A traveling exhibition that honors the life of noted writer and civil rights activist James Baldwin has made its final US stop at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African-American History right here in Detroit.

The exhibit opened on August 2nd, which would've been Baldwin's 100th birthday, and it runs through February of next year.

It's titled "Frontline Prophet: James Baldwin," and it features the work of Detroit-based artist Sabrina Nelson.

I spoke with Sabrina about the inspiration behind this major project.

Sabrina Nelson, it is always delightful to see you.

Welcome to "American Black Journal."

- Thank you, Stephen Henderson.

I am always happy to listen and also see you out on the streets of Detroit.

- Yes, right?

We always seem to run into each other, just wandering around.

So tell me about "Frontline Prophet: James Baldwin," this exhibit at the Wright.

- Well, I can tell you the beginnings of it and how it started.

A lot of people will always ask, "How did you get so obsessed with James Baldwin?"

And I have to respond that I wasn't obsessed with James Baldwin, but I was invited by our Detroit Poet Laureate Jessica Care Moore to travel with her in 2016 to the James Baldwin Conference at American University of Paris.

I was on the plane with her, Melba Boyd, and Magdalena for a view of them.

And I just wanted to do as much reading as I could on James Baldwin before I got there, because I knew more about Beaufort Delaney, who was his mentor who's an artist moreso than I knew about James Baldwin.

And so I was invited by Jessica to paint live during her plenary session.

So I'd never drawn Baldwin before and I had done as much reading.

And when I got there and I started drawing his image, I felt something.

Now I don't know how many people feel things spiritually, but I felt something and my hairs raised on my arms that I had never drawn him before.

But I felt like he touched me, he came to me, and then I asked, after I experienced my Poltergeist moment, I asked, I said, "You know, if you're here, I need you to teach me how to know you."

And sometimes I feel like the spirit has jokes because it went deep and heavy.

And I've learned so many things about James Arthur Baldwin and his life and his activism and his artivism as well.

This is how it started.

So it started off with small sketchbooks and drawing him during what we normally call Inktober.

I didn't like the word pops, so I changed it to Blacktober.

And I said who can I draw, this is of course, after I came back from Paris, can I draw every day for 31 days?

Which ended up into 91 days because I didn't stop.

So that's the beginning of this "Frontline Prophet."

And with Ashara and Omo Misha who armed my co-curators, they came to my studio and said, "Hey, what are you doing with these little sketchbooks?

What are they?"

And I said, "Well I did a study of James Baldwin."

And she was like, "What are you doing with them?"

And I said, "Well, they were in my studio."

And she says, "We should do a show."

And I'd already talked to a friend of mine named Mikael Rashid about it, but I wasn't really sure how I was gonna do it.

And with Ashara suggesting that she'll travel, we've traveled now to seven, six cities.

And now after being home, we will go to Paris to make it a full circle.

And so it's been a really amazing journey.

It's been a great journey with Ashara Ekundayo and also Omo Misha McGlown from Irwin House Gallery for those listening in Detroit.

Both of these women, all of us are born in Detroit, raised here and lived between Oakland, California and Detroit or Harlem, New York and Detroit.

So we are all here, and this is how it started, and this is how it sort of spread into the, Ashara named the show, by the way, "Frontline Prophet: James Baldwin" that you can see now at the Charles H. Wright Museum up until February 28th.

- Yeah, so one of my favorite things about Baldwin is what I'll call complication.

It's not just that his struggle was about being African-American and male in a society that didn't value him for that reason.

He had struggles on many different fronts.

And I think when we do write by him, we tell that story.

We tell the story of those complications, of that nuance.

When you were hearing from him, from this poltergeist, what did he say to you about complication, about that nuance?

- Well, I didn't really, I just felt his spirit.

And when I draw him, I feel like I've baptized myself and his image enough to know his eyes, his expressions, his voice.

When I walk in a room and I hear a recording and I hear it's his voice, I'm like, whoa.

So I think my job is to reopen a portal, if you will, so that he can reenter in this time.

He's never really left.

And during his physical time here with us, there were no awards given to him.

And there were lots of activists who felt like he was using his platform's star power to just be seen in the moment.

But he really was concerned about what it means to be Black in this country where he would say things like, "I picked the cotton, I built the homes, I tilled the land."

And have a country that doesn't think of you as this important being.

And so I think having his visual image and also augmented reality in the museum will allow people who've forgotten who he was, what his words were, and how he walked and left a very solid footprint here with things that were happening then back in the '50s, the '60s, and now it's still happening here in how we value beings less than we value man.

And so with him dying at 63 years old, and I know he died in 1987, and I was very pregnant with Mario.

And so Mario will be 37 this year, and I will be 57 this year.

And so just thinking about the time that he went through between 1924 and his timeline of 1987 and what he witnessed.

And so when you ask a young person who may be much younger than Mario who James Baldwin was or is, sometimes they'll go, "Well, I've heard of him, but I don't really know him."

So I think bringing his image back, celebrating his centennial life, adding the augmented reality will allow them to hear his voice, will allow people to see his face and think about his political views, and him as a poet who also told the truth about who we were in this country and how he had to leave this country to go away to find out who he really is.

Sort of when you're running away, you really are running to find yourself.

And you are always with you no matter where you go.

So I think that journey to Paris gave him enough quietness to find who James Arthur Baldwin was.

And so I think he said to me, maybe not in words, "I'm coming back," I'm coming through your work and through the work of these co-curators in this museum and these journeys that we've had from Harlem to New Orleans, from New Orleans to Oakland, from Oakland to Chicago, and now in Detroit, and then to Paris, how we can hold this frontline prophet up and say, "Hey, he did some work here and I think we need to revisit his CliffNotes."

Because he said some things, he even told kids in Oakland, "You can be the president, maybe not in this lifetime as history is right now, but within your lifetime, you can be the president of this United States."

And so when the hens come to roost, it just makes me happy that he was definitely prophesizing on his truths and what we need to do together to make this place better than what it is and to stop the craziness that's happening - And the othering, yeah.

Sabrina Nelson, again, always great to see you.

Really looking forward to this exhibit being at the Wright through next February, right?

- Yes, February the 28th.