Frederick Hammersley Foundation 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!

READING LETTERS AND POETRY, HAKIM BELLAMY SHARES HIS MEDITATION ON DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. INTEGRAL TO THE BURGEONING AFRICAN AMERICAN FASHION COMMUNITY IN THE 1920'S, A VERY DETERMINED AMANDA WICKER CREATED A LEGACY.

FASCINATED WITH THE COMPLEXITIES OF HUMAN INTERACTION, GLENYSE THOMPSON ILLUSTRATES CONVERSATIONS THROUGH COLORS AND LINES.

IT'S ALL AHEAD ON COLORES!

DREAMING INTO REALITY.

>>Hakim Bellamy: Today, I find myself distanced from you and This sustained period of isolation is indeed, a sort of solitary confinement.

I know this whole experience is very difficult for you to adjust to, especially in your condition of pregnancy, but as I said to you yesterday this is the cross we must bear for the freedom of our people.

So I urge you to be strong in faith, and this will in turn strengthen me.

I can assure you that it is extremely difficult for me to think of being away from you and my Yoki and Marty for days at a time, but I am asking god hourly to give me the power of endurance.

I have faith to believe that this excessive suffering that is now coming to our family will in some little way serve to make Atlanta a better city, to make Georgia a better state, and America a better country.

Just how yet I do not yet know, but I have faith to believe it will.

If I am correct then our suffering is not in vain.

I like the letter to Coretta because I just feel like that gave you some insight into personal King, you know, what we generally get in school and even in media is we get like King when he's getting ready to perform, or King is leading some big action, and uh that's just more like you know what are you saying to like your confidant and your counselor which usually your spouse or partner is, and so and what was interesting about that particular piece is that even in that little intimate transaction or conversation, it was still him bringing these really big ideas into it and in that space he could be a little bit more vulnerable.

You know, there were some like I don't know this is - he literally said "I don't know if this is going to work" I like, I have faith but um he can't say that on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial <laughter> right?

He has to be like sure on the steps to Lincoln Memorial.

So I just felt like there was a vulnerability in that piece that I really liked.

To those that would suggest that progress be a slow process, I had hoped that you would understand that law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and that when they fail in this purpose, they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress.

I had hoped that you would understand that the present tension in the south is a necessary phase of the transition from an obnoxious negative piece in which the Negro passively accepted his unjust plight to a substantive and positive peace in which all men will respect the dignity and worth of human personality.

Actually, we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension.

We merely bring it to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive.

We bring it out into the open, where it can be seen and dealt with.

Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up, but must be open with all of its ugliness to the neutral medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed with all the tensions its exposure creates to the light of human conscience.

In the air of a national opinion before it can be cured.

In your letter you assert that our actions, even though peaceful, must be condemned because they precipitate violence.

But is this a logical assertion?

Isn't this like condemning a robbed man because his possession of money precipitated the evil act of robbery?

Isn't this like condemning Jesus because his unique God consciousness and never ceasing devotion to God will precipitate the evil act of crucifixion?

We must come to see that as the federal courts have consistently affirmed, it is wrong to urge an individual to cease his efforts to gain his basic constitutional rights because the quest may precipitate violence.

Society must protect the robbed and punish the robber.

I'd also hope that you would reject the myth concerning time, in relation to the struggle for freedom.

I have just received a letter from a white brother in Texas, he writes: "All Christians know that the colored people will receive equal rights eventually, but it is possible that you are in too great a religious hurry.

It has taken Christianity almost two thousand years to accomplish what it has.

The teachings of Christ take time to come to earth."

Such an attitude stems from a tragic misconception of time, from the strangely irrational notion that there is something in the very flow of time that would inevitably cure all ills.

Actually, time itself is neutral; It could be used either destructively or constructively.

What both of the excerpts that we chose I think they really show King as a seeker, like he's wondering in these he's not knowing, right?

In some of his speeches he's like "I know God told me, I'm telling you, I know."

