they look like African currency objects,” he ponders. “But I<br />
can tell that this was a bracelet — like several bracelets. I picked<br />
this up in California and I’m intrigued to know the story because<br />
it's rusted.” Other favorites include a fragile piece of antique<br />
pottery in his bedroom, once used to store documents. “Maybe<br />
an architect, back in that day, had all of his paperwork inside of<br />
this,” he muses. Another is an armoire, originally from India, but<br />
obtained from a vintage shop somewhere along the way. “I don't<br />
really have a backstory on it, but I just love the intricate detailing<br />
on the door. And when you open it up you can see the unfinished<br />
nature of how the nails were actually applied and hammered.”<br />
The little thrill that Mikel experiences on seeing these unpolished<br />
details, evidence of human hands that worked to strike<br />
a balance between style and necessity in some distant place<br />
or time, is a big part of how he knows which pieces he needs to<br />
make a part of his home. “I just like old things that people used to<br />
treasure,” he shrugs. “I just like to keep the story going.”<br />
One of the things that distinguishes this home is the<br />
pervasive serenity of its neutral color palette. But the focus on<br />
earth tones doesn’t mean the eye goes wanting for things to to<br />
enjoy. Witness the brief wall space between Mikel’s kitchen and<br />
living room, which the designer activates with a gallery wall<br />
of pieces that reaches to the floor, combining paintings with<br />
objects such as beaded necklaces and a small chest. “It's just one<br />
of those transitional areas,” he concedes. “I could have just put a<br />
big oversized piece of artwork. But I wanted something that had<br />
a little more character.” In addition to making a more detailed<br />
visual statement, the gallery wall also offers Mikel flexibility,<br />
which is always a treasured gift. “It's got some of my favorite<br />
things, as cheesy as that sounds, but as you begin to accumulate<br />
things over time, you’ll always find reasons to swap out what just<br />
doesn't work anymore.”<br />
Making a space that works for him means something<br />
different to Mikel now than it did when he lived in Harlem, just<br />
a few years ago. <strong>No</strong>w with distance and time, Mikel has seen a<br />
change, not only in the aesthetic of what he embraces as “his<br />
style,” but in the substance of what he wants that aesthetic to<br />
express. “I turned 40 in this place,” he says. “So for me, this place<br />
will go down in history as the first apartment where I lived like<br />
an adult. And with that change, I felt like it was time to really put<br />
some thought into my place. I never took the time to really think<br />
about who I was in an apartment before, it was just someplace<br />
to sleep. But here, the story that I want to tell is of a Mikel who is<br />
established now. He's got a better hold of himself and now he's<br />
beginning to enjoy life.”<br />
Part of that enjoyment is feeling that he’s built for himself<br />
a bit of the luxury that he creates for his clients, bringing the<br />
Hamptons to Queens, and fitting it all into 650 square feet, just<br />
for him. “The biggest thing for me now is to have some work/<br />
life balance. Most of the time, whenever I get some time off to<br />
enjoy myself I go to the Hamptons. I wanted a space that made<br />
me feel like I was there, because that’s where I relax. When I<br />
come home I'm not even in New York [City] right now. I close<br />
my eyes, and I see Montauk, and there’s water outside.” AC<br />
50 aphrochic
Interior Design
issue ten 53
West African<br />
Brooklyn home of designer<br />
Tina Rich. Photo by<br />
Genevieve Garruppo<br />
54 aphrochic
Roots<br />
issue ten 55
Culture<br />
A Closer Look at the Origins<br />
of the Fiddle Leaf Fig<br />
For most of us, it was around 20<strong>10</strong> that today’s<br />
trendiest houseplant came onto the scene. The ficus<br />
lyrata, better known as the fiddle leaf fig started a<br />
revolution, quickly replacing the old, outdated palm<br />
tree of virtually every home and office of the 1990s.<br />
While the fiddle leaf fig has enjoyed soaring popularity<br />
over the past decade — even getting recognized<br />
by The New York Times as the go-to plant of<br />
top interior designers — its history is much longer<br />
and deeper than that. In fact, this stylishly modern<br />
plant is millions of years old and traces its roots to<br />
West Africa, specifically modern day Cameroon and<br />
Sierra Leone.<br />
Words by Jeanine Hays and Bryan Mason<br />
56 aphrochic
Philadelphia home designed<br />
by Naomi Stein.<br />
Photo by Seth Caplan<br />
issue ten 57
Culture<br />
Despite sounding somewhat<br />
bizarre, the plant’s Latin title actually<br />
makes some good sense. Native to<br />
lowland tropical rainforests, where<br />
they commonly reach heights of 50<br />
feet, this lush tropical ficus boasts large<br />
leathery leaves that resemble a lyre, or<br />
lap harp, hence the name ficus lyrata.<br />
In English we call it a fig tree because,<br />
in its homeland, this large flowering<br />
plant produces green fig fruit. While it<br />
stands alone as an ornamental statement<br />
plant in today’s interiors, in the wild,<br />
the fiddle leaf fig is known as a fierce<br />
competitor, growing to its gargantuan<br />
height by attaching itself to lower level<br />
trees and taking their share of sunlight.<br />
In domestic settings however, it has no<br />
such competition — which is probably<br />
good for the rest of the houseplants.<br />
Known for being finicky and hard<br />
to care for, its high maintenance reputation,<br />
while adding to its luxury status,<br />
may actually be a bit unfair. Far from<br />
being temperamental, it’s more that<br />
this plant is out of its element in most<br />
homes. The fiddle leaf fig needs a bright<br />
spot to grow in and lots of humidity to<br />
keep it happy. While that doesn’t sound<br />
like too much to ask, most of our homes<br />
don’t offer the type of rain forest environment<br />
the plant requires. And most<br />
of us don’t want them to. At the same<br />
time, if you can keep the fiddle leaf fig<br />
healthy and thriving, it can grow pretty<br />
wild, so pruning may be necessary<br />
from time to time.<br />
Interior design is all about trends,<br />
and whether we’re talking about<br />
furniture or plants, every era has its<br />
favorite styles. In the 1950s and '60s the<br />
African violet was the flora of choice,<br />
the 1970s had the spider plant, and the<br />
'80s and '90s, the ficus. In contemporary<br />
spaces, however, it’s the imposing size<br />
and sculptural quality of the fiddle leaf<br />
fig that makes it a stand out in any room.<br />
Older than humanity itself, the jurassic<br />
nature of the tree is likely the reason for<br />
its stunning leaves that can measure up<br />
to twelve inches in length. Lending to the<br />
sculpted feeling of the plant, it can’t help<br />
but grab attention from any corner in the<br />
room. Likewise, the feminine aesthetic<br />
of its curving leaves fits in beautifully<br />
with modern decor while freshening up<br />
more traditional spaces.<br />
For those wanting to liven up their<br />
spaces with culture, artifacts and plant<br />
life, the fiddle leaf fig can be a perfect way<br />
to bring a piece of the African Diaspora<br />
into daily decor. We love utilizing this<br />
tree in rooms with handcrafted rugs<br />
from the African continent, hand carved<br />
sculptures and other artisan objects by<br />
makers of the Diaspora.<br />
While the fiddle leaf fig tree has<br />
West African roots, today its popularity<br />
has led to it being grown in the US<br />
for decorative purposes. While we did<br />
try to research African growers, sadly<br />
we weren’t able to identify any. But, a<br />
fiddle leaf fig is a wonderful way to bring<br />
African roots home. Here are a few of our<br />
favorite sources for fiddle leaf fig trees:<br />
Bloomscape<br />
Fiddle leaf fig trees up to 5 feet<br />
tall can be found at Bloomscape. You<br />
can order your plant online and expect<br />
it in just a few days in a colorful pot of<br />
your choice. Your fiddle leaf fig will<br />
come with care instructions, and will<br />
be replaced for free if it dies within the<br />
first 30 days.<br />
Pottery Barn<br />
For those who don’t want to have<br />
to deal with the care and upkeep of a real<br />
plant, there are plenty of beautiful faux<br />
options for fiddle leaf figs. Pottery Barn<br />
has sculptural faux fiddle leaf fig trees<br />
that are up to 7 feet tall. Their faux trees<br />
are sure to add drama and interest to an<br />
empty corner in any room.<br />
World Market<br />
World’s Market’s 6-foot faux<br />
fiddle leaf fig is regarded as one of the<br />
most lifelike faux options you can find.<br />
We’ve used it ourselves in a project<br />
and admired how lifelike it is. With a<br />
lush canopy of leaves at the top, it’s a<br />
beautiful statement piece that can be<br />
dressed up even further in a stylish<br />
basket.<br />
Costa Farms<br />
One of the largest growers of plants<br />
worldwide, Costa Farms sells a variety<br />
of fiddle leaf fig trees. After buying the<br />
plant from Costa Farms you can visit<br />
their website that provides information<br />
on how to keep your fiddle leaf fig happy<br />
and healthy and learn how this stunning<br />
plant also contributes to better indoor<br />
air quality as well. AC<br />
Home of actor Danielle<br />
Brooks, designed by<br />
<strong>AphroChic</strong>, featuring a World<br />
Market faux fiddle leaf fig.<br />
Photo by Chinasa Cooper<br />
58 aphrochic
issue ten 59
Hudson home<br />
designed by<br />
<strong>AphroChic</strong>. Photo by<br />
Nicole Franzen
Food<br />
Queen<br />
Mother's<br />
Chef Rock Harper Is Changing the<br />
Chicken Sandwich Game, Served with<br />
a Side of History and Respect<br />
Fast food is usually the last place anyone would<br />
look for a history lesson, a social conscience, or a<br />
message of change. And maybe that’s the problem.<br />
In a world where fast food is often the only food<br />
available in our communities, is there any reason<br />
why it shouldn’t be a force for good, serving healthy<br />
food while encouraging community togetherness<br />
and mutual respect? Chef Rock Harper says no,<br />
