Anisa Khalifa
This is tested from WUNC, a look at how we're responding to the day's challenges in North Carolina and the South. I'm Anisa Khalifa.
Cornell Watson
This photo series is an unapologetic archive of our feelings and emotions. It is a vessel for self healing. Despite continued obstruction by whiteness, we will heal, even if it is tarred.
Anisa Khalifa
That's photographer Cornell Watson, who was working on an exhibition called "Tarred Healing" for the Sonja Haynes Stone Center for Black Culture and History at UNC Chapel Hill. Less than a week before it was set to open, the center notified him that they were canceling it, in a move the artists labeled as censorship, and Stone Center director Joseph Jordan called justified. WUNC's Education reporter Liz Schlemmer, who reported this story, joins me to break down what happened. Liz, this isn't the first time we've heard concerns about freedom of expression at UNC. The most infamous of course is the fight over granting Nicole Hannah Jones tenure last summer. But can you refresh our memories about some others?
Liz Schlemmer
Right, tenure is all about securing a professor's academic freedom. In another incident last June, the Board of Governors did not approve law professor Eric Muller's reappointment to the UNC Press board. And this happened after he publicly criticized the Board of Governors' dealings with Silent Sam. There were also some concerns voiced by faculty that the appointment of Chris Clemens as Provost was tainted by outside influence.
Anisa Khalifa
And in this context, we have the sudden cancellation of a photo exhibition about Black life at UNC. How did this all begin?
Liz Schlemmer
Cornell Watson is a Durham-based photographer and he was approached by the Stone Center because they were impressed with his password on a photo series published by The Washington Post. The Stone Center invited him to be a visiting artist and the director described a theme for an exhibition that they wanted him to create, that would go on display in their gallery on campus. Here's Cornell Watson.
Cornell Watson
It was a mixture of documentary photos and conceptual photos that told a story about black spaces in a story form, that I call Tarred Healing, which was basically about those spaces, threaded through the healing process of the black community in and around Chapel Hill and the university. And after I presented that photo story, they didn't like some of the images that were in there and didn't feel that it fit what they wanted in the exhibition. And I, at one of the exhibition planning meetings, basically told them that like taking away a part of the story, the body of work that I had completed, is basically censorship. And they disagreed on the term censorship. I don't know what else we would call it if it's not censorship.
Anisa Khalifa
Which photos did the Stone Center have an issue with?
Liz Schlemmer
There were three photos that Watson reluctantly agreed not to display at the Stone Center because they had objected to them. And those are of demonstrations on campus in support of Nicole Hannah Jones. Two depict the Board of Trustees meeting where the board ultimately did vote to offer her tenure. And in one of those, protesters are holding up signs, including one that simply says "academic freedom".
The second image foregrounds a white administrator, Clayton Somers, and he's turning and has a displeased stare at the camera. Somers is known to have been involved in the legal deal to give a pro-Confederate group two and a half million dollars in university funds for taking the Silent Sam statue. A third photo from student demonstrations is of Julia Clark. She's the vice president of the Black Student Movement and the photo shows her holding a bullhorn in front of a crowd. And then there was also a fourth photo that the Stone Center did not want but did agree to display, and that was a conceptual image of a silhouette of a man holding a noose above the Unsung Founders Memorial, which is a memorial on campus to enslaved and free black people who built the university.
Cornell Watson
The photos of the student demonstrations was the hottest contention point. And they said their thoughts were that they didn't think that it was a part of the story. And my argument is that it is a part of the story, the student demonstrations, especially a lot of like what they were saying was tied to a lot of those spaces. They had been fighting for the memorialization of James Cates and protection for the Unsung Founders Memorial. As it relates to the photo of Clayton Somers at the student demonstration, how can we talk about reckoning? How can we talk about healing if we're not going to talk about what we're reckoning and what we're healing from?
Anisa Khalifa
So if they had agreed on what would be displayed, then why did the Stone Center cancel the exhibition?
Liz Schlemmer
When the full photo story published in The Washington Post in February, Watson shared the article with the Stone Center out of excitement. And he received an abrupt email back from director Joseph Jordan saying that they were canceling the exhibition.
