>>Just ahead on "American Black Journal" Reverend Horace Sheffield III is here.

We'll talk about his father's legacy and the labor movement and new plans to house his archives.

Plus, we'll hear from this year's Kresge Eminent Artist, Olayami Dabls, about the inspiration behind his unique work.

And we'll talk with artist, Tylonn Sawyer about the modern day messages in his art.

Don't go away, "American Black Journal" starts now.

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Thank you.

(jazzy upbeat music) >>Welcome to "American Black Journal."

I'm Stephen Henderson.

As we celebrate Black History Month, we wanna remember an African American leader in organized labor, the late Horace Sheffield Jr. As a young auto worker at Ford, he rose through the ranks of the UAW, and played a huge role in expanding the influence of Blacks in the union.

Sheffield was also a civil rights activist, and a close ally to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

I spoke with his son, Reverend Horace Sheffield III, about preserving his father's legacy.

I'm really excited to talk to you about your dad, and the work that you're doing to preserve, you know, his archives and his legacy.

But, I figure we probably oughta start with just a simple recitation of who your dad was, what he did, and why he's so important, not just to the legacy of labor here in the city of Detroit, but especially to the legacy of civil rights.

He really was something else.

>>Well you know, and my dad, much like me, was not a self promoter.

You know, he was a race man, and in that generation, as you know, 'cause your family's a part of that.

These are people who deferred their own aspirations for future generations to experience what they never had an opportunity to.

So it wasn't about them getting the job.

It was about opening the door, making certain other folks came in.

But I think Willie Felder opened my eyes to who my dad was at his hundredth birthday celebration.

Told me he was in Birmingham, Alabama, and Dr. A.G. Gatz, who was a millionaire invited my dad down.

And my dad brought Thurgood Marshall with him.

And they were having a meeting, because these Black veterans who had come back from the war were being discriminated against, not able to get the veterans loans.

And so he said, when my dad walked in the room, everybody knew who he was, and knew that things were about to get started now.

So my dad's history is this.

He by the way, was vice president of the Negro American Labor Council with A. Philip Randolph.

He and Bayard Rustin served in that same capacity.

Both of them were the staff organizers of the March on Washington for jobs in the war industry.

And of course of the first person to bring Dr. King to the Detroit.

what people don't understand is the success of the Civil Rights movement, because you have Black labor organizers.

Also one tidbit is in his archives, is that I discovered that he was the first person that they asked to be mayor, to run as a Black mayor.

And my dad loathed politics.

(Stephen laughing) So it's very interesting that my daughter would become president of the council.

But one good example, five plus one.

They went down and met with Mary Ann and Van Antwerp, because of police brutality.

The Big Four and all those things.

And if you read B.J.

Whitit's book, you know that they brought the Klan here, and Charles Bowles almost won the mayor's race in the '20s to discourage the growth of the Black population.

And the police took on that mantra.

And when they went down and met about what was happening, they said, that's what we do to (beep), it's in my dad's archives.

And what did they do?

My dad came back to TULC, had a big meeting, and organized a slate called Five Plus One.

The one was Jerry Kavanaugh and five liberal Counsels and they won, they beat the UAW, they beat the White power structure.

And that was a powerful moment in the history of TULC, and the Black Trade Union, of which my dad was a part of.

>>And, you know, just hearing you talk about those things, those events, those moments in history, you can connect so much of what we see and experience today in Detroit to those moments.

That things are the way they are for us, in particular in the city, because of those things that your dad and those other folks did.

>>Yeah so what's interesting is the same person who did Daisy Bates, and Robert Kennedy, and Jackie Robinson's archives.

We spent $90,000 digitizing this, and kind of tongue in cheek, the White guy says, you know, this is one of the best collections.

He didn't wanna say period, you know.

But really, my dad had already annotated everything.

I mean, back to a pamphlet he wrote, with a pseudonym called "Unite Regardless," encouraging Black workers to join the UAW, of which my grandfather didn't until after it was accepted by the you know, was a collective bargaining agent.

My grandfather thought that it before was the second coming of Jesus Christ.

But my dad saved absolutely everything.

And what's important to me about all of this, is that if I, you know, you have family members, for example, that were in the trade union movement, right?

You can literally pull up people's names, people that folks, everyday people don't know, that like Anne Jones or, you know, George Cherry, I mean, and you will find information that my dad has.

I know I'm running my mouth, but I'm so excited about this.

But one of the most important pieces that I've read recently, and by the way, my dad took me where I was able to connect the dots was when he came home from King's funeral, having walked behind his coffin, and African American trade unionists were absent from Memphis.

