- Hi I'm Satori Shakoor and here's what's coming up this week on One Detroit Arts and Culture.

Ken Quattro and his recent book on the untold stories of black comic book artists called "Invisible Men".

How they face systemic racism and open doors for future generations.

Plus Detroit's 'Queen of the Blues', Thornetta Davis on her collaboration with actor Jeff Daniels that went viral.

Then the work of artist Sabrina Nelson and the Detroit Youth Choir with a performance at Marygrove.

It's all coming up, on "One Detroit".

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(upbeat music) - Hi there I'm Satori Shakoor and welcome to One Detroit Art's and Culture.

Thank you so much for joining me.

Coming up Will Glover catches up with Michigan author Ken Quattro.

He's known as the "Comics Detective", and he has a book called "Invisible Men".

The trail blazing black artists of comic books.

Ken shares how he found out about these untold stories of black comic book artists from the 1930's to the 1950's and how they're influencing comics today.

Plus you'll meet artist Sabrina Nelson and see her exhibition on the power of black motherhood, loss and transformation.

And then you'll be inspired and entertained by the Detroit Youth Choir.

They'll perform for us at Marygrove.

That's all just ahead.

But we're starting off with Detroit's own "Queen of the Blues", Thornetta Davis has been making music here in Detroit for over 30 years.

And like a lot of artists COVID brought her live performances and promotions to a halt.

Her recent collaboration with actor Jeff Daniels went viral.

Thornetta tells Christie McDonald how the song "I am America" stretched her creativity in new ways.

♪ Well my baby up and left me ♪ ♪ Did me a favor when he did ♪ ♪ Shoop, Shoop, Shoop ♪ ♪ He's been lying all along ♪ ♪ About another woman and two kids ♪ ♪ Shoop, Shoop, Shoop ♪ ♪ I guess he wasn't mine anyway ♪ ♪ So I'm not sad to see him go ♪ ♪ Shoop, Shoop, Shoop ♪ ♪ He was no good anyhow ♪ ♪ And he spent up all my dough ♪ ♪ Shoop, Shoop, Shoop ♪ ♪ And I believe, I believe ♪ ♪ Everything gonna be all right ♪ ♪ Everything's gonna be all right ♪ ♪ I believe, I believe ♪ - What has this last year been like for you as a musician?

- Wow.

Well, it it's definitely been a crazy experience because I haven't been able to get out and perform.

There was so many things we were gonna do this past year, me and my band, we were gonna do a lot of traveling.

I think the week of the cancellation of everything all over the Country, we were going to Austin, Texas and we were going to perform down there a number of gigs for the South by Southwest Convention.

And they canceled that immediately.

- You've worked with everyone from Etta James to Gladys Knight to Bob Seger.

You always feel like you have been in that arena in terms of working with artists but still pushing your name out there.

- Yeah, I was always behind the scenes singing in the background and always wanting to go forward and do my own thing.

So I managed to do both.

I never did go on tour with those famous people but I managed to sing on their records which helped lift my career up to do what I needed to do.

This past four years, I released an album called "Honest Woman" and "Honest Woman" was something that I had in place or have been working on 20 years.

Finally, got it out, started winning all these great awards for it.

And then pandemic hits.

And I was looking forward to touring all over the world.

When those things happen, you get scared you start wondering what's gonna happen.

And I thank God for the Internet, because I did start to help me when people ask me to do certain performances recorded.

- About a month ago, we heard a recording of you and Jeff Daniels singing this song called "I am America".

Tell me about how that song came into being and your collaboration with Jeff Daniels that everyone knows as an actor, but likes to sing a bit and perform as well.

- Well, I got a call and from Jeff's people and they asked me would I be willing to perform with him on a song that he's putting on his album?

And I was excited.

I didn't know, to what capacity.

I just thought I'm singing with Jeff Daniels.

And so when they sent me the music and I noticed that it only had the hook and one of the verses and I had to write the rest of it.

And I said, okay, well, this is good this a stretch for me, but I'm gonna enjoy this.

And I wanted to speak on what I'd been feeling as far as what's been going on in the world.

What's been going on in this country.

What we've experienced, all of us, but what I've experienced in my life as far as being a black person in this country.

And so I wrote the words, give me my freedom.

All I wanna do is breathe.

And all of these things that has not been happening in this country for hundreds of years.

And I wanted to put it in this song.

