Thomas and fellow artist Ebony Brown talk about interdependence and
How to Live Through a Police Riot, an archival handbook that inspired his 2018
series.
Karen Chernick
Hank Willis Thomas,
“First stages” (2018), from Black Survival Guide, or How to Live Through a
Police Riot, screen print on retroreflective vinyl with aluminum backing,
photograph of Wilmington riots and National Guard occupation by Frank Fahey,
1968 (courtesy of the News Journal), text from Northeast Conservation
Association, Black Survival Guide, or How to Live Through a Police Riot, c.
1960s (courtesy of the Delaware Historical Society), 62 x 48 inches;
commissioned by the Delaware Art Museum (© Hank Willis Thomas; all images courtesy the artist and Delaware
Art Museum)
“IMPORTANT,” asserts the opening line of a pamphlet that
contemporary conceptual artist Hank Willis Thomas found a couple years ago at
the Delaware Historical Society. “Because you are black, this booklet is
important to you. It may help save your life.”
Thomas was doing research for a 2018 commission from the Delaware
Art Museum (DAM) to mark the 50th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s
assassination and Wilmington’s grief-stricken public response, followed by a
nearly unprecedented nine-month-long occupation of the city by National
Guardsmen. The artist had seen photographs of the 1968 occupation of Wilmington
but was surprised by this 13-page handbook titled BLACK SURVIVAL GUIDE OR How
To Live Through A Police Riot, typewritten on 8 1/2-by-11-inch office paper.
The guide was full of detailed practical information for worst-case
scenarios, like how to stop bleeding and identify heart attacks, ways to
communicate if telephone service was cut off, how much water to stockpile per
person per day, and the importance of knowing all ways to exit one’s home. The
pages were a testament to violence, fear, and perseverance.
Thomas transformed the pamphlet into a screen printed series on retroreflective
vinyl called “Black Survival Guide, or How to Live Through a Police Riot”
(2018), overlaying the complete text over images of the Wilmington occupation.
When the DAM exhibited the series in 2018, it coincided with exhibitions of
Danny Lyon’s photographs of the Southern Civil Rights Movement and drawings of
the Montgomery bus boycott by Harvey Dinnerstein and Burton Silverman. The
museum recently reinstalled “Black Survival Guide” when it reopened to the
public in early July, in response to the recent wave of Black Lives Matter
marches and protests.
I spoke with Thomas about the series this week over speakerphone,
as he and his friend, artist Ebony Brown, were in a car headed to Brooklyn. They were going to an event organized by The Wide Awakes collaborative
commemorating the ratification of the 19th Amendment with music, art, and voter
registration assistance. This interview has been lightly condensed and edited for clarity.
Hyperallergic: What was your research process for the Black
Survival Guide? What archival materials did you look at, and how did you decide
to use the booklet and photographs?
Hank Willis Thomas: I was invited to do this installation at the
Delaware Art Museum, and I didn’t know much about Delaware or Wilmington even
though it’s really close to Philadelphia which is where my family is, where my
mom grew up. My mother, Deborah Willis, she’s a historian
and artist, and I grew up in libraries and archives. Through my mother’s work I
learned that there’s so much hidden information in archives. So I asked the
museum, and they shared with me all these photographs that they had from the
newspaper.
The context was it being the 50th anniversary
of the longest occupation of federal troops in an American city since the Civil
War, after the assassination of Martin Luther King. So we went to the
[Delaware] Historical Society to find images that we thought would be really
good for that. We wound up in all these boxes and I pulled out this thing that
said “Black Survival Guide” and I was like, what? What is that? It was
literally a handbook on how to survive a police riot.
That was such a revelation that not only was
the movement organized, but it was prepared for the worst at all times. That
gave new context to all the photographs I saw of police and National Guardsmen
occupying this neighborhood in Delaware. I wanted to highlight them both, and
so I printed in black-on-white the text of the Survival Guide and then I
printed white-on-white the photographs that I collected. I printed on a material
called retroreflective vinyl, which allows the viewer to see both images when
you take a flash photograph. So to the naked eye it’ll look like black text on
white, whereas if you take a flash photograph a latent image is exposed.
H: You’ve used retroreflective vinyl in a
number of your works. Was there a specific reason that you wanted to use that
material in this series, or something specific you wanted the viewer to
experience here?
HWT: There was no other way to show the photographs with contemporaneous
content that was designed to respond to this police occupation. I’ve been
working with retroreflective for a while because I love how it makes the
invisible visible. And a lot of history, of course — most of it if not all of
it — is invisible, truly.
H: What would a contemporary Black Survival Guide look like?
HWT: I have no idea because I’m not the kind of person who could
write a handbook. I would definitely ask an organizer that question. Maybe
that’s a good question for my friend Ebony — she/we are doing an event around
joy and positivity as core tenets to what would probably be a guide. Or maybe
joy and positivity as the guides themselves to all the destructive forces that
keep us separated and divided in this movement. Here’s my friend “Wildcat”
Ebony Brown, from The Wide Awakes.
Ebony Brown: The first thing that comes to my mind is my
grandmother and knowing that you are protected. Knowing that there is someone
watching over you, that your ancestors are always with you. That is, for me, a
reminder that there are forces at work always guiding us and protecting us. We
can always remind ourselves of that. It’s a guide and it’s also nurturing and
comforting, and provides a source of sustenance that at some times we may not
feel like we have.
HWT: Especially in facing unexpected adversity. I feel like connecting with the ancestors, it doesn’t have to be written.
It looks like us under strike and stress and pain, and feeling connected.
H: Going back to your series, Black Survival
Guide, what are your thoughts about it being re-exhibited now? It was originally
created for such a specific place and anniversary.
HWT: Actually, it was shown for the reasons that Ebony pointed out.
There was already a need, and there was already a space and opportunity for
that need to be addressed. What I inferred from them wanting to re-show it was,
‘oh great, someone else has tapped into this, as Ebony puts it, this cosmic
connection.’ And so I’ve been thinking it, but someone at the museum was like,
‘yeah, this is why we did that work.’
H: What are you working on now?
HWT: We’re working on a project called The Wide Awakes. It’s a
federation of artists and activists — just heart-led people — building positively
towards our evolution through creative civic action. And it’s an extension of a
collaboration called For Freedoms, except it’s much more autonomous.
EB: Today we’re celebrating the ratification of the 19th amendment
which gave some women the vote, not everyone.
HWT: The problem is universal suffrage.
EB: So today we’re gathering at Grand Army Plaza in Brooklyn and
we’ve been creating events to share this concept of interdependence. That’s the
understanding that we cannot live and survive in this society alone, it takes
all of us working together for us to progress and evolve and heal. I think
that’s where we need to be. All of these protests and rallies and marches are
very necessary and effective. It’s also equally as important to balance it with
harmony and joy as an act of resistance, and uplift the community and bring
people together using music and art.
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