Communal Gathering, Mourning, and Joy

On the Black Family

By June Jordan

“On the Black Family” by June Jordan from The Essential June Jordan, edited by Jan Heller Levi and Christoph Keller, Copper Canyon Press 2021 . ©2021 June M . Jordan Literary Estate . Used by permission . www .junejordan .com we making love real they mining the rivers we been going without trees and going without please and growing on— on make-dos and breakthroughs to baby makes three’s a family ole Charlie knows nothing about out there where he burning the leaves and firing the earth and killing and killing we been raising the children to hold us some love for tomorrows that show how we won our own wars just to come in the night Black and Loving Man and Woman definitely in despite of all the hurdles that the murdering masterminds threw up to stop the comings of Black Love we came we came and we come in a glory of darkness around the true reasons for sharing our dark and our beautiful name that we give to our dark and our beautiful daughters and sons who must make the same struggle to love and must win against the tyrannical soldierly sins of the ones who beatify plastic and steel and who fly themselves high on the failure to feel —they mining the rivers we making love real

Dox Thrash, After the Lynching, late 1930s . Carborundum mezzotint printed in black ink on wove paper, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Kathleen Boone Samuels Memorial Fund, 2017 .27 . Courtesy of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts . Photo by David Stover .

Call: Through soft shadows and delicate line work, Dox Thrash tenderly explores the weight of community mourning in his 1930s print After the Lynching. The image conveys the pain and grief the four figures must all feel together; a woman and young girl comfort one another while watching someone they knew, likely a close friend or family member, being carried away to be buried .

Response: This pairing of black and white photographs celebrates the uplifting possibility of creating community spaces for embodied joy through dancing and music . Roadhouse near Jackson, Mississippi, by noted jazz photographer Ted Williams, conveys the energy of dancing bodies with blurred spaces and overlapping shapes that reflect the camera’s potential to capture both stillness and motion . We are also reminded that the fullness of these moments reverberates beyond the camera’s frame: the vibrations of the music playing, aromas of a crowded dance hall, perhaps a moment of rest with a glass of water or a cigarette, and conversations among friends . Ted Williams was one of the first African American photography students to attend Chicago’s Institute of Design at the Illinois Institute of Technology . He inspired a generation of young African American photojournalists documenting Black American life on Chicago’s South Side during the 1960s and 70s, including Mikki Ferrill . For a full decade Ferrill photographed the dance venue The Garage, also known as “The Alley,” a weekly pop-up music club that took over a car garage and the surrounding alley space at 610 East 50th Street . Over the course of 30 years “The Alley” provided an important space for the uninhibited expression of Black life and culture, in a city heavily divided along lines of class and race . Every Sunday, a large and close-knit community would come together to listen to DJ jazz record battles, dance, drink, and laugh . Ferrill developed a close relationship with the people who came to the space, and she displayed the photographs she took on the walls inside The Garage itself, so that the community could see themselves and the beauty that brought them together .

Top: Ted Williams, Roadhouse near Jackson, Mississippi, 1964, gelatin silver print, Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University, The Richard Florsheim Art Fund purchase . 2000 .25 .23 Above: Mikki Ferrill, Untitled (The Garage, Chicago),1973, gelatin silver print, Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University, The Richard Florsheim Art Fund Purchase . 2000 .25 .2 . Courtesy of the artist © Mikki Ferrill