The Black Student Union photo booth reflects on the University Center’s ballroom floor. The BSU was formed in 1967 and formally published its own newspaper called “Watani,” which later became a yearbook for the BSU.
The Black Solidarity Summit, put on by the University of Montana’s Black Student Union, celebrated its seventh year on Feb. 9 and 10, platforming Black and Indigenous voices through speeches, artwork and music.
The Summit brought together representatives from the Union, African student associations and experts on Black and Indigenous history and culture to discuss racial discrimination and important historical figures and activists, but it also intended to provide a place for Black and Indigenous students to educate one another and celebrate their racial identities.
From queer voices to bracelet-making, here’s a collection of the Kaimin’s coverage of some of the Summit’s events.
(Claire Bernard)
Murray Pierce, left, and Tobin Milller Shearer, right, present at the Black Solidarity Summit, leading discussions about “wokeness.”
Murray Pierce, middle, and Tobin Miller Shearer, right, present at the Black Solidarity Summit at the University of Montana on Feb. 10. Pierce and Shearer discuss the definition of “woke”, the historical context of “wokeness,” and how to navigate a climate of “anti-wokeness.”
An evolution of ‘woke’ over time
Tobin Miller Shearer, director of African-American studies at the University of Montana, would describe the story of Jonathan Daniels and Ruby Sales as one of two key “woke” individuals in history.
But it’s a story that would ultimately end in tragedy, after 26-year-old Daniels was shot and killed by a part-time deputy sheriff in Hayneville, Alabama. In 1965, Daniels, a white man and Civil Rights activist, accompanied 17-year-old Sales to the entrance of a convenience store, looking for a fresh beverage.
But instead of being let inside, the pair faced a gun, held by Tom Coleman, a state highway employee and volunteer deputy. After warning Sales and Daniels they couldn’t enter, Coleman fired at Sales. Daniels pushed Sales out of the way and the bullet killed him immediately.
As a result of the trauma, Sales became mute for about a year. She grew up to be an important leader and founded the SpiritHouse Project, which uses art, education, action and spirituality to bring diverse peoples together to work for social justice, spiritual maturity and more.
“Ruby Sales is still with us. She’s an amazing woman, continues to be so, and her life is with us because of what Jonathan Daniels lecture,” Shearer said in his speech, “The Dangers of Staying Woke While Others Sleep.”
The white Episcopal seminarian is considered a martyr by many, including Martin Luther King Jr., who said, “One of the most heroic Christian deeds of which I have heard in my entire ministry was performed by Jonathan Daniels,” according to the Virginia Military Institute, Daniels’ alma mater.
VMI — which at the time was an all-men, all-white institution with a history of resisting integration, according to the Washington Post — has since recognized Daniels, establishing the Jonathan M. Daniels ‘61 Humanitarian Award in 1997.
“Jonathan Daniels was woke. He knew what he had to do,” Shearer, who has a doctorate in history and religious studies, said. “He listened very carefully to the African American leaders around him and responded in that context.”
Being woke can look different for people of color and people who are white, Shearer said. For himself, a white man, being woke includes multiple principles, like the responsibility of education on Black history and culture. Rather than asking colleagues or people of color, he urges people to be proactive and do their own research.
“People need to be clear in their racial identities without getting caught up in any sort of guilt or discomfort about them,” Shearer said. “We need to know who we are.”
Shearer believes having a clear understanding of who we are is important for being able to educate ourselves.
The word “woke” has attained a controversial connotation among politics in America throughout history and has stirred controversy among different political parties, according to Shearer, who has taught at UM for 16 years.
In the past year, prominent right-wing political figures have shared their stance on people who are “woke.” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis claimed, “The woke mind virus is basically a form of cultural Marxism,” during the launch of his bid for the Republican nomination for the upcoming presidential election, going as far as declaring a “war on woke.”
As laws and politics in America shift, so does the definition of what racial awareness and education means. For example, Pierce said, during the period of slavery in America, understanding the geographical conditions of the land to prevent a chance of being tracked while escaping was considered awareness. Now in the modern world, it could be defined as being alert to injustices as well as educated on the history of Black, Indigenous and people of color.
