Funding for COLORES was provided in part by: Frederick Hammersley Fund for the Arts at the Albuquerque Community Foundation and the New Mexico PBS Great Southwestern Arts & Education Endowment Fund at the Albuquerque Community Foundation... ...New Mexico Arts, a division of the Department of Cultural Affairs, and by the National Endowment for the Arts.

...and Viewers Like You.

THIS TIME, ON COLORES!

THE FIRST AFRICAN AMERICAN CHURCH IN NEW MEXICO, GRANT CHAPEL WAS FOUNDED IN 1882.

REVEREND MARGARET MCFADDEN SHARES HER HOPE FOR THE FUTURE.

CAPTURING AN AUDIENCE, BUILDING A SCENE AND TELLING THE TRUTH, DAYTON YOUTH RADIO IS A SAFE PLACE FOR TEENAGERS TO LEARN AND TELL THEIR STORIES.

THE PEABODY ESSEX MUSEUM'S NEW SOUTH ASIAN ART GALLERIES CHALLENGE CULTURAL NARRATIVES BY EXPLORING INDIAN IDENTITY THROUGH MULTIPLE LENSES.

IT'S ALL AHEAD ON COLORES!

A VISION FOR THE FUTURE.

>> [Sermon] >>Ebony Isis Booth: What do you think it meant for the black community in Albuquerque to have found a church in 1882?

>>Reverend Margaret McFadden: Knowing the history of the AME church as the country was opening up going westward.

People of African descent were moving to where the jobs were, and if you ever notice where AME churches are built, they're usually built on the corner coming into town.

That's so- and the AME church name is up there.

Therefore, the people coming in, they could find jobs, they could get help finding housing, get their kids in school, get them food, and if nothing else they could sleep on the pews if they needed to.

It was very much in the spirit of Richard Allen and the Free African Society which was about self-help.

[Music] >>Ebony: Tell me a little bit more about Richard Allen and the Free African Society?

>>Margaret: It's one of my favorite stories, I'm so glad you asked!

In the late 1700's, Richard Allen and some others had been asked to leave St. George's Methodist Episcopal church in Philadelphia, because it wasn't their turn to pray.

Richard Allen and about ten other men and women, said "if you would but allow us to finish praying we'll arise and trouble you no more", and that's exactly what they did.

They started the Free African Society and out of that came a lot of the mutual aid funds and organizations and things of that nature.

We tend to think that those things were something that just got started in the 30's and 40's.

No, they were always there.

We were always helping one another.

>>Ebony: When you're up there in front of your congregation, and you look out and see those faces.

What goes through your mind?

>>Margaret: Of course, I you know- I'm talking to people all week long, so I know what's going on in their lives, and then by Friday and Saturday night I've gotten a glimpse into what God wants me to speak to and sometimes I think I've done a horrible job preaching to Pastor- that was just what I needed to hear.

I'm like "okay thank you for that".

But I try to be- I don't try to be like a man, because I can't.

But the feminine divine... God you know, he gathered the hens, he gathered his children under his wings like a hen would her chicks.

That's the divine.

Yes, he's also the judgment god, and- I think we make God too vengeful, because we, you know, we ascribe characteristics to him that he doesn't exhibit.

>>Ebony: What does the divine feminine mean to you?

>>Margaret: It gives me the freedom to be who I am.

My biggest thing is that I make mistakes.

But, they're not fatal, and we shouldn't treat them as fatal.

We should just say "yeah, that-yeah you did kind of mess that up Pastor."

and we move on -and when people realize that nobody has to be perfect, then we'll be a lot happier I think.

>>Ebony: Yeah, then there's room to just be excellent.

>>Margaret: Exactly!

Oh, I like that!

"Room to be excellent", that'll preach!

>>Both: [Laughter] >>Ebony: What is your prayer for this congregation?

>>Margaret: I want to see them live to see their grandchildren grow and prosper.

Because pretty much everybody in the congregation is educated and everybody has children and grandchildren that they want to see grow up in the kind of Christian environment that they grew up in.

>>Ebony: How about your favorite song or hymn?

>>Margaret: Amazing Grace.

>>Ebony: "How sweet the sound".

>>Margaret: "That saved a wretch like me".

Yes, hymns really are sermons.

There's an opening well- There's the- admiration, admonition, we gotta- we're gonna have a problem real soon.

God's gonna help us figure it out, and when you help us figure it out we're gonna shout, five parts of a sermon.

