AMERICAN UNIVERSITY

BLACK ARTISTS IN WASHINGTON, D.C. AND THE BLACK LIVES MATTER MOVEMENT

Oral History Interview with

DR. ANNE BOUIE

By JOY PIERCE

Remote: Conducted online through Zencastr

OCTOBER 20, 2020 AMERICAN UNIVERSITY: BLACK ARTISTS IN WASHINGTON, D.C. AND THE BLACK LIVES MATTER MOVEMENT

NARRATOR: Dr. Anne Bouie DATE: Tuesday, October 20, 2020 INTERVIEWER: Joy Pierce PLACE: Remote interview (each of our residences- Washington, D. C. and Stephens City, VA)

NARRATOR’S PERSONAL DATA Birthdate: unavailable Spouse: N/A Occupation: Artist, Former teacher

SUMMARY OF INTERVIEW

Dr. Bouie is a black artist currently living in Washington, D.C. She previously worked as a teacher and spent several years creating educational programing for inner city schools. She discusses her life from childhood, early education, later experiences in college and graduate school. Then, she talks about her experiences as a black educator serving inner city students and her transition into being an artist. Finally, she shares her thoughts on the Black Lives Matter movement and the role of art and spirituality in sustaining social movements.

INTERVIEWER'S COMMENTS

The interview was conducted remotely through the podcasting program Zencastr and we experienced some technical difficulties which are described in greater detail in the background journal for this interview.

COPYRIGHT STATUS

The copyright for this interview is retained by the D. C. Public Library and Humanities Truck at American University.

INDEX TERMS

Washington, D.C., Anne Bouie, Black Lives Matter, Art, Education, Black Artists of D.C., Columbia Heights, Spirituality, University of California Riverside

2 Black Artists in Washington, D. C. and the Black Lives Matter Movement

Transcription of Interview with Anne Bouie on October 20, 2020 remotely at our individual residences (in Washington, D.C. and Stephens City, VA)

Joy Pierce 00:01 All right, so Hello, my name is Joy Pierce. Today is Tuesday, October 22, at 9:12 am and I'm calling from my home in Stephens City. Could you please introduce yourself, Anne, and spell your name?

Anne Bouie 00:16 Sure. Hi, my name is Dr. Anne Bouie, B as in boy, O-U-I-E and I'm chatting with you from Washington, DC.

Joy Pierce 00:26 Wonderful. And do I have your permission to record this interview?

Anne Bouie 00:30 Yes, you do.

Joy Pierce 00:32 Awesome. So can you tell me a little bit about where you were born and when?

Anne Bouie 00:38 Sure. I was born in Birmingham, Alabama, and spent a few years there before my family moved to Atlanta.

Joy Pierce 00:48 Okay. Can you tell me a little bit about your parents, their names and occupations?

Anne Bouie 00:54 Sure. My mother's name was Anna Laurie. And she's the youngest of 10 children born to Willie and Nicey Gaynor in Jackson County, Florida, Marietta Florida. My father was born in Easley, Georgia, another small town in and they met on the train on the way to Atlanta.

Joy Pierce 01:25 Wonderful. Um, can you tell me a little bit about your family background? You said all of your family lived in the south.

Anne Bouie 01:34

3 My nuclear family? Yes, on both sides of my nuclear family. My mother was the youngest of a farmer. My grandfather was a farmer and his great grandfather was the land was deeded to my great grandfather, great grandfather, yes, who received the land upon being freed from enslavement. And that land is still in the family today. And my mother's father farmed it. And he sent his daughters to school so that they wouldn't have to serve as domestics and he had his sons working the land. My father came from a very small town, and his mother did day work, as they called it. And his father was ill and confined. So but they were both, as I said, they're both origins are of the earth and of rural people.

Joy Pierce 02:44 That's amazing. And can you tell me a little bit about your childhood and growing up there?

Anne Bouie 02:51 Sure. I'm one of those families that--or one of those people that eventually has to share with you all of my entire life simply to tell you where I'm from. Because we were in Atlanta for a minute. My I believe my mother said my father had a photography gig there or something. But we moved back to Atlanta, and we went to school in Atlanta and lived there. My mother was familiar with Atlanta, she left home from boarding school. As a student at Nursing at Grady college--at Grady Hospital, which was at the time, still may be one of the premier hospitals for training black medical professionals. And so she was there and getting ready to graduate. Marriage to my father interrupted that. He went to the Korean he served in the Korean War and came back and was able to enroll at Morris Brown College and served as a tax accountant with H&R Block for 35 years. My childhood was spent in Atlanta, my brother and I were city kids. And the first time I saw the earth and saw the country really was when we visited my grandmother, and my cousins over the summer. Being a city kid, I was amazed at the land and saw acres and acres and acres and acres of crops and a big old barn and of course when you're a little child, it looks huge. It looks absolutely huge. But it was there that I got introduced to the earth and to the land and I really resonated with it and loved it all there. Even though Atlanta is a green and was at the time a really Green City--trees and lots and parks and little streams going through the city, at least in the area where we lived. But the country is in altogether different thing. So I love the time in the country. Although we were there in the summertime in early harvest time. So it was quite a bit of work going on, we moved around a great deal. When my mother remarried, we became an Air Force, brat family, an Air Force family, which meant a great deal of moving around. So I actually have been to school in Florida, Georgia,

4 Kansas, and Pennsylvania by the time I was in fourth grade, so that we moved around a great deal. And some of that was fun, and some of it was, as would be expected.

Joy Pierce 05:44 That's so interesting. So what was it like, constantly moving like that for you?

Anne Bouie 05:51 Well, as I've thought about it, over the years, the upsides to it, as I'm sure most Air Force brats would say, army brat, whomever would say that you get to see a lot of different places and a lot of different people. And for me, that meant seeing lots of difference. And at the same time, there's similar things go on at every place. And they're similar people at every place and the thing that it taught me was the ability to go into situations and discern who was friend who was foe, get a sense of the lay of the land, get a sense of what being the new kid on the block meant over and over again. So you got pretty good at being the new kid on the block. The positive thing about that is obviously, your discernment skills are very finely honed, the thing that can become a handicap is you really don't have the opportunity to learn how to develop relationships outside of your family with people over time. Because you know, you're not going to be there very long. And so making connections to people, for example, I can remember friends, even to this day, in every place I lived, that I lost contact with as we moved around as children. And I can also remember, people who did the new kid on the block thing with me everywhere we lived. The positive--you get if you want to, you get kind of a cosmopolitan view of having simply been around a lot of different places, that puts some kind of sheen on people or some kind of mark on people whether they want it to or not. And if you're conscious of it, and intentional about it as an adult reflecting on it, then it really does help understand why a person can flit in and out of so many different arenas and maintain some kind of sense of self.

Joy Pierce 08:09 Absolutely. That's so interesting to me, sort of the adaptability that comes with that sort of constant change.

Anne Bouie 08:18 Yeah, some people would snidely call it becoming a chameleon and others would call it adaptability and flexibility, depending on how--the extent I guess to which people actually lose themselves in the process of becoming whoever they need to become, at a certain point, versus being adaptable to different situations.

5 Joy Pierce 08:42 Mm hmm.

Anne Bouie 08:43 Mm hmm.

Joy Pierce 08:44 Can you tell me a little bit about school as a child, if you had any favorite teachers or subjects growing up?

Anne Bouie 08:51 As a child, school was obviously fun, in some ways, and obviously challenging in other ways. I went to school at a time when teachers were fairly rigorous and had very high expectations of their students and really did not care about too much except you didn't factor in so many things that are supposed to have meaning today about whether or not children could learn or not. And I remember specifically, the thing I remember most about schooling in the south was, how rigorous the teachers were and how merciless they were. In terms of you learning. That is what I remember most about my childhood. teachers in the south I can still remember of course, I can remember my second grade teacher Mrs. Davis, or her son and her son had a crush on me. But the thing that I remember most is the rigor and the intensity of the extent to which they were very serious about teaching you To the extent, for example, that when we moved from Atlanta to Pennsylvania, to Kansas, and to Pennsylvania in particular, that math, which is not one of my strong suits, I was actually ahead of kids in Pennsylvania in math coming from the south, and so my experience is that Southern schools in spite of having fewer resources, and having buildings that were not as new and well, furbish, quote, unquote, as other schools, still, the still created environment and taught children and taught them very well. Plus, there was a sense of nurture, that I remember, in southern schools. As I was sharing with you the other day that my principal, Mr. Brown, every Friday took a small group of us who were brownies precursor to Girl Scouts, to the bank every Friday, and we deposit our little pennies in the he would line us up and walk us in there and the bank, people would say, "Hello, how are you?" and he would beam and all of this and dare us not to act properly. And we've put our little pennies in the bank, and he'd walk us back to the school. Sometimes we got an ice cream, but he did that every Friday with us. And I really missed that when I left that school. And it's an indication to me of the way that that Southern adults, nurtured their kids and, and tried to create and did create a sense of self in them in the face of very, very stringent hostility, actually from the larger community.

6 09:07 And they did it, they did a good job with that, in my experience of sheltering us as much as possible from the rigors of Southern life for African Americans when they're encountering the larger society there. I think I was sharing with you that I didn't, there was a time in southern communities, you could literally go from womb to tomb and not deal with anybody outside the black community. And the first white teacher that I had actually what I was in Kansas, on military base at Salina, Kansas. And I still remember the principal, Mr. Bowman, who was a really very fine and excellent principal and person. And I mentioned that I don't remember the chats he had; I don't remember a lot of what we did. I simply remember energetically, he was a good guy. And he's an example of what Maya Angelou says, when people might not remember what you say, but they will always remember how you made them feel. And I obviously still have warm feelings toward him. When we hit Pennsylvania is when the reality of encountering white people on a regular basis, people outside community basis started to sink in and sort of hit because it's like, "Oh, dear. These people really don't think I'm very smart," or "Oh dear, these people think things of me that are not true."

13:34 And my mother having been fairly sheltered herself, all of her life seriously sheltered. Because I remember my uncle, Willie, her elder brother, telling her that he that his father, my grandfather told him it was his job, to go to the train station and pick my mother up from boarding school and get her back home that that was his job to do. And so he would be waiting for her at the train station. And that kind of protective energy that many Southern families were able to, and communities were able to give their children fortified them when they were growing up and created a sense of protection around them that was obviously quite dearly needed. And obviously, something to counter the press of living in the south living, in the north, living any place actually. I enjoyed school and found it a place of repose actually from having to move. The one thing that would be consistent is you go to a school, you get some books and you get a teacher and you start doing homework, regardless of where you are. That is a consistent thing. And so that schooling I guess became a staple of how I defined... I don't know, some kind of structure and routine because you have structure and routine, of course at home, but you're always moving. Your environment of always moving means that you do indeed come--I can see just listening here, that's probably why I enjoyed school so much because it was a place of routine, in a sense of routine, you knew it was going to happen, you knew was going to be expected of you, regardless of where you went. And that was, I guess, in looking at it a part of why I stayed in school so long. And why the

7 structure of school really didn't bother me that much, because you need some kind of structure. Even outside of your home, you need some kind of structure and consistency course your home provides it, but you have to leave your house sooner or later and encounter the real world.

