I have a degree from Howard University, a Historically Black University in Washington D.C that was founded when America was segregated by race. I grew up listening to the tales of my elders and I heard about what it felt like to be cold and hungry but we still have love and family. I can imagine their lives because they are me and I am them. I know the pride in hard work and the dignity of these people because they are my people. I know about my grandmother’s birth at home in Plaquemine Parish, Louisiana I know about my Aunt Sheila whose family left Mississippi for Chicago in the 1940s I know about my own father who left Ghana in 1960 with a scholarship to study in the United States and had a suitcase with one shirt and one pair of pants in it. I feel these people I know these stories because I have grown up with them my whole life.

My subjects are African Americans from ordinary walks of life who who may have sat for a formal family portrait or may have been documented by a passing photographer. These unacknowledged African Americans had stories, families although they were not considered or treated as equals. Right there in the seat of power of our country, African Americans were creating and contributing but who knew who these people were and what their names were. Only a few years ago that it was acknowledged that the white house was built by slaves.

While we have been right beside our white counterparts experiencing and creating history our contributions and very perspectives have been ignored, unrecorded and lost. My community has been marginalized for hundreds of years. History is the story of men and women but the narrative is controlled by those who hold the pen. Girl is my work I am telling the story- The African American side- of this American life.

Bisa butler chadwick boseman