And some of them were absent from the funeral, because the White unions had turned against Dr. King because of his stance on the Vietnam war.

And this five page letter, my dad wrote to the Black Trade Unions, asked a question, when are we even as a part of White institutions, not gonna be afraid to stick up for own interest.

They stick up for theirs, and make us bow to theirs.

When are we gonna make them bow to ours?

>>Wow, so I know you're doing this work now, trying to preserve his legacy and his archive, but I want you to talk just a little about growing up with your dad.

I mean, this was your dad.

He wasn't just a civil rights activist.

You know, this was the man who raised you.

Talk about the things that you believe, and the things you work on today that were influenced by growing up in a household with him.

>>Well, you know, my dad's favorite question he asked in any meeting that he was organizing for an issue, was "What's the difference between a pile of bricks, and a cathedral?"

And no one would get it.

He'd always say "Organization, the bricks are organized."

So one of the things I got out was by the way this humongous movement.

I mean, the social upheaval and all that you saw happen.

I was there in that cauldron, and that crucible.

I mean, I watched Dr. King speak.

I went to Walter Reuther's funeral.

I mean, these are things that I experienced, and I ask myself, unlike today, when people would TikTok it and, and Instagram it, and Facebook it, I asked myself, why was I providentially placed in this era to be exposed to these people, and to know them by name, and you know sleep in King's house, and all that.

And I came away with it, that I was to carry on the legacy of selfless service.

My dad said the true measure of a person's life is not how much they have, but how much they give.

And I really think that came home in '63, when we went to celebrate the hundredth anniversary, Emancipation Proclamation, and Lyndon Johnson received my dad and my sisters and I at his house.

And my sister swam in his swimming pool, as my dad met with Lyndon Johnson.

And I didn't come out of there thinking, oh my God, I'm somebody, you know, look at us.

I came away from there knowing that my dad was a pivotal person in the movement for Civil Rights, and that this blue collar worker, he was a blue collar worker.

My grandfather had a fourth grade education, came out of the foundry at Ford, organized workers.

And they called him the Champion of the Working Poor, and Blue Collar workers, that took him into Lyndon Johnson's front room, and was known by him, and by name.

And by the way, I got an interesting story about Lyndon Johnson.

It's in his archives, you wanna hear it?

And it is time, because Aidan Kohn wrote this and told me it's in the archives, that Lyndon Johnson called my dad.

He was the floor general at the convention, and asked my dad not to seat, the lady from Mississippi, what's her name?

Fannie Lou Hamer.

>>Oh, really?

>>And Aidan Kohn was standing next to him, and he told vice president or President Johnson that he would not seat those delegations who were delegates of Fannie Lou Hamer.

And, you know, I love Aidan Kohn, by the way.

You know, he contributed a lot of stuff to my dad's archives, and brought a lot of stuff together for me.

He's part of that Black Jewish coalition that began, you know, back in the '40s and '50s, that really desegregated the city.

>>So I think for anybody who's looking for an obvious sign of the power of your dad's legacy, of course, your daughter is now, you know a great symbol of that.

She's the president of the Detroit City Council.

But I also wonder if you look around the city and see other things that for you, are a reminder of all of the things that he did.

>>Well, I would be perfectly honest with you.

When I set out to do this collection, the only support I got was from my sister, LaVonne, who passed, who wrote a $50,000 check.

The rest of it, I had to raise, The UAW put in some money.

Some of their archives have been lost, and I'm working on an agreement with them.

But Dr. Curtis Ivery at Wayne County Community College embraced this project, helped me raise the money, and actually spent money to have an architectural layout, and to build out for where this is gonna go.

So now Wayne State, you know, I've yielded it to Wayne State.

I wanted to be broader, because my dad was broader, and I knew the issues he had with Walter Reuther.

And when I talked to them, they knew they were issues.

So we've addressed those, but I'm excited.

And I think, you know, when I look around town, that community college, with that many young African Americans who get an opportunity to go to college and go on.

My wife, who grew up on East Side, went to Kettering, fatherless, you know, almost homeless as a teenager, went to that college.

And she now is practicing medicine in the city of Detroit.

So I think that's a powerful thing, because one of the things you know and I know, is what they always believed was that education was the great game changer.

>>Everything, it was everything to them, yeah.

So for just average people who might wanna access this, learn about your dad, see this legacy.

They can just go the Wayne State, to the Reuther building.

>>It's not up on the platform yet, it will be.

What's gonna happen is Wayne will house it.

It'll be shared with Wayne County Community College district where actual physical artifacts from the archives will be on display.

