- Coming up, we got a great show for you on American Black Journal, acclaimed actress, CCH Pounder visits Detroit.

Talk about her personal art collection on display at the Charles Detroit Museum of African-American History.

Plus a Detroit nonprofit gets a new name and its first African-American leader.

We're gonna hear about the changes at the Michigan round table for diversity and inclusion.

Stay where you are.

American Black Journal starts right now.

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(upbeat music) - Welcome to American Black Journal, I'm Steven Henderson.

Four years after bringing her queen art collection to Detroit's Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History, Actress, CCH pounder is back with an exhibit that focuses on black men.

It's called Double ID and it features 54 works from her private art collection that depict noted scholar, W.E.B.

Du Bois concept of double consciousness.

I sat down with Pounder at The Wright to talk about the exhibit and her incredible love of art.

CCH Pounder Conay, welcome to Detroit.

- Thank you.

- And welcome to the Wright Museum.

- [CCH] It's lovely to be back again.

Have to say.

- This is not your first time here.

- It is not my first rodeo at the Wright.

- Yeah.

- [CCH] And it's wonderful to be able to bring something completely different.

- Right.

- And feel like you're just beginning again, so that's really nice.

- Yeah, so let's talk about this exhibit.

- [CCH] Absolutely.

- [Stephen] Double ID.

It is about black men and I, the duality, right, that.

- Yes.

Well, first of all, I should really say that I started off at the Wright with Queen.

- [Stephen] Yes.

- [CCH] Which was an all female show.

And then we talked later on that somebody had mentioned, she said, well, what about the men?

- What about the men?

What about us?

- And so I said, okay, well, the next time I come, we'll do a show on men.

- Yeah.

- But what I loved about how this was done is that it is couched in the philosophy of W.E.B.

DuBois.

- [Stephen] Sure.

- [CCH] Of double consciousness.

And so it was providing paintings that not only were sort of very present on, as you look at them, as you get an idea and the moment that you think of double consciousness, you get another idea of what this man may have had to do to present himself in a way that is less threatening one way, as less powerful than he actually is.

And so I thought, let's bring up these paintings.

And these were the ones that they chose from my collection.

- [CCH] Just walking through and looking at the.

The various faces and images, the spectrum, the broad spectrum of what it means to be an African American man is all here.

- It's all here.

And I have to say, it's literally the diaspora.

It's men from the Caribbean, from America, from Africa.

- Okay, so I wanna talk about selection and not just selection for the exhibit, but selection for you, how you choose these pieces for your collection.

- Absolutely, I think I always say it's a visceral moment when I sort of approach my front of a painting.

- And it literally goes, hey.

- [Stephen] You gotta have me.

- Hey, yeah, I connect with the eyes, I connect with the movement.

Something happens that makes me go, oh, could I get that?

I, there's always that moment.

And every single painting has had that moment.

Even when I decided to educate myself in paintings that I don't have, like for instance, I'm not particularly fond of abstract art.

- Okay.

- But just to learn about it and to have it as a part of your collection, just as a, her collection overall is well rounded.

I wanted to learn a little bit about it.

And I even had that moment that there, okay.

There was something about that one, about the color, about the look that says, okay, take me.

- Yeah.

- And all of them have have been a take me moment.

- Yeah.

- Every last one.

- So then how do you go from that to what's displayed here?

This is just part of what you have.

- This is just part of what I have, but also it's the idea that when somebody approaches me for a museum exhibit, we, there's a theme.

There's something that the curator wants to talk about, like how we brought in W.E.B.

DuBois with the double consciousness about this show.

- [Stephen] Sure.

- Then when they come, they visit your home and they choose the pieces.

And now that I see the pieces up, I see that double consciousness.

I see that brutish man, that uthman wahaab who's behind you, big and it's the gardener with the shears, he's just a gardener.

- [Stephen] Right.

- But he's massive.

- [Stephen] Yes.

- And I can imagine that in certain places where he was walking, he would have to try to make himself quite small so that you see this other person.

- [Stephen] Right.

- To disappear in some ways, right.

- [CCH] To disappear in some ways, yeah.

And it's how the Wright went about choosing these works.

And now that I walk in as a visitor, even though they're the pieces that I.

- [Stephen] They're yours.

- It all makes sense to me.

It all comes together really, really well, so yes.

- Yeah, so when I walk around and look, I see my grandfather's face.

- [CCH] Yes.

- I see my father's face.

I see my face, and I see my son's face.

It's remarkable how powerful that is.

- I thank you.

- And as an African American man, you don't get a chance to do that in many, in many art spaces.

- I have to share my first experience with that, which was the first time I displayed work.

It was in Xavier University in a sort of public forum.

And it was in a sort of what I call a passage gallery where students are walking through from one classroom off to another, headphones, cell phones, and their books, et cetera.

And to watch these students kind of.