and he’s proving his point with Queen Mother’s,<br />
his new Arlington, Va.-based restaurant that’s<br />
aiming to change the way we see fried chicken,<br />
and a few other things as well.<br />
Words by Bryan Mason<br />
Photos by Melena Shonell, Rock Harper and DoorDash<br />
62 aphrochic
issue ten 63
Food<br />
If you’re a fan of reality cooking shows, chances are you<br />
know who Rock Harper is. In 2007, he exploded onto the the<br />
public stage as the season 3 winner of Gordon Ramsay’s popular<br />
Hell’s Kitchen competition. Since then, Rock’s career has flourished,<br />
culminating in the opening of Queen Mother’s. But where<br />
many of the giants in the chicken game lean on plantation<br />
owners and mammy figures to symbolize their brands, Rock’s<br />
inspiration is altogether different.<br />
“My mom,” he smiles, “she’s my Queen Mother.” The<br />
connection between Rock’s mom and his craft, and all the<br />
meaning he derives from it, is an inspiration that goes back to<br />
his youngest days and his very first memories. “My mother<br />
and grandmother were the cooks,” he remembers. “Also some<br />
aunts, and uncles, my grandfather could make a mean batch of<br />
potatoes, and fish.” For Rock’s family food was more than sustenance,<br />
it was communication, both a way to speak and a means<br />
of facilitating that speech. “It was an opportunity to connect.<br />
Our family's very social and food was always a way for us to<br />
gather. We’d crack jokes, play the Dozens and fellowship with<br />
one another. And it laid the groundwork for me to do everything<br />
I do today.”<br />
What Rock is doing today is putting every other chicken<br />
sandwich in the game on notice — the Queen reigns alone. A<br />
perfect, upscale boutique-style approach to chicken sandwiches,<br />
Queen Mother’s offers a svelte menu with a curated selection<br />
of sandwich options, an arsenal of sauces, near-and-dear sides<br />
like dirty rice and cole slaw, and — in what can only be termed<br />
a stroke of pure genius — crinkle fries made with duck fat. But<br />
Queen Mother’s isn’t just changing the game with the menu.<br />
It has a different perspective on what fast food can mean to a<br />
community. The chef ensures that the chickens he serves are<br />
organically fed and humanely kept, his spices are all natural and<br />
his packaging is plant-based and compostable. Rock connects<br />
with his customers and invites them to rediscover their connections<br />
with each other through special take-out dinners for<br />
Mother’s Day and partnerships with local shelters to provide<br />
food through a program he calls “Buy One, Give One.”<br />
It’s no surprise to find Rock still up to his elbows in<br />
chicken 15 years after it propelled him into the winners circle of<br />
Hell’s Kitchen. It was confidence in himself and his food culture<br />
that motivated him to present a plate of fried chicken to one of<br />
the world’s most famous and decorated chefs in his bid to be<br />
named the best. That sense of self is no small thing in a culinary<br />
world that still reserves its highest praises for European traditions<br />
and those who cook within them. But Rock’s relationship<br />
to fried chicken is special. <strong>No</strong>t just a comfort food, Rock sees<br />
fried chicken as the intersection of a number of historical, social<br />
and economic issues that have been impacting Black people for<br />
centuries.<br />
Reluctant to be termed a scholar on the topic, Rock is nevertheless<br />
quick to point out the hypocrisy of one of the world’s<br />
most consumed foods being specifically linked to Black people<br />
through satire and stereotype, while simultaneously being<br />
claimed as the centerpiece of a “Southern” cooking tradition<br />
attributed primarily to white Americans and their European<br />
ancestry. “There's a lot of people who say fried chicken comes<br />
from the Scots,” he reveals, adding that the first American fried<br />
chicken recipe is widely credited to southern heiress, Mary<br />
Randolph, in her 1824 cookbook The Virginia Housewife.<br />
Rock rejects the theory that American fried chicken<br />
is a Scottish invention, pointing out — as others have — the<br />
existence of precolonial West African traditions of frying<br />
chicken in palm oil, as well as the extent to which Mary Randolph<br />
drew on the expertise of the enslaved women who worked her<br />
kitchens. Likely what we know today as fried chicken developed<br />
from a combination of African and Scottish methods while<br />
bearing little resemblance — particularly in sandwich form — to<br />
either. But the real question is why any of this matters.<br />
“It's a repositioning of ownership,” Rock explains. “I’m<br />
frying chicken. There’s a lot that comes with that and I'm all for<br />
it. But I want Black folks to recognize that this thing is a billion<br />
dollar industry that we do not participate in in a significant<br />
way.” Juxtaposed against the prevailing sentiment, even in our<br />
own community, that traditionally Black foods like chicken<br />
and other soul food staples are “low brow,” Rock struggles<br />
with the disconnect, and thinks that we should, too. “I don't get<br />
invited to some of the things that I used to get invited to,” he<br />
confesses, "because they don't want some dude talking about<br />
fried chicken.” This too seems incongruous, Rock observes,<br />
given the role that Black people, especially Black women, have<br />
played in the history of fried chicken, not only perfecting the art<br />
of making it, but creating the business of selling it.<br />
64 aphrochic
issue ten 65
Food<br />
Chef Rock Harper<br />
Black women have been selling fried chicken since the 1700s. After the Civil War,<br />
“waiter carriers,” Black women in Gordonville, Va., and elsewhere found economic empowerment<br />
selling fried chicken meals at train stations — a legacy that Gordonville celebrates<br />
every year. Immersed in this history, Rock works to remind us of how our food<br />
traditions encourage us to look past what we’re told we can be to celebrate what we are —<br />
starting with our mothers.<br />
“One of my responsibilities as a Black chef is to reframe how we talk about Black<br />
women and food,” he asserts. “I think I cook an incredible yardbird. But it’s not super<br />
important that everybody says it's the best fried chicken. It's really important that<br />
people understand what fried chicken means and why I chose it right now. Obviously,<br />
we're way more dynamic and multifaceted than just fried chicken. But this is what I<br />
choose to use, because if I can use the least thing among us, the thing that has been<br />
weaponized against us, for us to gain some empowerment, why am I trying to cook<br />
somebody else's food? This is literally in my blood; literally in my veins. Why on earth<br />
am I running away from it?” AC<br />
Visit queenmothercooks.com to place your order.<br />
66 aphrochic
issue ten 67
Entertaining<br />
Home for<br />
the Holidays<br />
Chef Rashad Frazier Shares His Favorite<br />
Family Dishes for a Soulful Holiday Meal<br />
The smell of eucalyptus, roast chicken, and citrus creates a fragrant<br />
mix in the kitchen. There’s magic in the air. Cooking for the holidays is<br />
always special, but today, Chef Rashad Frazier of Camp Yoshi has come<br />
in from the cold to create the perfect holiday meal. As the setting for<br />
this feast, the chef’s table is set with a mix of golden flatware, painted<br />
goblets, and taper candles. For some, creating a magical holiday meal<br />
starts days or even weeks in advance, but Chef Frazier has the process<br />
down to a science. As he describes it, “a dazzling roast, spectacular<br />
sides, and amazing cocktails,” are all anyone needs to make a big impact<br />
during the holidays.<br />
Words by Jeanine Hays and Bryan Mason<br />
Photos by Patrick Cline<br />
issue ten 69
Entertaining<br />
It’s a simple menu, focused on classic dishes with a few moments<br />
of culinary style added in for good measure. But as the room fills<br />
with the scent of roast chicken and its supporting cast of side dishes,<br />
it’s getting hard to argue with the virtues of the chef’s minimalist<br />
approach.<br />
Part of the virtue of the chef’s menu is its dedication to classic,<br />
beloved dishes that are, for many of us, a reminder of family tradition,<br />
but with new and unexpected twists. An old-fashioned brioche stuffed,<br />
roasted chicken is set on its classic bed of roasted vegetables — only<br />
this time the vegetables are accompanied by an assortment of citrus<br />
fruits. The addition of citrus, an unexpected touch to a holiday feast,<br />
not only adds a unique flavor to the meal, but with the orange harvest<br />
beginning in <strong>No</strong>vember, also brings a seasonal element to a dish that is<br />
specific to the holidays.<br />
“Roast chicken is one of my favorite dishes to make,” says Chef<br />
Frazier. “It’s usually very inexpensive and cooks quickly.” To keep the<br />
dish flavorful and juicy, Chef Frazier employs an unusual technique<br />
for stuffing the bird, eschewing the typical practice to instead place<br />
the stuffing mixture beneath the skin of the chicken, between the skin<br />
and the meat. “This technique creates big flavor all around but especially<br />
for the breast,” the chef attests. “When preparing this dish, it’s<br />
really important that you do not tear the chicken's skin while stuffing<br />
it. I recommend you very gently use your middle and index finger<br />
to separate the skin from the meat.” Chef Frazier further advises<br />
cooks using this method to not loosen the skin of the chicken past its<br />
shoulders as doing so will allow the stuffing mixture to leak out. His<br />
final word of advice: “to avoid creating a mess with the stuffing, use a<br />
pastry bag to squeeze the stuffing under the skin.”<br />
As with the main course, the side dishes of this meal feature<br />
updates on family favorites, namely sous vide whipped sweet potatoes<br />
and french-cut green beans that are crisp and fresh. “It’s crucial that<br />
the sides are right because they do so much to complete the entire<br />
meal,” Chef Frazier remarks. The relationship between main course<br />
and sides is so crucial in fact, that Rashad offers an unlikely comparison,<br />
“Chaka Khan is one of my favorite singers but her sound wouldn't<br />
have been the same without her band, Rufus. To me, sides are just as<br />
