I, Too, Am America, 2 Lincoln Memorial Circle NW, Washington D.C., DC (2026)

01/18/2021

Kip Omolade

“We didn’t have a lot of money when I was growing up. My mother was homeless when she had me. She stayed on friends’ couches and used an old suitcase as my crib. What we lacked in material things, she made a conscious effort to make up for in every other way she could. Even when our lives got better, my mother still took a lot of time and energy to invest in me. She’d always encourage me and tell me I would be a great artist someday.

When I was ten years old, she made a collage for me. She called it ‘My Son Is a Sun.’ There was a photo of me in the middle of a sunburst with lots of protest pictures on the left, including a protester holding the iconic ‘I Am A Man’ sign. On the right was a man in Africa, sculpting figurines. Even then, I knew not everybody’s mom was making things like this for them.

During high school, I was able to intern for Marvel and thought I’d go into comic book art, but when I learned that the artists didn’t own their work, I realized I wanted to go a different direction. I had a lot of experience in graffiti art, too. I grew up in Brooklyn and anything related to hip-hop was what we all wanted to do. Eventually, I enrolled at the School for Visual Arts and began studying traditional oil painting.

The project I’m most known for is my DIOVADIOVA CHROME series. It all began when my wife and I attended a gallery event in Florida. All the depictions of Black people featured them straining under the struggle of existence, and my wife asked, ‘Where are the beautiful Black people? Where’s our beauty? What are you going to do about this?’

I started studying the Kingdom of Ife and the sculptures from that culture. The masks were dipped in gold and bronze. When the Germans first found relics from this society, they couldn’t believe they had been made by Africans and tried to say the art was proof there was a lost city of Atlantis. Growing up, there were a lot of African masks in our home and my mother made collages of those as well.

The first people I made masks of were my wife and her friends. It’s a labor-intensive process—making the masks, then creating chrome casts, and using those as references for my paintings. The faces are metallic and bursting with reflective color, but I don’t bring race into the equation. It’s my hope that anybody can view these portraits and simply see them as beautiful faces. I’ve had people from all over the world contact me online to tell me that one of the pieces looks like their uncle or their sister. I think people have been having a hard time seeing themselves in other folk. Hopefully, my reflective masks help a little by letting people’s beauty be reflected back to themselves.

My latest project is titled GOD BODY and it uses the Black woman as the divine physical form. Black women’s bodies haven’t always been depicted as beautiful or dignified. This series features Black women in latex suits, reminiscent of superheroes. Going to museums in NYC as a kid, I didn’t see many representations of Black women. My paintings strive to enrich the art world with representations of Black faces and bodies for all people to see. If Michelangelo can use his cousin as the model for Jesus Christ, then I can use my sister-in-law as a model for the Divine.

So much of my art goes back to that collage my mother made—the bright sun, the Black protesters, the African man sculpting. She sowed the seeds of beauty and power so early. They sank deep in me, took root, and continue to break through the soil of my life.”

He, too, is America.

Made possible by Affinity Photo.

12/26/2020

Oren Smith

“It started with my great-grandmother, Miss Mary. She was the first Black woman to have a liquor license in North Carolina and she ran a place called the Moonlight Lounge, where Black professionals and servicemen could go to have a drink and listen to live music. Her nights were filled with culture and dancing, but she spent her days cooking. She was the head cook for the school district of Jacksonville, NC. I spent many summers watching her cook all day so that she could deliver free lunches to the kids who would’ve gone hungry if she didn’t.

Then there was my grandmother. She got pregnant at seventeen but moved her girls up north to have a better life. She cleaned office buildings at night so that she could put herself through college. She went to NYU, graduated from Upsala College, and became a social worker. She never retired, kept on working until she died.

My mother is just as industrious and independent as her ancestors. She raised me and my brother by herself. She went to business school and then to cosmetology school. She’s taught hairstyling professionally and has done celebrity hair. She gave me and my brother a very peaceful atmosphere and always modeled how to have an impact on the community by giving back.