15:55 When I came to California, I attended one school it was predominantly black, and I had Mrs. Haywood who was my fifth grade teacher, who really, really, really encouraged ideas and encouraged thinking and I'd go to or with any kind of idea. She said, "Yeah, go for it." And she would supply me with equipment, and with books and all sorts of thing outside of the encyclopedias and stuff that I had at home to do all this work. And she was very excited about it. And obviously, to have friends from there to this day, from that encounter in Riverside when we got to California. And then I went to another school, because we moved once again when I was in California. And that teacher was kind of the opposite of Mrs. Haywood, she really did not have very high expectations for any of her students, we were all black and Latino, she didn't have high expectations for any of us. In fact, she very well communicated that she thought we had a certain place or location, and it was her job to keep us there. And to... not ever think that we could move or do any better than that. So her energy towards her students was she'd say things like, "You're going someplace and I don't want you to act like you don't know how to act." And it's different from when your parents say, "Don't forget who raised you. And don't forget how you were raised." It's creating some kind of expectation for you when you go someplace, was really, really, really about don't embarrass me in the sense of who you are. And she, I remember quite clearly taking ideas to her. And, as I did with Mrs. Haywood and her simply dismissing them, dismissing the ideas and really making it very clear that I didn't know how to act. She was the one who, when I transferred to junior high school, at the time, they had an overt tracking system. Today, the tracking system is a lot more subtle, but they had an overt tracking system of x, y, z and double x, and she put me in y classes. And I remember being in those classes, and I still remember the teacher, Mrs. Queenie Kales, who at the end of um, I guess it had to be ninth grade said, "Now Anne next year, I'm putting you in x classes, and I expect you to act accordingly." And I really didn't know what she was talking about until I got there in the x classes and saw. I said, "Oh, this is what she's talking about," being the only little black child in there.

18:53 Again, the teacher saying things like I used the word ambivalent in a paper. And she called me to the front of the room and said, "What

8 does this word mean?" And I told her because my mother was a psych nurse. So of course, I knew what the word ambivalent meant. But she swore that I didn't and insisted that I write the paper over again. So she was one of the people that created a sense of "How dare you?" with me, and on the other hand, she's countered with people like Mrs. Galbreak, who would work us to death and say, "This is what I want you to do." And we did it. And when I told her it was so much work, she just said, "Yes, it is go do it." And other teachers there who did that. So all kids encounter teachers who they don't like and who don't like them. I personally believe if you have more than three kids, you don't like one of them, but you love them and you do what you're supposed to do with them and for them. And but in the case of African American students, case of girls, in case of poor, white students, whoever is on the bottom of the rung, quote unquote, it is very important, and can almost be life defining, the people that they run into or the people that make the biggest impact on them and whether or not they run into any advocates along the way. Because I used to reflect on it even then that, why was I in all of these classes and none of my friends were when I knew that most of my friends were as smart as I was supposed to be labeled as and were just as competent but none of them were in these classes. And that always disturbed me, because why is that? And you certainly can't make it into well, because I'm special and I'm different. That's not the case. The case is a combination of any number of factors that landed you there and did not land other people there. And one can take that to mean that you think you're somebody or something else and another way to approach it is to be grateful and to be appreciative of that and understand that in many ways, it's got it got nothing to do with you personally. It does, and it doesn't.

21:18 And that's one of the things I've learned from very early on that intelligence and creativity and humor and all that it's sort of like this song that Gil Scott Heron thing some people don't ever land in a place where they get to grow, they don't get a chance to grow. And so when people do get a chance to grow or land in some place where they do get a chance to grow, it's very humorous to me when they really do start to think that it's all about them and what they did and what they accomplished and how they did it for themselves and nobody helped them. That simply is not true. That is not true. In my experience, if it hadn't been for some people along the way, I wouldn't have made it into--Queenie Kales was a deciding factor. She is the one--Mrs. Cooter decided I should go into y classes which are dead end, academically. Queenie Kales three years later said, "I'm going to put you in this class." So that any number of the people along the way make a profound difference in how the capabilities of anyone get nurtured

9 and deployed. So my schooling in high school--shared with you the gamut from Mrs. Lawson to Mrs. Golbreck into Mr. Shannon, had a hard time with the geometry, I took a class from the same book in the same teacher for three years in order to get a passing grade in it, because I had a very hard time with it. And Mr. Peterson never made fun of me or never did anything, said, "Okay Anne let's get at it again." And so those experiences in school are making or breaking a difference. And that is one reason that when I became an educator, that's part of the reason that I did because most students are not unwilling to learn. They are simply unmotivated to learn, and I would defy anybody who goes someplace five days a week, for seven hours a day and runs into people thinking that they don't have home training or that they're not capable of learning because of their skin color or the hue of their skin color, or where they live and managed to continue to want to learn quote, unquote.

Joy Pierce 23:50 Absolutely. So can you tell me a little bit about your journey from high school through college and becoming an educator?

Anne Bouie 23:59 Sure, um, we landed in Riverside when I was in the fifth grade. And at the time, Riverside was a sleepy little town that had more orange groves than people probably. Yeah, really nice place to grow up in but not a good place to have a lot of different kinds of experiences in and when I graduated from high school, like a lot of us, I went to Riverside City College and was taking classes there. And there too, I ran into the extremes of a teacher who simply did not think I could write and another one who, as I shared with you, whose assignment was go watch the film, "Cool Hand Luke" and come back and write on all the symbolism that is in the film, which was a mind blowing experience. And I really remember that film and that assignment to this day because it opened up another set of neuron tracks in terms of looking at the world and studying. At the time that I was in junior college, the Watts Riots broke out. And one of the responses in California was the creation of the Educational Opportunity Program. And that experience reinforced my realization of the disparities and the nature and the implications of a kid's packaging as considering the opportunities that they might have access to. Because the Educational Opportunity Program came as a direct result of policy and programmatic direct response to the inequalities that were brought to light as a result of that urban rebellion. And yet the people who were out there dying and confronting the tear gas and all of that, their children, by and large, did not wind up at UC Riverside and certainly did not wind up graduating from UC Riverside, it was African American, and Latino kids whose parents were already--who were already placed, who had

10 already been to junior college, who would already had some economic and social currency, if you will, to be in a position to take advantage of that. And the few kids that did come from the urban arena, from LA and San Francisco, and places that the resources were not as well allocated, had a very hard time and many of them didn't make it. And so I am one of the people who benefited from the sacrifice and suffering. People in my own lifetime--I don't have to go back to enslavement to talk about benefiting from the trials of others. In my own lifetime, as a young adult, becoming a young adult, I saw that. I wasn't out there in those streets but I was one of the ones who got the benefit of that program and of other programs. And there too.

27:18 And the other factor is that is while those programs might have helped people like me get in the door, they certainly did not ensure that I would get out with the paper so that a lot of times people talk about African Americans and others taking the place of other people, the whole affirmative action thing. And my experience and observation of that is the affirmative action and EOP program and other programs like that might have gotten you in the door. But in some ways, they actually were a hindrance in you getting out because you went in there with people assuming that you did not belong there and treating you accordingly. And so you had to work very hard, if you will, to demonstrate the fact that look, I did earn this and it just so happened that the door opened, it's not anything to do with the fact that I came in here unprepared, or that I came in here unable to learn how to get prepared, learn how to make it and do well there. And so on both sides that really shaped my views a lot. I really have a hard time with people talking about I made it and I and I did it. No, you didn't. (laughs) I have a hard time with people saying that, "Well, you got there and you didn't deserve it." It's like, "Yes, I did. And yes, I do. Because it was earned it was not given to me."

28:39 And most of the programs--we all know that the first year of any grad school program, especially at the PhD level is about weeding people out it really, that is what it's about. They can say yes or no if they want to. But we both know that we all know that. That's really what many, the first year many PhD programs is about. In fact, that's the case with some undergrad programs. I remember a woman telling me she went to Spelman and her professor said, "Look to your left, and then look to your right. And one of those people will not be here when the semester ends." So no one can say that a person got out of the place. And the bottom line is getting in is important. But getting out with what you came for is also important in the EOP program didn't guarantee that and programs that talk with people about ethnicity or

11 race--it doesn't guarantee that they'll get out. And in some ways, the forces make it very rare that you won't get out and that if you do get out, you will have paid for it dearly.

29:47 So that I transferred from when I was at UC Riverside. I was getting ready to graduate and I had another one of those professors on the Mrs. Haywood end who said, “You don't know what you're going to do when you graduate. Fill this out." And it was an application to Stanford to the secondary teacher education program. So I rounded education, in fact, because Mark Loman knew that I did not know what I was going to do, and saw some notion that I might benefit from that program and at least put me in an arena where I would learn a whole new--a whole lot of different things and become exposed to a lot of different things that I had not to been before. And part of the reason that I know that my experiences are not unique, because I, all of us ran into people like Mark Loman. And all of us, I can remember in the tradition of rigor and excellence, and really not caring about a whole lot of other things. I think I told about one of my professors, Dr. Jacqueline Haywood at UC Riverside, who was the first African American professor there and inaugurated the black studies courses there. And I, we all loved her, of course, and we're really glad that she was there. And I remember her calling me into her office. And we were talking, just as I shared with you, just as you and I are talking right now. And she laid a paper that I had submitted to her on the desk. And I knew what it was, it was one of those night before B plus papers, or B minus papers that you submit. And she put the paper on the desk, and she just very quietly asked me, "Now about this paper, do you want to talk about it? Or do you want to do it over?" And that was all there was to that. So that those are the kind of professors I ran into that shaped to me about, "Don't come in here playing and thinking you're going to get over" because they call you out.

31:50 And that has been my tradition with students, I will call them out when--the problem is not misbehavior. The problem is not even trying. And part of the effort issue is because why would you try when somebody is going to put you in a y class anyway? And you look at the work and the work is insulting to your intelligence, which you know, you could but that's where you are, and what do you do? And there are all kinds of ways that kids revolt against being intellectually and psychically insulted. And that is one of the things that they do is just become disengaged, why would I engage with something that daily, daily, daily tried to tell me who I was, and in many ways, that's counter to the message that I get from people who do Love me, and who are supporting me, and who are working in some cases, two and

12 three jobs to get me those three figure tennis shoes that I come with, because they know I want them and who are working?

32:52 So I could go on and on with that. But I won't. In terms of undergrad and graduate experiences and getting through school and that's how I left Riverside after all those years, from fifth grade to UC to graduating from UC Riverside, at Stanford. And at Stanford, in some ways, as I shared with you, I'm really glad that I did not walk into Stanford, understanding the allure and the reputation and the fact of Stanford. I walked in there--It's another school that I'm going to it wasn't until I got there that I realized what people thought of the institution and how highly rated it was, you were transformed into another kind of human beings simply because you attended Stanford, and that too was "Oh really?" to me. So I'm glad I walked in there with that, and wasn't until I actually got into the teacher ed program, and started seeing what the implications of being Stanford were about and looking at, "Well how did you get here?" And looking at the assignments, but I had some fun in that teacher ed program. And I learned a lot in that teacher ed program that has stood me to the rest of this day. And that helped shape me becoming an educator and go into grad school because of some of the things that I learned and I did.