important. I prefer a side like green beans to be tender and crisp and<br />
my favorite way to achieve this is by poaching them briefly then immediately<br />
transferring them to an ice water bath to stop the cooking<br />
process.” For his sweet potatoes, the chef employed a more sophisticated<br />
cooking method called sous vide. “It's a technique where food is<br />
placed in an airtight bag and cooked in a water bath. It ensures food is<br />
cooked evenly but, more importantly for sweet potatoes, it ensures that<br />
the food retains all of its moisture throughout the cooking process.”<br />
The meal’s final note, a holiday whiskey punch infused with<br />
citrus. “I love a good cocktail during the holidays, too. I came up with<br />
the idea to incorporate citrus because the fruit becomes in-season<br />
during the holidays. Plus, citrus pairs really well with bourbon.” In<br />
addition to adding the perfect finishing touch on this wonderful<br />
meal, for Chef Frazier, elements of the drink remind him of his own<br />
childhood days. “As a kid, I always remember the house being filled<br />
with the aroma of fresh citrus and this cocktail represents that.”<br />
It’s a menu that offers a dazzling display of delicious dishes<br />
perfect for the entire family. “At the end of the day, a special holiday<br />
meal should bring loved ones together,” the chef says. “Regardless,<br />
of how well you stuff the chicken, sous vide your sweet potatoes, or<br />
decorate your table, in the end, the main goal is to spend time with<br />
family and this is what truly makes the day special.” AC<br />
70 aphrochic
72 aphrochic
issue ten 73
Entertaining<br />
holiday<br />
MENU<br />
Brioche Stuffed Roast Chicken<br />
Sous Vide Sweet Potatoes<br />
French-Cut Green Beans<br />
Holiday Whiskey Punch<br />
74 aphrochic
Holiday Whiskey Punch<br />
Serves 8<br />
INGREDIENTS:<br />
1 ½ cups Kentucky bourbon<br />
1 ½ cups strong tea<br />
5 medium oranges, muddled<br />
¾ cup fresh lemon juice<br />
9 dashes Angostura bitters<br />
2 tsp. freshly grated nutmeg<br />
8 orange wheels for garnish<br />
Sparkling water<br />
INSTRUCTIONS:<br />
First muddle the oranges, then add the bourbon, tea, lemon juice, Angostura<br />
bitters, and nutmeg in a container. Lightly mix. Cover, then chill and let<br />
rest over for 3 hours or overnight. Strain into a punch bowl and add orange<br />
wheels and 4 cups ice. Serve punch in cups over ice garnished with a splash of<br />
sparkling water.<br />
issue ten 75
Entertaining<br />
Brioche Stuffed Roast Chicken<br />
INGREDIENTS FOR CHICKEN:<br />
1 whole chicken<br />
Fresh rosemary<br />
2 cloves garlic, peeled<br />
1 lemon<br />
3 large carrots, roughly chopped<br />
2 celery stalks, roughly chopped<br />
2 fennel bulbs, quartered<br />
1 red onion, quartered<br />
2 oranges, quartered<br />
Sea salt and fresh ground pepper<br />
½ cup water<br />
INGREDIENTS FOR STUFFING:<br />
1 cup dried brioche breadcrumbs<br />
2 sticks of room temperature unsalted butter<br />
2 tbsp of minced fresh rosemary<br />
2 tbsp of minced fresh thyme<br />
3 tsp freshly grated lemon zest<br />
Sea salt and fresh ground pepper to taste<br />
INSTRUCTIONS:<br />
For the Stuffing:<br />
In a medium bowl, place butter and breadcrumbs in a bowl. Add the lemon zest,<br />
rosemary and thyme. Carefully mix to combine; season with salt and pepper. Move<br />
mixture to a to a pastry bag (feel free to use your hand but it’s messy) with an opening<br />
cut from one bottom corner.<br />
For the Chicken:<br />
Three to four hours early, prep the chicken. Using your fingers and starting at the rear,<br />
gently tunnel your fingers to separate the skin from the meat. Do not tear the skin.<br />
Using pastry piping tool, squeeze the stuffing mixture under the skin of the breast and<br />
legs. Season inside of chicken with salt. Prick the lemon with a fork and place it in the<br />
cavity along rosemary and garlic of the chicken. Using butcher twine, truss the chicken<br />
and transfer to a refrigerator to chill at least 3 to 24 hours uncovered. This step is<br />
critical because the chilled air with dry the chicken surface to allow for a crispier bird<br />
during roasting.<br />
Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Using a large skillet or a roasting pan, place fennel, onions,<br />
carrots, celery and oranges in and toss with two tbsp of olive oil and salt/pepper. Add<br />
half a cup of water to help prevent scorching. Set chicken on top of the bed of veggies.<br />
Transfer to oven. Roast chicken about 1 hour. Remove from oven and loosely cover with<br />
parchment paper-lined aluminum foil. Let stand 30 minutes before carving and serving.<br />
76 aphrochic
issue ten 77
Travel
City Stories<br />
Baltimore<br />
Speaks<br />
It’s amazing what can happen when you talk to people. Doors open, connections<br />
are made, and you find yourself learning things you didn’t know, about<br />
yourself, your life — or even a city. “Outside of Baltimore,” 19-year-old student,<br />
Ethan Hammett muses, “the city is known for two things — the accent and<br />
the murder rate. Going to school out of state, those are the two most frequent<br />
questions.” Known to most as the setting of crime dramas like, We Own This<br />
City, and more famously The Wire, it might be reasonable to expect that<br />
Baltimore would have a certain reputation. But to hear the city’s residents tell<br />
it, stopping there means missing a much bigger picture, especially when it<br />
comes to COVID-19.<br />
Words by Bryan Mason<br />
Photographs by Bryan Mason and Jeanine Hays<br />
80 aphrochic
City Stories<br />
“Baltimore should be known for its artists,” Ethan continues.<br />
“There are so many talented artists, musicians, actors, photographers,<br />
cinematographers. That type of light is never shined on the<br />
right people.” Similarly, Rob Lee, host of Baltimore’s popular The<br />
Truth in This Art podcast, describes the community he grew up in<br />
with one word: “family.” “Everybody knows somebody here,” he<br />
explains, “and everybody is rooting for you to win.” Skate parks and<br />
arts districts, improv studios, chicken boxes and an East side / West<br />
side relationship that isn’t quite a beef, but isn’t quite not — all are<br />
part of the unsung story of Baltimore, home to one of the nation’s<br />
largest and proudest Black communities.<br />
COVID-19 is another part of Baltimore’s story that has yet to<br />
be told from the inside. From the very start of the pandemic, we’ve<br />
been inundated with data on how the virus is infecting, hospitalizing,<br />
and killing people along racial lines, with Black people among those<br />
most affected. For Baltimore, a city that remains more than 60%<br />
Black, and is home to some of the nation’s leading medical institutions,<br />
that has meant some very specific outcomes. As the conversation<br />
has changed since 2020, and the drive to get America vaccinated<br />
increased, hesitancy within Black communities became a new talking<br />
point. This turn in the conversation brought a number of voices —<br />
some supportive, others admonishing — all pointed directly at Black<br />
communities. Largely missing from the conversation, however, has<br />
been the voices of the communities themselves.<br />
This summer, in partnership with Black Public Media,<br />
<strong>AphroChic</strong> went to Baltimore to see what the people who live there<br />
had to say about COVID-19, vaccination and hesitancy in Baltimore’s<br />
Black community. The result, Baltimore Speaks: Black Communities,<br />
COVID-19 and the Cost of <strong>No</strong>t Doing Enough, is a 15 minute documentary<br />
short aimed at looking at the pandemic through the eyes<br />
of Black people in the city. Speaking with podcasters and students,<br />
radio hosts and city officials, clergy and long COVID-19 survivors, the<br />
film is an examination of the city and what it has to teach the country<br />
as a whole.<br />
As nearly all of us know, the “hesitancy” which is often attributed<br />
to African Americans isn’t specific to vaccines, but applies to the<br />
American medical industry as a whole. And its roots go far deeper<br />
than COVID-19, extending well before the Civil War. Shooting this<br />
short documentary provided a unique opportunity to examine the<br />
relationship between America’s Black community and its medical<br />
community from the perspective of Black community members.<br />
That relationship, which includes medical experimentation<br />
on enslaved women, the horrors of Tuskegee, Henrietta Lacks, and a<br />
current maternal mortality rate among Black women that can only<br />
be described as “barbaric,” is more than enough reason for anyone to<br />
“hesitate,” even when what’s offered is the best and only way forward.<br />
As Baltimore resident and diversity educator Stephanie Tellis sum-<br />
Community ambassadors Sandra Dobson and Douglas<br />
Zimmerman of VALUE Baltimore.<br />
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issue ten 83
City Stories<br />
marizes in the film, “I'm going into an institution that has literally<br />
caused me to already be sick. And you think I'm gonna trust them?<br />
Are they actually going to give me the care that I need and deserve?”<br />
While hesitancy around the vaccines exists, we discovered that<br />
it wasn’t the heart of the issue. “More than 82% of residents 12 and<br />
up in Baltimore City are vaccinated,” we learned from Dr. Letitia<br />
Dzirasa, commissioner of the Baltimore City Health Department.<br />
“The percentage of white people that are vaccinated is higher,” she<br />
says, clearing up some of the confusion around percentage-based<br />
demographic studies. “But again, because there are more Black<br />
people in the city, it actually ends up being a higher number than<br />
the total number of white people vaccinated.” The city’s success in<br />
this area has rested largely on an alliance between its health department,<br />
medical and academic institutions, such as Johns Hopkins and<br />
Morgan State University, and the community itself, in the form of a<br />
peer ambassador program — members of the Baltimore community<br />
working tirelessly to get people the right details about the vaccines<br />
and making them accessible through events, information sessions<br />
and mobile vaccination units.<br />
Like us, the ambassadors found that amazing things can happen<br />
when you talk to people. Peer ambassador Kim Thomas recounts,<br />