[Amazing Grace playing] >>Ebony: So what is it about Amazing Grace that is your-is your shout?

When do you, where is your testimony?

>>Margaret: When we've been there ten-thousand years, we've no less days >>Ebony: "No less days" >>Margaret: -to sing his grace then when we first began.

That's it.

That's the shout in that sermon.

>>Ebony: Why?

>>Margaret: Because what we've- what we're experiencing here on this side of eternity, sometimes as scary as all get out, and you wonder how you're going to get through it and sometimes you just need to hear.

Even though we've been here 10,000 years.

We still get to stay here and that's encouragement for the future.

It also encourages us to raise our children in a way that honors God, and that God is pleased with.

So that they can raise their children in a way that is pleasing to God.

That's just- that's the cycle of life for me.

[Music] >>Ebony: What is your vision for Grant Chapel looking into the future?

>>Margaret: I like to see the millennials come in, and use their gifts.

I'd also like to see the adults let them.

>>Ebony: ah!

What do you think that will take?

>>Margaret: Well, I think it's gonna take a lot of prayer.

Because we do- you know we're the baby boomers.

So you know, we did the same thing to our parents that these children are doing to us- and now we're mad!

But, they have to find their own way and they have to uh- find a way, they have to find their words to speak in such a way that they can be heard and I think that's the challenge of every generation though.

>>Ebony: What role does Grant Chapel play in who we are becoming?

>>Margaret: That's a loaded question!

But I think that part of Grant Chapel's staying power is what is needed to be shared with the world, because nowadays somebody make you mad and you flip them off and you don't want to see them again.

That's not family.

Families fight but we don't fall out.

So, it is my hope that God will lead me in a direction in my preaching and teaching to start bringing them back together.

Because that church is 135 years old.

>>Ebony: For those who founded the church way back in 1882, what do you think they would say about where the church is now?

>>Margaret: They would say, "they got another girl preacher up there?

!"

>>Ebony: How many women pastors have there been, do you know?

>>Margaret: Two.

>>Ebony: You're one of two!

In the history of 135 years of the church, what does that mean to you?

>>Margaret: I've been a first in so many spaces until I don't even think anything of it.

It's like, "oh well, yeah I did do that, huh?"

and they just keep it moving.

Because I know that the gifts and graces God has placed in me are not mine.

He's given them to me to share with the world.

>>Ebony: I wonder what role the divine feminine plays in your ability to do that?

>>Margaret: She's always whispering in my ear.

I have a tendency to be blunt sometimes, and she's goin' "Nah, baby girl.

Don't say that."

and I really do get that, "No, baby girl" and I'm like "yeah, mama told you.

Mama told you it was like that."

But, that's it, you know, we have to embrace the feminine as well as the masculine, in both male and female because we're all made in God's image.

So, when we get in touch with those parts of us.

That allows us to forgive, that allows us to turn the other cheek and walk away, that allows us to pray in spite of how we feel about somebody, that's when God is pleased.

It's like, "I know you don't like me, that's okay.

It really is.

But I love you and Jesus, have a great day!"

and we really can do that.

I've always preached, "like is a feeling, love is an action".

To like is when you want to hang around somebody "let's go shopping" that kind of thing.

But, love is when you know they're stabbing you in the back, but you're still going to do good for them.

Now that's the divine feminine.

I'm like, "Nah, I won't do that", "you gotta".

>>Ebony Isis Booth: Thank you so much for your time and just talking to me, and extending that warm invitation to millennials to come and be a part of the next 135 years of Grant Chapel!

>>Reverend Margaret McFadden: This has been a pleasure!

TUNING IN.

(MUSIC) >>Marquan: I'm not sure why I decided to put on my Superman costume.

>>Kenzie: My mom would always put me and my brother before her, even for the small things.

>>Toné: I love my skin.

I love being beautiful.

I love being black, but not everybody else loves it.

I heard about Dayton Youth Radio through my creative writing teacher.

It was sort of nothing like I expected.

I mean, not that I went in there with negative expectations, but I was a little nervous towards the beginning.

I thought my voice was gonna shake, but I got comfortable pretty quick.

Through Dayton Youth Radio, I learned that I'm actually really courageous.

I didn't know that I had all of this ambition in me until I went with it, until I flowed with it, honestly.

And, when I did, I felt like it was beautiful.

It kinda made me feel empowered.

