(upbeat music) - Real life inspires powerful art and who knows it better than those who've dedicated their lives to their communities.

I'm your host Anne Ishii.

And we are in Germantown where we're starting this episode of Movers and Makers at a museum that celebrates black girlhood.

We'll also meet a priest, an activist, and a couple manicurists who've discovered the power of art in the everyday.

- ♪ Baby.

♪ ♪ You understand me now, ♪ ♪ if sometimes you see that I'm mad.

♪ - The Colored Girls Museum is located in the Germantown section of Philadelphia.

It's on a little street called New Hall Street and it's in a house.

- ♪ I'm just a soul ♪ - My name is Vashti Dubois.

I am the executive director and the founder of the Colored Girls Museum.

My pronouns are she and her.

(knocking on door) - Hello!

- Hi, welcome to the Colored Girls Museum.

My specific interests have always been black girls and black women.

I'm an only girl.

So I was desperate to have like girlfriends and sisters and I'm a theater artist.

And so one of my favorite things to do is to create the circumstances that allow people to talk to each other that allow art and artifact to talk to each other.

I think that all things have a certain kind of energy.

And so this museum is that combination of many, many loves of mine.

(piano music) Black girls are at the bottom of all things.

When you're at the bottom, you have a unique advantage that you did not ask for.

There is a way of seeing that you have, but also there are things denied when you're at the bottom.

People look at ordinary black girls all the time, but do not see ordinary black girls, because to look is not to see.

And so in this museum, we elevate the girl.

The history of museums begins in folks homes.

And particularly for black folks, black folks have always had collections.

We've always gathered folks in our home, because there was a time when we couldn't go to other places because of segregation.

So I think of The Colored Girls Museum as really tapping into a time worn way of being in the world.

♪ - Young, gifted and black ♪ ♪ Oh what a lovely, precious dream ♪ ♪ To be young, gifted and black ♪ - The one room schoolhouse really came out of our concern about what the impact of the pandemic would be on children, and specifically on black girls.

I really started thinking about that as people talked about black women as essential workers.

So if black women are essential workers, what happens to the essential workers' children?

As an only girl, myself, really thinking about how I became an extension of my mother.

And I think that these are things that happen to all girls, but again, I think it happens in a particular way to black girls.

So the one room schoolhouse at The Colored Girls Museum, every single room in this museum, in one way or another offers to the girl, some magic beans through quotes from children's books, which are written by black women.

And our hope is that as you go from one school room to the other, in The Colored Girls Museum, you get a different charge.

If you are an adult here, a different piece of work that you can do on her behalf, if you are the girl, you get a different way of seeing yourself.

I see myself there, I see myself here and so much so that for this exhibit, for the very first time we're creating a digital study guide so that we can really offer some concrete work that we can all be doing.

You know, I'd like to say to people, cuz a lot of folks are like, well why should we care about black girls, right?

Because the thing is, if the black girl is okay, everybody's gonna be okay, if she is not okay, ultimately nobody's gonna be okay.

- Oh wow.

I've seen these.

- I know, aren't these cool?

- Yeah.

You feel like you're home here.

Like you feel like, you know, you're in your mother's kitchen sitting, you're sitting and talking, it's not, it's all austere.

You can touch the pieces.

You know, you can smell the candles.

You can look around and see people who would be in your own family and if I'm feeling down or stressed out or trying to make sense of this crazy world.

I feel like this museum is a place where I can go and I'm seen.

I will be borrowing this from the Colored Girls Library.

- You absolutely should.

- My cousins had cabbage patch dolls.

I never had one.

I always find something that relates to my life, my home, my family.

They had a cabbage patch, but I had a life size doll.

It very much feels like this is my museum.

It just feels like a warm hug.

(upbeat music) - We live in a world where people wanna disabuse all of us of the notion that ordinary people matter.

But it is us ordinary folks who get up every day and do the things that we do that make the world turn.

So while The Colored Girls Museum is specific in her commitment to elevating the stories of black women and girls, it is not for colored girls only.

But what we like to say, anybody who's ready for a conscious revolution, because you would have to be able to imagine for yourself that everybody's story has significance.

And for lots of folks, that's a radical thought.

♪ - Love somebody, the way I love you.

♪ - Philadelphia's Church of the Advocate, has served as the center of activism for numerous civil rights issues, making it the perfect place to talk about music created to bring together people from different backgrounds.

(quick piano music) ♪ - Running from the hills, we live in the hard times, ♪ ♪ dealing with the struggle, the hustle of coal mines.

♪ ♪ It wasn't a goldmine, it hurt us in due time, ♪ ♪ the beauty of Appalachia ruined by health crimes.

♪ ♪ Wide share with those holes we gotta fill.

