Freida High W. Tesfagiorgis, professor emeritus of African American Studies, Gender Women Studies and Art, came of age artistically during the Black Arts Movement during the 1960 and early 1970s.

Her life follows the currents of Black history at the time, which deeply influenced the subject matter and the texture of her art. While she was born in Mississippi, her father moved the family to Chicago in 1952 and got employment at the Ford Motor plant and hauling and recycling metal from cars using his truck as a second job to support his wife and 12 children.

Tesfagiorgis remembers the sting of racism back then. They lived in central Chicago in a veteran’s project.

“All of the people who lived there were veterans’ families,” Tesfagiorgis recalled. “Our next door neighbor, the family we went to church with, they fought in World War II. It changed over time, but that is how it was when I was growing up there. Many of the families were also from the South. Southern culture still prevailed there. We were surrounded in the central area by working class, blue collar people who really didn’t Black folks around. There was a lot of racism that we had to experience just walking two long blacks from our homes to the elementary school. There were working-class families in these small houses. Women would often come out on their porch with their hands on their hips with their dog barking. That was a scary two blocks. Since we were from a big family, we all went to school together most of the time and came back after school, at least in twos and threes.”

Like most African American families of the time, the children were sent back South during the summer so that they wouldn’t lose their culture and to get away from the intensity of the city. But they did experience another intensity at times. This was the era when Emmitt Till was murdered in Money, Mississippi.

“I remember one time I was visiting my grandparents,” Tesfagiorgis said. “I was age 12. I asked my grandmother and my aunt if I could go get an ice cream cone. They told me to go ahead. I walked down to this restaurant and I walked through the door and went inside. I just went up to the counter and asked this woman for an ice cream cone. She just looked at me like I was crazy. And then this man with his hands on his hips looked down at me. Everyone was looking at me. She said, ‘You go around to the other door. I was a little girl. What would have happened if I were a little boy? I don’t know. I wasn’t thinking in that way. So I went out and I passed by and saw the same woman on the one walk through a curtain and there was a Black man sitting on a wooden bench. There was a restaurant with tables and chairs, everything you would expect to see on one side of this curtain. And then on the other side, it was separate and unequal, which is what we know of the segregated South. I couldn’t believe my eyes. I didn’t want to buy an ice cream cone. I wasn’t going to buy anything from that store. I walked across the street to the drugstore. And I got an ice cream cone there. It was just a little corner drugstore. They didn’t have any problem. They had all kinds of customers up in there. Then I went back and told my grandmother and my aunt what happened. They said, ‘Don’t you know better? Didn’t we tell you that?’”

While Tesfigiorgis’ mother was musically talented and would fill their home with music playing the piano, Tesfigiorgis’ heart and spirit were captured by the visual arts. And it was her artistic talent and interest in teaching that took her to Graceland University in rural Lamoni, Iowa.

Next issue: The Allure of the Black Arts Movement