Cornell Watson
And then when I asked for a follow up, they said it was because the full photo story had published in The Washington Post before the exhibition, and that they were not going to mount it. And I was angry, and I had a lot of emotions around that, because a lot of work that went into that. A lot of people were planning to come to the exhibition. I was surprised because the photos were in the gallery space laying on the floor ready to be mounted. Also surprised because like, who wouldn't want publicity from like a national publication, The Washington Post?
Liz Schlemmer
Stone Center director Joseph Jordan explained his reasoning in a press Q&A after the story broke.
Joseph Jordan
We would have no problem with it appearing in the post, if it had appeared after our opening. Can you imagine, that we provide support for a visiting artist with a fellowship to produce something for us and it appears someplace else first? Come on. I mean, you know, seriously. Now let me also say this, if it had appeared two days after we opened, not only would we have supported it, we would have been happy for it, because it would have been more publicity for us.
But this is what I will say. What Mr. Watson did is that he did that, and he put those pieces in there that we feel are absolutely opposite to what we were trying to transmit. I think it disrespects the families that cooperated with him. I think it disrespects us because he didn't let us know. And I think he also understands that that was the issue. He wants those pieces to be seen. And he wanted them to be seen as part of this, and he didn't care how we felt about it. We care how we feel about it because it represents us.
Liz Schlemmer
Jordan also explained why he found Cornell's additional images disrespectful.
Joseph Jordan
You saw families, you saw sites, you saw individuals in the act of what we call sacralizing, going into a place and communing with their ancestors or communing with particular ideas of history. And then you cut to a board member alone, looking back at a camera.
Liz Schlemmer
Reporters asked whether the Stone Center had a written contract with Watson laying out expectations for the residency, which they did not outside of an offer letter. There were no licensing agreements. And so then, of course, people asked, why not? And here's what Jordan said.
Joseph Jordan
Working with artists, there is an etiquette, and I think that that's the etiquette that we had expected. I think you're also bringing up something that we had never had to do before, but perhaps we'll have to do it in the future.
Liz Schlemmer
At a campus forum after canceling the exhibition, Jordan admitted that he had not consulted with any of the subjects in the photos about that decision, and said he should have.
Cornell Watson
James Cates, who white supremacists murdered on campus, still needs us to fight for justice. Nicole Hannah Jones showed us that we still need to fight for equity and equality. The UNC Board of Trustees showed us that we still need to fight for diversity. Roger Eubanks still needs us to fight against environmental injustice. Our ancestors still need us to fight for our history to be remembered and honored. We still need to fight and dismantle institutions of white supremacy. We still need to fight for reparations. We need to recognize with intentionality the many forms in which a diverse community seeks healing.
Anisa Khalifa
That's from Watson's artist statement for Tarred Healing. The idea of ongoing struggle as healing is foundational to the Stone Center. Generations of Black students fought for it to be established, and housed in a freestanding building. It's named for Sonja Haynes Stone, who had her own bitter fight for tenure at UNC.
Liz Schlemmer
I spoke to Danita Mason-Hogans, who's a member of the generational Black Chapel Hill community. She's been involved in trying to get the full photo series displayed locally.
Danita Mason-Hogans
I was a part of those Nicole Hannah Jones protests. I was also a part of the protests to get the Black culture center named after Dr. Sonja Haynes Stone. So for me in my relationship with the university, which is embodied by Cornell's photographs, those stories of protests are tremendously important to us local people, because it was the students who initiated a lot of the better conditions that the local generational people had been beset with.
So it was students who organized for better wages with a housekeepers, which my grandmother was a housekeeper. It was the students who organized for better wages and better treatment at the food workers' strike. It was students who organized for James Cates and recognition. Those were the students who did that back in the 1970s. So for me, resistance is also part of Carolina's story. And so I find those photographs incredibly important, not only appropriate, but I think is important part of the story that we have here.
Liz Schlemmer
Watson says after showing the full photo series to the Clark family, who are represented in two of the final images, he felt proud and validated. Danita Mason-Hogans also reached out to Watson when she first saw the series.
Cornell Watson
She called to let me know how proud she was after she had seen the photo story in the Washington Post. And it was just really, truly a moment of validation that all the work that I had done really meant something.
