Kondwani Fidel - The Antiracist

Copyright 2020 by Kondwani Fidel

Foreword copyright 2020 by Devin Allen

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

Print ISBN: 978-1-5107-6420-0

Ebook ISBN: 978-1-5107-6421-7

Cover design by Kai Texel

Printed in the United States of America

CONTENTS

by Devin Allen

Wake up to a hunnit murders, go to sleep to glock nines Fireworks and lullabies, it aint even Fourth of July But whats independence, when you deprived of your innocence? Fighting a life sentence before you can form sentences.
Eddie Vanz

God Bless America, but bless my niggas too.
Zadia

The first change that takes place is in your mind. You have to change your mind before you change the way you live and the way you move. The thing thats going to change people is something that nobody will ever be able to capture on film. Its just something that you see and youll think, Oh Im on the wrong page, or Im on the right page but the wrong note. And Ive got to get in sync with everyone else to find out whats happening in this country.
Gil Scott Heron

Rebellion is nuanced.
Sometimes it looks like rage.
Sometimes it looks like love.
Sometimes it looks like silence.
Sometimes its just existing
Its rebellion nonetheless.
Erica Buddington

Foreword

I was born into a world heavily vested in the idea that people with Black skin have no voice; however, I was lucky enough to find my voiceeven though I had no place to nurture, or express, itand that is the reality for many Black artists in America.

Born and raised in West Baltimore during one of the deadliest eras of American history, surviving was more of a priority than art or the understanding of what it means. At the age of seventeen, I lost one of my close childhood friends, Lor Mar, to gun violence.

We met at the age of eight and did everything together. Lor Mar loved gambling more than anyone I ever knew, and it wasnt strange to see him with his head deep in a dice game around our neighborhood. An argument over a couple dollars had broken out during one of those games that ended with shots being fired from multiple directions and Lor Mar was caught in the middlehe died on the scene. Lor Mar was a great person, fresh out of high school, a soon-to-be father, and in the blink of an eyegone. After his death, other people around me were murdered as well, so naturally, I thought I was going to meet that same demise.

Baltimore wears hard on bones, and we dont really get to be young or get lost in the joys of childhood. We often spend most of our formative years in hopelessnesstold to go to school, get a job, and go to college. Keep your head down, obey the law, be an upstanding citizen, and trust the system. The sad reality is that you can do all of that, and still end up with a bullet in your head. But if you do survive, following the lessons most of us are taught hinders our creativity and growth, forcing us to subscribe to the same vicious cycle of nothingness that guarantees the same normalcy that existed before us. In the world that I was born in, being a Black artist was the exact opposite of that normalcy and always an unobtainable dreammainly because our flames of creativity are smothered before they can even spread into our true potential.

Ive always been an artist, but I never tapped into my talents until later in life, on a journey where I found my purpose. I remember sharing my dreams with my peers and telling people on the blocks that I was going to be a photographer, and them just making fun of my interest in becoming an artistand it wasnt their fault since we really never knew any professional artist. They told me I had to go to one of those fancy White institutions to learn art and photographyYou cant pick it up and just do it, they said, especially as a Black man from the streets, because Black men from the streets arent good enough. I ignored them, and with the help of YouTube and books by Gordon Parks, I proved all of them wrong.

Schools in Baltimore never taught me anything about Black artists. I read Langston Hughes maybe a few times, but my mom taught me about legends like Nina Simone, Gil Scott-Heron, Billie Holiday, and more. When I decided to be an artist, I had to look into the past to understand my future: what I would have to overcome, and how I could create my style and make my footprint in this world. In my process, I began studying Gordon Parks, Anthony Barbosa, and Jamal Shibez. Their work inspired me, and I started making a name for myself as an artist.

On April 12, 2015, Freddie Carlos Gray was arrested by Baltimore City police for nothing, handcuffed and thrown in the back of the paddy wagon headfirst, without being strapped in. Freddie never made it to jail. Instead, he ended up in Shock Trauma with severe injuries to his spinal cord, which would ultimately take his life on April 19. Being from West Baltimore, I have had my share of altercations with BCP, so watching this story unfold hit home because that could have been me. I know my city like the back of my hand, and after watching Ferguson unfold and how media poorly controlled the narrative around Mike Brown, I wanted to control our story. I went to every protest and town hall, documenting everythingthe good, the bad, and everything in betweenputting it all out on social media, so people could see what is really taking place in the streets of Baltimore. Because for far too long, our narrative had been controlled by external voices, phony activists with no city connections, fake reverends, and clowns who regularly ignore and disregard the real Baltimore.

The authenticity of my work allowed it to become its own driving force, spreading from my camera to the social media accounts of Rihanna, SZA, and Beyonc all the way to the New York Times . And then Time magazine called, wanting me on the cover of their magazine as the third amateur photographer to do that in the history of the publication. I had finally found my voice.

Although I was excited that my art gained national recognition, I also felt conflicted because this opportunity grew from the death of Freddie Gray. But similar to Gordon Parks, my camera became my choice of weapon against what I hated most about the universe: racism, intolerance, and poverty. I wanted to use my newfound platform to inspire and elevate other Black artistsand one of them was a talented kid from East Baltimore named Kondwani Fidel.

I remember coming across this video called The Baltimore Bullet Train that was raw, gritty, and spoke to my Baltimore, the streets I know. Id never heard of Kondwani before, but his work changed me, and I had to find himI was determined to work with him. The Baltimore art world is small, so it didnt take long for me to connect with this one artist who introduced us. I told him his poetry ran through my bones, because I lived the words that he was speaking. Everything this guy did with words, I had been doing with my camera, so I invited him to perform at Wakenings In a New Light at the Reginald F. Lewis Museum, my first exhibition centered on the Baltimore Uprising.