♪ For I will rise up ♪ ♪ Rise ♪ ♪ I will rejoice ♪ ♪ I Am America ♪ ♪ When you can hear my American voice ♪ ♪ Oh yes, give me my freedom ♪ ♪ Give me my freedom ♪ - When did you hear it for the first time?

And what was the reaction?

- The first time I heard it for the public is when my Twitter started blowing up and I had no idea that they were gonna use it for the ad campaign which I'm glad they did that too.

But I'm like, why is my phone blowing up?

And I went to it and it was like 9:00 pm at night.

And people were liking me following me all of a sudden on my Twitter page.

And so I went to the reason why, and I'm like, oh whoa, this is really, they put it on this commercial for the two senators down in Georgia.

- It's the intersection of what you said is speaking your truth, activism, everything colliding in one ways.

And you said, even stretching yourself into places maybe musically that you hadn't been before.

- I wanted to write a song speaking on the things that have been going on as far as the police brutality and people making peaceful protests and having the President at that time answer with more violence.

And I'm like, how does this work?

Why can't we just be at peace?

I'm just looking forward to better days happening.

I got a song called "I Believe Everything's Gonna Be All Right".

And a lot of things happened this last year that had me struggling with that belief.

And I believe God gave me that song to help others keep the faith.

♪ Oh I believe, I believe ♪ ♪ Everything gonna be all right now ♪ ♪ Everything's gonna be all right now ♪ ♪ Everything's gonna be all right now ♪ ♪ I believe, I believe ♪ ♪ I believe ♪ ♪ Did my crying in the evening ♪ ♪ Joy gonna come ♪ ♪ Did my crying in the evening ♪ ♪ Joy still come ♪ ♪ Did my crying in the evening ♪ ♪ Joy gonna come in the morning light ♪ - Turning now to Michigan author Ken Quattro and his book 20 years in the making.

Ken is well known as a comic book historian.

He was a consultant on the 2017 film Professor Marston and the Wonder Women.

But it's his book on the untold stories of black comic book artists that is getting a lot of national attention and shining a light on talented men who face systemic racism.

Will Glover has more.

- So with this book, 'The Invisible Men,' you is set out on a journey that A took a while and B I'm assuming you found out some things that you may or may not have been expecting.

Let's start with Mr. Samuel Joiner.

Could you tell us a little bit about who he is and how he helped you get started down this road?

- I've been writing about comics in comic books for probably going on 50 years back to early 70's.

So I've been doing this a long time.

I've written many articles and stuff and I was gonna be writing about a particular artist named Matt Baker.

Any research I could find on any articles, any reference to it all only came up with two things that Mr. Baker died young.

He died in his 37 and he was black.

And at the time 20 years ago a lot of people considered him the only black comic book artist of all time.

back in the 1940s and 50's which to me seemed really odd, Just didn't... Statistically that didn't make sense to me.

So for years, I was trying to track down information about Matt Baker.

And I kept asking everyone finally I came across somebody who just casually mentioned have have you spoken with Mr. Samuel Joiner, who was a retired black cartoonist from Philadelphia?

He'd done most of his work for the Philadelphia Tribune.

Mr. Joiner wrote me this beautiful four page letter detailed letter, talking about meeting not only Matt Baker but he met E. Simms Campbell.

He met Ted Shearer and these different artists, Jay Jackson.

And I'm going like, what?

Wait a minute, I mean, who are these people?

Like some of the names were vaguely familiar but nobody had I ever come across who ever actually physically met these people.

Not only did he write me this letter but he included a lot of clippings newspaper clippings and photocopies of articles.

And it was like a starting point for me on saying like, oh, okay I'm gonna start researching some of these men.

Well, Will I started the normal places where I would start my research would be in newspaper archives.

There was nothing and this is something I've been doing for years, I looked at my regular sources but couldn't find anything, dawned on me?

I said what about black newspapers?

Well, unfortunately very few libraries carried black newspaper archives.

They were considered disposable.

Nobody, very few places at the time had black newspaper archives.

I started trying locating, fortunately the internet existed at that time.

I started these wide searches libraries all over the country, trying to find any library that had any black newspapers.

What the white media had never covered was that these men were respected artists almost every single one of these guys I covered in "Invisible Men" was respected classically trained fine artist, or they had been schooled in Art and everything.

Every single one of them.