“We've actually gone business to business, organization and organization,<br />
[to] nursing homes, stores, malls, just anywhere that we see<br />
people that we can engage.” And while not everyone was receptive to<br />
the message at first, over time people came to appreciate the effort,<br />
which has had results of its own. “People, when they see us, they know<br />
us," says ambassador Douglas Zimmerman, “They commune with us.<br />
We have relationships.”<br />
Despite the strides made by the ambassadors, COVID-19<br />
continues to run rampant throughout the country, and Baltimore<br />
is no exception. “I think that folks believe that we've turned some<br />
imaginary corner,” says Tamara Jones-Short, a Baltimore peer ambassador,<br />
“and we have not.”<br />
Yet like so many of us, Baltimore’s residents see the winding<br />
down of support from all levels of government and wonder about<br />
84 aphrochic
issue ten 85
City Stories<br />
what’s to come. “As far as a lot of folks are concerned, it’s over in<br />
December,” peer ambassador organizer Sandra Dobson says<br />
of the VALUE Baltimore program, Dobson says of the program,<br />
which is seeking funding to continue its efforts. “Conversely, my<br />
sun porch looks like COVID-19-R-Us, full of pamphlets and literature.<br />
And so when the project is over, I'm sure I'll have a lot of that<br />
literature left. It can be used. We can provide it to people — but one<br />
day those materials on my porch are going to be gone.”<br />
The story of COVID-19 in Baltimore is not just one of<br />
viruses and vaccines. Like Black communities across the<br />
country, Black Baltimoreans have faced centuries of systemic<br />
racism that has left its stamp on the current crisis at every<br />
level, from the prevalence of pre-existing conditions and food<br />
deserts to vaccine access. While this is possibly the easiest part<br />
of Baltimore’s story to identify with the rest of the country, the<br />
city’s best lesson might be the ambassador program. Based on<br />
trust and community relationships made one conversation<br />
at a time, it’s giving Baltimore a fighting chance in its battle<br />
with COVID-19 “That's how you can win,” Douglas reminds us.<br />
“People know when you're for real. They can know that you are<br />
sincere. And they know when you love them as a person and a<br />
human being.” AC<br />
Chimere Smith<br />
DeAyres White<br />
Rob Lee<br />
86 aphrochic
Dr. Letitia Dzrisasa<br />
Ethan Hammett<br />
Pastor Terris King<br />
Stephanie Tellis<br />
issue ten 87
City Stories<br />
88 aphrochic
View Baltimore Speaks:<br />
Black Communities,<br />
COVID-19, and the Cost of<br />
<strong>No</strong>t Doing Enough, and<br />
find critical resources<br />
regarding COVID-19 at<br />
baltimorespeaks.com.<br />
issue ten 89
Civics<br />
Black America’s<br />
Voting Revolution<br />
In the fall of 2020, the National Urban League partnered with BET<br />
to launch a new initiative — National Black Voter Day. The day, part<br />
of BET’s #ReclaimYourVote campaign, was focused on increasing<br />
Black voter turnout at the ballot box in the United States. Black voter<br />
turnout has been relatively high in the US for decades. Pew Research<br />
Center surveys that examine voting patterns over the past 20 years<br />
show that a majority of Black voters turn out each election cycle, with<br />
67% of eligible Black voters participating in the 2012 election. That<br />
number was higher than any other racial or ethnic group that year.<br />
But in 2016, during the presidential race between Hillary Clinton<br />
and Donald Trump, Black voter turnout dipped by <strong>10</strong>%, resulting in a<br />
20-year low (higher still than the percentage of eligible Asian-Americans<br />
and Hispanic-Americans who voted that year, but slightly<br />
lower than the percentage of eligible white Americans).<br />
Words by by Jeanine Hays<br />
Photos by Hunter Crenian, Element5 and via When We All Vote,<br />
Fair Fight Action and Ben & Jerry’s<br />
90 aphrochic
Michelle Obama headlines When We All Vote<br />
event in Miami in 2018.<br />
issue ten 91
Civics<br />
Stacey Abrams, candidate for governor of<br />
Georgia and founder of Fair Fight Action.<br />
92 aphrochic
To address the dip in numbers, for the first<br />
National Black Voter Day, the National Urban<br />
League and BET partnered with more than 40<br />
organizations around the country, including<br />
Michelle Obama’s When We All Vote, Stacey<br />
Abrams’ Fair Fight Action, and the NAACP, to<br />
help get people in the community registered<br />
to vote, provide guidance on voting rights restoration<br />
for eligible voters, help voters create<br />
a voting plan, and demystify the US voting<br />
process, which can differ from state to state.<br />
“In the current climate of uncertainty<br />
and unrest, it’s important to make a plan for<br />
voting — particularly for Black voters. Efforts<br />
to suppress the Black vote are coming from all<br />
sides, whether it’s restrictive state voting laws<br />
or foreign-based misinformation campaigns.<br />
National Black Voter Day is an opportunity to<br />
rise above the confusion and plot out a clear<br />
path to the ballot box,” National Urban League<br />
president and CEO Marc H. Morial said in a<br />
statement.<br />
The effort became a monumental success.<br />
In 2020, When We All Vote reported that the<br />
number of African Americans eligible to vote<br />
reached a record 30 million, with Black eligible<br />
voters now making up 12.5% of the US electorate.<br />
And Black Americans turned out en masse that<br />
year, with Joe Biden receiving 92% of the Black<br />
vote.<br />
Just weeks after the election, when polling<br />
data was in, Rashawn Ray of the Brookings Institution<br />
reported that, “The role of Black<br />
Americans goes way beyond helping candidate<br />
Biden secure a presidential victory. With<br />
Trump’s divisive rhetoric, overt appeals to<br />
systemic racism, use of outright falsehoods and<br />
distortions, and attempts to overturn the 2020<br />
election through extra-legal maneuvers, Blacks<br />
helped to save American democracy. They<br />
enabled Democrats to overcome the appeals<br />
of a GOP leader intent on subverting long-held<br />
democratic institutions and ushering in an era<br />
of authoritarian rule.”<br />
Still Under Threat<br />
While the number of Black registered<br />
voters reached a historic plateau in America<br />
in 2020, the onslaught against the right to vote<br />
has risen to a fever pitch over the last few years.<br />
When We All Vote reports that state lawmakers<br />
across the nation have introduced more than<br />
500 voter suppression bills since 2020. And that<br />
these bills and tactics seek to silence American<br />
voices at the ballot box, with an unstated yet<br />
clear focus on marginalizing Black voters.<br />
“It’s great news that more Black Americans<br />
were eligible to vote in the last presidential<br />
election than ever before,” says Michelle<br />
Obama in a video message released on this<br />
year’s National Black Voter Day. “But, at the<br />
same time, eligibility doesn’t mean those ballots<br />
will actually be cast — especially when in some<br />
places, it’s getting harder and harder to vote.”<br />
In the video message, which was played<br />
on BET network, she is joined by When We<br />
All Vote’s Co-Chair and Phoenix Suns point<br />
guard, Chris Paul, who states, “We’re seeing the<br />
polling places closed down, early voting hours<br />
being cut, folks being purged from the voting<br />
rolls. Who would have thought that in 2022, our<br />
right to vote would still be under threat?”<br />
The two end the message by encouraging<br />
viewers to check their voter registration<br />
at whenweallvote.org and work together with<br />
their community to get out the vote. The video<br />
is sobering. Some 57 years since the passage of<br />
the Voting Rights Act, Americans, and Black<br />
Americans in particular, are facing a coordinated<br />
attack to dismantle the power of America’s<br />
Black vote.<br />
The Brennan Center for Justice reports<br />
that currently, “This year, state lawmakers<br />
have focused on enacting election interference<br />
legislation, with six states already<br />
passing nine laws that threaten to undermine<br />
voters’ confidence in the security of elections.”<br />
Such laws permit partisan action in interfering<br />
with elections, seek to overturn election<br />
results and even threaten election officials with<br />
criminal penalties. And the Brennan Center has<br />
concluded that these interference laws “disproportionately<br />
affect voters of color.”<br />
Shadows of the Past<br />
Today’s election interference laws are a<br />
pull back to an America that existed before 1965<br />
when the Voting Rights Act (VRA) was enacted —<br />
key legislation providing all Americans the right<br />
to vote regardless of race. Just eight days after<br />
Martin Luther King, Jr. led the march in Selma,<br />
President Lyndon B. Johnson announced that<br />
he would pass the Voting Rights Act. Signed on<br />
August 6, 1965, the sweeping legislation ensured<br />
that no federal, state or local government could<br />
impede citizens from voting in any way because<br />
of their race or ethnicity.<br />
The legislation was intended to be a<br />
stopgap. Legislators believed that the VRA only<br />
needed to be in place for five years, and had<br />
hopes that America would resolve its issues<br />
around voting. But 57 years later, the fight for<br />
voting rights continues. The provisions of the<br />
VRA have been extended four times. And over<br />
the years, the law has been chipped away at.<br />
The Supreme Court is currently hearing Merrill<br />
v. Mulligan, which centers around whether or<br />
not race should be a required consideration<br />
when drawing maps of electoral districts. If the<br />
Supreme Court finds that race is not a required<br />
factor, Black communities could be redistricted<br />
in ways that render Black voters powerless in<br />
state Congressional maps.<br />
During oral arguments of the case, Justice<br />
Ketanji Brown Jackson, America’s first Black<br />
female justice, provided an important reminder<br />
about the purpose of laws enacted to protect<br />
Black civil rights in America. Citing the Civil<br />
Rights Act of 1866, Justice Jackson stated, “I don’t<br />
think that the historical record establishes that<br />