Other terminology that helped birth the term “woke” can be traced back to as early as 1923 when political activist Marcus Garvey published, “Wake up Ethiopia! Wake up Africa! Let us work towards the one glorious end of a free, redeemed, and mighty nation,” in one of his articles.
According to Pierce, some people believed Garvey was calling on Black people globally to become more socially and politically conscious.
“The term was ‘consciousness.’ People talked about having consciousness or raising consciousness,” Murray Pierce, director of multicultural affairs and administrative rep with the Black Student Union, said.
The actual term “woke” did not become popular until the Civil Rights Movement, according to Pierce. During that time, there were talks about having consciousness and raising consciousness much like Garvey said in 1923. According to the Oxford Academic, the goal of raising consciousness during the Civil Rights Movement was to create a more positive and empowering sense of Black identity.
The term recently became more prominent in 2020, following the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Trayvon Martin and the Black Lives Matter Movement.
Modern-day “wokeness,” as described by Pierce, is an increasing awareness of events and occurrences that impact African American lives and changing social expectations through reactions and beliefs by broadening knowledge.
“The knowledge of history combined with action equals power,” Pierce said.
(Sav Chavez)
Queer people of color learn from past activists & artists
Sylvie Tower and Mint Pitassy, Black Student Union members, presented about influential queer Black and Indigenous people of color who helped make social progress and publically represent the community at the lecture “Queer People of Color: Their importance and history.”
Many individuals have experienced intersectionality, according to the speakers. Intersectionality is defined by the Center for Intersectional Justice as “the ways in which systems of inequality based on gender, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, class and other forms of discrimination ‘intersect’ to create unique dynamics and effects.”
Because many people exist in intersectional issues of discrimination, the speakers shared the stories of a few influential figures to explain how they helped others to understand this complex topic. Storme Delarverie, a drag king in the 1960s, was biracial, and a lesbian. She was also considered a key figure at Stonewall, a series of protests for LGBTQIA+ rights that started after police raids at a gay bar in New York City.
James Baldwin, a Civil Rights activist and influential writer for African American rights, wrote stories and books including depictions of same-sex love, moving the needle and stigma surrounding not only queer relationships but queer relationships for people of color. The students covered their stories, among others, and their challenges and triumphs.
“Love is where you find it,” James Baldwin said. “If you lie about that, you lie about everything.”
According to Tower and Pitassy, the time for action is now. They encouraged the audience to listen to queer people of color, speak up about injustice, create spaces inclusive for them, support businesses owned by the community and fight transphobic laws and legislation, like recent Montana state legislation banning gender-affirming care for transgender youth.
(Lauren Reinhart)
President of the Black Student Union Jasmine Caldwell-Smith, left, and BSU member Sylvie Tower, right, pick out beads to make bracelets on the second day of the Black Solidarity Summit.
Art as a safe space: Beads and painting
University of Montana students and community members gathered Saturday during a breakout session of the Black Solidarity Summit in the University Center ballroom to relax through making bracelets and viewing art. All participants were welcome to sift through the bowls of beads, grab some embroidery floss and join the bracelet-making table.
Bead making, and especially bead trading, has been a central part of Western African economies and cultures for centuries, according to a video shown at the start of the event. The most popular Ghanaian style of bead is made from glass, but wooden and clay beads are also common.
The video focused on Garbe Mohammed, a fourth-generation bead merchant living in the Republic of Ghana. A typical West African trade bead might travel through Togo, Benin, Nigeria or Mali and arrive at Mohammed’s Koforidua Bead Market before finding a home far away from Africa.
“Beads travel in every part of the world,” Mohammed said.
In the 16th century, some beads were believed to protect wearers from evil spirits, according to the video. The Black Solidarity Summit’s beading activity looked to create a similar feeling — a relaxing, safe space to chat and craft with colorful beads and friendly people.