We're hiring a guy named Joseph Wilson, out of New Jersey, who was one of the foremost Black labor historians in the world, who you know, when I called him, he told me stuff about my dad.

And we're gonna be excited, because we're gonna be doing seminars.

And here's the real power of this.

The real power of this, that these rank and file people, Mickey Welch, and people like that, I grew up with.

You know, the Thomas', the Dillard's, will now have an opportunity for their lives to be opened up to others, so that people understand, It doesn't take a whole lot of folks.

Doesn't take grand folks.

It takes just committed folks.

And these blue collar rank and file people changed the history of this city, and this nation.

>>Now let's turn to the 2022 Kresge Eminent Artist.

Olayami Dabls is the recipient of this year's honor, which celebrates lifetime achievement in art, and comes with a $50,000 prize.

73-year-old Dabls is well known for transforming a neglected area on Detroit's West Side, into an African-centered cultural attraction.

Visitors from all over the world have traveled to the corner of Grand River and West Grand Boulevard to see his handy work.

Producer, Marcus Green paid a visit to Dabls' Mbad Bead Museum to learn more about the artist's unique brand of visual storytelling.

>>I'm a storyteller, which is a title that comes out of Africa.

And most cultures who live close to the land, they had people who told stories.

The concept of being an artist is relatively new within the last maybe 500 years, Prior to that, each culture had people that were there, and their responsibility was to communicate through what that particular culture group called symbols, their colors.

And now today, all of that has just been thrown into one big pot and referred to as art.

But that term is deceptive, because it's not art.

It's more material culture than it is art.

But when you talk about material culture, you're actually talking about the culture group, the group that it's there for, what they have left behind.

In most cultures, that would be defined as art is destroyed if it does not serve the purpose, because it's made to solicit and engage an ideal our concept.

And if that's not achieved, no one would just keep it around because of the aesthetics of it.

It's my responsibility to remind people from which they came.

And since I'm dealing with the African experience, it meant that for a period of, let's say 500 years, our history, our culture has been deliberately ignored, destroyed, or claimed by others.

It was only when I discovered African material culture, and I had to figure out what will I be able to talk about without getting sidetracked with the people being afraid of what I'm trying to introduce them to.

And that's where the beads came in.

There's no difference in the use of beads, textiles, carbon, sculpture, masks and utilitary items, in Africa.

They all serve the same purpose.

So that's why I gravitated towards beads.

Now that I got these beads, how do I get people to take note?

Even the display of the beads, I have to go through and uneducate myself, because we base everything we are doing based on the European model.

The European model says that if you got a museum, things have to be presented in a certain way.

You gotta have captions.

You gotta have a staff to research the captions.

So I had to deal with this ideal, do I wanna meet European museum standards, or do I want to display these beads, so my people could see them?

So I had to manufacture it, so others could see it without me saying a word, and yet communicating with them.

Then it dawned on me, that the Europeans who traveled throughout Africa, all the things they deemed to be significant, that they collected and stole, or were given to them, there was no captions on these items.

So once I got over that hurdle, then I'm able to display the beads, and where people can come in here, and just enjoy the energy of having them around.

It's still me, but I'm displaying who I am to people, so they can see what I know.

So I said, okay, I need some curb appeal.

So I gotta put stuff on these buildings that would appeal to the palate of African people.

So now I'm still using symbols.

I'm using images that have been in our cultures for thousands of years.

When I began to put these images on the building, I was attracting anyone who saw them.

So I said, okay, now I have all this information in me.

I've spent 15 years at the African American Museum, studying the history of Africans in this country.

And I spent another 15 years studying the history of Africans on the continent.

I'm not so much concerned about legacy, as I am, as impacting, influencing people during my own lifetime.

My concern is to make sense out of the nonsense stuff that I I am in.

And I'm beginning to figure my way out of, and I know that someone else will be able to unwrap some other information.

It is a continuation.

It took us about 400 years to get here, but each generation moves us even closer back to from which we came.

'Cause there's nothing else around here like this.

That means that it found the place in the community and it coexists with everything around it.

>>And there's another Detroit artist who's having his work recognized.

Tylonn Sawyer's art will be on display, inside and outside of an affordable housing project, planned for the city's Northwest side.

The building on West McNichols will be named Sawyer Art Apartments, in honor of the artist.

"One Detroit" Associate Producer, Will Glover, sat down with Sawyer, to talk about the contemporary messages in his work.

>>So Tylonn, the themes of your work delve into the cross sections of race, politics, identity.

When you create this work, who is it for?

And what do you hope that they get out of it?