the founders believed that race neutrality or<br />
race blindness was required. That’s the point of<br />
that act, to make sure that the other citizens, the<br />
issue ten 93
Civics<br />
Black citizens, would have the same [rights] as<br />
the white citizens.”<br />
The fight for those same rights continues<br />
to be elusive. And in the case of voting, Black<br />
Americans continue to fight an uphill battle.<br />
But, a new cadre of civil rights organizations is<br />
looking to change that dynamic.<br />
The Revolution Has Arrived —<br />
And It's at the Polls<br />
“To celebrate our Week of Action ahead of<br />
this year’s midterm elections, When We All Vote<br />
focused on empowering voters and reaching our<br />
communities in creative and engaging ways,”<br />
says Stephanie L. Young, Executive Director of<br />
When We All Vote. “Every voice and every vote<br />
matters. And when we organize, mobilize, show<br />
up and vote, we can make real change in our<br />
country and demand a better future for all of us.”<br />
Merging voting with pop culture, When<br />
We All Vote, Fair Fight Action, and Black Voters<br />
Matter, are getting citizens, and particularly<br />
Black citizens, excited about voting in completely<br />
new ways. On TikTok you can follow @blackvotersmtr<br />
and get a rundown on issues that<br />
matter to Black voters — climate change, police<br />
reform, worker protections, and gun control.<br />
And you might get to taste the new Change is<br />
Brewing ice cream they’ve created in partnership<br />
with Ben & Jerry’s if it rolls through your<br />
neighborhood in a Ben & Jerry’s Scoop Truck.<br />
“Mobilizing and community-building<br />
with Black voters is mission critical for<br />
BVM,” said Cliff Albright and LaTosha Brown,<br />
co-founders of Black Voters Matter, in a joint<br />
statement. “There are so many pressing<br />
national and local issues at the forefront<br />
right now from healthcare to housing to basic<br />
needs like access to clean water, which we<br />
know disproportionately impacts Black communities.<br />
While voting is always an exercise<br />
in using our power, we know this year that<br />
our safety, our health, our freedom is also on<br />
the ballot. And change happens when we use<br />
our power collectively at the voting booth. We<br />
are partnering with Ben & Jerry’s while on<br />
our tour this fall, which has for so long been<br />
a voice for change in our communities, and<br />
will continue to do the necessary work of increasing<br />
progressive power through movement-building.”<br />
The seven-week tour is crisscrossing the<br />
state of Georgia — a battleground state — and is<br />
visiting HBCUs, big cities, and rural communities.<br />
The tour is focused on getting Black communities<br />
to participate in the midterm election.<br />
And yes, free ice cream will be given out along<br />
the way.<br />
Fair Fight Action has a YouTube series,<br />
#CivicsForTheCulture, hosted by Chelsey Hall.<br />
Dubbed as “Gen Z’s Schoolhouse Rock” by Paper<br />
magazine, the series breaks down the political<br />
process before, during and after Election Day.<br />
The brightly colorful set, with Hall serving<br />
some serious lewks, makes conversations about<br />
voting and civics feel like you’re out at brunch<br />
chatting with your girlfriends. Kerry Washington,<br />
Steph Curry, Issa Rae, Yara Shahidi, and<br />
Kumail Nanjiani have all been guests on the<br />
series.<br />
And Michelle Obama is running with<br />
the squad of squads, with When We All Vote<br />
Co-Chairs Steph Curry, H.E.R., Jennifer Lopez,<br />
Lin Manuel-Miranda, Janelle Monáe, Chris Paul,<br />
Shonda Rimes and Kerry Washington, just to<br />
name a few. The organization has led over <strong>10</strong>0<br />
voter registration events across the country<br />
this year, engaged more than 22,000 people to<br />
register or check their voter registration, and<br />
they just launched a sweepstakes with Live<br />
Nation where participants can win VIP tickets<br />
to attend the Roots Picnic, Broccoli City or ONE<br />
Musicfest in 2023.<br />
Through the power of social media and<br />
community-based events, these organizations<br />
have reached millions, greatly expanding the<br />
number of people who will vote in the midterms<br />
and other upcoming election cycles in the US.<br />
Get Involved!<br />
“If you don’t think it’s important, why<br />
is there a movement to stop us from voting?”<br />
stated Sixers coach, Doc Rivers. Conservatives<br />
are working hard to shrink the electorate<br />
in America. And it’s clear that they are laser-focused<br />
on attacking the voting rights of Black<br />
communities. The Black vote is strong. It has<br />
made presidents and shored up our democratic<br />
institutions for decades. And without it, America<br />
is in danger of moving away from democracy<br />
and freedom and towards authoritarianism.<br />
But today’s voting rights organizations<br />
are a powerful reminder that together, we can<br />
make significant change. The work to preserve<br />
voting rights is something that each of us can get<br />
involved in. And here’s how you can make a difference<br />
in your community:<br />
1. Host A Party At The Polls. When We<br />
All Vote can help you host a party in your<br />
community to get folks registered and help your<br />
family, friends, and neighbors come up with a<br />
voting plan. You can sign up to receive a party<br />
pack with buttons, stickers, tees and more at<br />
weall.vote/party.<br />
2. Help staff your local polling place.<br />
There is a national poll worker shortage and<br />
folks are needed to help ensure that elections<br />
run smoothly. Poll workers get training and<br />
are paid for their service. Sign up to become<br />
a poll worker in your local community at powerthepolls.org<br />
3. Get on the bus! Join the Black Voters<br />
Matter “We Won’t Black Down” campaign and<br />
bus tour. You can engage in on the ground mobilization<br />
efforts in Georgia, a major battleground<br />
state. Sign up to become a member of the team.<br />
4. Eat ice cream. Get some Ben & Jerry’s<br />
Change is Brewing Ice Cream. The cold brew<br />
coffee ice cream with marshmallow swirls and<br />
fudge brownies sounds delicious. You can find<br />
it along stops of the “We Won’t Black Down” bus<br />
tour. And you can visit Ben & Jerry’s to register<br />
to vote at benjerry.com.<br />
5. Vote! Election Day is <strong>No</strong>vember 8. Be<br />
sure to check your voter registration, make<br />
sure you know where your polling place is, and<br />
look into early voting in your area. And don’t<br />
worry about distractions. The NBA announced<br />
that they won’t schedule games on election day<br />
and will instead encourage fans to vote. So, no<br />
excuses. Get out and vote! AC<br />
94 aphrochic
Sounds<br />
History in Sound<br />
A Conversation with Lara Downes<br />
African American culture is a force. For generations it has set standards<br />
and changed games across all parts of American — and global — culture.<br />
Within that history, we’ve had no end of trailblazers, geniuses, and<br />
luminaries. Yet the nature of memory and the specific complication of<br />
racism in the telling of Black stories, particularly in America, is such<br />
that many of these once towering figures are quickly lost to time and<br />
neglect, waiting for someone who, in the process of blazing a trail of<br />
their own, takes the time to retread their path, giving us the opportunity<br />
to remember something we’d forgotten, to reclaim something we’d lost.<br />
One such pair of figures is Scott Joplin, the “King of Ragtime,” who ruled<br />
over the brief era of Ragtime’s preeminence in American music as the<br />
most popular of its composers, and Lara Downes, whose star currently<br />
shines in the world of classical music as one of its most innovative figures<br />
and most energetic activists. We sat down with Lara to learn more about<br />
her latest work, Reflections: Scott Joplin Reconsidered, a modern reflection<br />
on Joplin’s musical legacy. Along the way we explore her own musical<br />
journey, the importance of cultural memory and how the music of Scott<br />
Joplin continues to speak to us all.<br />
Interview by Bryan Mason and Jeanine Hays<br />
Photos by Max Barrett<br />
issue ten 97
Sounds<br />
<strong>AphroChic</strong>: When did your journey with<br />
music begin? And when did you know that it<br />
would become such a large part of your life?<br />
Lara Downes: My journey with music<br />
began when I was a small, tiny child. I was<br />
playing the piano by the time I was four. And<br />
I was serious about it by the time I was six. So<br />
this truly is a lifelong journey. I don't know any<br />
other profession, calling, or life path that is so<br />
long. The piano journey began so young and has<br />
been the most consistent thing in my life. But I<br />
think the journey to becoming the artist that I<br />
am has really taken shape over the last <strong>10</strong> years,<br />
locking into what it is that I want and need to do<br />
with my music; what I want to say and give and<br />
what I want to leave behind — asking the big<br />
questions, the understanding of self.<br />
AC: How would you describe the<br />
evolution of that journey? Was there a point or<br />
a period that you can really point to as where it<br />
all started to come together?<br />
LD: This is a big question for me. It’s a<br />
big piece of my creative life. I think that everything<br />
that I care about and that I'm doing stems<br />
from an initial lack of identity in this field, the<br />
search for that identity and the finding of that<br />
identity. So to clarify that — you're four years<br />
old, you're this little brown girl at the piano.<br />
This is a world that looks nothing like you. And<br />
there are pictures on the wall of all of these old,<br />
dead, white, bearded, grumpy men who you are<br />
literally looking up to all the time. And I fell in<br />
love with their music, but they could have been<br />
aliens as far as I was concerned in terms of<br />
feeling a human connection. Also, I think that<br />
just the way that history has been told and the<br />
way the stories of those composers were told to<br />
me when I was little — all you're hearing about<br />
is genius that existed in other centuries on<br />
other continents. There's just this disconnect,<br />
and you accept that disconnect. So my truth<br />