Eporu Tower, a 21-year-old art major from Uganda and Missoula, also showed four pieces of his art, including an unfinished painting he continued to work on during the session. Tower’s work was colorful and abstract, structured and free, personal and existential. One of his pieces, a self-portrait, was painted in all black using gesso and layered newspaper to create a 3D effect. As a result, the portrait was raised off of the canvas, a mix between painting and sculpting. Tower was eager to talk about art, and not just his own, believing that everyone has a space for and is capable of creating.
“Art making is prayer,” Tower wrote on his Instagram.
(Mariah Henry)
Eporu Tower works on a piece at the Black Solidarity Summit on Feb. 10. Tower said he was just sort of “playing around” with this piece in progress, but themes from his art often focus on inner self expression.
Race, identity and the planet
According to George Price, a retired UM professor of Native American studies and history, we are Earth, and Earth is love.
“Look at these rocks, the colors of Earth,” he said, pointing to a picture taken near Paradise, Montana. “These are the colors of our own skins.”
Price, a multi-racial descendant of the Assonet Band of the Wampanoag Nation of Massachusetts, drew from his climate activism and experiences to discuss Indigenous identity and humans’ relationship to the planet in his lecture “BIPOC History and Humanity’s Indigenous Future.” BIPOC stands for Black and Indigenous people of color.
Price said if human beings are the world, and the world is love, then people must take care of each other and the planet.
“Something is missing in the human experience,” he said.
Retired UM professor George Price after his session at the Black Solidarity Summit on Feb. 10. Price talked about the history and future of Black and Indigenous people of color at the summit.
Racial discrimination and hatred are two things that lessen the human experience, and the word “Indigenous” is often racialized, Price said. However, he offered a definition focusing on location instead, explaining Indigenous means the first or original people belonging to a specific geographic place. “I like that the definition of Indigenous is ‘belonging to a place,’” Price said. “The place doesn’t belong to you. It’s not your property, but your life is drawn from it.”
In conversations about race today, people focus on and strive for cultural sensitivity, he said, like in his story about an academic informing Flathead Elders they should call themselves Native Americans instead of Indians.
“Who gets to define? Does academia get to define identity for all of the various groups?” He asked the audience. “Is it just kind of to be assumed that academia knows best?”
Price said the traditional names of Indigenous tribes and languages worldwide usually mean “we are the people of this place” in English.
“Modern humans are a species that doesn’t even know what we are,” he said, “and that doesn’t sit right.”
(Vivanne Ostheimer)
Black Solidarity Summit attendees chat before starting the Black History Trivia game on Feb. 10, held in the University Center Ballroom. Questions like “ Who played Uncle Phil in the Fresh Prince of Bel Air?” kept the audience engaged.
‘I Don’t Like It When…’ then and now video display
“I Don’t Like It When…” started as a 2014 video project by the University of Montana’s Black Student Union. Ten years later, they revisited the concept, updating it with current members’ experiences.
The 2014 project is a short interview-style video, with BSU members talking about discriminatory situations they’ve encountered. Each segment features a whiteboard with the words “I don’t like it when…”, followed by each person’s response.
“I don’t like it when I have to be an ambassador for my race,” one person said.
The video discusses many scenarios, but some examples included being called and seen as “ghetto”, being called and seen as “white-washed”, assuming someone can’t swim, assuming someone is a good dancer and being the only Black person in a class.
One thread that came up repetitively is isolating and racist experiences on campus and in the Missoula community at large, such as being stared at and followed in stores, or people crossing the street deliberately to avoid interaction. It paints a bleak picture of UM and Missoula in 2014, but the video ended with the line “I think we’re making progress.”
The 2024 “I Don’t Like It When…” project has some big stylistic differences. To adjust to a more modern format, it’s filmed less like a Youtube video, and more like a series of TikToks. There’s also an informational segment in between each person’s commentary, useful for people who want to be good allies but maybe don’t understand why touching a stranger’s hair is inappropriate.
The updated video display covers this, discrimination and judgment against people who speak or are learning English as a second language, racist assumptions about how people speak, and people asking invasive questions about ethnicity and where people are “really from”. The video asserts at the end that we as a campus and society need to be more aware of racism and microaggressions.