>>I guess you could specifically say like White people, but that's not necessarily the case, because I consider myself American.

And when I refer to like the founding fathers, I notice that I put Our in front of it, right?

So like, obviously that's a type of ownership that I take on, some other people may not.

But even, I would say I bet ya' they're American, somehow subconsciously, they still maybe think that way.

And so creating works like that.

Similarly that to most things that I do, I think that it's about getting the viewer to engage with our history, and even recent history, in a more thoughtful way than just a romanticized way that we've become accustomed to it.

You know, I hope that my art does sort of influences younger people or people to think a much more nuanced way about these problems.

'Cause we have heavy handed problems, but they're so intricate, it's hard to just say, do this, and this will fix that, you know.

Defund the police, gonna set, is that what's gonna stop all of the, you know, like and I get where it comes from.

But I mean like it's such a complicated problem.

You know like you can't just use, like something that needs a scaffold, you come in with you know, like a sledge hammer, or something like that.

Like that's unfortunately that's the way I think that's how we've gotten to where we are socially, in this country.

And so a lot of my work kind of deals with that.

Like you mentioned that painting, like "A Gentle Reminder", you know.

And it's a Black Power fist with butterflies on it that have, but instead of the Monarch designs, it's a Confederate flag, you know.

And butterflies are a metaphor for reincarnation, in certain Eastern religions.

And so, racism kind of reincarnates itself in a different way.

It's not that good old boy, mass lynching, pickup truck, or like angry, you know, like Southern Confederate sort of thing now.

Now it takes place subtly, in boardrooms.

It's policies that disproportionately affect people of color.

It's that the way that we may not see people who look like us on television shows.

When we do see folks that look like us on television shows, it's a script written by a person who never lived our life.

So when we hear the dialogue, there's a disconnect from like who I am, versus like who they're presenting like on television.

And so, yeah, like when I, I don't know my work, I try to pay attention to like those little subtleties, the little things that are causing these bigger problems.

You know, like 'cause a lotta times that's what it is.

It's just a bunch of little things that compound themselves into these big mass problems.

>>So as an artist with a resume like yours, what advice do you give to artists who, you know, want something similar for themselves?

>>Usually it's young people, and I would say, you have to have hard work, and you have to have passion.

Like all these things have to kind of coalesce at the same time.

Like my work is heavily research driven.

My paintings are very laborious.

I spend a lot of time like working on them.

Sometimes it happens quick, but that isn't the case the majority of the time.

Like I say, how many books I have to read, the networking aspect of it.

It's a lot of hard work.

It exhausts you, and sometimes you have to be pushed, and you have to push yourself, 'cause no one else is gonna do it.

We live in a time where a big, I don't know, a big chunk of the messaging to younger people about safe spaces, take your time.

You know, like your anxiety, like take care of yourself, your anxiety, self care.

You should have been doing.

You should, yes, you should take care of yourself, but all humans have anxiety.

I don't know, I have a lot of anxiety right now.

you know, just from teaching and job, and I can imagine what you do.

This is just a part of the human condition.

And I've often, I don't know, like from what I see the narrative seems to make these aspects, which are the tribulations, but they are average parts of the human condition.

And they're given like the special credence to stop people from putting their best foot foot forward.

I do think that you should address those issues via therapy, or whatever it takes, but it's considered self care.

But simultaneously, man, I get in the studio, and I work.

Like I come from a blue collar family, who went to, you know, they go to work every day to take care of their families, their homes.

And so I have to go to work every day.

Rather I'm teaching, when I'm not teaching, I need to be in the studio doing the same thing with that type of ethic.

Yes, it's a lot of hard work, and I am drained at the end of the day.

But man, what a labor of love.

What great problems to have, to be exhausted from painting rather than filling out CPS reports in the office.

And I made a very conscious decision to change my life to what it is now and be an artist, and be an educator.

And I'm a thousand times happier.

>>That is gonna do it for us this week.

Thanks for watching.

@AmericanBlackJournal.org, and you can always connect with us on Facebook, and on Twitter.

Make sure you join us next Tuesday, February 22nd at 7:00 PM, for a special one hour show, about our Black Church in Detroit initiative.

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

(jazzy upbeat music) >>[Female Spokesperson] 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.

>>[Male Spokesperson] Support also provided by, the Cynthia and Edsel Ford Fund for Journalism at Detroit Public TV.

>>[Female Spokesperson] 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 present African American perspectives about our communities and in our world.

>>[Male Spokesperson] Also brought to you by AAA, Nissan Foundation, and viewers like you.

You can find out more about our guests Thank you.

(final piano music)