Final Push to Make the Center for Black Excellence a Reality: The Home Stretch (Part 2 of 2)
Rev. Dr. Alex Gee superimposed on the arcitectural rendition of the Center For Black Excellence and Culture by Rafeeq Asad
by Jonathan Gramling
The seeds for the Center for Black Excellence and Culture were planted long ago in the imagination of Rev. Dr. Alex Gee, who is spearheading the effort to build it on Badger Road, adjacent to the Nehemiah Corporation. Like any other kid in Madison when he was growing up, there wasn’t a great deal said or depicted about Black history and culture, especially in the mainstream media. Black culture and traditions were passed down through Black community institutions like Mt. Zion Baptist Church and the South Madison Neighborhood Center, which became the Boys & Girls Club.
As the Black community has grown and expanded through the years, Gee wants to create a place where people can interact and learn to create a dynamic center of Black culture and history. The Center for Black Excellence and Culture is envisioned to be a 68,000 sq. ft. facility on Badger Road in South Madison where the community can come together and create.
“There will be a beautiful multi-purpose theater space for plays, film festivals, comedy shows and the like,” Gee said. “It will have retractable seats so that it will also provide banquet space and other kind of meeting space. Weddings and receptions will be able to be held there. There’s a smaller performance space for experimental theater because what I am finding from the Black drama community is there is no place that is designed by Black people and held by Black people where our stories can be told and we are encouraged to be behind the cameras, behind the scenes. There will be art space, maker space in studios. There will be a gallery. There will be a music studio and a place for creating videos, and podcasts. We’re going to help young people tell their stories.”
Beyond telling stories, the center will be a place where children — and adults — can develop their intellectual and performance talent.
“There will be classrooms for STEM and STEAM education,” Gee revealed. “We want to make sure that wee add the A for arts into STEAM education so that we are preparing Black children for excellence. There will be innovation space on the third level for people to come and design and work together on their consulting businesses. We’ll be showing people how to trademark and protect and patent their intellectual property and how to become consultants. It will be a place where people can meet and come and be developed as leaders, as thought leaders, as innovators where the focus will really be on leadership
development. Once that happens, we feel that people cannot only excel in creating their own business, but also running for political office or starting a nonprofit where the entrepreneurial spirit looks different. And we need for-profit businesses.”
With a space where people can interact at all times of the week, the interactions can spur creativity and innovation.
“I have to go out of the state to figure out how to become a social innovator,” Gee exclaimed. “We want to teach people how to expend innovation in all sectors. There will be a professional lounge where we will be able to entertain dignitaries from business or governmental officials or corporate officials who come to the city of Madison. When people come here and go to the Capitol or the UW-Madison campus, they don’t always come to the community. But we will have great space where we can host them and entertain them. The beauty of this is that it is focusing on the African Diaspora and not just the African American community. People who hail from Africa or the Caribbean or identify as Afro-Latino and North American Black can talk about that footprint that holds us together and the impact that that creative Pan-African movement has had on positively shaping the world is a story that we want to tell, particularly as it pertains to Wisconsin and the Midwest.”
While it will be a beautiful and conducive space, it will be the people who fulfill the space and its purpose.
“There is a lot of mingling and social space,” Gee said. “The big piece of this is when we had our listening sessions, 91 percent of the respondents said that we need space for meetings and gatherings. And so community groups can come in for meetings. And there will be space for local school districts to briung their children in from elementary to high school where they can spend a half day learning about the contributions of Black Americans in the state of Wisconsin. We’re going to be focusing on how you create art as a business. How do you turn your podcast into a business. How do you turn your intellectual property into a business? And how do we give you a framework for thinking about yourself and innovation from an Afro-Centric lens. It will be gathering people who are trying to create something.”
The building itself will be managed by a non-profit organization that is separate from Fountain of Life and Nehemiah. While Gee has a dream on how the center will function, the actual make-up of the programming — and who provides it — will evolve as the center opens and people and groups are attracted to the center.
“How much programming the center nonprofit does is still being determined,” Gee said. “A lot of the programming will come from the outside. We’re really focusing on the infrastructure and the relationships and the strategic partnerships. There are programs that we will design as we are trying to create welcoming space for UW Black students, staff and faculty. There will be other spaces where we are going to be bringing in Black experts to talk about wellness. I don’t mean a clinic. We’ll talk about mindfulness. We’re working closely with Richie Davidson and the Center for Healthy Minds. There are programs that we will be partnering with different branches of the university or other nonprofits with health programming. Sororities and fraternities will have meetings and trainings. So we are creating space so that we can create a greater sense of community. But it is not my desire to program all that space with center space. We’ll have staff who will run the facility, but creating staff to run all the programming is whole another burden. I’ve done that for 30 years. We’re trying something different now. Nehemiah will continue to do that as I step away to become the CEO of the center.”
The center is in the final stages of raising its last $3 million to open debt-free with groundbreaking slated for later this spring. In Gee’s view, the Center for Black Excellence and Culture would have remained only a dream if it weren’t for the Madison community.
“I’m appreciative that the community is really rallying around what is happening in South Madison,” Gee said. “I’m proud to be a part of the excitement that is happening. The community is trusting that we will pull this off with great excellence and finesse. That’s really affirming and makes me feel very proud to be a part of this community.”
Once more, the greater Madison community is proving to be a community ahead of its time.
To make a contribution to the Center for Black Excellence, visit www. theblackcenter.org.
“People can go to our website, which is,” Gee said. “They can give that way. It’s a portal for credit cards or people can mail their gift in. Certain larger gifts can be pledged over three years. But we are really asking people to make end-of-the-year donations because they get the tax benefit and we get the benefit of having it matched from this special fund that we now have available. When they go to the portal, it will explain all of the many ways in which they can give.”
Next issue: The Vision for The Center
