BY HARRY COVERSTON, GUEST WRITER TO THE TIMES
WINTER PARK – The Puzzled Peace exhibition September 29 at the Winter Park Civic Center at Hannibal Square brought together Black artists from across the area to display artwork and tell the stories surrounding them. The event, organized by author and artist Valada Flewellyn, was designed to bring to consciousness the pieces of our collective history which remain to be acknowledged.
One work caught my eye from the outset. Nicole Persley, who goes by the professional name COL-e, had created a piece entitled “Chaos to Peace.” It featured a series of images, all arose from today’s Florida. What struck me was the disconnection of these pieces, the obscurity of some of the images and the overall sense of unease that the piece conveyed.
If chaos theory is to be trusted, it is precisely out of chaos that order based in all the component pieces finding right relation arises. The Hebrew word Shalom means peace based in right relation. As the title suggested, this peace is clearly still in process.
It was no accident that some of the imagery was partially obscured. Persley had whitewashed over several layers of images in succession. This symbolized the whitewashing of many chapters of American history, erasing both the stories of terrorism and suffering inflicted upon African-Americans as well as their stories of success despite all the obstacles thrown in their paths.
For Persley, the latter group would include a personal story. Unaware until her young adulthood that she was a mixed race woman, Persley began a process of discovery of her family roots using existing hard copies of official records that produced both incredible pride as well as deep sadness.
Her Grandfather had been a highly successful businessman and leader of community organizations in Detroit. Other family members had been pillars of success in Macon, Georgia. There her uncle had become the first Black licensed architect in Georgia and had drawn up plans for the original Tuskegee Institute in Alabama as well as the massive 16th Street Baptist Church in Montgomery infamous as the site of a terrorist bombing in 1963 killed four young girls. Persley found that a major artery in Macon was named for her family members who spelled their last name Pursley.
But mixed with the newly found pride was a sense of sadness. Her Grandfather had made his way passing as white. And her Father never told her that story. Whether he knew or not, she would never know. But the mere fact that her Grandfather seemingly felt the need to do this and scrupulously keep that secret was disturbing.
Persley had discovered the truth of the proverb “Be careful what you wish for. You might get it.” In her interview, she said, “There was a lot to unpack, a lot to understand. I have wondered if my Dad knew he was keeping a secret. I have wondered what is real, what is a lie. Learning about all this produced a lot to process.”
In the end, Persley found her long journey of discovery to be a process of healing. Part of that healing came in creating the artwork she displayed at Puzzled Peace: “There was as much emotional healing in creating this artwork as discovering my family’s history has been for me.” And she readily sees that same healing journey as possible for all Floridians. “I know what it’s like for history to be suppressed. But I also know how healing it is to uncover the truth.” She also knows the discovery of untold history comes at a price: “Racial awareness bears with it a legacy.”