34:22 One of my formative core experiences when I was intern teaching at Burlingame High School, was how much of what I really needed to know I was not taught and in grad school at Stanford University, and I realized--our teacher education program was rated number one or two in the country. And so if I wasn't getting it there, very few people were getting it anywhere else, at least that so-called counted. And one of those things was working with students, especially students of color, because I walked into my African American history class that I was teaching at Burlingame High School, and they welcome to me the same way that we welcome Dr. Hayward UC, Riverside, excuse me. And I walked in there and I asked them per my Stanford training about involving students in learning process, quote, unquote. And I asked them what they wanted to learn in this black history class. And what my students heard, and what many students hear is not, "I'm being open and want you to learn new things." What they heard is, "This woman does not know what she's doing and does not know what she's teaching. Why should I respect her?" Because they came from a place of wanting to know that whoever was in front of them, was competent, and would be able to work with them not whether or not they liked the person, quote, unquote. Initially, liking had nothing to do with it. So I lost that class, even though I was African American.

13 And they liked me quote, unquote. I lost that class. And it was, it's really humorous today because my department chair, Aldo Priviney, who is this really very suave, kind of high school teacher everybody thinks about--camelhair jackets and black turtleneck and loafers kind of teacher. I asked him to come to my class, to help me see whether or not my assessment was correct. And he sat in that class and he said, "Yep, Anne you've lost them. They're gone. You've lost them." And but what he meant from that I had no control of the class.

36:42 And I was, in all likelihood, not going to get control of the class, because it's very difficult to get control of a class, once you've lost them, the best thing to do is not ever to have lost them. Because the work you have to do to reclaim a class that you lost in terms of discipline and attention and creating a learning environment is so, so arduous, that it's all--I can understand why people give up, because it is extremely difficult to reclaim a class whose discipline so forth has gone out the window that you've basically lost control of. And that was so humbling and humiliating that I have never lost a class since then, because I learned a different way of doing things with different kids. On the other hand, I had a class, predominantly white, and it was contemporary problems. And I had different kinds of experiences. Two of my favorite students were John and Peter whom I remember to this day, very wealthy kids. And one day, they came into my class with a jar full of marijuana seeds, because I was young, African American, cool da, da, da, da, da. And I told them, "I would strongly suggest you take those out of my class. And if you do it again, I will call the authorities on you. Because I do know what you look like when you're high, you know, eyes are red, and dilated. And you're coming here, almost as if you're floating. Don't do that again. And in fact, I want to research paper on the street names or drugs and medicinal names of drugs and their uses. And I want footnotes on the paper." And they looked at me quite shocked. And how and, "Who are you?" And I said "Yes, indeed we will. Otherwise, there can be consequences to this." And so looking at my approach in asking kids, "what do they want" versus saying, "Oh, no, no, no, no, no." John and Peter not only turned in excellent papers, they gave me the first edition of a book, I guess they got from one of their homes, Stanley Livingston's "In darkest Africa," one of the first editions of it. And I still have that book to this day.

38:55 I still remember Michael Brown, this little cowboy who put his boots-- took off his boots in my class and put them directly in my walkway to see what I would do. So you ran into all kinds of kids. And I learned a lot from Michael Brown. "Michael, would you please put your boots

14 on? Thank you." And from Little Peter, who had gray hair because his parents expected him to go to Harvard and the child had gray hair in the 10th grade.

Joy Pierce 39:23 Oh my gosh.

Anne Bouie 39:24 Yes, it was horrible! To the two very, very smart kids like Linda Savage who said, "You know, I really like you but they don't think that you can control them. They don't think you can teach them and that's why they're there like that Miss Bouie." And having to regroup with that and understanding that there are different cards, you have to learn how to play. And any school that's going to send you into an urban school if they don't teach you the complete playbook, they're doing you a disservice because it's not that children are uneducated or don't want to learn or behavior problems. As I got out of grad school, and I worked, and I learned even more, that was one pivotal experience losing that class and working with John and Peter.

40:14 When I got to Farwest Laboratories upon graduating from UC Riverside, I worked in a lot of urban projects around educational dissemination and doing different kinds of work. I worked on a project to reduce suspensions in Stockton, California School District, and I had to work with a lot of students and teachers there, that was a very rewarding experience that I was given. And from working at Farwest Laboratory, I moved to another educational project that worked with reducing violence and vandalism at schools. That was another seminal framing experience for me. And it was there that I was able to put my experiences at Burlingame High School into some kind of context, because the program operated in urban schools all over the country, literally North, South, East and West and dead center of the country. And it brought together teams of educators, civic people, police people, teams of--they tried to take this approach of understanding that it was a community issue, not merely a school issue, and invited these teams of people to come to the sessions about how to reduce violence and vandalism in their schools. And it was there that we hired different people to come and make presentations and lead workshops, from mostly local areas, or at least areas surrounding the city in which we were in so that in the Bay Area, we worked with a lot of Bay Area educators and civic people. And I started hearing from the people who were effective, irrespective of packaging, the same song. And that's what really struck me about being effective in urban environments, and why I wanted to become an urban educator, because they were saying, "It can be done. And this is how you do it."

15 And it's very powerful when you hear dapper, trash-talking, junior high school principal from Oakland, saying the same thing, as you see a little straight-laced, proper African American woman to a Down to Earth da, da, da, da, da Southern police person, all saying the same thing about how you are effective within urban schools, how you create rapport, how you raise expectations, how you get kids and communities motivated and get engaged and using their motivation, which they obviously have, in ways that will help them in their lives. That was very, very powerful for me that all these people were saying the same thing. And I learned from them. I listened to them. And I learned from them and talked with them extensively offline about their experiences and how they did it.

43:29 So that when I applied to grad school, first time, I didn't get accepted. And I taught for a year California University at Stanford, San Luis Obispo. And there too, I was one of the first African American professors that they had, and I was in the Ed school and I was teaching urban ed and such. But black students on campus were really thirsty for somebody with their experiences. But I now had Burlingame's experience under my belt. (laughs) And so I was able to know when to yield the carrot and when to yield the stick with students inside and outside of my classes. I learned to sense what they call the "Okey doke" and the obvious--to some people--obvious lies of it all versus the truth of it and learn not to be swayed by the stories. Learn which stories to be swayed by and which stories not, learn to discern when I was getting ready to--For example, this is what I'm trying to share. When I was at Stanford, I was working at Nairobi College in East Palo Alto, and I was teaching and sometimes those were times when there was a lot of community engagement. A couple times my students came in and said they had court dates and they had to go to court. And they need to be excused from class. And so of course, I said, "Oh, okay," I assumed that this--and then somebody called me and, she said, "Anne those are for parking tickets, they aren't for anything civil." And soon I learned that that no, no, no, don't come in here with a court date telling me that you have something real going on, and you've got a parking ticket that you want to take care of. So those kinds of things, a lot of it was so that I was able to really be of real use to people to students, because I was able to carrot and stick them. Whereas before, I was mostly using carrot and care and concern, but without the kind of care and concern that Mrs. Haywood evidenced, for example, or Dr. Mayhew evidenced when I--he is a classic example of carrot and stick both in working with students. And that's what I learned from grad school.

45:59

16 I'm sort of skipping ahead. If I go back to talk about my experiences at Stanford, one of those experiences is, again, under the press of, "Was I here legitimately or was like not there legitimately?" I actually went to the chair of my department and said, you know, "Did I get here-- how much did who I was play into to whether or not I got in here, and he pulled out my class, the GRE scores from my class and said, "Look at--" and he just threw them, he just put them on his desk and said, "Look at these," and I saw my scores, and my scores were, my scores were solid, they were good scores. And that again, reinforced to me that a lot of times people like many who wind up in those doors are not there, because they're getting a favor done. They're there, because a door that was normally closed to people with that kind of packaging all of a sudden opened, but they were more than able to walk in there.

47:04 And on the other hand, there are many who, for whom the door open, and they were not prepared and equipped to be there and when they ran into--but at their schools, for example, I used to run into a lot of students who were A and B students. And I remember a story I read in a newspaper article about this woman, who's a bank vice president working with a high school student at Castleman High School in Oakland, which was really renowned for its athletics and its students spirit, but its academics were quite low. And she had the students who've gotten an A minus on a paper. (phone rings) And the woman looked at the paper--Sorry, the woman looked at the-

Joy Pierce 47:53 You're okay.

Anne Bouie 47:52 paper, and said, to herself, "Am I really going to tell this child the truth about this paper?" And she decided that she would tell the child the truth about the paper, she asked the child, "Do you want me to really edit and tell you about this paper?" And the child saying, "Yes, I do, of course." And the woman took this A minus paper. And by the time she was done with it, the paper was essentially would have been about a D, in a class that had high expectations, it would have been equivalent to a D. And so many times, the standards are lowered, and the grades are raised. And kids come out thinking that they really know something A or B, or C and land at some place like UC Berkeley, or Cal State, or any place and find out that the work that they've been told was an A was really C if not actually failing work. And that is, those are sort of the two ends of the continuum that many students of color face. They're either very well prepared and not thought to be prepared, and were able to enter the place because of doors opening

17 or doors open and the kids were not prepared at all and were sent up like raw meat. So that many times that's where students, all students, but particularly students who have been traditionally underserved and underrepresented fall.

49:22 So going back to Dr. Mayhew, I went to him and said that I'm at the end of my second year and my advisor had not told me about preparing for the proposal, nor about the fact that I needed a master's degree outside of the School of Education to graduate and that that meant another 36 units that I had to pick up and pay for. And that was one of the times I almost quit school. After learning that and after having gotten through that trauma, and decided that I would press on, solely by the grace of God I might add, and the spiritual support I got from a church that I had become a member of. I went to tell him that my situation, and he said, Come back in two weeks. And when I went back in two weeks, he said, "Okay, this is the deal." And he laid out the proposal development guidelines and said, "There are five chapters in a dissertation. This is what each one of them does, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, come back to me in a week with an outline of each of the five chapters." And I was so taken aback that I actually did it. And from then on, he became my major advisor, and he hired me as a TA. And I was working three jobs, counting his at the time working at Nairobi College and working at American Institutes for Research, and with him and taking a full load.

51:01 And he had assigned me to write some kind of policy handbook and I called him one time and I said, "Dr. Mayhew, I'm really got a lot of going on right now. Can I get an extension on this assignment from the deadline?" He said, "No." And pretty much goodbye and hung up the phone. (laughs) And so I was sharing with you that the grad school thing is as much about the process as it is about the content of the work. And I don't remember the contents of that policy handbook, per se, nor do I remember in detail some of the assignments that I was given at AIRA to work on. But I do remember that Dr. Mayhew said no. And that meant that I had to get all of that stuff done. All of it done.

