(somber music) - Just beyond a cemetery where generations of African Americans have been laid to rest, there's a house with a yard seemingly full of rust and ruin.

From above, it's hard to make sense of what you're seeing, but this isn't chaos.

It's a calling.

For more than 30 years, Joe Minter has been telling stories in metal, stories to honor his ancestors whose struggles were left out of the history books.

Today Minter's sculptures are in museums across the country, but his masterpiece is here in his own backyard.

Come with us on a walk through the African Village in America.

Hey, Mr.

Minter.

I'm Jennifer.

- Nice to meet you.

- Thanks for having us out today.

- All right, and y'all welcome to the African Village.

What you mainly would call me, I'm just a cry in the wilderness.

Let those who have ears to hear, let them hear.

Let my people go, and leave my children alone.

Just a cry in the wilderness.

(metal clanking) Well what this here is what you would call like the reality of being under, I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all, except the African.

We have shown our loyalty through every walk it been, was in the boat with George Washington.

We have been in the foxhole with, I would say our brothers and sisters, Anglo Saxon and the African in a foxhole, trying to deliver up that part of us that is the good part of us and we're gonna defend the Constitution.

We've been lost.

What has happened to us, we have fallen apart because who was included in the Constitution?

Who was included in the Constitution?

We had nothing to do with it.

We was enslaved.

Some of our people over there helped in the enslavement.

Now I got to hand that to 'em.

But how do a country go 400 years and keep the chains on us as a human being and as part of the humanity of God's flower, God, how do we just get into this shape where we just hate and hate and hate?

(somber music) So art is a gift given to mankind to be able to take a universal thought, or mind thought, so the heart can be converted and be what we call in one rhythm so it can join together to come together.

A-R-T-S, I'm gonna tell you what art is now, A-R-T-S.

A is abstract.

R is rhythm.

T is thought.

S is statement.

Everybody's an artist.

So what I'm is, I'm a messenger as I consider myself.

My signature is peacemaker.

You say you want to go through the Africa Village?

- [Jennifer] Yes, sir.

- This is what you call the back door.

(metal clanking) Now to those that say the matriarch don't come first, (metal clanking) this represent the matriarch right here looking on to the village and she's the biggest thing within the village 'cause she is the queen.

So she's a protector of not only life, she protector of what you call the Village, so I made it big enough to stretch out and look like you look through her, you can't look around you see, you look through her, look like she covering every spot in the village when you look through the queen, right?

That's the reason I made that big like that.

- [Jennifer] Joe Minter calls himself a messenger, a man driven by vision, purpose, and pain.

After retiring as a steel worker, he set out to document the untold stories of Africans in America to create a record for the next generation.

- And this is my testimony.

It says, "Thank you God for the Holy Ghost faith, vision, and dream in 1989 to be a worker in this vineyard built by Your hand, my Lord, thy God in love and peace to open Thy children eyes."

That's who it dedicated to, is children.

- What's so exciting about Joe Minter's work and his practice is that he really is living history.

Working with metals, working with found materials are really visible in his final products, which makes his practice quite special, alongside his yard show.

African Village in America is Joe Minter's site-specific environment that was created after 1989 when he had a vision from God to tell his story.

He's really interested in being along the history lines of 400 years of African people.

- [Joe] You feel that breeze there?

- [Jennifer] Mmmmm - That's the breath of the ancestors coming right out of all the 100,000 of us.

And you know what the feel of that is?

It putting chill bumps on me.

You have the Trail of Tears.

This would be called the Trail of Chains and Shackles.

So this is how we were dispersed and a lot of us coming out of the Mother Land was what you would call like left by jumping off the ship trying to get back to Africa and different things like that.

And that was always a trail of sharks behind the ships.

So this is how this would be the ship.

In between this ship you'll see a hut that's right here.

This hut is representing on the same side of this ship, us unloading in America in a hut of labor.

The other hut over there would be in Africa where we came from would be what you call like in harmony, a Mother Africa, the mother of 50 nations.

We have never felt the breath and love of this country.

This country had treated us like we ain't been nothing but what we have been, we have given our heart as humble as we could to be able to say one thing.

We just want to be free.

We just want to vote.

We just ought to be called a human being.

And within this stage of 400 years, we don't supposed to be in the shape we in now and just have drifted back so far we hating everything that breathe and look like our brothers and sisters.

So this is a Trail of Chains and Shackles and Death.

Misery, agony and death involved in this, so how do we come out of, you would call it, I guess when you say repent is the word that America won't preach.

'Cause see, before you get to repent, you're gonna have to say this word right here, racism.

Could you change place with me and my people for half a second?

- [Jennifer] Thousands have walked through the African Village in America.

His art is in museums nationwide, but in 2024, for the first time, a full exhibition of Joe Minter's work was held in his hometown just down the road from his house in a former factory in Birmingham's Titusville community.