I started out as a teacher, but then I got my Master’s in psychology. I’ve been a clinical social worker in DC for five years now. I work with people in the system and try to help them move forward with their lives. It can be exhausting as some seem complacent with where they are or don’t believe they can break the cycle and start a new path.

It can be frustrating when I can’t make a difference or can’t provide the level of care that a person requires due to the confines of the job. I’ve definitely gone above and beyond my role—trying to get them housing, referring them to a friend who can help with their résumé. Just like when I was teaching, you end up doing so much more than the listed expectations.

You know those tests that they give to high school students to tell them what careers would be best for them? When I took the test, my results were teacher, social worker, counselor—all those professions that help people. I should’ve known. I’d been watching the women in my life take care of others for as long as I can remember. I’m just doing what I always saw them do.”

He, too, is America.

Made possible by Affinity Photo.

12/08/2020

Sherese Nelson

“Growing up, my parents wanted me to become a doctor or a lawyer. They wanted me to have a stable career with a good paycheck. I agreed, so my first year of college, I was pre-med. Then I interned at an environmental lab that focused on water quality and watershed management and I decided that was the path for my life.

When I earned my MS in Environmental Science, I was living in the Midwest and I’d have to go to a lot of small, rural areas to investigate the superfund sites requiring a long-term response to hazardous materials contaminations. A lot of the local people would be very surprised to see me arrive as the scientist to complete the investigation. Most of the time, I would travel to these places with a lab partner, but sometimes, I had to go alone. My director would always warn me to make sure to be indoors before dark. He didn’t believe the places were safe for me to be alone at night, so he’d ask me to know where the next large town was so I’d know where to go if I felt unsafe.

I eventually moved back to The Bronx and got a job as an Environmental Health and Safety Auditor for the Dept of Environmental Protection, an agency of NYC. The thing with Environmental Protection is that you have to convince people that it’s important. People don’t just instinctively know that if they don’t protect their earth, water, and air, it won’t be safe for them to use. Protecting the environment exposes how reactionary we are as a culture instead of proactive. It takes money upfront to avoid major problems in the future. We don’t address issues until they start affecting our daily lives. By then, it’s usually too late.

When I was young, there weren’t any role models in Science, certainly no Black women in Science that I could look to for inspiration. In high school, when I was taking AP Biology and AP Physics, I never met a teacher who looked like me.

Now, I have a lot of friends who are teachers and I always rearrange my schedule so that I can attend their Career Day. I wear my white lab coat, bring in my gloves and goggles, and tell kids that they can become a scientist like me. I want them to see a Black woman excited about Science and passionate about our environment. One of my friends called me a few days after my presentation to tell me that some of the students who heard me speak started picking up trash around their neighborhood.

That’s what motivates me—the possibility of a brighter future for our world with these kids. This generation seems more concerned with protecting the environment than others before them. We’ve got to offer them other dreams besides becoming an entertainer or athlete. I want to show them that they can make a difference; every decision they make can have a positive impact on our world.”

She, too, is America.

Made possible by Affinity Photo.

11/11/2020

Diannah “Brooklyn” Sparks

“When I decided to go to college in Oklahoma, everyone thought I was crazy. I’d already committed to another school, but I felt like I needed to go to this one in the Midwest. Once I got there, I met people from all over the world. No one seemed to be able to remember my name. People wanted to call me something more ‘interesting’ than Diannah, which felt too plain to them for my personality. So this guy from Atlanta started calling me ‘Brooklyn’ because that was something everyone could remember—where I was from. It just stuck, and almost twenty years later, people are still calling me that.

I grew up in Crown Heights. My parents were from the streets, both had kids while they were teenagers, but they found God, got their lives together, and raised us well. I was a child in the middle of the crack epidemic and my parents were desperate to keep us safe and make a difference in our community. They set up a table in the lobby of our apartment building and got other parents to volunteer to patrol the building in order to keep drug dealers out. My father was a preacher at the time and held funerals every week due to street violence and drugs.