<laughter> and in both these it is like, even a response to the - to the the clergyman who challenged him on the pace of progress, but he's - even in that there's like there's - a whole middle section there where it's just question mark, question mark, question mark and so I feel like we oftentimes look at King, or any other orator or leader who we - who we celebrate and we feel like they have all the answers and their life was all about asking the right questions, asking the right questions of society, of Government, of power, of themselves, of their God, and so I think that hopefully empowers folks who are interacting with King's work, not to sit back and go "oh, I could never do that" and actually go "wait, I have questions too" and they pursue them right - right where you're at.

You don't need a better position to be able to pursue those questions, you don't need to be more distinguished, or have more letters after your name, you can actually just follow those questions, and ask those questions.

You know as a almost forty-four year old Black man in America, when I was growing up - 80's late 70's, early 80s, he was kind of the first person that was reading poetry in public that I could like identify with and I know that my writing style as an artist is very inspired by the oral tradition of the Black church.

He was a black preacher.

I grew up with Black ministers.

Like, that was the only space in like the American conversation and dialogue where Black men particularly could just wax like philosophically about their beliefs, - their fears, and their dreams in Dr. King's case.

And so I just feel like I'll always have that connection to Dr. King and so I'm looking - I'm always looking for that in his work.

I want to see if my experience in the world aligns with his.

Like that's just the - we do that to the people we idolize, our heroes.

Like we want to see how similar we are to them but also because I know there's something that like I don't know yet, there's something you know whenever you find a teacher you're always looking - you're trying to figure out "what's - what lesson have I not quite captured yet?"

, "what lesson am I not quite getting?"

when you hear something like I Have a Dream, yeah it washes over you because it has amazing rhetoric and it's rhythmic.

But if you keep reading it you're like you're - getting deeper than just the kind of "yeah I get - I get the big part - the big part is that we should all live together.

Can't we all just get along?"

like that's the big part, and then when you get into it and dig underneath it then you start seeing other things in that work around fear, wishes, wants, desires, and I feel like that's what I'm always trying to find every time I visit with his work.

No matter what color you are.

In your dreams... you can fly.

Facts.

It has nothing to do with seance, it has everything to do with science.

And those who know me know I'm happy and hype to wicca-wicca-Ouija conversation with the dead like Bruce Willis and that little White kid.

Like... if Dr. King stood right there.

Right now.

Today.

Alive.

All flesh.

And you had the opportunity to ask him one question, what would it be?

I'll go first.

I'd be like... after four hundred and thirty seven years of praying, of slaving, of hoping, and waiting.

What in God's name in vain made you made us think that your last resort, last ditch effort, after every hallelujah hail Mary, you had left was a dream?

King of the clever comeback, I imagine he'd say something like "our practice of non-violence mandates that we keep our hands to ourselves.

So, I thought i'd give dreaming a shot.

Look Ma, no palms."

My kind of monarch, no crown.

Just a placeholder for a thought bubble, or a dark cloud.

Dreaming we talmbout dreaming.

Not a game, a dream.

However, I spare king the A.I.

allegory and simply reply... "is that your final answer?"

and I imagine he'd be like... "The thing about dreams is there's no question as to whether or not they exist.

However haunted by the impossibilities of sleep, they do.

We wake.

Scientific evidence of this thing we had that we may not remember, but know was real.

A memory no color could steal.

Like, so real that I did it for six and a half hours long last night, real.

Like what I experienced felt like six and a half hours into the future, real.

Because, this isn't the first time I've dreamed something that became true."

And in that moment.

With all of his Christness and politeness, King will provide proof that his eighth grade teacher screwed the pooch.

Dreams are not "in"-voluntary.

They never happen in the blink of an eye.

There is nothing rapid about movements.

The future we imagine for our kids has everything to do with "in"-tention.

The future has everything to do with time.

Some scientists say dreams don't mean a thing.

That any given dream transpires over the course of five to twenty five minutes of sleep.

But I tend to disagree.

I believe in magic.

That dreams are a form of time travel.

A type of teaching that requires learning how to see.

In the dark, dreams are part of the fabric with which we weave long-term memories.

And what if, in the long run, our reality is nothing more than long-term memories we collectively believe?