51:54 And running into a professor when I finally accepted that I was going to have to do this history thing went into a professor like Kennell Jackson, who would assign you 500 pages of reading this esoteric, African, African American History, names with five and 10 syllables in them and countries from places that you're just trying to get a grip on. And the history of all of this and acting as if that's the only class you

18 had is his 500 pages of reading, and going to a seminar. And hearing that--I missed that seminar. I'm so glad I did. But as I shared with you going to a seminar, and I call my friend to ask her, what did we need to do as a result of it? And she told me the Kennell sent us home. She said, "We were sitting around the table. And we started going through the discussion at the seminar and Kennell just stopped and he said, 'You guys have read. Go home.'" And send them home. And so the press, those are the kinds of things that that stymie people and cause them to give up not so much the work, although the work is obviously arduous, but those are the experiences that stuck with me about the kinds of standards you can hold people to, especially if you know that they're also in your corner.

53:18 As I shared with you about Dr. Mayhew, when I started this internship at University of San Francisco. The prof that I ran into was from UC Berkeley. And he invited me to his home in the Berkeley Hills to discuss the assignment. And it didn't feel right. And I went to Dr. Mayhew and I specifically remember saying, "You never invited me to your house in the Berkeley Hills to discuss anything." And he did his proverbial, "Huh. Get back to me." And sure enough, I got back to him. And the next time I talked to that Professor, we were meeting on UC Berkeley's campus, not in his house in the Berkeley Hills. So that the quintessential thing about being, I believe, a good manager, a good educator is knowing when to hold 'em and when to fold them. And Dr. Mayhew told me no on getting that assignment done. And on the other hand, when I went to him about an untoward approach by a professor, I'm telling you, that man treated me with kid gloves from then on out. (laughs) He treated me with kid gloves. And to this day, obviously, I don't know what Dr. Mayhew said, but obviously he said something. And that man left me alone. So that those are the kinds of people that struck me, the kind that expected the absolute most out of me and almost had no mercy. And at the same time would take anybody who tried to harm you to the mat.

54:46 So those are lessons--this little trail as I look back on things that taught me about how to be and help me examine how I was treated and what helped me get what enabled me to keep moving along, aside from the familial things, and my mother who had just--if you come home with A's and B's and you get a C or D in something, that's what gets emphasis, not the A's and the B's, what gets emphasis is, "What about this, and dah, dah, dah, dah, dah on that." And so between those two streams of environment, I distilled out of it if you're going to jack somebody up or be untoward, with somebody about something they didn't do, you have to have their backs. And I had the same

19 experience with my mother, going all the way back to junior high school, I was in the teacher's classroom. And she was very mean to me, and had me standing out in the hallway and had me in the back of the room when I didn't have my glasses, and sent me to the dean's office. And the dean told me to come back the next morning because she was going to talk to me, and I went home and told my mother about it. And my mother went to the school with me. And sure enough that Dean and my teacher in there waiting for me to I guess, send me into my next incarnation. And my mother took them to task. And she was a classic example of you do not want to mess with an African American woman about her child. You don't want to do that. And I witnessed my mother put both of those women in their seats. And there too I got left alone after that. So I've learned all these lessons about observing things. And as I shared with you, when I got out of grad school, and got my dissertation done, and Dr. Mayhew was my chair, and he signed off on it. And you can't ask for anything better than for Louis D. Mayhew to sign off on your dissertation, that is a big deal and it meant a great deal to me.

57:02 And going to work at those places where I got a chance to start interacting with young people and when I started getting a chance to having somebody concretize and almost present a structure and almost a theory of how you work with students who are disengaged, and so called unengaged and who give off the appearance that they don't want to learn helped me when I finally left both of those jobs. I got an opportunity to start an after school enrichment program that was written by the Northern California Council of Black Professional Engineers. And it was housed at a large urban church in East Oakland Allen Temple Baptist Church. And that program dealt with kids, grades seven through nine who were underachievers, and who were either failing in college prep classes or wasting away in general math classes. And our task was to introduce them to sciences and math and to make sure that when they left, if they came in, in seventh grade, when they left us, as going into school as sophomores that they were enrolled in geometry and in biology, which according to California state standards, that's where you're supposed to be. In 10th grade, you're in geometry and you're in biology, and that sets you up for the rest of the track. And we all know that from ninth grade on, that's when it starts and if you aren't on that track, it's very, very difficult for you to get to get on it, if you're not on it by ninth grade.

58:50 And so our students were the kinds that would come in with their homework folded up in little pieces of paper, lots of them in their backpack, no date, no class description, folded up on these little grimy

20 pieces of paper, and walk in and say, "And?" about all of this. And it was our task to take these bright kids who were very disengaged from school, and to, if you will, help them transmute into kids who would feel comfortable in biology and geometry in 10th grade. And this was an opportunity for me to put into practice and see for myself whether or not I could do what all of these people that I had learned from in the violence and vandalism project and from my own personal experiences with who got me to work and who didn't and who took care of me and looked after me and who didn't, put them into practice.

59:52 We worked with 50 to 80 junior high school kids, four days a week, two hours a day after school and the staff were college students who were math and science majors and/or who wanted to become teachers. And by that time, I had learned enough about process to understand thoroughly. And we've already documented the fact that math is not my strong subject. So that I told them, "These are the tools you need to develop really good learning activities." Creative, bright kids who needed to understand what they need--to develop learning experiences that would help kids who were unmotivated, quote, unquote, and who were certainly performing below their ability, and who citizenship you see--at that level one of the things I learned, it's not the academic grades that I want to focus on, it's the citizenship grades that are the teller. And if your citizenship grades are poor, that tells me something right there, that because all you have to do is go to class and shut up and get a decent grade for citizenship. Now, if you are doing something to get less than a decent grade for citizenship, that tells me right that you are nowhere near doing any academics at all. That's not where your attention. So the first thing is, let's get your attention to academics, and then the ability, and the mindset will kick in. So we indeed did that.

1:01:24 I taught the project interface staff (sigh) the processes of teaching, how you teach how you set up, what you do on the first day, what you do in the first week, how you lay out the groundwork, how do you get a sense of establishing leadership in the classroom without coming off as a neo-Nazi? How do you do the nurture without coming off as an earth mother who has no damns whatsoever, and no boundaries whatsoever? How do you design learning experiences and what do you need--content to do learning experiences, so I was a process person, and they were the content people. And in order to develop good content, the tools that I gave them more the California State Standards for math and science, which were among the best in the nation. Massachusetts State Standards, were, I understand, the very

21 best. California State science standards were just a beautiful work of art. And they also produced documents about what classes needed to be taken at each grade level to assure college entrance, what would be in those classes, and what they needed to know year by year. And I shared with the college students and the staff, you all have been through this but these are the standards. This is what they have to know, this is what they should have known. I need you to develop learning experiences that cover what they should have known and that they don't know, what they're doing now and what they will run into. And I got taught by people not to give people lessons, Robert Fullilove at UC Berkeley shared what you want to do, or you want to do these worksheets, and you have students develop worksheets and learning activities that address all three of those different points in the learning process.

1:02:40 And you develop--you don't call yourself a tutor. You don't call it remedial education. We never even use the word tutor. We never used any of those words that have come to mean that you're stupid and you need help. We never did one on one work, we always did work in small groups, because for some cultures in some communities, that is the way. You don't ever do anything alone, you always do things in a small group, or with a group of people. Even if somebody is braiding your hair and it's you and the person braiding your hair, there are always other people around talking and commenting in this kind of thing. So that working with a person one on one whose context and background, talk about working in a small group and getting things done in that way is problematic in many ways. That's not the way they best work. The same thing with you know, used to observe a lot of kids and they'd sit up and move their arms and do all this kind of stuff in order to get ready to work. And a lot of times people think they're fidgeting and all of that when there's a formal name for that stage setting with kids and some kids do that. As much as I don't like it. Some kids can do work well with music in the background. So there were things that they needed to learn about how kids work and who we were working with that made for a difference.

1:04:47 And we at that project for over nine years turned out kids every year 66 to 75% of our students tested higher on the California test of comprehensive basic skills, certainly than the district as a whole and oftentimes from the schools that scored the highest in the district, our kids were there or beating them on this test. And it taught me a couple of things that you do not need to teach to the test. And neither teachers nor students need to be terrified of the test, you can teach kids in such a way that they will be able to walk in there and take the

22 test without you teaching it to them or without you falling out and connipting and devoting a whole week to taking the test and whole year of designing lessons that are tests related versus learning related to students. And we documented that we had to go get the stats from the open research department, because I used to tell our students, "Look, people who fund us and who pay your salary and my salary, do not care that we like little black children, they do not care. And they don't care about a little person saying that I came here and the people really liked me and I felt good and I learned a lot." They want to see some bottom line results, as in from 55th percentile to 75th, or to 80th percentile. That's what they want to see.

1:06:18 And that's what we're going to deliver, and they delivered it. And I was so proud of them. And so proud of the work because we were working in a context that large church where people would see-- parents felt comfortable coming there, they felt comfortable sending their kids there, because it was base in the community. And they felt that they were a part of it. We did things to incorporate the fact that parents were not a problem, and that they were not seen as uninvolved and uncaring. We thoroughly understood that given the way we were outlining the work, that students would not do it. They simply would buck and not do it and rebel if we did not have the support of the adults that they respected in our corner. It was their parents and their aunts and their older brothers and sisters, excuse me (clearing throat), that said, "All right, we hear you. And you better go in there and act like we taught you how to act. You better go in there and listen to those people and do what they say." That's how we got our students initially. They liked the fellowship, they liked being around with other kids, they liked meeting kids from all over the city. They liked their study group leaders, excuse me (clearing throat), the college students. They didn't necessarily start out liking the work. And they didn't necessarily think that they could do it or that they wanted to do it. The reason we got traction is because from day one, we got the endorsement of the people that they listened to and respect. And that was their parents, their grandparents their aunt, their older brother, or somebody who said, "You go in there and you do what she says do and you listen to those people and you do it."

1:08:15 And so when I would ask them, we got to have a series of consequences for when behavior problems come up. And I'd invite them to give me some input because that's what Stanford says you're supposed to do. You're supposed to get student interest in all of this and that which is true. And I said, "So if something goes wrong, I want to call your parents the first time you do." They said, "Oh, no, no, no,

23 no, give us a chance at least give us one chance to do it, we probably need two chances to do it." And so I said, "Okay, I won't call them the first time. Can we compromise on the second time that something goes awry, I call your parents?" Because you're working with junior high school kids, and they can space out because they got the phone call from whomever they have a crush on, or they didn't get the phone call, or they just got some new shoes, for whatever reason they space and they're not completely well, so "Okay, I'll talk with you the first time about the second time, we will call home. And we've already established with your parents because we brought your parents there. And we've told them what we're doing. And we told them why we're doing it. And we told them who you're working with. And our orientation was really thorough about this is you're working with. And this is what we want to do. And this is where we want to come out. And this is why." So that we called we didn't get parents not wanting to work with us or believing their child versus believing us quote unquote, because we had already laid the groundwork that we are in this together and that I realize I need you otherwise I simply will not be able to do what I need to do. So we did that.