In 1989, Yusef Hawkins, a Black teen, was shot to death by a mob of white teens in a racially motivated crime. Al Sharpton was just coming up at that time and he came to Brooklyn. That was the first time I remember them chanting, “No justice. No peace.” During that time of unrest, my mother and I were walking in our neighborhood and came across a protest. She said, ‘Let’s walk with them for a while,’ so we did. I was six years old.

Two years later, almost to the day, the Crown Heights Riot broke out. Two Black children were hit by a Rabbi’s motorcade, and when the police arrived on the scene, they tended to the adults first and let one of the children die from their injuries. I was eight years old then, and it felt like there was chaos in the street for a week, but it only lasted three days.

When protests began this summer, I watched my oldest daughter, who was five at the time, with her head out of our apartment window. The city felt like it did when I was a little girl. She asked me if she could join the people marching. All I could think about was that day with my mother, so we masked up and I took her to a gathering. We held a sign with a Malcolm X quote and added our voices to those demanding to be heard. A few months ago, both of my daughters helped to paint the Black Lives Matter mural outside Borough Hall.

Just before the election, I was at a rally, and a woman asked me where I was from. I told her Brooklyn. Then she asked where I was from originally. I gave her the same answer. Our borough has become so gentrified over the past few years, so everyone seems to be a transplant from somewhere else. The woman talked about how she just started going to protests this year and was happy to be more involved.

In moments like those, I think about my parents, who are retired now and living on Long Island. I asked them why they didn’t just buy a house in BK. My mom told me when she and my dad were coming up, the goal was to get out of the neighborhood, not buy it back. I understand that, but I have no intention of moving. I don’t want to be displaced from the community I grew up in. I could go and live somewhere with more space and lower housing costs, but I don’t want to succumb to the gentrification, inflation, and capitalism that seeks to drive us out. I won’t be told that I can’t afford to live in the neighborhood I grew up in. Brooklyn is my home, and my girls and I are going to do everything we can to make this city the best version of itself it can be.”

She, too, is America.

Made possible by Affinity Photo.

11/10/2020

This Sunday, NYC was still abuzz with the election results. Block parties and good vibes made this afternoon feel like a summer day. I went to Brooklyn to meet a woman nicknamed for her home city and learned how she serves her country.

10/29/2020

Janis Logan

“One day I was walking at the park near my home, trying to keep active, and I noticed a group of women in a huddle. They looked like they were sharing good news. There was cheering, clapping, and lots of smiling faces. A few days later, I went to the track again to walk and saw the same group, so I walked closer to them and eventually stood close enough until they invited me over.

The group was part of Black Girls Run, an organization with over 10,000 Black women who walk and run to stay healthy and keep each other accountable. I had caught these women at the start of their new spring program, “Walk before You Run.” It lasted twelve weeks.

I was so excited to join them and begin the process that I didn’t realize until it was too late that I didn’t have the proper sneakers for really running. They were okay for walking around the track, but we were training for a 5K. I got injured and had to take a break.

I re-joined the group for their fall program and graduated in December 2014. That meant my first 5K was in the winter. It had snowed the night before and the path was icy all over. Women were slipping and sliding; it was scary. But somehow we made it. I still have my sneakers and tag from that race.

Black Girls Run is an incredible organization. They hold various meet ups throughout the week and we always meet early on Saturdays to run. Women will come to us saying the doctor told them they have diabetes, high blood pressure, or any number of ailments, and we tell them that we’ve got their back. We help them turn their lives around, just by walking and running with them. There is a lot of talk of diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, etc. in the Black community, but BGR is combatting that by getting us out there running together.

No woman left behind. That’s the motto they taught me when I joined. No matter what pace any woman chose to walk/run during that meet up, all of the women will wait until the last one finishes her goal. We won’t leave the park until everyone’s done.

