CHERYL A. ALSTON

Cheryl A. Alston received a Bachelor of Arts degree in art history and a master's degree in interdisciplinary studies from Wayne State University, where she was the winner of several scholarships and grants. She has worked as an assistant curator at the Charles Wright Museum of African American History in Detroit and has been an intern at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., and the Detroit Institute of Arts. She is interested in representation — particularly in the manner in which African American artists have portrayed their culture — and has developed a lecture series on African American artists and religion.

The issue of representation has been a challenging one for African Americans. Before the 1900s, when they were represented visually, it was primarily a negative image, subject to ridicule. To portray and own one's image is to empower one's self. This began to change by the first decade of the 1900s and one of the prevailing themes was lynching, a form of violence used against African Americans since they have been in the United States, but accelerated during Reconstruction, from 1865 to 1877, and during Jim Crow, from 1876 to 1965. 

In response, an anti-lynching movement was established. Of the groups and individuals that spoke out against this injustice were African American artists of the visual arts, who, I believe, were champions of the movement because the visual image itself is profound. When they represented these acts of violence, they were not only claiming the racial image, but they were taking a stance against lynching, putting their art and their careers at risk and their lives in mortal danger. This pro-active position against lynching was juxtaposed against the dominant image of the time, that of a voiceless, powerless people. Many of the names of these artists, and their body of work, have been forgotten over time. If this art was taboo, how did it affect the careers and lives of the artists who created it? 

From the essay "African American Artists of the Visual Arts: Champions of the Anti-Lynching Movement." 

MARY JO FIRTH GILLETT

 Mary Jo Firth Gillett's poetry collection, "Soluble Fish," won the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry First Book Award (Southern Illinois University Press, 2007). Her three award-winning chapbooks are Chandeliers of Fish (Poetry West Press, 2004), Tiger in a Hairnet (Small Poetry Press, Select Poets Series, 1999), and Not One (The Writer's Voice, 1998). Her poems have appeared in The Harvard Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, The Southern Review, Gettysburg Review, Third Coast and Green Mountains Review, among other journals. She has won the NY Open Voice Award, a Creative Artist Grant from ArtServe Michigan, and several Pushcart Prize nominations.

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