- One of the incredible things about Joe Minter is here, being in the Marc Steel building was when, in his working years, you know, before he retired as a steel worker, he applied for work here three times, couldn't get a job.

I mean, who knows the reason, but that industry that made Birmingham is functionally non-existent.

Joe Minter is still here.

He is still working.

I'm very glad that he has gotten so much recognition now while he is alive.

The night that Lonnie Holley performed, it was like Joe Minter was floating through this place.

The whole scene was electric, and yeah, it was kind of unlike anything I'd ever seen, it was great.

- Was working on this project your first introduction to Joe Minter?

- [Glenny] I had been familiar with Minter's work for a long time.

If you go to his house, it's almost like all this camouflage.

It's like everything is sort of in a, a well-organized jumble, but a jumble nonetheless, but here there was this sort of minimalist approach to putting each piece of sculpture on a white staging area and to lay it out in a spiral, put every piece alone just added so much and you could study the different elements of it.

All of his titles were so magnificent.

I mean, it just added this whole level of my understanding of the work.

My favorite title was The Many Uses of the Chain.

That piece was at the start of the labyrinth and if you carried that title with you as you were walking the labyrinth, you were sort of walking a chain anyway, but there are chains in so many of the sculptures.

In some pieces, it's excruciating to see the uses of a chain.

Sometimes it's being used like to link Joe and his wife.

Sometimes it's being used to bind human bodies.

- [Jennifer] Some of Minter's most powerful work gives form to the moments that changed his country forever.

- This is what you call the depiction of what I seen through my eyes that are right there.

What happened when that bomb went off?

This is the impact of a pipe bomb.

What a pipe gonna do, it goes down, out, and leave a big old crater and iron flying everywhere.

So these little girls down in the basement probably, right before probably Sunday school, studying something there about, God, forgiveness and stuff, and all a sudden a bomb go off.

Now, I was there, I saw the undertaker come in there and saw that they were crying and throwing up and they couldn't even face the inside of a bombing site, of little girl bombed up with their guts in their heads and everywhere and big old crater in the middle of the church.

These four little girl down there enjoying thereself in the basement.

When old racism come alive, racism is sickness, worser than cancer cause what racism do it build and build and build and make joints and joints and then it grow so big, you can't handle it and you can do any kind of way you wanna do indirectly.

But this is attack on a sacred place of God, heard around the world.

What happened to me when I saw this, it's etched into my mind in a way where you can't forget it.

So down there you see the way they depicted down there with the little girl throwing birds up in the air.

Now it's been sanitized down there with the way they depict that bomb was you need to have a big old pipe bomb in the middle looking something just like that because this the way it looked that like a earthquake had hit and legs and arms and all your body's been mutilated.

So this is what this depicts 16th Street Baptist Church, a place where the ill of racism showed up, killed four little angel baby girls that never had the chance.

This is a sickness and the results, how far racism can go, and this should never happen again, but look like it done creep back into the scene or it might happen any day, any minute, any second now.

- All right, we're heading into your workshop area.

- Uh-huh.

- [Jennifer] Mr.

Minter, I'm looking around in your workshop and I'm curious, are you making any sculptures now?

Are you just focusing on painting more?

- I done work wood, iron, you name it, I done work it.

- [Jennifer] And so when you go to put something together, do you have a vision in mind before you start the piece, or do you just let the materials speak to you as you work?

- I say let it speak to you as you work because what it is you got a big, so you got lots of material to work with.

You might just pick up something and this might be something that you wasn't gonna even work on, but once you pick it up then you say, "Well, go to this next."

It's like a step.

But what it is, it got to have the message in it that I want to put it in it when I make it.

Like all of these is names, but look like God told me make this as my going out.

I really done did all the stuff I need to do, but look like somehow I have to make something that to keep the flow.

This been a flow for 34 years, it's a flow.

Everything you see been touched by hand.

And when I say touched by hand, I mean, when you look at this you see I ain't never had a indoor work shop.

I done use the sky, the birds, the butterfly.

- [Jennifer] Why do you think that Joe Minter makes the art that he does?

- I think in part 'cause he is a patriot and he is anguished by America.

He is anguished by Birmingham and by Alabama in a lot of specific ways.

He's really reckoning with what it means to be an American citizen and a Black man in America in particular.

You know, in the materials he chooses, and in the themes he is always chasing.

You know, he's really questioning God a lot.

He's thanking God a lot.

If you think about some of the stuff that he is really dealing with, it's convict labor.

It's the post-civil rights movement realities for everybody, but for Black Americans in particular, it's the legacy of slavery.

I think he is a fellow seeking answers in a serious way to try to make sense of the particular American experience he's having.

- But this is a bridge (metal clanking) called the Edmund Pettus Bridge.

This bridge was made to be able to show the world with their own eyeballs and hearts how we ask for just the right to vote and the right to be a human, Edmund Pettus Bridge.