1:09:54 And we were successful. And I did that for 10 years and then I left to start consulting to urban schools on my own based on my own experiences, not what I had read, not what I had seen on TV, but what I knew personally could turn the corner. You were going to say something?

Joy Pierce 1:10:14 I was just going to say what you're talking about, as far as you know, community engagement and support. My mom is also a teacher. And I think that that's something that we talk about all the time. So it's, it's kind of interesting to hear that it's been a longer and more pervasive issue than even we realized in our community. So I appreciate that perspective.

Anne Bouie 1:10:34 Well, thank you. No, of course, it is it with when schools are seen as adversarial in institutions, one thing I had to learn in school is seen as an adversarial institution. And it's not that poor or their parents don't like education or don't want, and don't value education. It's not education, it's the educators that they don't like.

Joy Pierce 1:10:57 Mm Hmm.

Anne Bouie 1:10:57

24 And problem where the dissonance is, it's not education in of itself. It's the way that they are treated and perceived when they come to school, it's almost assumed, and no child is going to respect you, when they're standing there and watch you treat the person that they love and care about, as if they don't know how to do anything. Or as if they are not good parents and need to be taught, no child is going to--they have to choose, they have to choose, it's clear who they're going to choose without a doubt. And what we did is make--there's not a choice here, we are all on the same team. And we know that your mother--I ride the metro, I see women and men, eyes blurred over working two and three jobs trying to get things so don't tell me your definition of parental involvement is the definition that is necessary in order for you to get buy in for students. These women are already taking their kids to the zoo, they're already buying those books at dollar stores for kids to read. They're already sending--I've seen him in the nail salons. I don't know what nail salons that some people go to. But some of the ones that I go to the women are in there and they cool the kid out with a book, those little cheap dollar store books, they cool him out with books. "Go read the book."

1:12:11 So I know, you see them at the zoo. So that I know that what they are concerned about is educating their children just like the schools are it's just the schools do not see them as partners, as equal partners with something to say, and really do not understand that there is an entire community around those children and around those women, irrespective of the fact that they're poor, that enables them, that prepares their kid to go to school to be able to learn if that's the assumption rather than they don't want to learn and their parents are not involved and how can we get their parents involved? That's not the problem. The problem is working with what you have where people are, they don't want to come to school, for you to teach them to teach their kids how to read, then fine, what you do is you say okay, you don't have to take him to the zoo, you don't have to take him to the Grand Canyon, you don't have to do any of this. What are you doing and where can we work with because we thoroughly understand that you love your children and that you want the best for them, and we want the best for them to. And what we do to contribute to that is this, what you do is that and all we need is for you to tell them to come in here and listen to us and cooperate with us.

1:13:25 And we can probably do something with at least 80% of them. Because they're that 5% on either end, five to 10% on either end. There's 10% of the kids will be orphaned, all their families shot dead right in front of them, they have to walk across the Sahara Desert

25 barefoot with no water for six months, and they come out someplace and then they make it. There the other 10% that they do need the authorities and they are beyond the pale for many of us and are certainly not needing of some kind of outside--they're rough. The other 80% they're in the middle, they can be had, they can be had. There's no problem with that 80% being had. And the day that, with all due respect to all the work and the energy and the money, it is possible to turn out 75 to 80% of them at or above grade level. I know that for a fact.

1:14:26 So that was a lot of my orientation, to work. And as I shared with you, I worked as a consultant to urban schools all around the country. Just as that project had taught me to work all around the country to see that the needs were basically the same, the concerns are basically the same. How do we get them and their parents to come to the party? How do we get them motivated, quote, unquote, to learn? And the key of it is they don't need pity. They need a challenge. They need respect that they are smart. They need to respect that we know you love your children, and that we know that you care about them and that you do want to get education. We will get out of your way and stop saying things about you, that poverty is the problem. Being poor is not an obstacle to being taught. Otherwise, all these children all over the world that are learning under bridges and having to use the dirt and a stick to write on wouldn't learn if poverty were the problem. Poverty's not the problem that's being poor is not a problem. And I used to tell my staff, "Look, if they're poor, they need more homework. If they're living under a bridge, they need more homework, not less, to do that," and that's sort of a segwayed into my artwork, because I've always seen myself as somebody who understands the hidden transcript with why things aren't going well.

1:15:58 And in 2006--2003, actually, my yellow brick road kind of ran out with my consulting. It just wasn't happening. It wasn't happening, I couldn't get contracts at all. And I understand some of why that was the case. And is the case even, but the bottom line is the doors weren't opening. And the other bottom line is I had segwayed, into the art scene here in DC. And I was at a black artist of DC meeting at Graham's gallery over in Northeast. And they said that they were getting ready to mount a show called "Found" and it was based on found objects. And I said, "Well, I have this piece of wood that I brought from California" because I've gathered found objects and botanicals for years way before I even thought about doing art. And they said, "Well put it in," and I got the help to fabricate the piece of work, I put it in and it sold.

26 1:17:02 And all of a sudden all these art doors start opening while the education doors were staying shut. The art doors are opening, opening, opening and I had a neighbor, a friend who was in Wharton MBA and one of the most dry, pedantic souls you can ever meet, certainly not you would think spiritually motivated at all or oriented at all. He said, "Well, Anne if the art doors are the ones that are opening, and the other doors are not you probably want to walk through the open doors."

Joy Pierce 1:17:35 (laughs)

Anne Bouie 1:17:37 And, and he said in such a "duh" way that I stopped bemoaning what was I was being confronted with and start getting into it. And that piece of work sold and I've never looked back since that piece of work was about using found objects and botanicals, which were something that I've been always enamored with. And my style of work is rooted in a southern sensibility of using what you have, of seeing the beauty in earth and things and seeing the beauty and the utility of things that people have cast aside and who don't want. And understanding that art is more than simply art for art's sake, that in my tradition, at least, beautiful utilitarian things have been made beautiful and have a certain aesthetic value, and that art is a functional aspect of living and of orientation. It's not merely something that's aesthetically pleasing, and it stops in that or it's not simply art for art's sake. It's about functionality and art serves a specific role in the culture and the context from which I spring. And that's the tradition and its sense of aesthetics that I've carried into my work. The other sense of aesthetics is the realization that pre contact cultures, their orientation to the earth, to spirituality, to the cosmos, and a relationships with the earth and other people. And the way in which they use art as a part of their life experience, to teach, to educate, to frame, to present is something that I really value. And those are the two things that emanate from that rest on my art, which brings you brings us to the noose. (chuckles)

Joy Pierce 1:19:39 Absolutely.

Anne Bouie 1:19:40 Yeah, that's what brings us to the, to the noose and to why I am still kind of amazed at the response to that and what it meant. It was a-- what's the word I want--a lightning rod or trigger for all different

27 kinds of reactions and responses. And I put that--it was a vine. It's a kudzu vine, that a friend and I went to some woman's house in Maryland, rural Maryland, because she had found she had read that this woman had all these different kinds of vines on her yard. And yeah, she'd be happy to let us come down there and have some. And that's what we did. And when I saw that vine that was in front of my house, when I saw it, I said, "Oh, we know what this is right here." And I had it at home, there were three of them. I've had him at home, I had them at home for a long time. And then when George Floyd was murdered, was murdered, executed publicly. And the marches started, I was amazed at that response to his murder, since it's nothing really new, to be vulgar about it.

1:21:08 And the marches and the protest and the energy around it, and the things that people were doing individually, collectively, I wanted to be a part of because I do not March, that's a period, dot. I do not do crowds, I do not do marches, I am never any place, as I shared with you, that I do not see and have access to a direct way out. I want to see the exit sign and I want to be able to get to it. Therefore I don't do marching. I don't do crowds. But I wanted to express my support. And my support was putting out that noose. And what that meant to me and how it was interpreted and how it was experienced has been really edifying to me in terms of the response to it. Because here in Columbia Heights, there was a serious brouhaha around here for a couple of weeks on Next Door Columbia Heights quote unquote, that people were responding to it. And I got the gamut of responses to it, most of which were horrified and appalled. And "this has no place in our community." And "I hope for the day when this doesn't come to be" and on and on and on.

1:22:18 So it's given me that art, that particular piece of work is perhaps, excuse me, a more pointed or definitive, definite piece of work that addresses the themes that I've been addressing ever since I've been engaged in this journey in art and history, which is that there is a subtext to American history, to the African American experience that we don't deal with. And that does not serve the--what's the word I want--does not serve the public mythology and public interpretation of history. And therefore, that hidden transcript is not one that is articulated, and is not one that African Americans can draw from, in particular, not only African Americans, but anybody who's been on the downside of things, has a history that is not drawn upon and is not acknowledged and that noose in my mind's eye is part of the subtext of the African American response to our experience that is not addressed, is not dealt with. Because that noose means to me

28 something very different than how it was interpreted, even by a lot of African Americans. And there's another way to get at that story, or there's something else that you could have said, and that there are nicer ways to talk about it than that was a lot. "And I've lived in this community for 33 years, and I've never seen anything like that. And it's horrifying to me to see it. And did somebody do that to you? Are you okay? Are you being threatened yourself in some way or another?" And I know that the noose is a trigger. If I saw a noose, running around and I didn't understand it, I'd probably feel the same way. Depends on who was hanging it and why they were hanging it. But that was a vine as one person said, "Well, it's not really a noose, it's just a vine. It's not a noose tie knot and it's not rope. It's just tied together with some yarn or something. It's not really a slip knot for a noose," and on and on and on.

1:24:45 But the noose, that that piece of vine, and what it represented, it's sort of like the spear point to what my art and my historical work are about which is the resistance on any number of levels to enslavement into oppression and the culture of opposition to enslavement and oppression that developed during enslavement by people who were enslaved. And what got them through. Everyone is quite, quite, quite, quite aware more than aware of the horrors that they experienced and of the terror that was experienced so many times and just the, the need to deal with that. There is another side to that. The "however" is how did they get over with their souls intact? How did they get through and were not destroyed by that.

1:25:49 And that is what I'm interested in that yes, and I'm not diminishing at all, because as I shared with one person I have personal experiences, members of my family have personally witnessed and or experienced and were present, when events that that news represents occurred in their lives, personally, that and these are not ancestors. These were my Uncle Willie and his peers. So this, this happened, not in the 18th, 17th, 16th, even 19th centuries, this is contemporary for all intents and purposes. So don't tell me that I'm not aware of what that means because my family members and I are aware of what that means. And in fact, one time I asked my favorite uncle who was essentially a surrogate father, who had never said, a coarse, word to me in my entire life. I tried to probe him about the history of Jackson County, and he went from zero to 60 on me, and I had never experienced him doing that before and I was taken aback. I think my mouth dropped open for him to talk with me like that, because he had never, ever. And it took me a while to know and understand why he went there. And yet, I look at that man, he raised seven kids, he took care of the

29 land that his grandfather, my great grandfather was deeded that land is still in the family today. He had a marvelous sense of humor. He could make you laugh until your stomach hurt. He was a wise man. And he himself faced or experienced or saw and witnessed some of the most horrific things that have been a part of the African American experience in this country.