Now I can see King, palming a Pall Mall, mid-drag of a great idea... "What if the cure for this country's amnesia is anamnesis?"

Dreams are a form of medicine.

Both the poor man psychotherapist and how a rich man forgets.

During our deepest sleep our minds are triggering through the possibility of future threats.

A psychological space where overwhelming, contradictory, or highly complex notions can be brought together in a dream.

An ego reconciling notions that would otherwise be unsettling, when awake.

Conjuring a future where lil' Black boys and little White girls don't have to dream bout' holding hands.

Where little Black girls don't get blown up in church basements for a White man.

Where "I can" is so much more than a sammich board of "I am a man," Black man.

Where Black dreams too come true.

A place where this land is your land but I am no longer land.

Where Black Butterflies can finally get some sleep, too.

DETERMINED TO DESIGN.

(jazz music) >>Carrie Wise: When Amanda Wicker moved to Cleveland nearly a century ago, she put her education to work.

Having studied teaching and sewing.

She started her own business out of her home training others in dressmaking.

>>Regnnia N. Williams: She's launching this business in basically what is the era of the Great Depression.

That's when her business is taking off.

And she's a widow, a childless widow at the end of the 1920s and through the 1930s, but she doesn't give up.

>>Wise: Wicker's determination paid off.

Not only did she create unique designs for herself and her clients, she helped others do the same.

>>Patty Edmonson: Well, she started out with a business in her home with, you know a single client, teaching them how to sew and turned it into this huge school that taught teenagers, adults.

She taught, you know, high fashion design couture techniques, but also if you wanted to be trained in garment industry factory work she could train you on machines that way too.

(jazz music) >>Wise: Wicker moved her business out of her home and established the school at east 89th street in Cedar avenue in Cleveland's Fairfax neighborhood.

In tribute to her own fashion instructor in Washington, DC, Addie Clark, Wicker named her business the Clark School of Dressmaking and Fashion Design.

>>Williams: I really liked the fact that she's an alumna of Tuskegee Institute.

And of course the founding principal of that school in Alabama was Booker Calvarial Washington.

And he was someone who preached self-help for black people.

So it was an industrial and a normal school, certainly lots of jobs available in manufacturing, sewing, textiles you know, creating the fabric, working with the thread and then creating the garments once they the fabric has been manufactured.

And so I like to think that Booker T. Washington would have been proud of that Tuskegee alumni who eventually studied in Washington DC, and then made her way to Cleveland and became the focal point of a burgeoning black fashion community here on America's north coast.

>>Wise: For decades Wicker celebrated Cleveland's black fashion scene with annual shows.

The large scale events featured models wearing the latest designs, live entertainment and scholarship awards for students.

>>Edmonson: She called her fashion shows the Book of Gold and you get a program with a gold cover and it was a sort of part graduation ceremony for students.

And then part, just a way for locals to display their work because the fashion shows were kind of a mix of student work, Amanda Wicker work but also they would bring in local milliners to showcase their hats on the models.

>>Wise: Wicker designed clothes throughout her life from wedding dresses to suits and evening wear.

More than a dozen of those creations as well as her photograph collection were donated by her niece to the Western Reserve Historical Society.

Those photos and designs live on in a display now on view at the Cleveland History Center.

>>Edmonson: I think like playful is a good word for her style.

So fun, a little bit of sparkle, sometimes a fun silhouette.

I have a personal favorite.

It's a sort of chartreuse green dress that's covered in a grey lace.

And then on the back, it has a detail.

That's almost like sort of half of a cape.

It's like on the one hand somewhat conservative, but then has these little twists.

>>Wise: Wicker also had a talent for helping the community look its best.

She was an active member of Antioch Baptist church and the Cleveland NAACP.

She taught her trade for more than 50 years until selling her school and retiring in the late 1970's.

I think a lot of people don't necessarily think that teaching someone sewing is a form of activism, but it can give you a skill to become something different.

It can help support a community.

>>Williams: The freedom of expression.

I will have to say associated with fashion design and dressmaking.

