Seeing successful people who look like them and hail from the same neighborhood can play a pivotal role in Black youths’ lives.
A collaboration between The Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis Learning and Engagement department and GatewayGIS titled Neighborhood Banner Project: Learning St. Louis History Through Design, honors present and past historic Black icons from north St. Louis communities.
“So many times in the past we’ve seen things that don’t reflect people that look like us, our past, our history, and our heritage,” Kevin McCoy said.
Its mission is to educate North St. Louis students about significant Black figures, community monuments, and digital graphic design.
Eight banners are featured in the exhibition, which faces the museum’s west corridor.
Entertainer and activist Josephine Baker, Congresswoman Maxine Waters, Griot Museum of Black History Founder Lois Conley and Negro League Baseball star and Baseball hall of Fame member James “Cool Papa” Bell are representatives of three north St. Louis city neighborhoods: Carr Square, Covenant Blu Grand Center, and JeffVanderLou.
Local middle school and high school students designed and created the banners with the assistance of resident teaching artists with connections to their selected neighborhoods.
Rosalind “Roz” Norman, the founder of GatewayGIS, an organization that exposes marginalized communities to STEAM education, said inspiration for the project came from a short video documentary about the 1999 opening of the then-new Vashon High School.
She said the video displayed community pride and quoted late activist and educator Norman Seay.
“I remember Norman talking about our children needing to develop a sense of belonging to community pride in knowing there have been many outstanding leaders from JeffVanderLou and other nearby predominantly Black neighborhoods in north St. Louis,” Norman said.
Norman, The Gateway GIS Founder, who was born in Homer G. Phillips Hospital and raised in The Ville and the JVL, said her labor of love for GatewayGIS comes from aspirations of making emerging and geospatial technology, resources, and education accessible to Black youth.
“I love providing a backdrop of career education efforts to engage our children, their parents, and families in north St. Louis,” she said.
LM Flowers, a resident teaching artist, who assisted Carr Lane Middle School students with their Conley banner, which will be displayed in the St. Louis Place Neighborhood, said she wasn’t knowledgeable about the chosen hero, but is glad she was selected for their involvement.
“It was pretty cool to learn more about Conely’s life, her aspirations, and why she opened the Griot Museum,” Flowers said.
Flowers said she enjoys teaching art and connecting young people to the creative form.
“Seeing the students’ aspirations for art is exhilarating for me because I have a profound love for art,” Flowers said.
Kevin McCoy assisted students from Herbert Hoover Boys and Girls Club in the creation of designing Bell for the JeffVanderLou neighborhood.
“So many times in the past we’ve seen things that don’t reflect people that look like us, our past, our history, and our heritage,” McCoy said.
“There has been whitewashed history, redacted history, and buried history. The Banner Project helps to eliminate those biases by us all working together in collaboration celebrating people that look like us from our backyards in our city.”
The designs are the aftermath of two years of planning, teaching, and collaboration with local organizations and schools near the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency west campus. The students’ work will display on the outside of the museum, facing North Spring Avenue, through September 18, 2022.
At the end of the exhibition, a set of the banners will be distributed to classrooms, and another will be gifted to St. Louis 3rd Ward Alderman Brandon Bosley for future public display.