And everyone’s happy when they finish. Some days, one of us will come, saying, “Oh, I can only do one mile today,” and before they know it, they’ve done four or five and they feel great at the end. Running can be such a mind-clearing experience.

Many Black women may not think fitness is for them, but Black Girls Run was made for Black women by Black women. We’re here. We’re all over the country. You can easily find a group near you, and those ladies will welcome you with open arms. They’ll never leave you behind, and they’ll keep pushing you to do more than you thought you could.

We’ve got to preserve the sexy. That’s another motto I learned, and at my age, it’s important.”

She, too, is America.

Made possible by Affinity Photo.

10/27/2020

Nicholas Graham

“I was born and raised in Oklahoma. I went to college there. I always wanted to leave, but the timing never worked out. I knew I would find a way out eventually. I was hungry for a bigger life and I wanted more than just the appetite. I wanted to get fed.

Finally, in my mid-twenties, I was able to save up enough money to move. A friend and I got an apartment in DC. A week after moving, I ended up at this Black Congressional Caucus event. I don’t know if I’d ever, before that point, been around so many Black professionals in one room at the same time.

Two weeks after that, I joined DC Front Runners, the city’s LGBTQ running group. This group became, along with my church small group, the backbone of my community in this new state. It’s been amazing to find new people and expand my comfort zone.

I never thought I’d be working on policy issues on Capitol Hill, studying for the LSAT, or spending most of my non-work hours on building my personal skills, like writing and communicating. But being in this city challenges me and offers me inspiration for growth and progress.

My life goal is now gaining a seat at the table. I want to be in the room where decisions are being made for our communities’, our country’s future. Not only do I want to possess the knowledge and expertise to be leaned upon as a resource, but I also want to be a man of integrity and character so that my advice is taken seriously.

My father died when I was a child and I watched my mother have to begin again, especially financially. I know what it’s like to have a lot and have to get used to a little. I also know what it’s like to get back up again after failures, to keep pushing even when things get hard.

This is the perspective that I want to bring to that room where the decisions are made. We need every voice to be represented at the table, and I have the point of view of someone who’s had to work hard for everything I’ve received and everywhere I’ve traveled. My life hasn’t been a narrow, straight line that’s brought me to this moment, but rather a lot of loops and new beginnings.

I want to be a voice for many who have been unheard for too long.”

He, too, is America.

Made possible by Affinity Photo.

10/18/2020

McKinley Bernard Johnson

[Part 2 of 2]

“They called him Pops. My father was a man of incredible wisdom and insight.

He loved folks, young people especially. He helped people get out of debt, send their kids to college. At one point, he owned over 32 apartments. He’d buy these handyman specials and fix them up himself and set the rent real low so that people could have somewhere to live. Whatever profit he made, he used to finance the events at the church.

My father, the original Reverend Johnson, was the first Black man to found a ministry in Albany, NY. His church, St. Johns COGIC, had nine members at the start: my father, my mother, me, and my six siblings. He pastored that church for 42 years until passing the mantle to me.

In the 70s, the bishop of our district appointed me as Director of Youth Activities. It was a made-up position—they created it for me. I just started working with young people in the way I’d watched my father do it for decades before.

When I started working with the youth, my father would pull me aside to talk. He’d say, ‘If you’re only doing the same as the other people, you’re not doing anything. You have to do something more, something different to draw the young people in and keep them engaged.’ He wouldn’t actually tell me what to do, but he’d stir something inside of me, and I’d go away and pray. Before you’d know it, I’d have new ideas for what to do.

That’s how Youth Explosion began. We’d bring in young adults from all over. They’d come up from Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, New York City—all to Albany to take part in a two-day rich experience with God. The newspaper did a write up one year because the event had drawn over 2,000 young people to our city.