And have that look of, oh my God, that's me, that's me.

That's me, it was thrilling.

And that's really what opened my brain to saying, we cannot just store these and keep them for your own pleasure.

These need to go around the world and be seen by us.

And really enjoyed by us.

So that was the beginning.

And I realized that even people who would be considered, others who feel like they don't really know African American people or African Caribbean people, there is this kind of portal that these paintings provide.

That there is this variety of men and women, obviously, in the world that you've taken a sort of a one dimensional look at.

- [Stephen] Yes.

- And here's an opportunity to begin to open up your mind to visiting these people.

- [Stephen] Yeah, yeah.

- [CCH] Making a connection.

- [Stephen] To see them more fully.

- [CCH] To see them more fully.

- Yeah.

- Yes.

- Let's talk about this being here in Detroit.

- Yes, and at the Wright, which is of course a special place in Detroit.

- Well, for me it's special because Neil Barkley was the first person that said, you should bring that collection to Detroit.

- [Stephen] Here.

- [CCH] And, which was fantastic.

And so this is my second time around.

So I feel now I write is almost like the home for me in terms of my start of showing the works.

And I think Detroit in particular is a type of city that could use an infusion.

- Sure.

- Of self.

- Yes.

- And so I think this is sort of a good place to come back to.

- Yeah, so I wanna talk about this piece that's kind of off to your left because it's sculpture.

- Oh, Dermeili Fini.

- And sculpture speaks to me in a way that, that other art does not.

- Yes.

- [Stephen] And it was the first thing I noticed when I walked in the room told me.

- Well, I'm really lucky that I bought a really spectacular piece of his, he's a South African artist, was, he's passed away, but he spent some time in New York and he has a really simpatico type of heart and a extraordinary observance of the, the African face that's literally from the mask to man.

So when you look at it, you will actually sort of see the African mask as well.

- [Stephen] I see.

- As the, the human African behind it.

So I was really interested in that kind of look.

So, and another thing was is that it's a very pronounced look.

- It is, it is.

- You know, there is like no doubt about it that this is an African feature you know.

- [Stephen] The jawline.

- The Jawline is very powerful.

Nostrils are very powerful.

And it's a very long, and even the mangbethu sort of extended head, which, you know, your mother might have said, oh, you're lap headed.

Or, you know, you had these other words for it.

But, you know, I think rutabaga head was one of the other ones I used to hear as a kid, you know, so I, I thought this one in particular encompasses a standard recognizable African head, is lovely.

- Yeah, unmistakable for sure.

So in this part of the exhibit, it's portraits, faces.

- [CCH] Yes.

- [Stephen] The other side is.

- More like storytelling there.

There's scenes with African men and they're quite varied.

I have a very, a sort of political section where it, what I would call about draft, like African men have been drafted, Football, drafted for sports, drafted to be in service, enduring slavery to be drafted in a particular kind of servitude service that you must render to others.

And so there's that.

And then there's scenes of their, our colonial past where we are, there's a wonderful painting, a very large painting of Greg Bailey's of a barrister or lawyer getting dressed modern day, still having to put on the powdered wig.

- [Stephen] The wig.

- [CCH] Yes.

And then there's a lovely sort of scene of the, the high tea moment of this table and his man servant getting him dressed.

So there's that.

And then it's what I call the sag God.

It's by Faham Peku, which really kind of relates to our very young citizens with the pants that are well below the waistline hanging off of the hip and creating a kind of his own personal God in a sense.

So sort of reinventing himself the way he wants to see himself.

So there is again, what I call the rainbow of black men.

- [Stephen] Yeah.

- And that's available to be seen in the big, in the big room.

- So, you're an artist.

- [CCH[ Yes.

- In a different medium.

- Yes.

- Of course.

But I'm, I guess I'm really interested in how, as an artist this art speaks to you.

In other words, the translation, I guess, of this form to your life and your experience.

- Well, I then I must confess that I was indeed an artist visual.

- You were, okay.

Yes.

- And I had a wonderful mentor because I was always tortured, do I wanna go into the theater?

Do I wanna go into the studio and paint?

And it was like, what am I gonna do, what am I gonna do?

And she said, art, you can always do art as long as you have your hands and your eyes.

But acting, eh, that's for young people.

I went, okay, well then the first half of my life I'll be an actor, and then the second half of my life I'll be an artist.

Well, obviously that's not the way things could turn out in reality, but I became a great art appreciator.

- Yeah.

- And I've actually recently been writing people saying, do you still have some of my work?

Can you send a picture?

Because I would like to kind of follow my own, kind of, this is how I got from point A to point B, and lifestyle change.

But it's always been with me.

And I even sort of still doodle myself in, you know, on paper you can tell that she's always making some kind of mark.

So this transition for me was really easy.

- Yeah, yeah.