was that I love this music, I was going to make<br />
my way in this music. And I was going to feel<br />
like an outsider in this music. And you fight that<br />
battle on a daily basis, but you don't know that<br />
you're fighting it. You're fighting that already<br />
by virtue of being female, you're fighting it by<br />
virtue of being a person of color. And that just<br />
continued. And you don't notice the extra effort<br />
and energy that it demands.<br />
AC: How has finding or creating that<br />
identity shaped your musical trajectory?<br />
LD: I had a very strange childhood. My<br />
father died when I was very small. And my mom<br />
was struggling to raise three girls by herself.<br />
And when my father died, I think sort of the<br />
Black part of my community also kind of went<br />
away into a white, Eurocentric, classical music-focused<br />
world. And then when I was in my<br />
early teens, we moved to Europe, my mom, my<br />
sisters, and I, and we were studying there. On<br />
the one hand, that was much more familiar,<br />
because classical music was much more central<br />
to the culture. So I didn't feel like a weirdo in<br />
that respect. But of course, I felt even more<br />
foreign by virtue of being a foreigner, and years<br />
of being called “exotic.” So when I came back to<br />
the States, I had this built-up need to understand<br />
what it was going to mean in my life to be<br />
American. I had to confront, for the first time<br />
really, all these questions of identity — finding<br />
where I fit in in this culture, in this country, and<br />
in this art form. That's when I started looking<br />
into American music. And it was that urgency<br />
of finding my place, and my meaning in this<br />
tradition that drove me to start this excavation.<br />
But as soon as I started excavating, and<br />
sharing what I had excavated, I understood<br />
immediately that my search wasn't just about<br />
me, that there is a whole world of people who<br />
have not been included in this tradition, or<br />
have not known that they were included in this<br />
tradition. So that's why I say this is an ongoing<br />
process and, really, a mission. And I'm still in<br />
the process of understanding the scope and the<br />
potential of it.<br />
AC: As you’ve taken this journey, your sole<br />
companion has been the piano. How do you see<br />
it as an instrument among instruments, considering<br />
its importance in so many genres of<br />
music? Why is it so central?<br />
LD: I've been thinking about this a lot in<br />
in the context of this Joplin project, because I<br />
think the superpower of the piano is that it was<br />
a household instrument.<br />
It was the center of music in the home<br />
in a very accessible, tangible, everyday way.<br />
Joplin's music is a perfect example. Ragtime<br />
is an art form that develops in a very DIY way,<br />
cobbling together different things. It's entertainment<br />
in the Black world and it's a traveling<br />
form of entertainment. And then at that turn of<br />
the 20th century, the piano becomes a central<br />
element to homes across the country, and a<br />
wider economic range of people have access<br />
to the piano. Publishing is taking off and Joplin<br />
becomes the king of Ragtime, and his Maple<br />
Leaf Rag sells a million copies. And those copies<br />
are getting sent to white women who have<br />
pianos in their parlors and are starting to play<br />
Ragtime. So the piano is like this translator,<br />
the piano could take an opera and let you play<br />
that music at home. It could take Ragtime and<br />
let you internalize that. I think that's something<br />
that we have lost, but that, to me, is the foundational<br />
importance of the piano as an instrument<br />
— that it was in the home, and it was<br />
bringing people together around it.<br />
AC: Looking at Ragtime as an art form,<br />
where does it fit in the continuum of music as an<br />
influence on American music and world music?<br />
Where can we see in contemporary music some<br />
pieces of what it left behind?<br />
LD: The fascinating thing about Ragtime<br />
is that it was very short-lived, lasting only 20<br />
years. Ragtime is coming into its own in the<br />
very last years of the 19th century, and that's<br />
when Joplin is growing up. His big successes<br />
come in the second half of that last decade, and<br />
then Ragtime is done. By the time the 1920s hit,<br />
jazz has already emerged and is taking over. So<br />
it's very fast. But Ragtime is bringing together<br />
classical music, 19th century parlor music, and<br />
African rhythms via plantation melodies. And<br />
I think it's the first form of American mainstream<br />
music because it’s wildly popular at<br />
the 1893 World Expo, the Columbian Exposition.<br />
That’s when Ragtime passes from Black<br />
traveling bands to the wide white listening<br />
public. And that was the moment when it<br />
98 aphrochic
Sounds<br />
became a national craze. And of course, it was scandalous, it<br />
was the “devil's music” and all of that. But the syncopation of<br />
Ragtime is really what led to jazz. And as we know, jazz leads to<br />
everything else — R&B, Rock & Roll…it’s all there. So you can<br />
trace these routes straight back. It's really just the transformational<br />
nature of that form that led to everything else.<br />
AC: Though many early Black composers like Joplin and<br />
others were classically trained, the stereotype was that Black<br />
people were somehow innately musical, so all of that training<br />
was dismissed as “instinct.” Where do you feel Joplin stands<br />
among the classically trained composers of his time?<br />
LD: Certainly he did not have the immersion that some<br />
others had, which is partly a factor of where and how he was<br />
born and raised. There were other Black composers at exactly<br />
that same time, like Harry T. Burleigh and Robert Nathaniel<br />
Dett, who were raised in the north, one step further away<br />
from oppression, in educated families; who went to conservatories<br />
and took leading roles in that community. Joplin<br />
didn't have those options. He was very much self-educated.<br />
He had early lessons with a German Jewish immigrant<br />
who’d ended up in Texarkana at that time. He trained Joplin,<br />
gave him a formal, classical education. I think Joplin, in his<br />
early years, probably had a dream of being a classical pianist,<br />
which he knew fully he couldn't accomplish. So he set about<br />
making a living, and the Ragtime gig was a good one. He was<br />
very savvy, when you look at how he approached publishing<br />
and all of the things he did. He was a good businessman. Until<br />
his dream of writing the first great African American opera<br />
became an obsession, leading him to sink all of his money,<br />
time and emotional energy into that vision, which was not<br />
fulfilled in his lifetime. He wrote two operas, the first was lost.<br />
So it's a sad intersection, in a way — the amount of time in his<br />
short life that he devoted to pursuing this really unrealistically<br />
ambitious idea, and then how quickly after his death, it<br />
would have been possible because the Harlem Renaissance<br />
was right around the corner.<br />
AC: Reflection, both personal and historical, is an ongoing<br />
theme in your work. Before Scott Joplin, you’ve explored the<br />
work of Duke Ellington and Langston Hughes among others.<br />
Why do you feel like these revisitings are important for us as<br />
human beings? And what special attributes does music have?<br />
What special possibilities does it open up for us to reflect?<br />
LD: I think cultural memory is so much more important<br />
than what we usually call “history.” What we usually call history<br />
is a story that one person or one small group of people chose to<br />
write and then we take as truth. But I think there's something<br />
else that we carry inside, that can be tapped into, and that<br />
the information that we can feed into that culture, cultural<br />
memory can inform our relationship to the past, our existence<br />
in the present, and what we take into the future. I can only take<br />
myself as an example, but what I knew about the history of this<br />
music was a story that a few people chose to write. What I know<br />
now, because I'm sort of letting myself feel my own cultural<br />
leanings, like vibrations, gives me a completely different reality,<br />
a different understanding of that past, and a different possibility<br />
of what I can create now to shape the future. And I'm so<br />
optimistic about what will come of what we're currently trying<br />
to do, not just in the field of music, but in reexamining history,<br />
and trying to redefine what history is and the different opportunities<br />
that offers to so many people in terms of belonging,<br />
ownership, and participation. AC<br />
Buy or stream Lara’s new album, Reflections: Scott Joplin<br />
Reconsidered, at laradownes.com. And subscribe to One Story Up<br />
to hear our podcast episode featuring Lara Downes.<br />
issue ten <strong>10</strong>1
PINPOINT<br />
Artists & Artisans | Hot Topic | Who Are You
ARTISTS & ARTISANS<br />
The Art of Quiet Moments<br />
One of the most powerful and impactful<br />
things about art is its ability to make us stop<br />
and consider small details — the little things<br />
that actually make up most of our lives. There<br />
are artists who take us to the extremes, past<br />
any comfortable sense of shape, dimension, or<br />
texture. And there are those whose goal is to<br />
capture life so exactly that it’s hard to believe<br />
that what, or who, you’re seeing isn’t actually<br />
there. Then there are those whose work isn’t<br />
about a concept or an object, but a moment; the<br />
ones whose efforts draw you inexorably into a<br />
place of quiet contemplation because they show<br />
you a moment that you’ve seen before, you’ve<br />
lived it, but didn’t see it at the time in quite<br />
the same way. Capturing those moments on his<br />
canvas and creating those seconds of quiet for<br />
us is the work of painter Jas Knight.<br />
Words by Bryan Mason<br />
Photographs by Patrick Cline<br />
<strong>10</strong>4 aphrochic
issue ten <strong>10</strong>5
<strong>10</strong>6 aphrochic
issue ten <strong>10</strong>7
ARTISTS & ARTISANS<br />
Honored with inclusion in the US State<br />
Department’s Art in Embassies program,<br />
the Hartford, Conn., native’s works are<br />