“The first step is to embrace the uncomfortable conversations we’ve been avoiding,” the video said.
(Keely Proebstel)
Untangling from internalized oppression and reclaiming self
“This is baby Shay, the little Black girl who was given the talk at a young age and given a complete understanding of my space in this world,” said Meshayla Cox-Luebbe, former Black Student Union president, founder of the Black Solidarity Summit, and the keynote speaker for this year’s summit.
Cox-Luebbe shared a spectrum of experiences from when she was younger, from being a carefree child wanting to be friends with everyone to not being invited to a sleepover because of her blackness. Cox-Luebbe said that from a young age, she was aware of her space in the world.
Directing the conversation towards students — specifically Black students — and students of marginalized groups, Cox-Luebbe, owner and founder of Coequity Consulting, walked the crowd of 20 through her experience on the path of growth to help reach a fuller version of herself.
Cox-Luebbe constructed a concept called an “empowerment tapestry,” listing six steps representing the intricate nature of a growth process, specifically within social justice. The six steps include awakening, understanding, reckoning, self-compassion, rebuilding and collective action.
“The awakening period led to a lot of judgment and fear and jumping directly into action with little introspection,” Cox-Luebbe shared. “Before getting into action, what are the additional steps we take on our awareness journey?”
As someone who put action first and self-compassion on the back burner, she often found herself doing tasks and being harsh towards herself with a high sense of perfection. Now, however, she’s focusing on putting her energy into being an expert on herself while doing work for others, Cox-Luebbe said.
By consulting the community she found on campus, as well as advice she gained from inspiring figures in her life, Cox-Luebbe abandoned these mindsets and is “in her soft girl era, now until forever.”
Jasmine Caldwell, current president of the BSU, had the chance to get advice on being the president of the Union, as well as how to handle stress during school work, advocacy and everyday chores.
“I’m really proud of you, I’m really proud of the fact that you represent as an inspiration. You represent as an example to a lot of young women and men on this campus,” said Murray Pierce, BSU adviser and Cox-Luebbe’s former mentor. “I would hope the people in this room would take a look at you as an example and follow in your footsteps.”
(SC)
Keys to the “yellow brick road” of entrepreneurship
In a market that may seem flooded with entrepreneurs, there are many ways for students to stand out as they enter the entrepreneur job field, especially for people of color, according to Black Solidarity Summit Speaker, Mynor Alejandro Veliz.
Veliz is the Chief Financial Officer for Headwaters Foundation, an endowment that is focused on building relationships in the community. Veliz originally wanted to be a car salesman, but grew to be a resource for other up-and-coming entrepreneurs. He is originally from Guatemala and brought the perspective of an immigrant entrepreneur to the Black Solidarity Summit to give tips to students wanting to start businesses or fundraise for their organizations.
Networking is very important when going into entrepreneurship. According to Veliz, networking so one knows who can donate to one’s causes is key to success.
“Figure out who the rich people in town are,” Veliz said. “Know someone who will point you in the right direction.”
Having a space is important to keep group work engaging and progressing, Veliz said. This can be a donor’s home, large meeting hall, or other meeting space with facilities available. Some facilities include a commercial kitchen and catering services.
Hosting events in an underused space also sets a group apart from others. For example, “activated alleys,” where alleys are cleaned up and used for events — like concerts to promote an event — or an outdoor extension of a restaurant or store.
“One day the events will get to Wilma,” Veliz said.
Money is not the only thing that can be donated. People can donate their time, manual labor and other resources. Volunteers can donate their time to set up and take down the event, and to clean up afterwards.
Most of the time, the hardest step is just asking people for help. Veliz suggests people should set up a portfolio of the things they need and donors can choose what they want to contribute.
Veliz remembered when the International Food Fair used to happen. He wants opportunities like that to come back to Missoula and become more common, to share the stories of different cultures and different business owners.
(LR)
Editor’s Note: This story was updated to accurately attribute comments to Murray Pierce, and to correct the amount of time Tobin Miller Shearer has been teaching at UM.