And which was unusual because most comic book artists of the 1930s and 40's were self taught white guys from New York.

they couldn't find a job and they were the lowest.

It was the lowest rung of commercial art.

Well, that's why with this book too if you notice of each one of the profiles I talk about not just a man in his career but the entire history of a man.

I sometimes I go back generations.

So you get an idea of where these people came from.

It's not just a snapshot of a year or two of time.

We have a tendency in life to look at people in a microcosm saying like, oh they did this for, you know, this is what he was.

He was an artist for 2 or 3 years on comic books.

Like Elmer Stone is a perfect example.

Elmer Stone was an established, classically trained fine artist of the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s, established artist.

He became a commercial artist.

He's one of the very few blacks to break over into the white media.

And he worked almost exclusively in white media but in comic books he was basically ignored.

He wasn't a real flashy artist or anything like that.

And what it was, a lot of these guys didn't put a lot of effort into comic book art.

It was a way to put food on the table and it's the truth, Will.

It really was.

I mean, a lot of it was hack work.

Like, you know we need a comic book story you know, eight pages long.

How quick can you get it to me?

I'll get it to you in two days.

As an artist, I can tell you, that's almost impossible.

If you're putting a lot of work into it.

So you were not seeing, the best of these men, but we have a tendency in our society to look at just the tiniest part of a person's life and not look at the entirety of life.

We define people in the most narrow ways.

And what I do again with this book is try to give a wider view of a person's life.

- So that said, where can people go?

if they wanna get their hands on a copy of "The Invisible Men"?

- I'm glad you asked.

It's literally everywhere, but you can go on Amazon.

It's sold through a couple times already.

I also prefer people to go to their local comic books shop and probably help some of these guys out.

Cause a lot of them are having tough time right now.

And like I said, I think it speaks to a lot of people, cause it shows the human experience, what so many people have experienced.

And like I said, these men are inspirational, and I don't care who you are.

You should be inspired by their stories.

- This next story comes to us from our show on Detroit Public Television called Detroit Performs.

It's about artist Sabrina Nelson and her work capturing the essence of black motherhood, loss and transformation.

(soft piano playing) - I think my medicine is art.

My language is art.

(soft piano music) I think the term artist means to be responsible for what's happening in the world, how you see it, how you record it, how you make things that are a result of what you are trying to say.

Whether it's a question you're answering or a story you're trying to tell or here's something I need to make because it's just embedded in me.

Like I have to make something Detroit is embedded in who I am.

I've been here all my life since the rebellion in 1967.

That's when I was born.

And so everything around me becomes a part of the story I'm trying to tell or the question I'm trying to ask.

My super power is being able to visually communicate how I feel about what's happening in the world.

Nina Simone says, if you're gonna be an artist it's your duty to reflect what's happening in the world and in the world that I live in from the time I can remember remembering there's always trauma and hurt and pain, and I'm not always talking about that but you can't ignore it.

And on this day, I think about the lives that are lost, that are constant like coming at me through different mediums.

And so I'm thinking about homicides and deaths of young people and how I'm affected by it.

But I'm talking about death where people aren't considered people like you don't matter.

You you're not important.

So I'm just gonna take your life.

I don't care how old you are.

I don't care who you belong to.

And when that person is missing from our communities not just the blood family is affected we are all and we should all be concerned.

You know, a life is a life.

A human is a human.

And so in this work I'm talking about that pain.

The name of the exhibition is "Why You Wanna Fly Blackbird?"

And I got it from an Nina Simone song who talks about black women like how dare you try and be happy in your life.

How dare you not expect pain, pain is gonna come.

You have to move through it and you have to live, but pain will be here.

I didn't want the colors to be so seductive that it draws you in as pretty like I don't like the idea of my work being pretty.

I want it to be impactful.

I want it to be deeper than just what you see.

And I want it to be large enough to have some girth to it.

So these particular pieces are very large drawings.

They're also reliquary if you will.

So they talk about like the body the housing of the bodies that we have, like the home and then what it's like to have a nest with no eggs in it.

Thinking about the empty nest of children who never return you know, I don't care how old they are.

They never can return.

So I'm just talking about the darkness in that and expressing it with the most eloquence that I can.

(soft piano music) The cages will represent empty homes.

That can be the home that they lived in.

That can be the community that they lived in.

How do you deal with that?

You know, that room that's empty.