described by the program as, “studies in<br />
cultural history as well as in the tradition<br />
of portraiture itself. His portraits are<br />
suffused with a sense of dignity that recalls<br />
the formal portraiture of the seventeenth<br />
century.” Knight openly acknowledges the<br />
inspiration of “Old Masters,” such as 17th<br />
century Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer,<br />
and their shared vocation as “genre<br />
painters,” artists who focus their work on<br />
“mundane” scenes of daily life. However,<br />
Knight adds Gordon Parks and fellow Philadelphia<br />
Academy of Fine Arts alum Henry<br />
Ossawa Tanner to the list of masters that he<br />
looks to.<br />
The most striking quality of Knight’s<br />
work is the sense of quiet repose with<br />
which he imbues his subjects who are, in<br />
nearly all cases, Black women. This feeling<br />
of dignity, of self-possession in the women<br />
he paints — emphasized by the ornate,<br />
Baroque frames that he favors — is made<br />
all the more striking and endearing as our<br />
fight for better representation in art and<br />
other media continues to teach us that how<br />
we’re seen is just as important as how often.<br />
It was this same sense that the artist sought<br />
to convey in 2018, when, at the request of<br />
Yale University his subject became James<br />
W. C. Pennington, who, once enslaved, went<br />
on to become a pastor and abolitionist as<br />
well as the first African American to attend<br />
the university. “I wanted the viewer to feel<br />
as though he or she was meeting Pennington,”<br />
Knight says. “It was my goal to have his<br />
stance communicate dignity and self-determination<br />
because I felt these two traits<br />
fueled many of his efforts.”<br />
<strong>No</strong>t content to make an impact only<br />
through his work, Knight looks to inspire<br />
others in their artistic journeys as well. He<br />
teaches courses at the Art Students League<br />
of New York on the trichromatic theory and<br />
its application to portraiture and the history<br />
and technique of reproducing the work of<br />
master painters, and has produced books<br />
on both topics. But whether he’s writing,<br />
teaching, or painting, to Jas, the three are<br />
the same because they each further the<br />
commitment to art and beauty in life that<br />
have propelled him from the beginning.<br />
“Most people have bifurcated their lives<br />
into categories of things they live to do and<br />
the work that makes those things possible,”<br />
he told the Philadelphia Art Museum. “As<br />
a painter I’ve taken the nearly disastrous<br />
gamble of not assuming the two of them to<br />
be mutually exclusive. As a child I marveled<br />
at the particles I could see floating in the air<br />
when the sun shone through a window. It<br />
is my belief that all of life can feel this transcendent.<br />
Music, architecture, taste, etc., are<br />
all things that we can use to evoke a sense of<br />
the transcendent.” AC<br />
Explore the work of Jas Knight at jasknightfineart.com.<br />
<strong>10</strong>8 aphrochic
issue ten <strong>10</strong>9
HOT TOPIC<br />
The Woman King Doesn't Tell the Whole Story,<br />
But Should It Have To?<br />
History is a tricky beast to nail down. The result of a mixture that’s equal parts objective<br />
science, subjective perspective, political power, and good old fashioned belief, history is<br />
a feat, the attempt of which leaves scholars and students alike with the same inevitable<br />
paradox: on one hand, an unwilling acceptance of the fact that we will never be able to<br />
recount with complete accuracy or objectivity exactly what happened; and on the other<br />
hand a grim understanding of the consequences of getting it too wrong or worse yet, not<br />
trying at all.<br />
It is impossible to overstate the importance<br />
of history because of the concrete relationship<br />
it has with the present. Fully one<br />
half of the present moment is made up of<br />
the consequences of things that happened<br />
in the past. The rest is made up of how we<br />
choose to see that past and those things.<br />
The fight for control of how we see history is<br />
currently at a fever pitch as lawmakers and<br />
school boards, concerned parents and billionaires<br />
with dreams of social-engineering<br />
all weigh in on what history we will teach<br />
and who will or won’t be included in it. But<br />
history, certainly our understanding of it, is<br />
not made up entirely of textbooks and classrooms.<br />
Pop culture will also have its say<br />
through the countless TV shows, movies, and<br />
other forms of content that shape our perspectives<br />
of both our daily lives and the lives<br />
that came before.<br />
Into this fraught landscape steps the<br />
recent film, The Woman King, headlined by<br />
producer and star Viola Davis. The ambitious<br />
film purports to wring a story of African<br />
sovereignty, female political and military<br />
power, and an image of a once flourishing<br />
society out of a moment in history which has<br />
almost exclusively been represented cinematically<br />
by male-dominated tropes of the<br />
suffering and misery of Black primitives<br />
and the Europeans who — however unjustly<br />
— dominated them. A good goal to have.<br />
Yet, from the moment it was released, The<br />
Woman King garnered a wave of backlash.<br />
Accusations of bad history and half-truths,<br />
infantilizing tropes, and catering to the<br />
guilt-ridden sensibilities of white elites, all<br />
created an air of questionability around the<br />
value of the film and the intentions of those<br />
responsible for its creation.<br />
At the heart of the controversy around<br />
this tale of the Agojie, the powerful female<br />
warriors of Dahomey, is the setting of<br />
Dahomey itself. One of the most powerful<br />
polities of West Africa at the time, Dahomey<br />
was a major participant in the trans-Atlantic<br />
slave trade and the violent conflicts that<br />
fueled it. The portrayal of this participation<br />
and of the Dahomean characters’ attitudes<br />
towards it, most notably King Ghezo —<br />
played by John Boyega — differs significantly<br />
from what is recorded in history.<br />
It is important to note at this point that<br />
the authors of this article have not yet seen<br />
the film, though we have every intention to<br />
do so once it becomes available to stream.<br />
So we will not go into detail here about<br />
what the film gets right or wrong. There<br />
are already numerous articles that go into<br />
great detail about the content of the film<br />
versus the actual history of the kingdom,<br />
including Ghezo’s commitment to continuing<br />
the trade, his conspiracy with famed<br />
Brazilian slave trader Francisco Felix de<br />
Sousa to overthrow his brother (the former<br />
king), and the brutality of the Agojie’s raids.<br />
Words by Bryan Mason<br />
Images furnished by Sony Pictures<br />
1<strong>10</strong> aphrochic
issue ten 111
HOT TOPIC<br />
We encourage readers to explore further.<br />
Dahomey is one of the most complex<br />
examples of an extremely complex time and<br />
doing justice to its history is more than any<br />
one article can reasonably be expected to do.<br />
In this article, the question is not whether<br />
the accusations of historical inaccuracy<br />
leveled against the film are correct, but why<br />
they are being leveled so vehemently and<br />
whether they’re being directed at where they<br />
will do the most good.<br />
The Woman King is not the first film to<br />
depict the history of the trans-Atlantic slave<br />
trade — and it’s far from the first to get that<br />
history wrong. Amistad, Django Unchained,<br />
Harriet, and even Roots have all left<br />
something to be desired in their depiction<br />
of events, whether by inventing characters<br />
(a necessary storytelling maneuver) or<br />
by misinterpreting or reinterpreting the<br />
point, process, or impact of events. And<br />
in the process, these errors or omissions<br />
often present events in ways that are more<br />
in keeping with generally accepted assumptions<br />
— or just wishful thinking — about the<br />
power dynamics and ethics of the time.<br />
Roots’ famous depiction of white men<br />
leading bands of Africans on slave-catching<br />
raids, for example, misses the fact that,<br />
historically, military enslavement through<br />
warfare between African nations accounted<br />
for the vast majority of people enslaved.<br />
Arguably, this version also minimizes<br />
African agency by depicting the slave-catchers<br />
themselves as little more than the tools<br />
of Europeans — a generally accepted though<br />
incorrect perspective.<br />
Similarly, historian Eric Foner takes<br />
issue with Amistad’s presentment of the<br />
court case on which the film is based and<br />
the historical impact of the verdict that<br />
concluded it. “The film gives the distinct<br />
impression,” he states, “that the Supreme<br />
Court was convinced by Adams' plea to<br />
repudiate slavery in favor of the natural<br />
rights of man, thus taking a major step on the<br />
road to abolition. In fact, the Amistad case<br />
revolved around the Atlantic slave trade — by<br />
1840 outlawed by international treaty — and<br />
had nothing whatever to do with slavery as a<br />
domestic institution.”<br />
Just as Roots downplays African agency,<br />
and therefore culpability, in the trans-Atlantic<br />
slave trade, Amistad reinterprets the<br />
case with the wishful thinking that it marked<br />
a significant shift in the American attitude<br />
towards the institution of slavery. Conversely,<br />
Foner reports that, “Incongruous as<br />
it may seem, it was perfectly possible in the<br />
nineteenth century to condemn the importation<br />
of slaves from Africa while simultaneously<br />
defending slavery and the flourishing<br />
slave trade within the United States.”<br />
These types of historical errors are in<br />
no way unique to movies about slavery or the<br />
slave trade. While Kevin Costner’s fictional<br />
Robin Hood might be forgiven for lacking<br />
a proper accent, not only was the historical<br />
King Richard I not Scottish, he barely spoke<br />
English at all, spending only a few months<br />
of his <strong>10</strong>-year reign in the country. So if this<br />
sort of thing happens in movies all the time,<br />