- [CCH] And becoming an art appreciator, I think at the time when I did, was a wonderful thing because I could introduce artists to actors.

Actors always made a little bit more money.

- Yeah.

- And, not with the same consistency, obviously, you know, it was like, okay, I got a job.

Yippee, I can buy a painting.

But I used to do celebrations, like mix artists and actors together, have great dinners.

So food, art.

- Oh my goodness.

- Poetry.

- Right.

- You know, and the artwork was always like the prize at the end of the day.

Like who had the best meal.

We'd give the person who cooked us the best meal.

So from a very young age, there was always this kind of intermingling of the arts for me.

- [Stephen] Artists to start, right.

- It was easy.

It was easy to get there for me.

- All right, so I'm gonna make you choose among your children here.

- I know everybody wants to do that.

Everybody's like, who is your favorite?

- What's the one that speaks to you more than than the others?

You won't do it.

- No, there, because as many moods as you see in the room.

Are the moods that I've had to sort of say, oh, you've got to cut home with me.

There's a painting that that's on your right behind you.

It's a giant head.

And everyone has said, oh, you know, is he sleeping?

Is he alive?

And when I spoke to the artist and said, what's that giant head about?

And he said, he remembers seeing those giant Olmec stones across Mexico and Central America.

- [Stephen] Wow.

- And that he noticed that between Mexico to the Central America, they became more and more black featured.

- [Stephen] They get darker.

- And so he started to paint these enormous black featured men.

- Wow.

- And so it was like that's stunning.

I have to say though, seeing it here in the museum, it sort of fits in.

When I first saw it in his studio, it was like, this is enormous.

- [Stephen] It's too big, right.

- [CCH] But yeah.

- [Stephen] Yeah, yeah.

- [CCH] It fits in perfectly.

- That's what museums are for, right?

- Yes, they are, they really are.

It brings everything into perspective.

It's really beautiful.

- Yeah, it's a wonderful and thoughtful, thoughtful collection.

- [CCH] Thank you.

- I mean, you can get lost.

- [Stephen] Thank you so much in the faces.

So, so thank you for bringing it to Detroit and promise that.

- [CCH] Thank you (indiscernible).

- [Stephen] You'll do a third exhibition here of.

- [CCH] Who knows.

- Maybe black families, - Maybe I'll even do abstract.

Who knows.

Something I'm really not good at, but.

Thanks.

- And you can see the Double ID exhibit through October 20th at the Wright Museum.

For the first time in its 83 year history, the Michigan Roundtable for Diversity and Inclusion has an African American leader, Yusef Bunche Shakur is the new co-executive director of the organization, which is also changing its name to Michigan Roundtable For Just Communities.

Here's my conversation with Shakur about his new title and the new name of the nonprofit he now leads.

Yusef Shakur, it's great to see you here on American Black Journal, thanks for joining us.

- Thank you for having me.

- Yeah.

So let's talk about this new role, Michigan Roundtable for Diversity, which becomes Michigan Roundtable For Just Communities.

And you're gonna be the co-executive director, isn't that right?

- Yes, yes.

I'm Co-Executive Director with Steve, talking about an 83-year-old organization who looks to cultivating and building beloved communities with organization neighborhoods to eradicate systematic racism, but also in bridging the gap between a lot of dynamics.

I think everybody wants to live in a just community, but reality, not everybody lives in a just community.

- Yeah.

- So we're taking that name as addressing the elephant in the room to build beloved communities.

- Yeah, let's talk about what that means to you.

What is a just community and what are the challenges that we have to making sure that everybody lives in one?

- I think I like to quote Brian Stevenson, the lawyer, just, I mean, Just Mercy, the book, and the movie, and he says there's power in proximity.

So when we, when we are shifting the name to just communities, we're shifting and reconnecting and saying that we want to be closest to the problem.

We wanna be closer to those who, who don't have, and being closer to those don't even think as a child when you're, when you're sick and your mother come and hugs you and it makes you, makes you feel all that better, right.

No matter where you at.

And, that we wanna hug those, those individuals, and we, and so when we think about a just community.

We're recognizing that we don't live in a post, a post-racial society.

We don't live in a post sexist society.

And we want to address those things by creating better opportunities, by uplifting those who are suffering, but also recognizing despite their suffering, they're making the best out of it.

And, by loving on them and by engaging them, they can be be even better.

- Yeah, so how does the work at the Michigan Roundtable change with this new leadership from you and with the name change?

What will people notice is different?

- One is we're looking to, we always, we've had a house in the neighborhood years ago, and we're looking to relocate back in the, in the neighborhood where our house, you know, our business will be in the neighborhood in terms of our Day-to-Day operation.

It's just of how we approach the work.

You know, having a paradigm shift, you know, power, the power dynamics of seeing regular folks, whether they're white, black, Asian, green, who are, who are marginalized, oppress as the stakeholders, seeing that their personal experience as the expert in the room, and engaging that and being able to leverage our, our organization to be able to move and influence others.

