Celebrating Dr. King with MLK Exhibit

A room devoted to the stories of sung and unsung Black women. A history of the population of Black Americans. A wall marked with the words, “Say Their Names” alongside photos of people such as Emmett Till, Trayvon Martin, Breonna Taylor, and unfortunately, many more. These are only some of the things visitors have the opportunity to see at Sam X and Michael Jones’ Interactive Art Exhibition, and that’s not even mentioning the entire exhibit devoting to Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

On Monday, January 18, after much hard work, this exhibition opened at 2050 Watson Boulevard, Warner Robins, the site of the Curtis Events Center. Originally, this event would have ended on Sunday, January 24; however, it will run through February. On weekdays, it will be open from 10 a.m. until 6:30 p.m., and on weekends, the hours are 10 a.m. to 10:30 p.m. Due to COVID, this event does not take walk-ins, and masks are required. All visits are guided tours, and visitors must register before coming.

Sam X and Michael Jones were the leaders and researchers of this project and spoke briefly with The Journal about their work and experience.

“We started trying to compile the research sometime back in December,” Jones explained. “All in all, it took about a week and a half to compile all the research, plus the images. And then going back through it took about another week, so it was a good two-week process just to get the research compiled, figuring out the pictures, and then trying to figure out exactly how we wanted to do the layout of each room. It was a very tough endeavor, but it was very rewarding,” he added.

X expounded upon this. “We brainstormed for about a week, week and a half, knowing that we wanted to do something, trying to figure out what was the best way to execute it, and once we did figure that out, the research was the bulk of it. Then we pretty much segued into the compartmentalization of all the research, and then doubled back through all of the research, adding detail. I like to say adding intention.” X went on to share that, “We made everything; everything is handmade. With the exception of some of the props or some of the things you see, everything is DIY, everything is done by hand. That was probably the biggest chunk of it,” she said with a laugh. “We’ve been working on that for about two weeks now, literally day in, day out, 24-hour shifts. I slept [at the Curtis Event Center] every night getting it done. I was coming in, I would work all day, and then I would go sleep, maybe around four or six [a.m.], and then wake back up at eleven in the morning, and then do it all over again.”

The work definitely shows. The exhibit is three full rooms, each of which are unique in their designs and how they present the information, which varies from highlighting Black women such as Angela Davis, Assata Shakur, Rosa Parks and Michelle Obama, to presenting the history of Black Americans such as the names and faces of Black inventors often uncelebrated, or tragic events in American history that often go unspoken about, such as the Wilmington Insurrection of 1898, or the Tulsa Race Massacre. Jones explained that each of these rooms has its own name and purpose. “Unsung Heroes of The Civil Rights, or The Women of The Movement” is the first room. It houses dioramas explaining the historical and current significance of these women, as well as other works devoted to, as the title says, “The Women of The Movement.”

“The Decades or Precedence” is a room that gives a brief history of Black Americans, as well as a study of each decade’s census count of Black Americans. Finally, the last room is titled “Dedicated to Martin: The Man, The Myth, The Legend,” and this room is devoted to the life of Dr. King.

When asked about their inspirations for this project, Jones began, “There’s this concept that Martin Luther King gets talked about as a certain person, but nobody really talks about the other sides of him, so that kind of sparked the idea like, ‘hey, let’s create something that we can really show different sides of Martin.’ And then it broke off into, ‘well, you know, women don’t really shine as much as they should, because they were the backbones of these movements. Let’s give them a lot of the credit that they deserve.’ So, we decided to designate a whole room to that. Then it was like, ‘okay, representation is obviously important to us, so where have we been represented, where have we been unrepresented?’ So, that’s where the census came about. And then we started realizing that there’s just a whole bunch of stories we wanted to tell, a whole bunch of people we wanted to highlight, and it just kind of became a whole experience.”