why are we so upset with The Woman King?<br />
Unlike the stories of Robin Hood and<br />
the history of King Richard, the characters<br />
that make up the history of the African<br />
Diaspora, from the Agojie of Dahomey to<br />
Touissaint L’Ouverture, rarely find themselves<br />
the subject of films. Telling the story<br />
correctly, or at least completely, is important<br />
simply because we know we may not get the<br />
chance to tell it again. Moreover the tropes<br />
that mass media events like movies create<br />
and reinforce impact the lives of Black<br />
Americans far more than is typically the<br />
case for white Americans. So while getting<br />
King Richard’s accent wrong isn’t likely to<br />
affect the life chances of the average white<br />
American, for a movie like The Woman<br />
King, whether it leans towards diminishing<br />
African agency by minimizing African complicity<br />
in the slave trade or blaming them<br />
completely for its atrocities — neither of<br />
which would be accurate — the prevailing<br />
themes to come out of it will interact with the<br />
complex web of stories, tropes and stereotypes<br />
that surround Black people in America<br />
and which do impact our lives in concrete<br />
ways every day. So yes, a detailed, nuanced<br />
and accurate depiction of events would be<br />
preferable. If nothing else, it has often shown<br />
to make for better movies. But the problem<br />
that The Woman King raises ultimately is not<br />
that it, or any other movie, fails to represent<br />
history accurately — it’s the extent to which<br />
we get our history from movies.<br />
As much as we would like to see Bass<br />
Reeves and Jim Beckwourth blazing across<br />
the screen in a Western, witness Pharaohs<br />
Taharqa and Shoshenq intervening in events<br />
recorded in the Bible, see Queen Nzinga<br />
display her legendary battle prowess or<br />
hear the masterpieces of composition from<br />
Joseph Boulogne that overshadowed contemporaries<br />
like Mozart — movies, even<br />
these movies, should not be the first place<br />
that we hear of these people, or supply<br />
the majority of what we know about them.<br />
That’s what schools are for. Unfortunately,<br />
the current fight over American education<br />
means that if we don’t act, soon it will be<br />
harder for us to find accurate and inclusive<br />
history in our schools than in our movie<br />
theaters and streaming queues.<br />
For the past several years there has been<br />
continual conflict over inclusive histories<br />
112 aphrochic
issue ten 113
HOT TOPIC<br />
(often mislabeled as Critical Race Theory, see<br />
issue 7) and their place in American schools.<br />
The New York Times reports attempts to ban<br />
1,651 books as of mid-September in 2022<br />
alone, while the century-old literary activist<br />
group PEN America lists more than 2,500<br />
titles banned or in danger of being banned<br />
between July 1, 2021, and June 30, 2022. These<br />
attacks are specifically against the inclusion<br />
of people of color, LGBTQ+ identity, and<br />
women, as authors or subjects of texts in<br />
schools and local libraries. Groups of angry<br />
parents have stormed school board meetings<br />
around the country backed by right wing<br />
non-profit organizations, conservative media<br />
outlets, coalitions of lawyers and billionaires<br />
with conservative agendas and often, direct<br />
connections to the GOP.<br />
One of the largest of these groups,<br />
<strong>No</strong> Left Turn in Education, was founded<br />
by a suburban mother near Philadelphia.<br />
Incensed by the school board’s attempts to<br />
provide students with lessons on racism and<br />
“white privilege,” following the George Floyd<br />
protests, she started the organization to<br />
save her children and others from what she<br />
called, a “plan to indoctrinate the children<br />
into the 'woke’ culture.” Boosted by an appearance<br />
on Tucker Carlson, the group grew<br />
to have as many as 30 chapters in 23 states as<br />
of June of last year. With strategies and legislative<br />
agendas being devised by conservative<br />
think tanks such as the Manhattan<br />
Institute, the Heritage Foundation and the<br />
American Legislative Exchange Council,<br />
organizations like <strong>No</strong> Left Turn and the<br />
Washington DC-based Parents Defending<br />
Education are turning conservative parents<br />
into weapons, inundating school boards with<br />
protests, information requests and lawsuits<br />
while anti-CRT and anti-LGBTQ+ laws are<br />
proposed and passed in state legislatures. As<br />
a result, 8 states currently have some form of<br />
anti-CRT laws on their books with at least 15<br />
more with bills in process.<br />
Of course, there’s money in this fight.<br />
NBC News reports more than $215,000<br />
raised by Southlake Families PAC, “around<br />
a school board battle in a wealthy Dallas-Fort<br />
Worth suburb.” An additional $<strong>10</strong>0,000 was<br />
raised by school board candidates running<br />
on a promise to stop the district's cultural<br />
diversity plan. The candidates won with 70%<br />
of the vote as did two city council members<br />
and a mayoral candidate backed by the same<br />
PAC. Though perhaps even more interesting<br />
than the money to be found in this game<br />
is the money that’s backing it. In Texas, oil and<br />
fracking billionaires have put tens of millions<br />
of dollars into financing the state’s massive<br />
fall to the right in recent years through<br />
donations to political action committees and<br />
candidates for state offices as well as funding<br />
a series of conservative activist groups.<br />
On the federal end of the spectrum of<br />
billionaire conservatives sits the shadowy<br />
figure of Barre Seid, who, despite being<br />
almost completely unheard of by the general<br />
public until recently, gave nearly $2 billion<br />
in a so-far-largely-successful venture to<br />
force the American judicial system to the<br />
right — beginning with the Supreme Court.<br />
The donation, an example of what Seid has<br />
termed “attack philanthropy,” went to the<br />
Marble Freedom Trust, headed by former<br />
Trump advisor Leonard Leo and was reportedly<br />
instrumental in the overturning of<br />
federal abortion rights. And all of it, from<br />
billionaires bankrolling a nation’s nightmares,<br />
to angry parents shouting down<br />
cultural inclusion in history classes is all part<br />
of a continuing GOP strategy of focusing on<br />
power grabs at local levels to facilitate social<br />
and political control at higher levels.<br />
So what does any of this have to do<br />
with a movie about women soldiers supporting<br />
the trans-Atlantic slave trade in<br />
19th century West Africa? Almost nothing,<br />
and that’s the point. As Black people — as<br />
any people — we have the right to demand<br />
that our stories be told with all the fullness,<br />
nuance and accuracy that they deserve, as<br />
much as any other story of any other people;<br />
perhaps even moreso because we understand<br />
exactly what’s at stake for us in the<br />
telling of these stories. But neither Viola<br />
Davis nor Hollywood in general, is solely or<br />
specifically responsible for providing us with<br />
our history. <strong>No</strong>r is Davis the only or largest<br />
culprit behind their continual absence and<br />
general lack of depth. The visibility of her<br />
fame and the social realities of her race and<br />
gender might make her an easy, even acceptable<br />
target for our anger over these issues,<br />
but not an effective one.<br />
We need change in our schools and our<br />
school boards, our city councils, governor’s<br />
mansions and in several congressional seats.<br />
Getting it will require that we take the fire we<br />
feel over this movie and a dozen other issues<br />
and use it to educate ourselves, encourage<br />
each other, take action and vote. And in the<br />
meantime, if we want to be mad at someone<br />
let’s be mad at Leonard Leo and Barre Seid,<br />
or Tim Dunn and Farris Wilks — the Texas<br />
billionaires — or the hoards of conservative<br />
parents screaming that their children’s<br />
futures depend on them remaining totally<br />
ignorant of our past — and theirs. Or, if<br />
you’re in the New York area, maybe mayor<br />
Eric Adams who recently stripped $300<br />
million from city schools while increasing<br />
the budget for police.<br />
Movies are a terrible place to learn<br />
history. But they can be an excellent place<br />
to spark a historical interest, provided that<br />
that interest inspires us to take the initiative,<br />
go further and learn more. The Woman King<br />
has generated a spark. More people are now<br />
aware of the chequered history of Dahomey<br />
and the Agojie than were before. And if the<br />
ire over the clear flaws in its telling of history<br />
inspire us to fight harder to have that history<br />
taught — in all of its vast and problematic<br />
detail — accurately, along with all of the<br />
rest of our histories in schools and texts that<br />
combine to include not just our story but the<br />
whole story, then this movie with all its flaws<br />
(along with a profitable box office showing,<br />
good social media scores and Oscar buzz)<br />
can only be considered a success. AC<br />
114 aphrochic
issue ten 115
WHO ARE YOU<br />
Name:<br />
Wanda Jeffries<br />
Based In:<br />
Greensboro, NC<br />
Occupation:<br />
Student<br />
Currently:<br />
I live in an historic city, one that<br />
is known around the world for the<br />
sit-ins of the civil rights movement<br />
and now for our International<br />
Civil Rights Center & Museum.<br />
Greensboro also is home to <strong>No</strong>rth<br />
Carolina A&T State University, the<br />
largest historically black college<br />
or university in the country, and<br />
Bennett College, an HBCU for<br />
women. Being surrounded by all<br />
that history is uplifting and helps<br />
to motivate me in my own studies.<br />
I’ve learned so much about myself<br />
and the Black community and it has<br />
made me want to do more with my<br />
own education and goals.<br />
Black Culture Is:<br />
Inspiring and determined. Put<br />
roadblocks in our way, and we’ll go<br />
around them or through them.<br />
116 aphrochic
118 aphrochic
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issue ten 119
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