We think that's our niche.

- Yeah, when you think about the work that the Roundtable has done so far, what inspired you about what they've been able to do?

- What inspires me again, like we, we do criminal justice work and looking at data and being able to create some, some level of accountability and how data has been utilized as a weapon against people.

And our goal is to de weaponize that data.

You know, speaking from those who are the most impacted, like that, that inspires me.

When you, when you could talk to a mother or father or children and saying, you know, despite where you at, you matter, your life is worth something.

You're, and you're the reason why we exist, why we do what we do.

- Yeah, so if you think about the things that are going on right now and the conversations that we're having, it seems like a crazy time for issues like justice, right?

It's harder, it's harder to fight for it.

It's harder to articulate it without that pushback.

Give me a sense from your chair of how that looks in Detroit and Michigan.

- Well, it looks like it's still fresh off the plate.

The young brother that was just recently murdered by the state police officers that literally ran, ran, ran him over.

- Run over by a car, right?

- Yeah, right, you know, I think we all, all wrestling with it.

I don't think it's really has hit the news and hit people in our communities the way it should have.

But, you know, but when you think about, you know, when you ask that question, what do you wanna be?

And a lot of us, you know, we say easily, I wanna be a police officer.

I want to be a fireman, you know, or a fire woman.

You are like, why?

Because I wanna make a difference.

And those are noble things.

And those are things to aspire.

But then when you grow up and you lose that sight, you lose that reality because we've lost touch of what justice looks like.

Here was an individual, his crime was running.

His crime wasn't that he had a weapon in his hand and you literally like ran, they ran him over.

Like, how do you justify that?

And, and how we, how we alleviate that type of situation.

It's by seeing the good in that person, by recognizing that the fact that their life, life still matters, even though you came there to rest or detain this person, you still can do it in a manner that's respectful and engaging and being willing to talk about those things.

Willing to confront that.

Because if not, we know that these things happen too often to black bodies and go unrecognizable.

- Yeah, so does the round table have a chance to, to kind of bring the community closer to those who police us or to bring those who police us around the table to talk about, Hey, this is not the way to do it and we can't have the things that are going on continuing.

- That's something we do, we've been doing over 20 years through the AKPAC community, community and policing.

There's still a lot, lot of work.

We just had a recent meeting this past Friday where we had Dr. Rubin Miller, author of the book Halfway Home, who's also, he was the, our featured speaker at our tribute dinner.

And he said some, he said a lot of powerful things.

I think the most powerful is the fact that those individuals who made mistakes, they're still our neighbors.

They're still in our community, but also in reality, we've all made mistakes.

Some of our mistakes are not as public as others.

And as John Paul reminded us, we have to stop, continue to other others.

And, and we do that by again.

But, and this is, these are basic things of building a just community.

These are basic things of building above community.

Because reality, we are taught discrimination, we are taught racism.

It's not born in us.

And, so we have the ability to reteach people to how to be better human beings, to propagate a just community, a just society.

- Yeah, so I also wanna talk about some personal news for you.

You recently received a PhD, is that right?

- Yes, yes, thank you, yes.

- That's a big deal, tell me about that.

- Oh, yeah, this is the last, the last time I seen you.

Yeah, I defended last, last November.

Everything is finalized in January.

You know, my topic was looking at the social phenomenon of single black motherhood and the stigmas that come with it.

And so I challenged myself to look at this society through the lens of my mother, a black woman.

- Wow.

- So to over stand my oppression, I, I must over stand her oppression.

But also within that I over stand how through my mother's sacrifice and through her love that I, it positioned me to be able to achieve a PhD.

- Wow, wow.

No, that's really, that's really great.

And I'm sure that'll give you a big lift in the new work.

- Yes.

- All right.

So Yusef Shakur, it's always great to talk with you.

Congratulations again on the new role and we'll look forward to seeing what you do next.

- I appreciate it, thank you, brother.

Have a good blessed day.

- That'll do it for this week.

You can find out more about our guests at AmericanBlackJournal.org, and you can connect with us anytime on social media.

Take care of yourselves, and we'll see you next time.

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] From Delta Faucets to Behr Paint, Masco Corporation is proud to deliver products that enhance the way consumers all over the world experience and enjoy their living spaces.

Masco, serving Michigan communities since 1929.

Support also provided by the Cynthia & Edsel Ford Fund for journalism at Detroit PBS.

- [Narrator] The DTE Foundation proudly supports 50 years of American Black Journal in covering African American history, culture, and politics.

The DTE Foundation and American Black Journal partners in presenting African American perspectives about our communities and in our world.

- [Narrator] Also brought to you by Nissan Foundation and viewers like you.

Thank you.

(upbeat music)