1:27:47 So the public myth of African Americans and our response to enslavement and to oppression are--we are articulated as having been destroyed by enslavement. And Daniel Moynihan's treatise of the reasons for the demise, if you will, of the African American community are rooted in enslavement misses the point entirely. The public narrative on enslavement and on black people in this country, and to this day it's based on three faulty premises. The first one is that Africans had no culture and no history and no past of note, they had nothing of that sort. The second is that they were spiritually and religiously savages and heathens who ran around trees and who had no concept or no knowledge of God and needed to be saved. And enslavement was actually a method of saving their souls. And so therefore, it was worth it. And the third one is that we rolled over, that African American is rolled over. And that interpretation, that public narrative are still operative, and obviously, have had a deleterious effect on African Americans and on the entire country because they're simply not true. They're lies. They're just so far beyond the reality of what happened, and how we responded to that and how we got over. There's a spiritual sense, sometimes I look back and I wonder how we got over. And my work is about the "however, yes." And my work is about the "however" and let us focus on the things that enabled us to not merely survive but prevail oppression and enslavement to prevail and come out with not only our humanity intact, but our own skills and wherewithal and minds established, to be able and to want to establish a life for ourselves. And that life had been established beyond the respectability politics of many sectors of the African American community, to make it. So that's what the noose is about. And I guess I can pause there to see if that's helpful or where you want to go from here Joy.

Joy Pierce 1:30:24 Yeah, that was wonderful. That was really powerful. And I think I have yet to hear someone state, sort of the big myth so succinctly with those three points. That was very helpful. So I think my follow up question for all of this is, it's clear that you see the role of art, of your art particularly, in countering that narrative and saying, "No, you know, we have agency and there's been resistance in this sort of thing." Do you think that there's a particular place for art specifically

30 within the Black Lives Matter movement and what's happening right now? Do you see any sort of parallels there? I know you said you don't March but you make your art.

Anne Bouie 1:31:14 Right. Yeah, well, art has served a functional purpose in the African American--well throughout the aesthetics. The aesthetic of art being functional, and as a part of integral part of society, is certainly rooted in African aesthetic and, and a context. But it's also a pre contact context as well any pre contact culture or civilization across space and time. Since came out of mine, art has served as not only ascetically pleasing, but functional. It has had a role in teaching and healing, in defining who people were, telling people the cultural mythology, mythological and cosmological and religious stories about themselves. Art has been a major tool for how that's done. So it's functional and a part of people's lives. One of the things that we often forget is that all the so called African art, all African art that's collected in a Museum, the beautiful masks, the statues, the carvings, the iron work, all of them, those were not merely art to hang. They were functional and they were used by people and by individuals and by groups. And that's why you'll hear a lot of collectors of African art tell you how careful they are about which pieces they select, because some of those pieces are not to be used or displayed in many contexts, because they're simply too powerful, or the uses to which they were used were very, very secret, very, very sacred, and don't need to be in the hands of people who do not understand that. So I have a lot of African art, but I kind of engage with every piece to see even if I don't know the depths to which it was use to have a sense of understanding of it and not only that, whether or not the piece is something that would feel comfortable with me and that I would feel comfortable with. And that it's even appropriate for me to have. And I've encountered pieces of art in museums and in displays and for sale. And that's like, "Oh, no, no, no, no, no, that's a little too--no, no, this one, no."

Joy Pierce 1:33:43 (laughs)

Anne Bouie 1:33:43 "But this one, no." So we don't understand the extent to which art is functional and serves a purpose and is loaded with meaning on any number of levels. That cultural continuity is a part of what my work is in assuming that there had to have been visual cues on the Underground Railroad, there—

Joy Pierce 1:34:03

31 Mm Hmm.

Anne Bouie 1:34:04 And that means that art was a tool of resistance, and was intentionally used as a tool of resistance to enslavement and as a tool of agency, quote, unquote. So that my work builds upon that stream that pre contact cultures had a relationship and an understanding of the earth that is only now just being barely recognized and only because it's absolutely essential to do to do it. This point, for example, in Australia and in Northern California's both in both of those places, scientist and forest rangers and all of that have started to work with Aboriginal people in Australia and with Native Americans in this country because they know about using fire in controlled burns, they know about how to work with fire. And they know how to work with the earth in such a way that these kinds of tragedies do not happen with Aborigines and with Native Americans. The things that they know about the earth and about how to work with the earth and the land and respecting it are things that are now being sought out by people, because what do we do about these fires that are cataclysmic that are just simply cataclysmic and will destroy--fires in California are still burning after months. And some of that is because traditional pre contact methods of dealing with the earth have been completely ignored. So that I really have come to value the fact that there are universal principles and uses that transcend time and space, and every single pre contact culture on the planet, every single one, Europe, Africa, Asia, South-- everywhere. And I like those cosmological things. I like the fact that all of them used art as functionality. We all know, for example, that the plaids, Scottish tartans, simply by looking at the plaid in somebody's kilt or somebody clothes in Scotland could tell you their tribe, could tell you their affiliations within that tribe, could tell you their age, could tell you what they do, could tell you where they're from simply by looking at someone's kilt. The same thing is true in Africa, that if you look at a woman's head dress. Headdress in particular, it can tell you whether a woman is single, whether she's married, whether or not she's had her first son, all of those things can be shown simply by the clothing and embellishment that a woman wears, her hairstyle, her clothes, all of that can tell you that and we photograph these photographs of these women in their beautiful clothing and hair and carriage and all of that. And we do not realize that basically that woman is a book to anybody that can read it, can tell you everything about her. There are, for example, I have a piece of art, that is a very beautiful piece of work. And I've learned that it when it's hung on the outside of the house, it means that there is a single woman in there who's available for marriage, just by that.

1:37:41

32 Just a piece of art, I have another piece that I got in Namibia, that the woman told me is quite old and that it is used in the head man's house, it is that it is looked for that's who you go to when you first arrive in a village or a community because they are the person that you sort of check in with. And that's what you look for when you look to people's houses and it's very beautiful. All of the work is very beautiful. But it's also quite functional and has a role to play. And that's what motivates me, and certainly motivates the work from two strains of work, ancestry and the code, visual cues on the Underground Railroad. And since then it's led me to explore and contextualize that with the use of material culture and visual art as tools of resistance in enslavement, and that's where my research has gone. And that's where the studying has gone. And that piece with the vine is rooted in a combination of ancestral meaning as well as, functional meaning. There are things on that piece that if you know what they are inferred to, tell you something that counters the vine itself, the noose itself, all of the adornments and embellishment on that piece of work, for example, convey words and meaning that to someone looking at it who understood would disempower the power and terror of that vine. It would refocus their attention on the "however," that that noose signifies. The terror and demoralization and fear and horror of it are, if not neutralized, are certainly put into a place where they can be dealt with and that they don't destroy, and that there are tools that were involved in the community, either mentally, physically, spiritually or actually on this plane that counter that terror and that horror that made sure that the people did not fold. It is not to say that they were not wounded and they were not scarred. How are you gonna not be? It also says, however, that people were not destroyed by that the culture was not destroyed, their humanity was not destroyed their family units, blah, blah, blah are not destroyed. And that's what my work focuses on.

Joy Pierce 1:39:19 Wow

Anne Bouie 1:40:15 And Black Lives Matter is focusing on the fact that we are of value. And, clearly, we're of value and that it's not appropriate to continue to shoot people on the street like dogs in broad daylight. And art has played a role in that to a major extent. There have been too many artists who have responded to that, and just as with the Black Panthers with Emory, who was an artist for the Black Panthers, who used art to tell the story of liberation, contemporary artists across the board have been useful and have been involved in illuminating and depicting that struggle.

33 1:41:04 I wouldn't say a problem, but one of my concerns is that we do not focus enough on the "however," of George Floyd. The "however" of every single family in community whose lives have been ripped and sliced and stabbed by these deaths. You don't hear of any of them falling out and laying down and rolling over, I have yet to hear of one family that has rolled over and given up because of that. Every family that--I might be wrong on this but every family who has suffered that tragedy has responded in a way to stand up and to fight and to keep it moving. Which is not to say that every single member of that family does not go someplace and roll around in snot and cry and moan and ask why and be an incredible pain every day. It's horrible to think of somebody you loved and think about the way they die. Dying is enough even if you go to sleep and die in your own bed with your loved ones standing around you. It's going to cause pain and have you hurt and roll around the floor snotting and crying and almost unable to be consoled. Just death alone does that. But to die and to see your child or your husband or your friend or your daughter be shot down like a dog and their bodies literally laying in the street for half an hour before somebody comes to do something about it. It's almost beyond the pale.

1:42:47 And yet people have gotten up and Black Lives Matters is a result of seeing somebody's body lay in the street uncovered for 30 minutes, dead and bleeding before somebody comes. That was an impetus for Black Lives Matter. And that alone says something about the response of African American people to trauma and destruction in this country. And that is what I believe needs to be focused on as much as the actuality of the event. The response to that is very powerful to me. And that's my "however," being a southern person and listening to the ways that Southern people are described that southern men and women are described that they were Sambos and clowns and scratched when they didn't itch and laughed when it wasn't funny and shuffled along and their religion was nothing but about, "On the other side of glory, I'll get saved. And there's nothing to look for on this side of the water." That does not match my experience of my father, of my uncle, of my father's friends. No, it's a direct contradiction to my personal feelings of many of the black men and women that I know that's not them. These are them not that. And so my work focuses on these are them not that, which is not to say that that did not exist. Of course it did because we all know who gave up Denmark Vesey and Gabriel Prosser and probably Nat Turner. They were other black people that gave them up, especially with Gabriel and Denmark. Basically that prevented what probably would have been successful revolts that nipped them because other black people gave them up.

34 And other black people were the ones who went 500 miles into the interior of Africa to drag people out to take to the coasts so that they could be put on ships and sold away. Europeans weren't 500 miles into the interior of Africa. They weren't allowed to get off the coast, much less go into the interior. Other black people rounded them up and got them there. So it's not to say that, that the scope of humanity is not found in black people. Yeah, black people sold other black people, just like white people sold other white people, we have no monopoly on humanity or that sort of thing. And nobody gets out alive.

1:45:30 But the point is of the "however," that yes, I was on those ship stripped, inspected, finger stuck in every orifice in my body, and branded and all of this. And however, the "however" is what within me enabled me to get up and not give up. And I would contend that what, Joy, is about spirituality. It's not about my substance and my strength and my character, it's about being able to tap into something that is greater than myself, that enables me to get back up. I don't get up all by myself when the deal goes down. And when my son has been shot down like a dog. I go someplace to a power that is greater than myself. And that, to me is the underpinning of the art and the music and the protest. And so art, my art is based on a spiritual premise, I see making art as a spiritual process. And that artists at their best are allowing themselves to be used as channels for something higher and greater, that can serve people in some way. It's simply not a self- absorbed act. I see art as a spiritual process, because it's making something invisible, become visible, and it needs to be treated in that way. That's the way I approach art, I approach art as a spiritual process. And I'm very grateful for being able to be the channel through which some of my better work (laughs) has come through. And so the art that is made that references that not only needs to speak to the horror, it also needs to speak to the transcendence and transcendence is about spirituality.