Now that I’m 85, people tell me it might be time to sit down—I mean I’m still the president of the Black Clergy in our area. The only reason I’m still doing that is because no one else has come asking for the job. I still help with voter registration and the census. These are important things, and my life motto has been, ‘Don’t just do nothing.’ You have to do something, and you can do quite a lot actually.

My father had a third-grade education. He grew up in the red clay hills of Shubuta, Mississippi. His grandmother had been a slave. He’s been with the Lord over a decade and I still see people all of the time who have a story to tell about my father and how he impacted their lives.

In the year before he passed, the city of Albany named the street our church is located on, Herkimer St, ‘Rev. John Johnson Way.’ It was a great joy of ours to tease him after that, saying, ‘Well, Pops finally got his way.’”

He, too, is America.

Made possible by Affinity Photo.

10/10/2020

McKinley Bernard Johnson

[Part 1 of 2]

“You can call me Mac, Uncle Kinley, or Reverend Johnson.

My father was part of the Great Migration. He came up north from Mississippi in search of a better life. The north was said to be the ‘Promised Land,’ but he said it felt like the South, just an ‘up’ South. He first went to Cleveland and eventually came to Albany, where my family still lives today. My father used to get so glad to see another Black person when he would go into town because there weren’t many of us here at that time.

He was a workaholic. He washed floors and stairs. He loved to work. The man wouldn’t sit down. He and my mother centered my family’s lives on the church. Every social experience we had was in the church and around church folk. When I was thirteen, I had my own experience with God that has kept me to this day. We church kids would be ostracized for what we didn’t do, where we didn’t go.

The high school I went to didn’t have courses that really prepared students to go to college. They were just teaching you to be a worker, maybe learn a trade or something. When I graduated, I started selling window shades. I got involved with the NAACP in my area and acted as a mediator between the high school students and the administration as they petitioned for more rigorous courses that would help them get into college. I also worked for the Urban League to drive voter registration in the Black community.

Everybody knew me in Albany, not just because of my church involvement but everything I’d been doing in the community and with the Board of Education. So when the Boy Scouts had a problem, they came to me.

The Scouts couldn’t meet their troop quota in Albany. At that time, the families were only averaging two children per household. There weren’t enough boys to make up their desired number of Scouts. So, where do you find the other boys? Well, the Black families have children. Now they needed someone to act as a liaison between them and the Black community, someone who the families would trust to sign up their boys.

Well, I fit the bill on that end, but they wanted someone with a college degree. I didn’t have that. They agreed to pay for me to go to school and work for them. They’d combine my experience with my ongoing coursework to give me the necessary credentials.

So, I organized the troops and we took the new Scouts out into the woods. Church boys who knew nothing about camping. We had to teach them how to do everything.

Meanwhile, I was thirty years old, married with children, going to college. I felt like a senior citizen compared to those teenagers. Once I got my Associate's degree, the Scouts were established and decided not to help me pursue a further degree. By then, I wanted my BA, I felt like my father, wanting a better, more secure life for my family. Instead of moving north with a promise of a better life, I wanted the opportunities a degree would grant me. So I quit."

He, too, is America.

Made possible by Affinity Photo.

09/27/2020

Michelle Odita

“It all started when I was twelve. I was at a Catholic school, and they showed us that DVD, The Miracle of Life, the one where you watch a baby grow from conception to delivery. You see a live birth in the program. All of the other seventh grade girls were in the room freaking out. I was crying. I went home that day and told my mom I was going to be a doctor.

I got my BS in Biology and applied to med school during my senior year. I must’ve sent out twenty applications. Every school said no. At some point, I decided I needed to go to grad school so that I could bump up my GPA and have more credentials for when I tried to apply to med school again.

During my first year of grad school, I failed a class. Pharmacology. It was the first time that had ever happened in my life. I decided that I wasn’t going to let anything hinder me from moving forward, so I buckled down and studied for that class more intensely than I ever had before. It ended up being my strongest discipline once I finished my courses for my MS of Interdisciplinary Health Sciences. Then I submitted my thesis for graduation and it got denied.