♪ ♪ Politicians need to help but they signing corrupt bills.

♪ - I was fortunate enough to take a trip with a team from the Episcopal church to Liverpool in 2019.

We spent a lot of time learning about the town's history about its roots and slavery.

Along the way we met a priest named Father Malcolm Rogers.

He's been at the forefront of racial reconciliation in Liverpool.

And one of the things that I think drove him to that was his story with British teen, Anthony Walker.

I would encourage folks to look up the story, but it's one of the most horrific hate crimes that I've ever heard about.

So Anthony's song, is about what happened that shouldn't have happened.

- ♪ It's hard to hear that you lost your life.

♪ ♪ A faithful night full of inner spite, ♪ ♪ where the hate was ripe.

♪ ♪ July 2005 was your last day to be alive.

♪ ♪ Only 18 years old with a soul so deprived, ♪ ♪ babysitting, doing good needs.

♪ ♪ You never would've guessed, ♪ ♪ where the rest of your story might lead.

♪ We just try to use the music to tell that story, talk about what's going on in society.

Make everybody feel welcome to the conversation.

- As we look in our local communities, as we look at our nation, like there are struggles, there are challenges, and there are a lot of reasons to despair.

I went through my own dark night, if you will, after the death of George Floyd and just feeling like, like, why are we hunted?

Why is America hunting us?

And why has America hunted us as long as we've been here?

♪ - One swing of an ice ax, and your lifeline went flat.

♪ ♪ We would find out later these kids were racist.

♪ ♪ That's the tragic fact, but here's a promise.

♪ ♪ You didn't die in vain.

♪ ♪ Cause black lives matter.

♪ ♪ We gon' ease some of that pain.

♪ - I'm from Floyd County, Kentucky and it's as deep and rural Appalachia you can go without having to turn around.

It's a region made up of folks who powered an entire nation and they often did it with zero thanks, and they don't have much to show for it.

And a lot of the music that we grew up with back there was kind of still untouched from the outside world.

♪ - It's farewell, but it's never goodbye.

♪ ♪ We got a movement going on, ♪ ♪ but I promise I'll stop by.

♪ My dad was in the military for 27 years.

So I just happened to be born in Germany.

The first half of my life, I spent it traveling a lot, lived in seven different states.

But home for me is the definitely Baltimore.

I've been there since I've been 18 years old.

I'm 41 now.

I grew up on hiphop music, I love the culture, how they dressed, how they wore their hair, the kicks, you know, the shoes, it wasn't just the music.

It was just the style and the culture that I loved as well.

♪ In these uncertain times.

♪ I can deliver things, really tricky, smash a lot of syllables, say a lot in a small and amount of time, just have a way with my words, and that's what people always told me.

- I've been really fortunate to do a lot of things in the music industry that I'd never thought I would've been able to do, in various capacities as a producer with a lot of country artists, just as a musician.

Or I'll have worked in the studio where the record was made or produced.

And I also run a publishing company with some partners that I have in Toronto.

And they worked in hiphop music, in pop and R&B.

And we filter that through Nashville into the country music system.

- I write a lot for TV, films and games.

I work with Netflix a lot, WWE, ESPN, NFL network.

I work with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra.

I'm a spoken word artist.

I do reinterpretations and write new material for 'em.

Also I go into disability centers.

I go into gang affiliated villages a lot of times and talk to them, a lot of underserved youth.

- Wordsmith and I were friends before this concert started before the series started, the music part has been what's allowed us to, to have those conversations and hopefully start breaking down those walls.

You know, after George Floyd was murdered, a good friend of mine said, hey, listen, this music and everything ordered is cool, but Wordsmith needs the podium right now.

Cuz he can say things about what's going on right now in a way that needs to be heard in the way that only he can tell it.

♪ - For the mission, for religion, ♪ ♪ for the black lives lost at cost of the system.

♪ ♪ - I pray for the mountain.

♪ - There was, you know, this wonderful kind of creative spirit going on in, in our communications department about these beautiful spaces and how inspiring they are and what if we could do concerts in these churches?

- The coolest thing to me is that it's given a platform for, for folks, folks like Wordsmith, folks like myself, all the people we make music with, to share what the world is like for them.

Cause nobody's happy right now.

Nobody's okay with how things are on either side.

♪ - Couple things I admonish, my soul can use some solids.

♪ - Now we are finding the spaces and building out the tour dates cuz people are yearning for healing.

They're yearning for hope, really all the things that I feel when I sit in this church right now, and certainly when I hear Corey and Wordsmith.

So it really made sense to us that if we were going to be filming and talking about the concert for the human family, this concert, that's all about building bridges.

We would wanna do that right here at the advocate.