Then X added, “There’s a lot of things that MLK represents, and so inherently, there’s a lot of things that birthed him, and that comes from movements, organizations, all kinds of pioneers in their own fields, and then women.” She furthered her explanation with, “I feel like amongst the Black community, especially in the more recent decade, MLK has unfortunately been looked at as a figure who is a little shady, or has some different aspects to him that we aren’t able to trust. I feel like, as Black people, it’s important to embrace the leaders that we do have and that we always have had, regardless of beliefs, or idealisms. Because at the end of the day, they still laid the groundwork for a lot of the things, most of the things, that we’re able to do now. Like the fact that we can go out and do a peaceful protest; that is MLK’s whole dream. The fact that we can go into certain spaces and be with certain people and it be not necessarily an issue, that is all attributed to Martin, so regardless of his personal life and the things that we hear like rumors and myths, I think it’s very important to still shed light on a person that has unfortunately been commercialized.”

When describing the impact they each hoped it had on the local community, they were united under one term: education. “My biggest hope is that somebody gets an education,” Jones said, smiling. “I think the fact that we go through the K-12 experience, and we learn about western civilization and western culture, but we don’t learn about the true African American contributions and the things that they did—from philosophers, to the scientist, to the intellectuals—we don’t really get a chance to highlight that. So, my hope is that the community will be able to see that, and they’ll be able to talk about it; they’ll be able to expand upon it, and they’ll be able to create their own experiences that we can hopefully attend, and we just see more of these kinds of things start to come about, to just bring more light to the actual culture.”

X began her statement by quoting Nina Simone. “There’s no excuse for the young people not knowing who the heroes and heroines are or were, and I think that’s just so valid in our time, and throughout time in general. I grew up in a K-12 school system where I wasn’t learning about my people, and not that that’s an issue, but it’s just when you grow up, you realize how deprived you’ve been, and how ignorant you are to you own identity. It’s a challenge trying to teach yourself as an adult about these figures.” She continued, “I would love to just incentivize young people to want to know more. That doesn’t mean they’re necessarily going out that day after they leave this exhibit saying, ‘I want to go to the library, I want to get this book,’ but it’s got them thinking, and that’s what my hope is.”

Finally, when asked about Warner Robins’, and by extension, America’s next steps, they responded once more in turn, Jones beginning with, “I think that the fact that MLK was speaking about ideas of a new deal, that FDR was talking about ideas of a new deal, that AOC is talking about ideas of new deal, it’s time for a new deal [and] for us to be able to move forward. We’re a so-called ‘developed nation;’ there’s no reason we don’t have a universal health care system, there’s no reason that we cannot attend these public colleges, when we can go to these K-12 experiences for free, but we can’t go to these schools because tuition has turned into a business. Moving forward, it should be as a left-wing ideology, strictly progressive moving forward, with an emphasis on helping the downtrodden, the minorities, even the middle class. We continue to give all this money, these tax breaks and stuff like that which hasn’t done anything. Trickled down economics hasn’t done anything, so I think it’s time we took a new path forward and started using the ideas that have been established for so long and start looking around at other developed nations and how they’re doing it.”

“Specifically, for the people of Warner Robins, just going back to the major thing that I like to carry myself to, is intention. Thinking, eating, doing, and sleeping with intention. I feel like if you always have an intention to what you’re doing, whether people agree with it or not, it’s bound to produce something,” X added. “I would just say for the people of Warner Robins, think bigger. I feel like it’s so easy to get stuck in this small-town mindset and just pinned down under certain nuances of people in a small town. Being a military town, too, I think that people can get caught up in a mindset, the small town mindset, the very bigoted, ignorant mindset. But the world is bigger than Warner Robins; the world is bigger that Georgia.

In closing, Jones stated, “I just really want people to get out what we put in. There is a lot of thought, a lot of ideas; so I really want people to be able to see that for what it is and really come out of this with a true experience of, ‘wow, I just walked through the civil rights, I feel like I marched through this experience.’

X followed up with, “My aim, again, is to always help people tell their own stories, so I feel like experiences like this are what help facilitate that. If there’s anybody out there who’s been looking for some sort of push, some sort of spark of inspiration, some sort of hint at your hidden identity, then this is definitely the place for you; this is experience that you need to see.”

To experience the Martin Luther King, Jr. Exhibit, visit the Curtis Events Center at 2050 Watson Boulevard. Reservations (which are required) can be made by following the link on Curtis Events Center’s Facebook page. The link is attached to the post headlining this event.

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