This week, Black writers and artists celebrate Juneteenth by discussing their crafts and their activism in the context of our special exhibit Dark Testament: A Century of Black Writers on Justice, on view now at the American Writers Museum.
Journalist Jaha Nailah Avery reads from and discusses her new book Those Who Saw the Sun, a collection of oral history narratives from the time of Jim Crow in the South. Then, a gallery talk by artists featured in Dark Testament. Chicago artists Dorothy Burge, Damon Reed, and Dorian Sylvain talk about their process, what it means to them to create representations of America’s legendary Black authors for the exhibit, and how the words and work of those writers affected the artists’ renderings.
This conversation originally took place June 19, 2023 and was recorded live at the American Writers Museum.