Philadelphia is where the first black priest was ordained in the Episcopal Church, Absalom Jones.

It's where the first black Episcopal Church was founded, St. Thomas and this church, Church of the Advocate, was the home in 1974 for the first ordination of women in the whole Episcopal church.

So many of us think of this church as kind of like a cathedral for justice.

We've done virtual concerts here in Philly, Lexington, Kentucky.

The one we did in Cincinnati, Ohio was in person.

So we've gotten creative about how to do this.

- What's most important to me at this point is that everybody feels welcome to come and watch a concert.

Same as they would, any other concert.

I want folks from every background, from every political belief, our goal is to get people open to talking with each other.

- This little light of mine.

- The conversations that I've had with Stephanie Spellers about her own experiences, as black woman in America, the things that I've just been able to listen to and take in, they're life changing.

- I'm actually thinking about getting a tattoo and it will say 'hope is my superpower'.

I don't know how we survive without hope.

We all need something that we can look to and say like a better world is possible.

And I could be a part of that.

♪ This little light of mine.

♪ ♪ I'm gonna let it shine.

♪ ♪ Let it shine.

♪ (quick piano music) (laughing) - According to archeologists, ancient Egyptians started getting manicures in as early as 5,000 BCE.

And yet there's something about nail art today that can feel totally futuristic.

This is especially true of Nu Bella Nails, where customers are treated, to truly out of this world, nail art.

(upbeat music) - Nu Bella Nails.

We are new and beautiful.

That's what it means.

And we are bringing in a new style in nails.

(upbeat music) I've been doing nails for 20 years and this is the first salon that I've ever run and operate.

As my family been in this business for over 40 years now, they gave me a nail polish before they gave me a pen.

When I moved over here, I want to try to work for my parents and worked for them for a year.

It was the worst year of my life.

Cuz I mean like working for your parents, family, it's really tough.

I was like, I didn't even give them two week notice.

I just took off and started this.

I feel like I should start my own, 'cause I mean like I think I can do better than what I've seen.

But I didn't have credit.

I didn't have anything.

So I just went and searched and this is the only one that, that let me in without getting a credit check.

This area is coming up, but let's not forget, this is what everybody called the badlands back in the days.

Within the last like 10 years, the growth is dramatic.

It's crazy what the city been putting in to revive this part of the city.

- We really wanna focus on the art on nails.

It's the very essential accessory for a lot of women.

And we wanna make them feel really good about themselves.

- I'm not really into like massages and like stuff like that.

I'm more into like hair, makeup, nails.

So it's just fun for me at times, to just really like have to myself.

Cause I'm always so busy and I feel like this is kinda, like its a self care thing.

- It's like an accessory point.

You get dressed.

I love it.

It's fashion.

It's art.

I love everything about, I been getting my nails done since high school.

- It's definitely art.

Not everyone can do this at all.

- Our clients, they really appreciate art, which we love about them.

They come in, they sit down, they let us do whatever we want.

We do understand our client taste.

So that's why they give us the full control of their nail life.

They could just come in, sit down and feel comfortable.

And we just put on whatever, make them happy.

- Every time I get my nails in here, it's like amazing.

I've never been disappointed ever.

- I just sit down.

I really don't pick designs out at all.

I just let her do her thing.

And it comes out fabulous all the time.

- When you work with a person over time, you build a relationship.

So you know, okay, this person, she like colorful stuff, okay.

This client of mine, she like subtle colors, nude.

Yeah, it's fun.

(upbeat music) With my client depending on the length, it ranged from an hour and a half to 3 hours, 4 hours.

Sometimes as far as hand painted, it definitely take the long time because we can't rush on details.

- She probably did the longest now I've ever seen.

- Yeah, it gotta be like five inch.

I was stressed out.

I never, honestly I never in my life did that long set of nails.

I never took five hours on a set of nails, except that set.

It was that long.

I think its only good for fashion show.

You know, but daily life working is a little too much time.

- I was stressed out for her.

- To theme each and every single set of nails.

You guys should.

I think three color in a separate.

It's always been my dream to be able to teach.

So our workshop is usually two days and we do it monthly, not only an artist, we, or nail technician, we also educators and also a motivator because a lot of nail techs, they need a lot of motivation.

A lot of people already have it in them, but they just don't have the right motivation to really believe in themself and just go forward with this path.

- A lot of our students, they, they have accomplished so much more, than what I've accomplished for the first 15 years.

In two days I'm telling you, I mean like it, it just blows our mind.

- This is billion, multi billion dollar business.

It's enough money for everybody, me and Noodle, we have only two with arms and two legs.

We can't take every everybody.

- [Noodle] No.

- So it's a chance for everybody to be honest.

We see a lot of people change their life after nail class, and we are so happy to see their growth.

