Advocating For Masterpieces

from The LocaL, Feb-March 2020

John Houzer's Favorite Films of 2020

Sherricka Day ~ ON LISTENING, REPRESENTATION, & ART

By Erick Richman

Known for her community activism, support for the arts, exuberant personality - and her bountiful hair - Sherricka Day has bold things to say about the importance of listening. “Everybody is relevant,” she says. “Sometimes we downplay the importance of other people’s stories. Everyone has something to contribute to the community.”

Growing Up

Though a transplant, she says “I’ve been in Columbus long enough to call Columbus home.”

Born on the Landstuhl military base in Germany, Sherricka was the child of two high school sweethearts from Mississippi. She spent her early years at Fort Knox in Kentucky, then a base in Korea, before her family’s orders ultimately had them bound for Fort Benning, where she was finally able to put down roots.

A Hardaway High graduate, she worked part time jobs while studying at Columbus State, ultimately joining the insurance company Aflac full-time midway through her degree. Now an Aflac employee of 25 years, she was named the company’s “Corporate Social Responsibility Hero” in 2018. A passionate volunteer, she has been recognized by many local and regional organizations and was recently asked to join the board of Visit Columbus to help promote the city.

**Sherricka Day with Mayor Skip Henderson**

Her non-profit, Minor in Business, Inc., promotes entrepreneurial skills by providing mentorship and support to youth participants, who range from 7-year-olds to high school seniors. Her earliest mentees are now in college. Young participants learn practical skills and gain real world confidence, as well as a warm and open ear.

**Sherricka with her Minor in Business, Inc. Kids**

“We feel like we have to come with all this book knowledge,” she says, but often all children really need “is someone to talk to.”

Sherricka knows how important it is for a child to be heard.

“It was devastating for me,” she remembers hearing her parents announce their divorce. The two dramatic life changes – coming to Columbus and her parent’s separation - created a formative experience.

Often, she says, children facing divorce are left to wonder questions like “Could I have been a better child?” Amid the tumult of the divorce, her parents gave her a gift she still cherishes to this day:

“I had conversations with my parents, a few times.”

They listened to her, carefully talking through her assumptions and fears, and, perhaps most importantly for Sherricka, providing validation for her experience.

“It was reassuring to know that I could have that conversation.”

Throughout that experience, they modeled for her how to communicate effectively, she says, even when it was most difficult.

“It was helpful in making me who I am today,” she says, “knowing that I was able to express myself.” Her father treated her – as she recalls he did all children – as a small human being, telling her “you’re a person and deserve the same respect as an adult. Your feelings, thoughts and actions matter.”

Her mother, in contrast, “just cuts to the chase. She’s good about ‘don’t get sucked into what this person is saying or how they make you feel.’”

“Those two personalities,” she says, “I have a bit of both.”

Her parents continue modeling mutual respect today, as “co-parents,” she says with a laugh, “even though they’re done parenting.”

“I’m grateful for that balance, even though it was shaken up. I know that sometimes, that picture that you might have painted of what you feel like life should be, you might have to start on a fresh new canvas.”

Minor in Business, Inc.

Today she shares that same gift of respect and validation with the young people that join Minor in Business, Inc. When she works with them, she makes sure to tell them, “You have my attention for this moment,” so they know they can safely express themselves.

In addition to holding a variety of events annually, Sherricka and her mentees jointly identify a need in the community. Last year, they worked to collect and donate supplies to the Muscogee County School District’s Hygiene Pantry.

This year, they have navigated the pandemic together through virtual meetings. Among the works of distance volunteering, two mentees sewed and donated 500 face masks to the community. True to her commitment to listening, she plans to lead a conversation about the 2021 plans for the program with the mentees next month.

“I do my best to let them mold what our future is.”

Making Difficult Conversations

Having difficult conversations is clearly important to her. That starts with listening, she says.

“It can be hard to trust others. It takes effort.”

She gives the “Making Conversations with Warren Williams Homes” project as an example. In 2018, she joined a team at the Columbus Museum in documenting the lives of the residents of an often-overlooked community in Columbus through a series of oral histories.

“I’m coming in as a stranger, really trying to understand who they were. And just spending time with them, devoting that to them.”

In that process, she learned some surprising things. “I was used to hearing [the phrase] ‘the projects,’” she says, “and they stopped me and were like, ‘No.’

“It’s not the projects, they don’t use that term to describe their neighborhood. I didn’t know.”

Art & Advocacy

“With everything that was happening in 2020, artists were able to take a stand and get their message out there,” she says. “Across the nation we were watching murals pop up, murals of people that had lost their lives. My group, we felt like this is the time for Columbus to show support.”

Initially, “We wanted to do something that was inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement. There was a lot of pushback,” she says, “a lot.” After several conversations, it was agreed in November 2020 that a mural would be constructed with the words “hope, healing, and community.” In collaboration with Columbus State, the mural is planned for a wall outside the Ronald McDonald House in midtown Columbus with an expected completion of Fall 2021.