I started teaching high school Science and found purpose in revamping that school’s Science department and beefing up the course materials. In the meantime, I kept submitting my thesis for the completion of my master’s again and again. It took three years and a new chair of the department before my thesis was approved and I received my degree.

Then the applications for med school began again. Finally, I was accepted at St. George’s in Grenada. During the first month of my first year, the campus held a session where participants all stood on a line in the middle of the room and took steps forwards and backward based on their life experiences. For the better half of the exercise, I was walking forward. ‘Do you come from a two-parent home?’ Yes, step forward. ‘Do your parents have college degrees?’ Yes, step forward. ‘Did you grow up in a safe neighborhood?’ Yes, step forward. And it went on and on like that. Then they got to the questions about race. I happened to be the only Black person participating. ‘Have you ever been racially profiled by the police?’ Yes, step back. ‘Have you ever been called a racial slur?’ Yes, step back. I had to step back so many times that I hit the wall and couldn’t step back anymore.

The facilitator asked if anyone wanted to share or had any takeaways from the experience. Even though I didn’t want to say anything, I felt compelled, so I raised my hand. She looked relieved that I wanted to speak for myself. I told my classmates, ‘Though it seems like I’m behind you all, it’s only society that wants to put me there, not my family, not my upbringing. I'm not actually behind you. I'm standing with you. You have to see that I'm with you. It's society who put me behind, but I have the experiences to put me with you.’

It was then that I realized just how much of my life has been a re-positioning, a re-routing of how to get where I want to be. I had to maneuver around all those roadblocks in my way of becoming a doctor. A lot of people told me, ‘Michelle, you need to let it go. It’s just not happening for you.’ I almost let it die, I was about to go the PA route instead of MD, but a friend said, ‘That’s not for you. Go after what you want.’

So now I think back to that twelve-year-old girl who told her mother that day, ‘I know what I want to be when I grow up.’ I was so sure then. As I pursue this degree in obstetrics and endocrinology, I know that will be me one day, helping an expectant mother bring a new life into this world. I’ll be the one either helping to make the conception or delivery happen. That’s not a dream I’m willing to let go of.”

She, too, is America.

Made possible by Affinity Photo.

09/22/2020

Pelagie Jackson

Raised in the Republic of Cameroon, Pelagie came to the States in 1994. After spending her first few months in the bustling New York City, she visited a friend in Albany and decided to settle there. In addition to working for New York’s Office for People with Developmental Disabilities, Pelagie owns her own African braiding hair salon.

“I’ve had my salon for twenty years. My customers become my sisters. When I braid their hair, they tell me everything and open up to me. I like to take care of people. That’s my calling. I love to make people happy, to make them feel beautiful.”

This desire to care for people spills over beyond her work at the salon. Since 2014, Pelagie has been the founder and president of Anuanzeh, an organization whose main focus is to celebrate women. “We gather women from every background. Every year we celebrate women. White, Black, it doesn’t matter. If you’re a woman and stand for the community, we want to celebrate you. Every year we hold an event on International Women’s Day, and the funds we raise during that event go to pay for two community events that we hold. In August, we donate school supplies to children in the community and hold another event at the end of the year to celebrate all of the holidays.” They also put on an annual party at the local senior center on Mothers’ Day to help the elderly feel special. “I love to share my story about the organization and what we’re doing to help women in the community. People want to give to their communities, they want to help, but they don’t know how. When I tell them what we’re doing, it opens the door for them to become a blessing, too.”

Thinking about the plight of the small business owner, especially during these uncertain times of Covid-19, Pelgaie asserts, “I’ll still be here. Hard work is what I’ve always known. I’m not scared. Everything in my life has been hard work, from learning English to starting this business over twenty years ago, so it’s not much different than working hard now. I’m not going to quit. The only thing that could make me quit is if I died. I could be here 40-60 more years.”

She, too, is America.

Made possible by Affinity Photo.

I, Too, Am America

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