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Celebrating Through Art

This year we are celebrating the 25th Anniversary of the Ella Baker Center (EBC). On this page, we are honoring history through art. For our first installation, we commissioned two former EBC interns to come together to create a piece to honor our past, present, and future. Sarah Sanders-Messmann wrote this poem and Emma Li created this art to accompany the piece. Both are former EBC communications interns.

TIME HAPPENS, ALL OF IT, INSTANTANEOUSLY I. PAST I learned in grade school that Black folks can fly I raised my hand and said, “but my bones aren’t hollow.” The class laughed, I heard nothing I was too busy picturing grandfather soaring past the window. I choose to have a butterfly’s exoskeleton sprouting from my back. At home in the mirror, I flutter my eyelids trying to find the in-between of awake and a dream. The place where wings grow. “Grandpa, teach me how to fly” I whisper while cocooned underneath bedcovers What the teacher meant was Black people are gifted with flight, we know how to get home.
II. PRESENT Saltwater runs through my veins It’s an inheritance Which is a funny way of saying history. When I was younger I’d bring my mouth to my scraped knee, a clumsy kid’s prerogative, to suck out the blood and instead I spat out a mouthful of salt. Atlantic, generational, sodium chloride I may be weighed down, but hell watch how well I float!
III. FUTURE The space between Time will fold in and you’ll be drinking hot tea with your ancestors, laughing about “utopia.” What does it mean to come out on the other side? How does it feel to be in a future worth dreaming about? Are questions you may ask yourself. To which you reply, “Ashes make fertile ground for new growth.” The past seeds the present which blossoms into the future. We flew, we are flying, we will fly.

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