>>Basim: Dayton Youth Radio is a safe place for teenagers to tell stories about their lives, and to talk about anything they want, and to learn how to use radio equipment.

I put together an eight-week program and became the founding producer of this series in 2013.

Public school and our private school teachers reach out and invite me into their classroom.

Over 175 teenagers have come through this program, 10 at a time.

That first day is so important to just build trust.

And so we can talk about anything.

Once you get past that first hour of being with a new group of teenagers, we form a tribe.

It's an eight-week course, by week three, they start telling me about what they would like to do with this microphone.

Like, you have the microphone now, you got it for three minutes.

And, what do you want to talk about?

They're writing scripts and you have to tell the truth, it has to be about truth.

Towards the end of the course, we come to WYSO and they do their narratives.

>>Sophia: We talked about how writing for radio is different than writing for someone to read and the importance of still capturing your audience and building a scene for them and making sure that there's enough detail that they can imagine the scene but not too much that they're lost in it.

My Dayton Youth Radio story was about my transition from male to female and about how I encountered the world differently than a lot of other people because I happened to be a teenager who's trans.

Through Dayton Youth Radio, I learned that my personal story can have an impact on the people and environment that surround me, and even something as small as radio story can really open someone's eyes and maybe even change their views.

>>Adriana: What were you wearing?

What were you drinking?

What did you think were going to happen walking home alone?

>>Mark: I guess what I'm trying to say is: love is the best band-aid you can use.

>>Carmen: It bothers me that he never got to see me perform in color guard.

He hasn't been able to watch me grow up.

>>Basim: The first year were pretty generic stories.

But then I noticed the second year, the students wanted to talk about deeper and deeper topics.

And, sometimes students would cry in class as they talked about a subject that they wanted to do, and I had to look at my syllabus and said, you know, what, I need more training because if a student's talking about losing a loved one and then I'm like, well, this is how a microphone works, I wasn't being effective.

So, after the second year, I went back and got certified in mental health training for working with adolescents.

I know how to make this place even safer now with my training and then we could go deeper and if you look at our series, the stories have gotten more intense, more personal.

>>Max: It was almost like I was living in two different worlds.

At school, I always had a lunch yet at home, when we couldn't afford milk, my dad told me to pour water on my cereal."

>>Miriam: One of the things I dislike about my culture is young marriage.

My great grandma got married when she was only thirteen years old.

>>John: My dad who had always had a job, had been laid off.

Being laid off affected the way he saw our country, our community.

Now he seemed to be talking about race all the time.

I wasn't trying to tear anybody down.

I was trying to bring light to an issue which is important to me that I don't agree with.

I was actually in Dayton Youth Radio last year and it kind of inspired me to become interested in radio more and also just media at large.

I go to Bowling Green and I major in broadcast journalism.

>>Jack: Go ahead and hit pause.

What we can do is, let's hold off on getting the bike sounds.

Let's just finish it.

Cause the bike sounds can always just be thrown back in.

Like, it's not vital.

I go to Ohio State University and I'm studying journalism.

And then what we'll do, if we get everything done before 2:30, we'll just go out and have you sit with the recording equipment like in your lap and then just like pedal for like a minute of just like solid bike sounds.

My story was about a father that I did not know.

Well, I knew through other people, all bad things, of course.

But it was more of just trying to find out who he was.

I want to forgive my father.

But my grandma doesn't want me to see him.

My grandma has not forgiven my father for what he did to my mom and me.

You know, I was actually thinking about this.

Like, is this a form of therapy?

And, I think what's interesting about Dayton Youth Radio at least for the stories that we've done when they're really personal, they always start where it's opening up this wound and then it kind of just lets that be.

And, so it doesn't ever solve it, it's not trying to solve it, it's trying to get you and kind of kick you to go and deal with your problems.

And at least it motivates you to ask those questions that you might not have asked.

(BICYCLE WHEELS SPIN) Radio is a very emotive thing.

And it's still something that can move people to tears, make people laugh, make people get angry.

That's why people tune in.

>>Basim: That's what the listener hears when they hear these stories.

It's a love and passion and an excellence.

Once the class is over, I'm off to the next school, and sometimes I'll see the family like, at the mall.

And, they say, thank you for helping my kid tell that story.

There's a lot of happy endings I've heard from some of these stories going on the air.

I'm always in awe and just feeling blessed to do this project with the teenagers.

>>Treasure: I understand the value of education and what not having one can do to your life.