1:47:22 And every movement that's about something that has lasted and had some depth has had an overt, articulate, explicit spiritual dimension to it, not religious but spiritual. It just so happens in modern times that spirituality is often presented in the context of organized religion. They're not the same thing. But that is how spirituality is marshaled and presented, and so with Black Lives Matter to me in the spiritual dimension says, "Yes, we matter." It also says more importantly, is this is how we transcended and this is how we overcame. And it's about understanding that that's a spiritual process. It's not an intellectual process. It's not an intellectual process, for sure. It's not personal

35 psychological construct it is a spiritual construct. And I think that all protest and all desires for a better life are rooted in a sense of the spiritual and the spirituality and value of human beings and the earth, and their spiritual dimension, not merely their political, social or cultural dimension. And I think that movements that acknowledge that explicitly probably have a deeper root system than those that do not. You need a root system. And for me, the root system for African Americans, clearly in this country has always had a spiritual dimension. And all movements, if they're going to be successful, over the long haul, have to have some kind of spiritual dimension to them.

1:48:58 And art is one of the ways of, for me anyways of dealing with that spiritual dimension. And it says something not only about what we have suffered, it talks about how we have transcended, and you do not transcend without a spiritual dimension to your work. For me, that is my experience and my opinion that I have been places in my life and times that I know I did not get up from as a result of my own will or from you telling me that I could make it. I got up from them because of the acknowledgement there is a source of strength and power and guidance and all that that is greater than my own and greater than your own intellectual powers. And that's the way I work and believed in carry it. Sort of like that thing, there are no atheists in a foxhole. (laughs) And the other point is that Bob Dylan, in one of the songs he sings, that you're going to serve somebody, you're going to serve something. It's not whether or not you're going to serve somebody or believe in something or somebody or something. It's who and what that is, is the question not whether, because everybody believes in something, and calls upon something. And my experience is the only well that does not run dry and the only well does not depend on my own resources is a spiritual well.

1:50:28 And I see that spiritual well, coming through in pre contact cultures very clearly, I see that spiritual well, coming through the religious figures of many people who have been engaged in the movement. One of the things that is kind of disturbing to me these days is that the extent to which religious figures, overt religious figures, are disdained, and in some ways consciously excluded from social movements across the board. And in many ways, that's totally understandable. It's really hard to grasp the fact that the human beings who go into religious organizations are just like the human beings that go into commerce, or business, or food cuisine, or farming or anything else. They're not any different. The institutions in many cases have become such that are not any difference, the interpretation of the spiritual principles upon which most religions are

36 based, are serving power and money and not the growth and the service of people. None of that can be denied. None of that can be denied. One person said, "You know, people don't much appreciate religion and spirituality and the cross when it's accompanied by a gun." (laughs)

Joy Pierce 1:51:03 Mm hmm.

Anne Bouie 1:51:43 That is, the experience and the time of religion and so it's very, very hard for a religious person, quote, unquote, to be seen and heard as espousing spiritual principles. Because there is not a single major denomination on the planet today, who does not need a Madison Avenue campaign to restore its image.

Joy Pierce 1:52:28 (laughs)

Anne Bouie 1:52:29 There is not a single one and some of the things that you could say about the people in formal religious organizations, it would make you think, like Diogenes going through the streets, looking for one who is honorable. Just can I find one religious figure, that's honorable, please? It's that bad across any denomination. That does not deny the fact that spirituality is not religion, and that you need to find somebody who can articulate spiritual principles for you. And I know for a fact, in Black Lives Matter movement, every single one of the people involved has a very deep spiritual practice, from my reading and of interviews and that kind of thing. Every single one of them has a profound and deep spiritual practice. What the movement collectively needs is that is spiritual undergirding from somewhere, from somebody that everybody can say, "Yes, that we are drawing from a spiritual source and a spiritual well." And in this society, it's very hard for that not to be couched in religious terms. Otherwise, people think you're running around trees under the full moon, when you say spirituality. But that is what sustains movements. That is what sustains the 60 million people who were out in the street because George Floyd died. If that stuff is going to come to anywhere, it has to become beyond "Well, I've done my service. I've been in the streets and marched," or "Yes, I've been outraged. And then I express that and I get a catharsis and I can go sit down." No, it's spirituality that says, that was what I needed and what's done next, and gives people the energy and the power and the will and the faith to keep going, because that work is too hard. That work is too hard. It's too draining. It's too painful to think that people can go through it sustained on

37 their own will they simply cannot, it cannot how many bereaved mothers can you go to and talk to without becoming overwhelmed after a time and without just drained and full of despair? And how do you get up from that? You don't get up from that because you go on a cruise to Baja for two weeks. You don't. You get up from that from being connected to a spiritual source and art is spirituality. All of the art talks about intangible things that helped us get over, help anybody get over. So I've certainly had my hands on my hips about that, haven't I?

Joy Pierce 1:55:15 No, I really enjoyed it. That was extremely profound. And I appreciate sort of the framing, the spirituality as well as like the long term trajectory, the utilitarian purposes of art. I think it sort of gives me a more comprehensive view than I had before. And so shifting gears a little bit, but it's kind of related, I kept thinking about the big mural in Black Lives Matter Plaza in DC, as well as other ones that have sprung up across the US, after George Floyd specifically, and then Breonna Taylor. And knowing that you see these very explicit links between spirituality and art, what is your reaction to big murals that are sort of spearheaded by, you know, local government officials to make these statements? And, you know, what does it say when that sort of like an official representation, that art is sort of like co-opted by the government to say something, even if the people that work on are, you know, local DC artists, and there's a lot of support for it? What's your take on that? I'm just curious.

Anne Bouie 1:56:39 Well, first of all I think that it's really good when the arts are funded by government, local, national, all of that, because artists need to be paid for our work, and we need money for it. And it's good that they are funding the arts. For example, when we put "Black Lives Matter" in 12 foot letters in yellow on the plaza, and do that, and it's done by the--yes, it does. But what I get concerned about is, does government back that up with any kind of real structural change and addressing real structural issues? Because all too often Black Lives Matter is reduced to "Well, I'm not being racist" or "I support black people" or "As a black person, I can't take this anymore, and I won't deal with it anymore. And yes, I'm angry, and I'm not going to sit down." But the core of it is that it's not about personal feelings about whether or not I'm prejudiced or biased or racist, and it's very disconcerting when people say that they are not a racist or not prejudiced or something or other because my challenge to anybody about how they feel about anybody else is would you like your thoughts in your mind, recorded over a three to five day period, recorded every thought every word, and then print it out for anybody to read? And I don't know a soul on

38 the planet who would say yes. I do not know a single soul that would say yes to that. I know I certainly wouldn't because I think some horrible things about people and everybody else does. So don't say that I don't have any biases or that I'm not--I've had adults say to me that they were not aware that they had biases. It's like what?

Joy Pierce 1:58:45 Yeah.

Anne Bouie 1:58:47 So that the issue is not whether or not I'm a racist, quote, unquote, the issue is that it's like being in LA. The air in LA is brown. You can see it. Now the air in LA except for the Santa Ana winds in the wintertime is brown. Period. They have the air in Shanghai is dark brown. You can see it the air in Mexico City and the air in Houston. Now, if you live in Shanghai, or Mexico City, or Houston, or LA, you are breathing brown air. If you live in America, metaphorically speaking, you are breathing brown air. There's no way around it. Everybody has been affected with it. Xenophobia is quite real. I think in some ways it was necessary when people were running around stabbing mastodons and saber toothed tigers. They were them and we were us. So probably DNA--but to say that I'm not is part of the problem really. Yes, you are and it's okay. You're not going to die and go to hell. You're not a bad person. Nobody's going to kick you out of the spring jack's tournament. You still get to play marbles. But yes, you are. We are. And so the personal dimension is one thing that gets in the way of the willingness to look at the structural aspects, because one of my favorite lines is from James Brown, he said, "I don't want nobody to give me nothing, open up the door, and I'll get it myself."

2:00:22 So that when the city pays for a mural that espouses the principles and supports of Black Lives Matter, and at the same time, that very city's budget has $86 million allocated to the Department of Youth Rehabilitative Services, and it serves 250 clients and their budget is $86 million. The budget for the jails is $200 million. And it serves 1000 people, a little more, not even 1500 people annually. So their--

Joy Pierce 2:00:58 Wow.

Anne Bouie 2:00:58 [inaudible] almost $300 million allocated for less than 2000 people. And yet that same city's budget for the arts is $34 million. For the Parks and Recreation Department. It's around $30-40 million. For the libraries, it's about the same. And all of those agencies serve far more

39 people. So that if the city is really serious about talking about whose lives matter, they might want to look at the fact that research has shown that for every dollar spent on prevention, two to five are saved on treatment, and you are spending three times the amount of money to house so called juvenile delinquents, then you are on the arts program for the entire city.

Joy Pierce 2:01:50 Wow.

Anne Bouie 2:01:51 That's in DC alone. The Philadelphia government came out in support of Black Lives Matter, is closing 23 schools and it's funding a $4 million jail.

Joy Pierce 2:02:09 That shows where their values are.

Anne Bouie 2:02:10 Thank you so that I don't really want to hear about you spraying Black Lives Matter all over the walls or supporting my colleagues who need the money. In fact, if you would pay me to do something, I'd go do it. However I realize, and I'm sure they realize that they are being used to take away attention from the fact that $86 million, that's almost $100 million dollars is spent on 215 kids.

Joy Pierce 2:02:45 Wow.

Anne Bouie 2:02:46 That is a travesty. And so when government tries to (sighs) affirm itself, I want to see the numbers and I want to see the figures. It's the same thing with the people doing the marches. Now 60 million people were in the street, at the high point around protesting the murder of George Floyd. Let's assume that, minimally those 60 million people each spent at least $500. Let's assume that they could have spent as much as $1,000 in getting there. For example, the women's march in DC with a million people. And we know that people from around the country came. In fact, several of them stayed here at my house. So you figure transportation, you figure gas money, you figure food, lodging, souvenirs, money to make the signs, money to knit the little pink hats. All of that probably adds up to $1,000 per person. Now, what is 60 million times $1,000? I think it's $600 million.

Joy Pierce 2:03:57 Yeah, that's significant.

40 Anne Bouie 2:03:59 Now, how many houses how much affordable housing could you buy for that amount of money? How many libraries could you build? How many arts programs, how many job employment programs, how many businesses that would hire people over a long time with that much money support? So that I believe that it be great if people would stay at home and put that money in a pot and build some houses and parks and libraries and books and training programs for people, in my mind's eye. Which is not to say that protest does not serve a viable purpose. Of course it does. But $600 million and most of that money goes to the very corporations that people are protesting against.

Joy Pierce 2:04:48 Mm hmm.

Anne Bouie 2:04:49 As in the large hotels dah, dah, dah, dah, dah to city governments. And yet our tax money is paying their salaries and is paying for those kids to be--what is $86 million divided by 215 people, that's enough money to send every single one of them to a $50,000 a year school from preschool to grad school to post grad school.

