Photographs of smiling Black children adorn the walls and up the ceiling of this KCK store at 13th St. and Washington Blvd., transforming it into a street corner museum. (photo by Harold Smith)
In a society that is obsessed with the destruction of Black lives, creating images of Black joy is a militant act of creative resistance.
I’ve lived within walking distance of 13th St. and Washington Blvd. (in Kansas City, Kansas), for more than 20 years. When I bought my home, it had been vacant for years and was boarded up. Room by room, I did as much as I could to make it livable. I saved, and after nine years, I was able to get the exterior fixed up.
I’m proud of my home. I’m proud of the inner-city neighborhood where I live. I’m proud of the diverse mixture of people who live around me. I don’t plan to leave. Ever.
I’m also very proud of the corner of 13th and Washington Blvd. and the liquor store with the adjacent convenience shop. To me, a Black-owned business is, in itself, a militant act of economic resistance.
It’s not the wide variety of alcoholic beverages that I am most proud of (though I have indulged from time to time), nor is it the wide variety of starchy and sugary snacks in the convenience store (which has added a few inches to my waistline) that I am most proud of.
Rather, it is the joyous collection of photographs of smiling Black children that adorn the walls and up into the ceiling of the convenience store. Innocent faces of Black (and some Hispanic) children, beaming with joy and sometimes holding their snacks.
I see it as a Sistine Chapel of Black joy. The world is hard for Black children. I was one once. Many of us are raised in a cauldron of trickle-down trauma. I’ve often talked to rookie teachers who don’t understand why some of their Black students struggle to smile and reflect joy. Unlike our white brothers and sisters, our joy has to dig its way out from layers of societal dysfunction piled onto us from before our very conception.
So acknowledging the existence of these smiling and joyous faces is a militant act. Their presence flies in the face of the white supremacist ideology woven into the fabric of American society that has convinced a large percentage of white Americans that Black people, even children, are somehow less human, less compassionate, less innocent and less capable of simply being a happy and well-adjusted child beaming with happiness and ready to enjoy some Skittles, chips or a soda pop. There is humanity here, even though there are some who are incapable of seeing it.
Out of respect for the children and parents, we are not running the children’s images.
So, you will have to drive to this street corner museum to experience what I am talking about.
I’ve tried to find out who the photographer is and learn more, to no avail.
But that’s fine; this is all about the art.
If you want to see creative resistance in action and art fulfilling its purpose on the highest level of humanity, make your way to the intersection of 13th and Washington Blvd. in Kansas City, Kansas.
Don’t forget to buy something . . .
