Black history is celebrated in The Black Vote exhibit
This mixed media artwork titled “The Fault In Our Fabric” by local artist Karen Caldwell is featured in the Black Vote Exhibit at the African American Heritage Museum. The exhibit runs through May. Photo by Azalea Petry-Towns
By Azalea Petry-Towns, North News Intern
Art displayed in the Minnesota African American Heritage Museum and Gallery invokes viewers to question what happens when the fabric meant to hold us together falls to shreds.
The Black Vote exhibit, which runs through May 32, showcases the history of Black voters and public political figures throughout Minnesota.
The Black Vote has displays detailing Minnesota’s voting history from the 1800s, as well as a striking collection of artworks featuring Laura Marie, A. Drew Hammond, Charles Caldwell, and Karen Caldwell. There is also a small voting station.
“The purpose of this exhibit is to really understand how folks got the vote in Minnesota, what that fight was, and what that journey was,” said Mica L. Anders, the exhibit’s curator.”
The exhibit was installed for the anniversary of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which gave Black men and women the right to vote. Minnesota was the seventh state to pass the act, which gave African Americans in Minnesota voting rights.
One of the mixed-media art pieces, titled “The Fault in Our Fabric,” was done by Karen Caldwell, a Northsider, who was approached to create a piece centered around the Black vote. The piece has two Black people with their mouths bound in front of the American flag, with fabric pieces falling from the canvas, and words that were traditionally used to oppress people of color decorating the background such as segregation, literacy tests, and gerrymandering.
“I wanted to convey the quiet unraveling of a system that is actually supposed to unite us,” said Caldwell. “The fabric was used to show the brain and the weight of suppression and inequality.”
Another exhibit goal was to highlight the importance of Black people in political positions. Some of the first Black people in prominent positions weren’t elected until 2023.
“Although we had our first Black member of the Minnesota State Legislature (1898) so early, it took 80 years before we had our second one,” said Anders. “So it's this dichotomy of great early civic engagement that then took a long time to start back up in the 1940s and 50s, before we really started getting the ability to be voted back into office.”
There are many important firsts in Minnesota’s politics highlighted in the exhibit, including three prominent Northsiders. Sen. Bobby Joe Champion is the first Black president of the Minnesota Senate (2023). Keith Ellison was Minnesota’s first Black U.S. representative (2006) and Black state attorney general (2018-present). The first openly transgender Black man to be elected in a public office was former Ward 4 City Councilman Phillipe Cunningham (2016).
These remarkable achievements are displayed proudly in the museum, calling attention to the recency in which they happened, which many people don’t know.
In The Black Vote, Anders said, “It was getting the right to vote, getting the right to serve on juries, and getting the right to public office. It was about celebrating a lot of those firsts, both the men and the women and bringing light to something that a lot of people don't know that much about.”