Joy Pierce 2:05:21 Wow.

Anne Bouie 2:05:21 So that when we look at the way resources are allocated, when people start putting their money where their mouth is, and looking at not to defund the police, because oh, no, no, no, no, we need police. I'm sorry. Every society since time out of mind, is that some equivalent of the police now you need police. Nobody's talking about defunding the police. We're talking about a whole lot of things. But with all due respect, no. What we are talking about is giving the DC Arts Commission as much money as you give the police department so that a program officer who's supporting arts organizations has a million and a half dollars to split between 80 organizations.

Joy Pierce 2:06:08 Yeah, wow.

Anne Bouie 2:06:09 So that so that no, I look with a jaundiced, cynical eye at governments. And it's the same thing with philanthropists. You can give money to organizations. Having run a nonprofit, I would love somebody to drop six figures on a nonprofit that I'm running or had

41 been involved. It's a wonderful feeling when they do. You almost levitate, when somebody drops six figures or seven figures on you. At the same time, it would be wonderful if those philanthropists that are putting millions of dollars into it financed some black businesses, financed some black institutions, financed some job training programs that were guaranteed to get people jobs. If George Floyd had a job, he wouldn't have been murdered like that. And when 60 million people get marching in the street, about getting George Floyd a job while he's alive, as opposed to after he's been murdered, then we will be addressing structural change and not personal feelings. And art is, if nothing else, an intricate part of most of the structures, if you will, of the cultures that I resonate with. Art is a part of the structural system. And it's obviously part of our structural system, because we're saying," Oh, yeah, our city is really cool, because we have Black Lives Matter and a Black Lives Plaza." And in the same time, somebody looked like George Floyd would probably be swept up and taken to that $200 million facility. Or people would cross the street if he were alive. And they certainly wouldn't want him to have affordable housing in their neighborhood. And they certainly wouldn't give him a job. And there are a lot of George Florida's still alive and walking the streets who need affordable housing or a job or some literacy training or an employment program.

2:08:05 And they're still around. And no, there aren't 60 million people in the street for them. There are $86 million for juvenile facilities and $200 million facilities for jails for the ones for the George Floyds that are still on the street. And that's just a fact. That's just a fact and until our governments address that--Artists are being used, if you will, and we and we, I realize we realize that. And I know that we're doing the best and what we can with what we've got. So yeah, the mural says something and the mural is true and real. And as a minister that I used to know, would say, you know, saints are needed in Ahab's palace, murals are needed if Ahab pays for them, so bes it, they need it. But that's not the end all and be all of it.

Joy Pierce 2:09:03 One thing that you brought up that I kind of want to circle back to, in the whole discussion of defunding the police, and I know you said that's not something that you stand behind. But do you think that the national conversation surrounding these city budgets and sort of the allocation of resources, do you think that that is something to be hopeful about, the fact that people are maybe for the first time in a while realizing the way that their community spends their tax money? And maybe that there's hope in that?

42 Anne Bouie 2:09:38 Well, I am a self-righteous cynic, Joy. I know I am a self-righteous cynic. And in the cold light of day, I have yet to see one piece of local or national or state legislation that does anything about that. Have you?

Joy Pierce 2:10:02 I haven't. I've only seen people talking about budgets. They've been at the local level.

Anne Bouie 2:10:06 Exactly talking about budgets, and those 60 million people who need to be right there when they're talking about the budgets have dissipated, or have felt they've done what they needed to do, or have taken the money and done something inappropriate with it, or have taken the money and continued on without tangible things to show with it. So yes, it's important to be talking about budgets, but we've been talking about budgets since time out of mind. And I have yet to see any place where something substantive has actually been done. It's one thing to talk about defunding the police when everybody--No, it's not the police need to be defunded, it needs to be restructured and redesigned and reimplemented to serve. Because traditionally police are or have been about. That's what the patty rollers were about under enslavement. They weren't to protect black people. They were to protect the community from black people. And that is the origin and role of the police. And so until that orientation has changed. In Columbia Heights, you say, "Oh, it's great that we have all this police presence." And then some people are saying, "Oh, yeah, that means I gotta really be careful. And really dodge things because I could get hurt."

Joy Pierce 2:11:30 Mm hmm. Yeah.

Anne Bouie 2:11:33 Yeah. So that so that, I would like to think but I need to, it's like Jerry Maguire. Was it Cuba Gooding, or was it Tom Cruise in Jerry Maguire that said, "Show me the money?"

Joy Pierce 2:11:45 Yeah, absolutely.

Anne Bouie 2:11:48 Yeah, I haven't seen the money yet. And until the money is shown, it's all tingling, brass and crashing cymbals. So your hope comes not from what people have done are talking about. There goes back to the

43 spiritual principle. If I put my hope in those 60 million people, or I put my hope in the budgets, that people merely talking about the budgets, and obviously, I would have to go home and sit down, because that hope would be dissipated like fog in bright sunlight. The hope has to be rooted in something else other than what is going on, otherwise, you will crash and burn because nobody has put anything on legislation. So my hope has to rest on spiritual principles that say that the arc of justice is very wide, but it does lean toward justice. And says that, "let one"--I'm going to miss that quote up so I won't even try to say it. But the hope rest in spiritual substinance and drawing on that to keep going not in merely playing the--you have to work as if you think there's no God and you have to pray as if you think that there's no other help, you have to do both. And it's my contention that they fuel one another that you have to work and you have to believe. If you don't believe you won't be able to work. And if you work without belief, it won't be successful. And even if you do work with belief, it can take a long, long time to see success. And then you will get bitter, and you will get discouraged and we'll start to doubt ourselves and anybody we worked with. And that's why going back to art, in spirituality artists to put us in touch with something greater than ourselves and remind us of the invisible that frames and shapes the visible.

Joy Pierce 2:13:56 That's very well put, very well put. Do you have any other things that you really wanted to touch on? Any things I didn't ask you?

Anne Bouie 2:14:09 Well, I think you've been extremely thorough and thoughtful. I really do. Um, I can't right now. All the things that are meaningful to me in terms of explicit involvement in the spirituality of the movement. For example, Reverend Floyd Barber, I think he in his march on poverty-- people like William Lamar IV who's pastor of Metropolitan AME Church here in Washington, DC who are talking about justice and who are wielding not only the intellectual prowess to address injustice, but the spiritual muscle to stain that process are people that need to be invited to sit at the table with many people who want to dismiss them and what they say simply because of not being willing to examine things very closely.

Joy Pierce 2:15:18 Mm Hmm.

Anne Bouie 2:15:19 There were a couple other thoughts that I had, Joy. There were three points about black on... The inclusion piece and the healing that's

44 necessary because so many people involved in Black Lives have been marginalized and castigated and demonized by a formal religion. It's very easy to understand why they don't want to have any of it coming. However, there's no way this fight is going to be won without inclusiveness of that sort. And there are a couple of other thoughts. If I think of them, I'll call you back and perhaps get incorporated. But no, I really appreciate your talking with me. And it's really been illuminating for me to think about these things, and encouraging to keep on making art and doing the research that would do something to change the perception of who we are, where we've been, and where we're going. Because sometimes we're fighting shadows that we don't need to fight.

Joy Pierce 2:16:21 Absolutely.

Anne Bouie 2:16:21 We have a wealth of history and experience upon which to draw. I guess one thing I would say is that people don't understand the nature of protest, that these young people who are leading Black Lives Matter are not mushrooms, and they did not spring up out of a vacuum they sprung out of a culture and a context that nourished that. Just so they are not unique, and they are not exceptions. They are exemplary of what it's about. It's just as Harriet Tubman was called the Moses of her people. And she was called Moses that is a biblical, spiritual reference. But she was not a mushroom that grew up overnight, she came out of a context and a culture and movements need to root themselves in a context, culture and there is almost one that's not greater than the African American experience and our prevailing against enslavement and against oppression. And summarizing it, going back to the art into the noose, Ralph Ellison said that, "I am not ashamed that my ancestors were slaves were shot or hung were bred. I am not ashamed that my ancestors were slaves. I am ashamed that I once was ashamed.”

Joy Pierce 2:17:44 Wow. Yeah, I mean, that's it, isn't it?

Anne Bouie 2:17:50 Yes, it is. Because if I'm not ashamed, that means I can go back and draw from that well and not cut myself off from that well, can't cut yourself off from the well and you cannot cut yourself off from your roots. We know what happens to a living organism who cuts itself off from its roots. It dies, it dies. Or at least it's stretches along but not with any substance. And if we cut ourselves off from our roots, that's what we might end up doing as a people because we don't value those

45 roots and don't see the lessons from which we gained from which that helped us get over and make it so no, I think I've shared all the thoughts that I have on this I didn't think the noose would lead to things like this but it has and so if it gives us opportunity to just think and mull and to struggle, then I guess it's a good thing, you know.

Joy Pierce 2:18:54 Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much for your time. And if you think of anything else, feel free to reach out to me I appreciate this so much, you taking the time, so much time to sit and talk with me and do it again. Is there anything else?

Anne Bouie 2:19:15 No, I think that you've been most gracious and forbearing researcher, Joy. I really do and I thank you for that because many people would have just thrown up their hands in the air with what we've been through to get this and obviously I have a place in my heart for students period. And certainly for people trying to get out of grad school but I love the energy and the thinking this and--I always have a working with from everything from the college students at interface. I really enjoyed that and I really enjoy working with you and with people like yourself who are thinking and grappling and acting in a constructive way. And so anything I can do to help you, I certainly would do that. And I want to encourage you and strongly encourage you to keep moving and keep going and keep thinking and grappling and being willing to grapple. That I think is essential to be willing to grapple with the interior, as well as the exterior. And I sense that in you.

Joy Pierce 2:20:25 Thank you so much. That's so kind of you.

Anne Bouie 2:20:29 So, I guess we will know more later, right?

Joy Pierce 2:20:33 Yes.

Anne Bouie 2:20:34 You'll edit this. And if you need me to say any, to clarify anything and everything as you're editing it, please let me know.

Joy Pierce 2:20:43 Absolutely. I will send you of course, a copy of the recording, which I doubt you'll want to listen to the whole thing, but I'll send you a transcript as well.

46 Anne Bouie 2:20:53 Okay. That would be great to have the recording and have--

Joy Pierce 2:20:58 Mm Hmm.

Anne Bouie 2:20:58 You'll send it over the internet, right?

Joy Pierce 2:21:01 Mm hmm. Yeah, I'll figure out what's the easiest way to do it. But I'll send it to you for sure.

Anne Bouie 2:21:06 Okay, great. And you'll edit it and dah, dah, dah, dah, dah with it too, as well.

Joy Pierce 2:21:10 Yeah.

Anne Bouie 2:21:11 Okay, well, then we will keep in touch and I've listened for you and then and we will know more later.

Joy Pierce 2:21:17 All right. Perfect. Thank you.

Anne Bouie 2:21:19 Thank you. Joy, be well.

Joy Pierce 2:21:21 Alright, bye bye.

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