MIAMI — Together Nadege Green And mary vickles gave life to Give them their flowers. This exhibition at the Little Haiti Cultural Center Art Gallery is the first of its kind. It pays homage to Miami’s black queer history by fusing historical research, archival footage, artifacts, oral histories, videos, and portraits of Black LGBTQ+ Miamians over the age of 45. The exhibition features works by Miami artists Vanessa Charlot, Kendrick Daye, Woosler Delisfort, Hued Songs, and Loni Johnson.
I met Green, a writer and community historian, and founder of Black Miami Dadeand Vickles, director of education at the Pérez Art Museum and curator-in-residence at the Little Haiti Cultural Complex, to discuss oral histories, the power of the imagination, and why there is an urgent need to tell black queer stories in this moment.
The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Caroline Drake: How was this exhibition constructed?
Nadege Green: I started this research about two years ago. A good friend of mine, Corey Davis, who runs Maven Leadership Collectiveasked me if I could do an article on black queer history for the Black Miami Dade project. It was the impulse. When I started, there was a vacuum of silence around the history of Black queer Miami, and existing records were also missing. But we knew the story existed, that black gay people were still there. So that’s what started this research. Going through archives and making oral histories, and tracking down names. We still didn’t know it would be an exhibition. But as I got deeper into the research, I realized that to fill those gaps, we needed to do oral histories and talk to people, preferably over the age of 45.
These oral histories were able to fill in the gaps where historical records were silent because [the people] had lived Black queer Miami.
Mary Vickles: Nadège asked me to help her turn this project into an exhibition. We talked about this project for almost a year, and during this year a lot of things have evolved. Working with local photographers, Woosler Delisfort and Vanessa Charlot, was very special. Loni Johnson collaborated in creating the rear storage space. Then, Nadège introduced me to Kendrick Daye, who created the collages.
NG: In the absence of a visual historical record of black queerness, how do you correct that record when engaging with artists? You do it with imagination. So Kendrick created these brilliant textured collages featuring queer celebrities like Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Josephine Baker, and Phil Harris, who have starred here. When I spoke to him, I said, “It’s about imagining Miami as a black queer space because it’s a black queer space.”
MV: The final artistic element that blends it amazingly is a feature of tinted songs with an excerpt from a commission performance they did at the Historic Hampton House. The space came together so beautifully.
CD: I would like to know more about the process of making black queer narratives visible in Florida.
NG: I think given the current political climate, there’s an added urgency to making sure the historical record is clear around black history, queer history, and the intersectionality of being people queer people in a way that we knew was necessary, but in a way that is also under attack right now.
MV: This was not the case when we started this project. It really was a totally different climate in many ways, at least in Florida. Censorship had not grown in scale as we see it now. It’s always simmered under the surface, but to say, “Now we’re going to codify this into law”, it’s unbelievable. But that is even more the reason why an exhibition like this must take place. It’s history, right?
NG: And in 2023, it’s the first time there’s been an exhibit like this in Miami about Black queer Miami history. Yes, there have been many public-facing works around Miami’s LGBTQ+ history, many of them white. It’s about who is telling the stories, who is funded to tell the stories, and who cares about telling more complete stories. There’s a way when we say LGBTQ+ people in Miami, we mean White. But we never say White LGBTQ+. White is the default, and so maybe if you have a picture of a black person, you’ve hit your quota but never really questioned inside of what black queer life looks like at Miami. What a shame it didn’t happen, but also what an absolute delight it’s happening now.
MV: We are here. And that’s all there is to it.
NG: This work existed before these attacks [by Florida governor Ron DeSantis], it exists during these attacks, and it will exist after these attacks. Because storytellers and artists have always been resistance fighters and will continue to be.
CD: As natives of Miami-Dade and people who have seen this city grow and change, how does that experience influence your work as historians, curators, and archivists?
NG: I was born and raised here. I saw black queerness all around me. In high school, college. But I think one interesting thing about working on the exhibit, which I didn’t realize, was how prolific drag shows were in Miami’s black communities. We often think you have to get to the causeway of Miami Beach to perform. But I really smiled a lot while I was doing these interviews with all these people saying, “Yeah, there were epic drag shows at the Lord Calvert Hotel, at the Liberty City pool.” Even the Flea Market USA, which was recently demolished, was a drag performance venue. And then I started asking the elders all around me, “Why didn’t you ever tell me about this?” Then they rattled off the names of all the drag queens, much to my surprise.
It also reminds us why we need to talk to our elders and why we need to have these intergenerational conversations. Especially when history is under attack. Because there is so much living memory among us. There are so many people who lived through this story and are still with us. So having these conversations was incredibly powerful.
MV: And mounting an exhibition like this in Little Haiti, in a neighborhood that is gentrifying before our eyes, is bittersweet. I raised my child here, this is my home.
It’s really hard to see the changes happening caused by a variety of issues. I think it’s important that exhibits like this remind us of the history that still exists here within our communities. At this point, all of Miami is gentrifying, South Florida is gentrifying, and we have no laws that would help protect us in any way. It is, in many ways, the wild west or the “wild south”. We don’t have rent controls and we don’t have laws that protect us as citizens, although people are fighting for them. So it’s important for us to see what’s at stake, and I think this exhibition does that. It shows us what community we have and what will be lost if we don’t do anything about it.
CD: At the end of the gallery, “The Repast” by Loni Johnson is an installation site for mourning and celebrating. Can I know more?
NG: We need space to cry. We need space to cry. We need space to kiss. The memory space is called “The Repast” because of the tradition of black hospitality services. After the funeral, you go home. It is then that the memories arise, that the stories occur. This celebration of life occurs in “The Repast”.
If we talk about black queerness, we have to be able to mourn the people we have lost. Our trans sisters who were murdered. Our elders who have left. All people who are deceased loved ones. To have a space where we can come together as a community to say: We missed them, we love them, and right now we’re going to make sure they have their flowers.
Give them their flowers continues at the Little Haiti Cultural Center Art Gallery, (212 NE 59 Terrace, Miami, Florida) through April 23. The exhibition was curated by Nadege Green and Marie Vickles and made possible through the generous support of Maven Leadership Collective And the Center for Global Black Studies at the University of Miami.