>>Devontae: I'm an aspiring meteorologist who dreams of being on TV one day.

Yeah, I just said meteorologist.

>>JeDawn: When you have a dream, you shouldn't let anyone make you feel like you're not good enough.

You have the power to make a difference.

>>JeDawn: For Dayton Youth Radio, this is JeDawn!

ASKING QUESTIONS.

The first of the Peabody Essex Museum's new South Asian Art galleries just doesn't feel right.

There are low, oppressive ceilings and stereotypes and tropes abound.

It's uncomfortable.

I want people to walk through the galleries and ask that question of, you know, when we repeatedly see images of people and cultures that are different from us, and they're repeatedly shown in a particular way, how does that change the way we see others who are different from us?

How do they foster prejudice?

Most of this work was produced in the 19th century while India was under British occupation-when Indians were as much an object of classification as they were of interest.

From photo albums that portray Indian people almost as specimens to sculpture which both enchants and troubles Siddhartha Shah, the museum's South Asian Art curator.

I see so much beauty in this figure.

He's so realistic and lifelike.

But over the period that he's been here, he's been painted darker and darker over the years.

He's been made more and more other.

BUT, move on from here into galleries that reveal a Renaissance of Indian art spanning the latter half of the 20th century, and it's- A real contrast, a big explosion.

Whereas in the 19th century, it's how outsiders are viewing India and its people.

But in this gallery it's about how Indians are viewing themselves.

For themselves.

(Tell me about the installation.)

I wanted it to be overwhelming, at times.

Because um.

India is overwhelming.

India is a very, very overwhelming place, with moments of solitude and contemplation.

As you might have gleaned already, Shah approached these galleries with both a curator's clinical eye, and with a deep sense of personal history.

People are often surprised that I am... Y'know I went to Johns Hopkins for my undergrad, and so then people assume that I am a physician.

I'm not a physician, I've never taken biology.

I'm also not an engineer, I don't actually understand anything about engineering.

What he understands acutely though, and as we see here, is how Indian artists responded to the events and consequences of 1947.

That's when the British left India and a lawyer who had never even been to the country, divided the region into the Islamic nation of Pakistan and the secular nation of India.

It came to be called Partition.

The line he drew, went through communities, split up families.

Millions of people were displaced, and millions of people died.

In India, I mean it was both a moment of celebration and a moment of deep trauma.

The birth of the nation was a very bloody birth.

The image behind me, by Tyeb Mahta is-is the visualization of that.

You see that line dividing the canvas, and it's both the line across the subcontinent as well as the suffering of limbs.

I mean tremendous violence.

This collection comes from Chester and Davida Herwitz, a Worcester, Massachusetts couple who became so enamored with Indian artists in the 1970s, they collected thousands of pieces.

It was a time when few inside or outside India were paying attention to the arts scene, but when it was electrifying.

There were amazing teachers.

The art schools in India were thriving in the 50s and 60s.

One of India's most famous 20th century artists, M.F.

Husain painted these works.

Part of a 29-part series based on the Mahabharata, an ancient poem of 1.8 million words.

(We're literally standing in the middle of an epic right now.)

The climax is a war, a very, very intense battle between two factions of the same family.

Where nobody, even the victors don't really win.

There's loss on all sides.

And so, it actually made for a great metaphor for Partition.

But where there is carnage, there is also quiet contemplation as the galleries slip into spirituality.

India is known for yoga, meditation, contemplation.

So I have these moments, where people are seeing that aspect of our culture.

Where some people have emphasized the differences of the various religions in India, others have emphasized the universality of them.

Which is the essence of the story, as we see in these galleries and in this art, presented by a curator who knows it chapter and verse.

For me this was really personal.

Um and what I wanted to just show is that India is not a monolith.

We are complex beings just like everybody else is complex.

TO VIEW THIS AND OTHER COLORES PROGRAMS GO TO: New Mexico PBS dot org and look for COLORES under Local Productions.

Also, LOOK FOR US ON FACEBOOK AND INSTAGRAM.

"UNTIL NEXT WEEK, THANK YOU FOR WATCHING."

Funding for COLORES was provided in part by: Frederick Hammersley Fund for the Arts at the Albuquerque Community Foundation and the New Mexico PBS Great Southwestern Arts & Education Endowment Fund at the Albuquerque Community Foundation... ...New Mexico Arts, a division of the Department of Cultural Affairs, and by the National Endowment for the Arts.

...and Viewers Like You.