words by
Cindy Hoedel
photo by
Steven Green
IN CONVERSATION WITH
Diallo Javonne French
Y
ou can hear his smile over the phone. Photographer and filmmaker Diallo Javonne French, 48, captures musicians lost in the pleasure of performing, and when you talk to him, it is clear he’s drawn to joy. Positivity flows from him like a spring. So when the conversation turns to this summer’s painful clashes over racism, his clear-eyed observations, often tempered with gentle laughter, shock like a cold splash of water. He would rather talk about art. French’s intimate black-and-white portraits have been exhibited at the Box Gallery, and one of his short films, Let This Be Love, which was shot in Kansas City, aired on national television. He co-founded the African American Artists Collective, which helps connect painters, textile artists, musicians, filmmakers, photographers, actors, and writers to projects and funding. Four years ago, French produced Kansas City Dreamin’, a 45-minute film about the roots of Kansas City’s music scene. Now he’s dreaming bigger, raising funds to expand that film into a full-length documentary for a national audience about Kansas City’s essential role in the evolution of American music from jazz to soul to hip-hop. (You can help fund the project at gofundme.com/f/kansas-city-dreamin039). You avoid political commentary on your Facebook page. But on June 2nd, you posted “#blacklivesmatter” and made your profile pic a photo of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X shaking hands. Why? I wanted to show their different sides of being an activist. Obviously, Martin Luther King was very non-violent, and he believed in praying for our oppressors and so forth. Malcolm X was actually non-violent as well, but his attitude was more: If you bring violence to me, I’m going to bring violence back at you. I’m kind of in the middle on that. I definitely believe in non-violence and peaceful protesting, but if you smack me in the face, I’m probably going to smack you back. Have you been to the Black Lives Matter protests in Kansas City? I’m almost 50, and I feel like this is a thing of the younger generation, and that’s good. It’s also very encouraging to me that it’s not just African Americans out there protesting. Since I live near the Plaza, my dad called to ask if I was OK, if I was protesting, and I asked him, jokingly,
JULY 2020
“Are you going to go protest?” He said, “No, I’m 70, I’ll let the younger people handle that. I did that already in the ’60s.” But (a few days later) when Trump started talking about “law and order” on TV, my dad called me up and said, “That made me so mad, I almost put on my dashiki and went out there to start protesting.” [Laughs] When you were growing up in the ’70s and ’80s, did your parents warn you about the police? When I was a teenager, about to start driving, my mother sat me down and said, “When the cops pull you over, this is what you do: You keep your hands on the steering wheel, you’re always polite, don’t be a smart ass.” What changed is, there are video cameras now. But it’s been going on forever and ever and ever. I dated a young lady who lived in Overland Park, way out by 170-something street. She was black like me and her dad was a surgeon. They had the biggest house in the neighborhood. She had a bunch of brothers, and she told me how when her brothers were in high school, they were constantly getting pulled over and asked by cops, “What are you doing in this neighborhood?” And for me, in my lifetime, I don’t know the exact stats, but I would say I’ve been pulled over maybe a dozen times and at least ten of those times I was in Johnson County. I rarely get pulled over when I’m in the city. When was the last time you were pulled over? It was either two or three summers ago. I got a ticket for an “unsafe lane change.” [Laughs] I didn’t even know that that was a ticket you could get. I have to tell this story—I have to tell this story. Tell the story. So, he pulls me over. I’m on Shawnee Mission Parkway. I’m thinking, “OK, I wasn’t speeding, my tags are up to date. What is it this time?” He comes up and says, “You made an unsafe lane change.” Then, the first thing he asks me is if I have any weapons in the vehicle. And I said no. And he asks me if my license is suspended. And I’m thinking, “Wouldn’t he look that up?” He gives me the ticket, and I thought, “You know what? I’m fighting this.” So I went to the first court date, where you either pay the ticket or
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