**Sherricka At Chris Johnson Mural In Midtown**
Photo By Tony Pettis

“Art is always going to be subjective,” she says, “that’s what art does, it makes you have a conversation.”

She found herself in one such conversation in the Spring of 2019, when local artist Davian Chester’s Juneteenth doodle – one of his many creations, this one challenging Google to commemorate the day, June 19, 1865, when the last slaves in Texas learned that they had been freed – went viral online.

**Keith Phillips, Davian Chester & Sherricka**

“I’m still trying to figure out how I got involved,” she laughs.

The art and message spread nationwide, helping create a conversation about a day that held special significance for many in 2020.

“I think it speaks to kids: ‘don’t underestimate your creativity.’ You have a voice, you have a story, tell it. You never know if that’s what someone needs to hear, or see.”

Representation & Validation

The ideas of representation and validation are important to her.

“I shouldn’t have to change who I am for people to take me seriously. I’m the same person and I can deliver the same message in the package that I’m in,” she says.

Sherricka may be as well-known for her hair as she is for her roles in the community.

“I’ve had people yell at me that they love my hair. Which for me, when I first started hearing that, it was like, ‘oh wow.’

“For the longest time,” she explains, “‘Black hair’ wasn’t always acceptable.”

She talks about the growing trend of representation – of a variety of skin tones and natural hairstyles, with figures such as “Black Panther” stars Lupita Nyong’o and Chadwick Boseman, before turning towards another recent point of conversation in Columbus: “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.”

“I find it interesting to not know much about her living in Columbus,” she says of Ma Rainey, the “Mother of the Blues” and former Columbus resident whose story recently received renewed interest due to the Netflix adaptation of August Wilson’s 1982 stage play of the same name. “It’s amazing, just one day, all that happened. You learn so much about her.”

“I think about how she knew that her image was not ‘it,’” she says. The film depicts a single day of Ma Rainey’s life in order to explore, both directly and metaphorically, the historical conditions and social pressures that have and continue to affect the African American community.

“It was a lot in that film,” she agrees, “a lot to unpack.” She points out that many previously untold stories are now being made known. She gives the example of “Hidden Figures,” a 2016 film depicting the Black women mathematicians who helped send American astronauts into space. “That’s pretty powerful, why is that something we’re not taught?”

The history that led to the present day can often be obscured, as she saw when she spent time with the Warren Williams residents. “Initially it was a good community,” she explains, “As drugs came in and men were being arrested, it changed the dynamic.” Disproportionately enforced substance laws with long sentences broke up many families, often leaving single mothers to pick up the pieces.

**At Ma Rainey’s House**
Photo by Tony Pettis

“Black women have always had to just make it work, figure it out, move forward,” she says. “I find it interesting that Black women are seen as a threat, because the positions we find ourselves in are not threatening. We are there to help, to serve, to raise generations of children, to keep our community going. We have so much on our backs that we have to carry.”

“Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” and “Hidden Figures” are just a few recent examples of art creating conversations about representation, history and which stories get to be told.

“I’m happy to see more and more books, films, movies surrounding that acceptance for who we are. I should be accepted as is, there’s no reason I should have to change my hair to be seen as a person, an individual, an American.”

That message also resonates back to her father’s influence. “From being a plus size woman, my dad always helped me appreciate my size. He always just made me feel good about the person I was.” Similarly, she tells her 7-year-old nephew, “the packaging he came in is perfect. There’s nothing wrong with the way he is.”

Referencing Chris Rock’s 2009 film, “Good Hair,” which explored the pressure Black women experience to alter their hair to appear “less ethnic,” she says, “I would tell Black girls to rock whatever look they have that they are proud and comfortable in.

“What I love about my culture is the way we can wear our hair in so many different styles. It’s empowering, it’s an expression. That’s an art in itself.”

Expression through Art

During the pandemic, her collection of over 300 paintings allowed her to travel in her own home. The yard-sale painting that led to the idea for her non-profit is still among them.

“Everywhere you look, you have art around you. What would the world be like if we didn’t have the arts?”

“Art is expression,” she says, “The chef is an artist in putting this meal together that will be pleasing to you. The person photographing this food wants it to be just as beautiful. So, all of that to me is art: our clothes are art, we’re art, the way we’re made and created.”

Sharing art also means sharing ideas and history and creating opportunities for conversation. “It’s not always going to be comfortable, rainbows and butterflies. It’s going to be tough subjects we have to deal with.”

Though it feels like division is growing, she says we need to learn to have difficult conversations again. “We all stand to learn from each other.”

Sherricka is active in the community and can be reached through the Minor in Business, Inc. website at minorinbusiness.com, on Facebook under the organization’s original name, Crayons, Crafts and Kool Kids, and through her personal Facebook page.

**At Light Up Columbus Midtown**
photo by Tony Pettis

Oddly enough, walking downtown while speaking to The LocaL, we hear a passerby shout “I LOVE YOUR HAIR!” Sherricka laughs; it isn’t an unusual occurrence. “We are art,” she says. “We should view ourselves as such. If we treated ourselves and each other like some of the masterpieces we collect, the world would be a better place.”