It's very so rewarding.

- This era of nails is different from what my parents or my grandparents did back in the days.

We are artists because you know, we are creating arts on nails now.

We are not the best, but we trying our best.

- So the beauty of it, it only lasts for three weeks.

- To me, it feels like it is a chance for me to be, rebirthe to another, you know, set of nails that we wanted.

Cuz like Loann said, the passion never stops.

It's really tough, you know, to live this American dream.

But it's a hell of rush for us.

- You wanna follow where your heart leads you, because at the end of the day, this is what you do every day.

You'd rather do something that you love.

- I want, I want at the end of this, the thing we want this to be like a Bella universe, of beautiful nails.

- Social movements often start with the basic tools of protest and the most beautiful statements are usually the simplest.

In today's profile, we talked to Erika Nunez of Juntos, about their use of art to achieve justice.

- Juntos is located at 600 Washington Avenue, in a Plaza on the second floor, right up of Kung Fu Tea.

Juntos is a community led, immigrant rights organization, based here in South Philly.

And we organize the Latinx immigrant community, so that they may organize against systems of oppression, like immigration or lack of funding in schools.

And we focus a lot around immigration enforcement, but do a lot of work around education justice, addressing the other ways that like, local and federal governments have failed our community.

Juntos has always existed to serve the Latinx immigrant community, which has primarily been the community in South Philly.

When Juntos was founded, the majority of folks that we worked with were Mexican immigrants, but since then it's changed a lot.

So we're working a lot with the Central American community and we see them a lot through our mutual aid work and our schoolwork.

(cheerful latino music) I became executive director of Juntos, actually my first day was the day that the city shut down from COVID.

I had always been involved with Juntos.

I just saw the other day, like I had a Facebook memory come up and it was 10 years ago that I joined Juntos as a member.

I was already organizing as part of another group around immigration and detention.

But when I joined Juntos, I saw that they needed more support with their art making and their visuals and messaging for campaigns, so that's what I jumped in on.

We wanna make sure that we have signs, right?

That's a big thing in a protest.

And so I started painting banners for them.

One thing we really need to get started on are making some posters.

You wanna work really hard on a sign for us?

So it would be really cool.

And that way you can take it with you on Tuesday or let someone else borrow it so that they can use it, at the protest, if you can't go.

The mainstream immigrant rights movement, often has a messaging that does not actually speak to rallies of our people.

Juntos uses art to like uplift our own language and messaging in a way that's really striking, but also community led, you know, and sort of like every banner that we've made at Juntos has been made in community by folks, literally dozens of hands had touched something, but the messaging, the language of it has also been something that was discussed as a group collectively.

- So what's something that you would tell someone who can fix it, what do you wanna tell them?

- You can fix the water fountain.

- Fix the fountain?

- We have two campaigns at Juntos.

Our first one is our sanctuary schools campaign.

That is the education justice campaign.

About two years ago, right before the pandemic started, it was like February 25th, three weeks before the world fell apart.

An immigrant Honduran mother, was detained outside of a school in South Philly.

She was picked up by plain clothes, ICE officers, with an unmarked vehicle.

She was pregnant, had just dropped off her five year old child at this school and was detained.

And everyone around her didn't know what to do.

The staff at the school, unfortunately didn't know what to do.

And the district never like formally acknowledged the incident or set up like, here's what we're gonna do if this ever happens again.

Our first demand was asking that the district finally implement a plan on what to do if this happens, but also just expanding productions for the immigrant community.

And right now we're on the second point in the platform.

That's what our membership has asked us to focus on.

So that's that community led piece.

They've asked us to focus on the investment in schools, which is always been something that Juntos has mobilized around, like 20 years ago.

Juntos had community members mobilizing around the closure of Bach, for example, or all the different school closures in South Philly.

Quality access to education is a big value for community members, cuz a lot of 'em come here with that hope in mind for their future children.

And they come here and they actually see the massive disinvestment and there's like that dissonance.

Part of our work is saying like, yeah, actually this is not okay.

This is not fair.

You deserve better.

You can pick any color you want.

We have four colors.

I tried to pick a mix of colors.

There's no such thing as boy colors or girl colors.

So you should just pick whatever color you want.

A way that Juntos describes art and cultures importance in our movement is we say, hey, we could win the revolution.

We could win immigration reform and citizenship for all.

You could write stuff this way or you could write stuff this way, okay?

If our children don't know how to speak Spanish or they're not proud of the country that they came from, there's certain traditions that we haven't passed down, like we've actually lost.

(upbeat latino music) - Yay.

- It's so good.

- I hope you found some magic in the ordinary with us today.

I'm your host Anne Ishii, and I'll see you on the next Movers and Makers.