I think that's something that black women in particular came to appreciate in the years following the end of the civil war and certainly something that Amanda Wicker was the expert on and she taught other people to express themselves in excellent ways.

>>Wise: Her legacy lives on through the exhibit, Amanda Wicker: Black Fashion Design in Cleveland.

(jazz music) ILLUSTRATING CONVERSATIONS.

>>Glenyse Thompson: I, way back when, as a kid, was a creative and didn't know what that meant.

I thought I was going to be a journalist and then I thought I was going to be a photographer.

Put that away and had a kid, got on with life.

And then I'd say about 2014, 2015, I started having difficulties at work communicating with a couple of people and took a break and went on vacation.

It was my grandmother who said, you know, why don't you sit down and start really thinking about what you want to do next and try something different.

And I picked up some watercolors and started drawing again.

Hey, I'm Glenyse.

Welcome to my studio.

My name is Glenyse Thompson.

I am a visual abstract artist from St. Petersburg, Florida, and I also am a designer.

>>Amanda Cooper: When you speak to her about her work, it's not just about lines and color and form, but it's about conversations between people.

And she says that the, the washes of color in the background is about the general ebb and flow of a conversation.

But then the detailed lines on top of it is the actual words that you're saying and the conversation and the colors she chooses and the lines that she makes have to do with a specific conversation.

Maybe it's an intense conversation.

Maybe it's a friendly conversation.

>>Thompson: We have to understand that conversations are so important to who we are.

We're nothing without each other.

We're meeting each other.

And the lines represent that.

It could be a party.

It could be a Zoom call.

It could be a grocery store run.

You're always thinking or having to speak with someone to get something done.

And we need to pay more attention to what that means day to day.

>Larry Quinlan: Well, first, I encountered Glenyse herself before I encountered her work.

We were in France, of all places, and just happened to run into Glenyse and started having a conversation.

>>Thompson: We decided to keep in touch.

It was me and my, my guy and him and his lady friend when we met.

And then we get back to the states We decide to get in touch with them and realize they live right in Miami, live in our backyard.

>>Quinlan: And my fiancée and I happened to be in the Tampa Bay area.

So we look them up and got together and got to finding out a little bit more about art.

We got a chance to actually see some of it.

And, and I was smitten.

>>Thompson: I had created a piece about our burgeoning friendship, and that was the piece they ended up purchasing.

<laughter> It's in the blues and golds, but it's got a lot of lines on it in comparison to some of the other pieces just because who would have thought a continental meet would have turned into such an amazing friendship?

>>Quinlan: I think Glenyse as a person is special, and that's what makes Glenyse as an artist special.

>>Thompson: I was reticent to participate in the social justice movement with my art only because I didn't know what to do and I was approached by a curator.

I said, I want to make that part of my studio practice at least twice a year, creating a piece of art for a charity.

>>News Program: Citizens in another major city were angered by the death of an African-American woman at the hands of police.

Somebody kicked in the door and shot my girlfriend.

Say her name.

>>Thompson: Say her name is about black women and depending on who you support, trans and lesbian that have been assaulted or killed by the police or another person because of who they are.

We're always first to support and always last to get support, so we need more recognition.

We need more pay equity.

We don't get enough and we give so much.

I have two different focuses in my artwork at this time.

I am working on the Conversations pieces and then Big Shoulders.

The Conversations are inks and inks, and it's liquid ink, that layer upon layer put on paper or a panel, and it's usually between 5 and 20 layers of ink.

So each layer dries unto itself and that takes 7 to 10 days because each layer has to dry.

And then I come in and I add the lines.

The big shoulders pieces are the large, largely colored bright pieces.

And Big Shoulders is all about the fact that we stand on each other's shoulders to move about the world.

And all the colors represent all the different shapes and sizes of people we have to interact with to move into our next whatever we're going to do next.

And it all goes back to Conversations at the same time by saying we can't function without one another.

TO VIEW THIS AND OTHER COLORES PROGRAMS GO TO: New Mexico PBS dot org and look for COLORES under What We Do and 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 Foundation... 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.

(CLOSED CAPTIONING BY KNME-TV)