And so when we lose these people that are not treated with value out of our communities.

How do you deal with that?

So Levon is helping me on the dresses cause I wanna make dresses that will hang from the ceiling just above the patron's heads.

But the bird cages will be the empty rooms underneath the dresses.

And so I'm asking him to help me figure out how I'm gonna make the dresses, which are made out of Japanese rice paper so that they can be sheer enough that the bird cages can go underneath them.

And the patrons can see them with the lighting and hopefully they have the impact that's in my head and in my heart.

I want people to pay attention to it and to be more empathetic with others' lives if you see something happening and you can do something about it, why wouldn't you?

And so when I look at the homicide rates across the country they're incredibly high for African American, Indigenous and also Latin American children.

And so if this is all I can say and do about it I want someone to know that I care even though they're not my children I care that they're missing, that they're gone.

That there's, you know somebody should think about doing something about it.

The motion of movement, when I'm making these things, like when I did the nest here, you know the motion of drawing and drawing and drawing, you know that obsession of movement and what it feels like to do that.

These movements that we do over and over become very much ritual.

Maybe these are all prayers visually to say I'm sorry that your life is gone.

But I wanna say that you meant something that you were important.

Every artist wants someone to look at their work for a long time.

And I didn't wanna make so obvious and obtuse where it's like, you know you see people getting killed but I think the work and the drawings and some of the paintings that I'm using can be seductive.

So I want people to make sure that they walk away with knowing that I'm in a world, I am affected by it.

And don't just listen to the news and be in the world and not really take part in what's happening.

Think about what your voice is and what your superpower is and see what you can do to help.

I wanna say something that's important.

And I wanna leave this world with something that someone's learned from me.

My work might be central.

It'll draw you in and then it's gonna slap you a little bit.

And that's what I hope, I show.

(soft piano music) - And for more stories from Detroit Performs and all of the stories that we're working on each week just go to onedetroitpbs.org.

All right.

It's time for inspiration and some fun.

I'm gonna leave you with a performance.

The Detroit Youth Choir singing Katie Perry's "Roar" recorded at Marygrove Theater, enjoy and I'll see you next week.

Take care.

♪ I used to bite my tongue and hold for breath ♪ ♪ scared to rock the boat and make a mess ♪ ♪ So I sat quietly, agreed politely ♪ ♪ I guess I forgot I had a choice ♪ ♪ I let you push me past my breaking point ♪ ♪ I stood for nothing, so I fell for everything ♪ ♪ You held me down, but I got up ♪ ♪ Already brushing off the dust ♪ ♪ Your hear my voice, you hear that sound ♪ ♪ Like thunder, gonna shake the ground ♪ ♪ You held me down, but I got up ♪ ♪ Get ready 'cause I've had enough ♪ ♪ I've seen it all, I see it now ♪ ♪ I got the eye of the tiger, a fighter ♪ ♪ Dancing through the fire ♪ ♪ Cause I'm a champion ♪ ♪ And you're gonna hear me roar ♪ ♪ Louder, louder than a lion ♪ ♪ 'Cause I am a champion, ♪ ♪ and you're gonna hear me roar ♪ ♪ Oh-oh-oh-oh-oh ♪ ♪ Oh-oh-oh-oh-oh ♪ ♪ Oh-oh-oh-oh-oh ♪ ♪ You're gonna hear me roar ♪ ♪ Now I'm floating' like a butterfly ♪ ♪ Stinging like a bee, I earned my stripes ♪ ♪ I went from zero, to my own hero ♪ ♪ You held me down, but I got up ♪ ♪ Yeah, yeah ♪ ♪ Already brushing off the dust ♪ ♪ You hear my voice, you hear that sound ♪ ♪ Like thunder ♪ ♪ Like thunder, gonna shake the ground ♪ ♪ oh oh oh yeah ♪ ♪ You held me down, but I got up ♪ ♪ Get ready 'cause I've had enough ♪ ♪ Had Enough ♪ ♪ I see it all, I see it now ♪ ♪ I've got the eye ♪ ♪ I got the eye of the tiger, a fighter ♪ ♪ Dancing through the fire ♪ ♪ Dancing through the fire ♪ ♪ 'Cause I am a champion ♪ - [Announcer 2] You can find more at OneDetroitPBS.org or subscribe to our social media channels and sign up for our One Detroit Newsletter.

(soft upbeat music)