Seitu Jones

Artist 52 years old Del: How would you define the Civil Rights Movement? Seitu: The Civil Rights Movement was an initiative that began, well, a lot of people have the perception that the Civil Rights Movement began in the 60's but that's where it really picked up speed and generated more general support. The Civil Rights Movement actually began once Europeans landed in the U.S. and began to oppress other people and began to press black people from abroad into service. So the Civil Rights Movement in my mind began over 500 years ago, in direct opposition to those two forces of control and domination. The Civil Rights Movement of the 50's and 60's that really began to pick up steam after Rosa Parks initiated her point of resistance. It was built on the efforts of people who had been held in bondage generation, after generation, after generation. So, I like to look at it in a holistic way. Some like to put an end time to the Civil Rights Movement and bracketed it in between the mid 50's and early 70's, but I maintain that it actually continues to this day. That's people trying to put the movement in a time capsule rather than saying what it is. But it is that effort of folks trying to oppose the twin forces of domination and control. Del: In your opinion would the public boycotting and protesting of the past be an effective way to make the change today? Seitu: Yes, I think that we've grown too complacent and actually even begin to think of marches as something pass & acute. And that really began with my generation and our growing wariness of nonviolence confrontation. But, I do believe that those efforts really should be used a lot more and especially in respect to our current condition. Del: How would you define the relationship between a Black Arts Movement in the Civil Rights movement? Seitu: Now that is really the thing I feel lot more comfortable discussing, because while I was a part of the Civil Rights Movement I was on the peripheral of the Civil Rights Movement. My passion and activism or my activism really began as a part of the Black Arts Movement, which was the cultural arm of the Civil Rights Movement. An initiative toward black power which was an effort by African-Americans to gain much more control of our day to day existence through political, social, economic, and cultural means. The culture arts movement was an reawakening. I'm really looking at this in a holistic way. Many of the same tools that were used by artists of The Harlem Renaissance and throughout other kinds of cultural explosions in African-American life in the last 150 years. The Black Arts Movement was really part of this line that tied all of those different movements together. And the things that I participated in we really began to see culture as a tool for changing our lives and for culture to serve to our community in different ways. So as an artist one of the tenants of the Black Arts Movement was to leave our communities much more beautiful than when we found them. As a result all of my work since that time and even today has that as its primise - it's jumping off - point of departure. Del; What you think is the most important issue African-Americans have to address today? Seitu: There are many many issues. The different issues and mythologies despite our progress over the last 50 years, despite a lot of progress of the 150 years. There are still these points of our lives that still need change. There is no one thing that I can identify that we should be working on. We need to be working in concert with each other and our allies to change many of the different existing obstacles facing us that concern our health, our self image, our self worth, how we will be represented politically, develop our community economically, and all of those different things are things that we need to be working on simultaneously. Del: And what do you think of the Civil Rights Movement today? Seitu: I still think that it exist and that their are still folks working towards the equitable existence of African-American and everybody in general. Working against oppression, discrimination, and against racism. Del: Control The twin forces working for the last half of a millennium has been domination and control by the western world. We need to work against those forces and gain control over our own lives. Del: Dehumanize Seitu: That's one of the tools that oppressors use and racist will use to take away our human qualities to oppress us. Del: Stigma Seitu: As an artist I wear a lot of different hats I am a visual artists, an African-American artist, a Minnesota artist, all those different things, a father, somebody's uncle, all of these different context, and all these different hats that I wear, all of these different context that I live-in. And as an artist here in America there's a stigma that goes along with that compounded with the fact that I'm black and compound that with the fact that I've got funny hair. So, I bear many of those burdens, but I don't spend a lot of time thinking about them as a burden. I have to work past it. I have to a ignore the obstacles placed in front of me and so I have to work against those stigmas. Del: Traumatized Seitu: Black folks are still very traumatized from slavery and that's part of the reason why we have these prolonged pathologies while we have been unable to work past many immigrants who have come into the U.S., take one to three generations, at the most, to work themselves out of the low economic status that they came in. Black folks have been so traumatized and this society has been so traumatized, without healing, that we have been unable to work ourselves out of those pathologies. Del: Loss Seitu: I think also in addition to the cultural and social traumatization that we experience so much loss in our day to day lives that it ends up compounding that kind of social trauma. So, many of us end up walking around like were shell shocked or some sort of delayed stress syndrome. I feel a lot of the violence that we commit against each other is all part of that. Part of our reaction to stress and loss. Del: Identity Seitu: It has been said many times that one of our problems as black folks is that we don't have strong identities and there are many programs out here to strengthen our idea of self, but I think our sense of identity must be relatively strong in order to survive in America and to survive up and to this point. Del: Survival Seitu: A lot of times that's all we do. Just survive not really live. But just survive. Del: Inspire Seitu: The efforts by these giants of history like Martin King and Malcolm X have truly been inspiring. But, there are many of the role models and models in my life that inspire me. My parents- 'm sure you're hear this more from folks if you haven't heard it already. My parents have been sources of inspiration. My father and my uncle's. I grew up in a family where the men were all dark skinned, and smooth skinned, and big strong arms. They lived hard, they worked hard, and they truly loved their family and that's the behavior that I ended up modeling myself on. Del: Hope Seitu: That is one of the things that I feel is missing from the lives of some young folks. Because without that hope you end up becoming much much more self-destructive. Del: Closure Seitu: As I was saying before about our traumatization and the fact that America has never gone through any kind of healing process or forgiveness process or anything like South Africa did after apartheid where folks set out to do formal reconciliation. Nothing like that has ever really happened here. Actually it did for a while right after this Civil War and during that period of reconstruction, but that ended. And the last 125 years we've had no closure and that is needed now. A sense of closure, forgiveness, reconciliation, and reparations.

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