What happened on this bridge was John Lewis come out with about 600 people, women with babies in their stomach, elderly people, all.

He was in the head of it.

John Lewis said, "Let me disguise, let me make up something to go to the, Mr.

George C Wallace, the governor, and all we putting in our petition, we want the right to vote, and then we want the right to be a human being."

Met on the bridge by all of this I would call civil hurt from a government that were purely racist and it cultivated him with all this that you see right today, right here.

We got in the street, we made the right for everybody to vote with blood and sweat, so on this bridge what you see is the tyranny and hurt of a people done worked their way up to 1965 to say, "Let's go plead with it."

So that's what you see.

On this bridge, they were met by a posse.

Posse say get 'em with horses, tear gas, and they come on this crowd.

But America had made the slip already of saying, "Whoop, we mean for the world for to see."

I call this bridge the Bridge of Infamy for us to get our rights and not head a few years down the road that so-called Supreme Court, y'all don't deserve to go to school and get a decent education after 400 years.

You don't deserve to have the right to vote.

You don't deserve nothing called civil rights because there wasn't no such thing as civil rights, it was a human right, you don't deserve it.

So many of my people have died in vain just to get one right.

Couldn't get freedom, can't get the right to vote, can't get the right for equal opportunity.

I'm talking to you from the procession of what you would call my ancestors out there been hurt so bad they can't take it no more.

Laying there looking at all them and they still hurting in here, 100,000 of 'em, and who is I'm talking for?

The next generation that you is blocking all the progress and I'm going out telling my children this right here, we will be free at last.

Only thing got them bills passed was us in the street for all them years with the police brutality, dogs, and everything that was on us and we don't deserve it?

50 years and we ain't never had the right to do nothing here, and we went before the people in the world and we still ain't got it.

Something is not right with not only the preamble, decree.

(metal clanking) - Why was it important to everyone involved in the show to bring children to this exhibition?

- In part, so that kids could interact with art and artists in a way that they don't usually get to, to meet an artist that went to the same elementary school you did.

I mean, it's like that artist is you and you are that artist.

It was so glorious to watch all the kids making art after seeing Minter's artwork because you could just witness how it had gotten into them, like how had it made imprints in them and changed the, you know, even briefly, like the way they thought about materials and the way that they talked about art.

It's vital to have, like for kids to have that kind of access to art.

It is like replenishing for their lives.

There was some point when he showed up during a different field trip, and when he got out of his truck, all these kids started applauding quite spontaneously and we all just welled up because it was so great.

- As you walk through that space, you spend time with all of these different moments within American history and really leave with a better understanding of one man's idea of American history and how that can be part of the broader narrative for all Americans, and all people who are interested in history in the United States.

- All of my men in my family served in some kind of war.

I had to go through the pledge of allegiance.

I had to go through the code of conduct, all of this I pledged for this country, and the country have failed me and mine for 400 years.

400 years.

- [Jennifer] Joe Minter's art doesn't end in the past.

It plants seeds in the future, but the future of the African Village in America itself is uncertain.

The site sits beside two historic Black cemeteries and its significance has drawn interest from people who wish to protect it, yet others fear it may be lost.

Through it all, Minter, now 81, keeps building, continuing his work as a messenger and as a foot soldier for peace.

- [Glenny] I think for Joe, one of the most important words, a word he kept saying again and again was peacemaker 'cause obviously what he was talking about was being a foot soldier, making peace.

When you hear foot soldier, you think of a fight, but what he is always fighting for is peace.

And we, you know, would talk again and again about the play on words 'cause we were so busy looking at and talking about individual pieces in the show, so he is a maker of pieces as well as peace.

- Just like me and mine, I ain't never had nothing but God have fed me the truth to be able to do all this through the hearts of my 100,000 ancestors laying here, to be able to tell their story in a way where children can understand and grown folk don't.

Now this is my plot right here.

(metal clanking) This would be my son that went first.

He died over there in penitentiary, stabbed to death.

Then after my son, my wife Miss Hila, she left.

Then looked like my wife come back and got my son here, within a year time come back to get him out the chaos and confusion 'cause he went in '20, was up there when she died, it was a year later when she come back and get little Joe.

Little Joe served in the army.

That's my hole right there.

Knowing what I did with my grave here now, I did what I instructed to write on my grave.

I didn't want them to talk about what I served and what I was in and that, that old conflict of that Vietnam War.

I say I wanted, would you read that?

Read that out.

- "African warrior, Joe W Minter, March 28th, 1943.

Zulu ancestors, free at last, thank God, peacemaker."

- That's to serve my last serving of my people from Africa that have been suffering here so long, to collect them in a way where we ain't got nothing to be sad about and we ain't got nothing to be ashamed about 'cause we are a people that give our heart, soul, and spirit, and I mean all of our heart and soul and spirit to the human family of the humanity of those that have enough humanity to look.