Anisa Khalifa
Liz, you told me that what initially drew you to this story was the irony that the Stone Center first reached out to Cornell Watson specifically because of his Behind the Mask series in the Washington Post, that was about how Black people self-censor in white spaces. And then in the end, the center asked him to remove part of his vision for the project, because they didn't like it.
Liz Schlemmer
Yeah, Watson told the Stone Center in an email that he felt like they were asking him to wear the mask. Here he is reading from his artist statement for the Behind the Mask series.
Cornell Watson
Mask: a protective covering. This photo series is in honor of my ancestors who smiled when they were not happy, laughed when nothing was funny, and cried when they were not sad so that I could be here today. This is for the times we cut or straighten our hair to be professional. For the times we pretend to be happy around our managers after seeing photos of them in blackface. For the days we show up to work and smile after watching our brothers and sisters lynched on livestream. For the times we are told to go back to our country, and we would go if we knew what country we came from. This is for all the times we wore the mask.
Liz Schlemmer
Days after the story broke, he read that statement at an artist talk at the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, where part of the Behind the Mask series is on display. Watson told me it was an emotional experience because it was one of the first times he'd read it in public, and that it means even more to him now after what happened with the Tarred Healing exhibition.
Cornell Watson
It was almost like a manifesto for how I was going to move forward in the art world and be unapologetic about what I was going to say about our stories. And so I think that's also why this situation with the Stone Center in the exhibition was disappointing, because we weren't being completely our most authentic selves and telling the truth unapologetically.
You know, if we can't talk about Clayton Somers and his ties to Silent Sam and all the other systems we can't talk about, like the lack of diversity on the board of trustees. You know, we can't talk about the past the present ties of Sonja Haynes Stone and Nicole Hannah Jones. If we can't talk about like, you know, all the fighting that the students have done for to memorialize James Cates, like, what is that space even for if we can't talk about those things?
Anisa Khalifa
That experience of erasure is one that Black artists frequently have when they work with historically white institutions. How did it make Watson feel to have this decision come from a Black Cultural Center?
Liz Schlemmer
I asked him that.
Cornell Watson
I don't necessarily feel like the decision came from a Black institution. It came from a Black person that represents a white institution. Dr. Jordan has the power and agency to make the Stone Center a safe space and make it the place that it was supposed to be that so many people have fought for, for a freestanding Stone Center. But particularly with this decision to censor out the Black student movement from the exhibition, and then to eventually cancel the exhibition, is very counter to what those students and what the community fought for, as it relates to the Stone Center.
Anisa Khalifa
Liz, do you think this is an isolated incident or part of a larger worrying trend at UNC?
Liz Schlemmer
To a certain extent it is isolated because Jordan has made clear that the decision came from him and him alone that no one else outside the Stone Center even knew about his decision to cancel the exhibition. Provost Chris Clemens, who is Jordan's boss, actually called Watson to apologize for how he was treated. But members of the UNC Chapel Hill Community—professors, students, staff—have been talking about issues of academic freedom for years. And those conversations seem to be intensifying. I've seen it in faculty meetings, at protests, on Twitter, in conversations person-to-person and in news reporting. These issues are stemming not only from decisions by governing bodies like the Board of Trustees, but also as a result of an environment at the university that lets people know, we don't talk about certain things. Or maybe more precisely, we don't support people who draw attention to certain things.
Anisa Khalifa
Right. Legal scholars have described this as the chilling effect of even the threat of censorship. So what happens next?
Liz Schlemmer
Watson says he's been overwhelmed with offers to display the full photo series, but he's focused on putting it up locally in Chapel Hill first.
Cornell Watson
At the end of the day, this is really about the stories of the Black community of Chapel Hill. And so, like my hope is that their stories have an opportunity to be heard, because they're all important, and that they have an opportunity to see themselves and feel like their legacy is honored.
Liz Schlemmer
The Chapel Hill Public Library is planning to exhibit the full photo series tard healing later this spring.
Anisa Khalifa
That's all for this episode of Tested. Our editor is Dave DeWitt. I'm Anisa Khalifa. Thanks for listening.