Rev. Alex Gee and the Center for Black Excellence and Culture: A Dream Fulfilled (Part 2 of 2)
As a teenager, Rev. Alex Gee had a premonition that someday he would create something of note on a hill in South Madison.
by Jonathan Gramling
On May 6, the Center for Black Excellence and Culture held its grand opening. For the past 16 months, the Center has been rising on Badger Road just east of S. Park Street on vacant land that used to be a car wash and where Nehemiah Development Corporation once stood. It has arisen on a hill, fulfilling a dream that Rev. Alex Gee, the CEO of the Center, had as a youth.
It is one thing to have a dream. It’s another to make that dream a reality.
It was during COVID when Black Lives Matter was going strong in response to the murder of George Floyd and the health disparities that African Americans face brought the need for the Center to the fore. Some key players got involved in the planning for the center who would work pro bono until the necessary funds had been raised.
JLA Associates, the architectural firm was one of those players and they were bringing on board a game changer.
“At our first full meeting, this Black guy walked in,” Gee recalled. “He was tall in a great suit. I was wondering why he was there. I had no idea.”
It was Rafeeq Asad.
“Typically when people have someone Black on their staff and they are white, they’ll say, ‘Oh we have a guy who we think would be good at this,’”Gee said. “They made no mention because Rafeeq was not hired when Joe and I met or Jim, Joe and I met. Between the meeting when we asked Joe Lee to do it pro bono and our first meeting, they hired Rafeeq. The process had already begun. But we didn’t know it. So when Rafeeq later told me when he was hired, Joe told him when he was brand new on the job, like the first day, ‘I’ve got a project for you.’ And so when Rafeeq walked in, we said, ‘We have a Black architect?’ He had dreds. He was part of the culture. And from there, it was never a dull
moment. We connected at the very first meeting. And I could not believe that we would have the space to work with an architect who would not need to have Blackness in the space explained to him. He said, ‘I know what you’re talking about. It’s called the Black Aesthetic. I studied and wrote about that in my thesis.’ And from there, it was just a match made in heaven. That was in 2020-2021. It’s been a joy to work with him. The things he was able to capture, the things that he was able to design that we needed to feel the angles, the shapes, the colors, the Black Aesthetic. He captured it masterfully.”
Lilada Gee, Alex’s sister was the person on thje Center staff who interfaced with Asad.
“The design was backstopped by Lilada on our team,” Gee said. “She was an artist. We didn’t want something corporate or tech space or a high school auditorium or high school classroom. And so, Lilada and Rafeeq built a strong bond because they are both artists and he could hear her longing for colors that almost ripped off the wall. I think he loved working with another Black person who was the owner and also artistic. A beautiful moment was when we first gathered to talk about the concept. Rafeeq started presenting. Frances Huntley-Cooper was in the room as well as Ray Allen, Derrick Smith and others who were sorority and fraternity leaders. It was an emotional moment for me because I had never presented before an all Black group before. And the group paused and said, ‘We’ve never had a Black architect present to us before.’ And that was how this started and that introductory moment caused a pause in the room that fueled where we were going. And it was that significant at that point.”
Gee began to assemble a team to make the Center a reality. Many of them had worked together on projects in the E. Washington Ave. corridor.
“Their sense was ‘Let’s come behind Alex and the Black community and let’s do it again on the south side,’” Gee recalled. “And it was an amazing team. That was a respectful, present yielding team. They did not use a traumatizing or condescending tone because they realized that they were not experts, not only on Black culture, but also Black spaces. And they had to listen to us about what needed to happen, what needed to be felt in that space. And it happened. We made it happen. The people whom I mentioned so far were all vendors. The Hiebing Group volunteered to do all of the publicity. They have probably donated close to $650,000 in in-kind donations on this project. But Rick, Jim, Amanda and others were consulting services to us. But our planning group, which was made up of some of the advisors and other people like Frances and Neil Heinen who were our co-chairs. Lilada was on the team. And Ray Allen, the board chair, was on the team. The planning team was a combination of vendors and planning team members.”
The planning team used Zoom so that they could keep everyone at the table on a regular basis. And listening sessions were also held in the Black community to make sure that the project was meeting their needs.
“Lilada’s task was to hold listening sessions with doctors, nurses, formerly incarcerated individuals, moms, Blacks who were born in Madison, Black state workers, Black business owners to make sure that what we were dreaming was congruent with what the community wanted and what we thought we heard in our Justified Anger listening sessions,” Gee said. “And that piece kept us tethered to the community. But it also encouraged our white funders to understand that we weren’t working in a vacuum. That was really important.”
When the time arrived to do some serious fundraising, the drive started with pledges from approximately 300 African Americans to set the tone for the campaign, that the Black community had some skin in the game
“Funders were going to ask, ‘How does the Black community feel about this,’” Gee said. “Before they could ask us, we launched the Black Excellence campaign. We had over 300 donors give the first dollars. And that so impressed the business community that it moved Summit to give us our first seven figure gift, which was Summit’s largest gift ever, $2,000,000, to us. It caused a domino effect. Summit came in and others started coming in. It was legitimized because the Black community were galvanized years ago when asked what was needed and then asking those same Black people to invest in it. It was such an appropriate thing to do. And I think the community respected the fact that I was homegrown and spent my whole life and career here. And they were aware that I love this community and I wasn’t going anywhere.”
After that, things began to move pretty quickly.
“We broke ground on Juneteenth 2024,” Gee said. “By Juneteenth 2025, we announced that all of the money was raised for construction. We’re still raising money for programs. But for the construction, that was a tremendous timetable that we celebrated and here we are 8-9 months later and the project is finished. Findorff started construction in October 2024. From October 2024 to October 2025, the structure and the external was all finished and we were able to put the final beam in. Everything was finished outside of fine tuning in October 2025. From October 2025 to Christmas, everything was done. It took about 14-15 months.”
Not only were the furnishings new, but the organization itself, the Center for Black Excellence and Culture was a new entity as well.
“There were a few things in terms of art that we are hanging and touch-up painting and lighting that we had to have in place before we could put in,” Gee said. “Some of the furniture was back ordered and so those final pieces have come in the past few weeks. We’re also onboarding new staff. It hit me about six weeks ago that everyone was focusing on the fact of the new facility. But what we hadn’t really processed that we were launching a brand new company. This is not an outgrowth of Nehemiah or Fountain of Life. It’s a whole separate board with a whole different mission. And I don’t think I realized I was getting a company and a facility. Any one of those could make you gray. To do both of those was really overwhelming. But we had a great planning group. And then the staff has been able to build. Those are two major feats that we pulled off at the same time.”
And the programming will be a combination of projects that the Center initiates and programmikng from outside entities.
“Organizations can rent for activities,” Gee said. “A lot of it is major event space. We’re designing about 30 percent of the programming. The other 70 percent will come from other individuals from our community who want to do things for seniors, intergenerational programming, literacy, art, AI or plays or film festivals. And so we are talking with Black communities around the state of Wisconsin to hold activities that strengthen Black people. But service organizations of all backgrounds and businesses will be able to rent our space for staff gatherings, retreats and small conferences. Yes, we’ll be open for business as a premiere Black boutique mini-conference space. It’s going to be a very specialized venue in addition to our programming for the Black community. One thing that I would like to add is we will be conducting research here on the impact of this space on Black physiology, Black mental wellness and Black health. We know we’re dying more readily. We have signed memorandums of understanding with various university departments. We do not have a partnership with UW-Madison. I have built relationships with various UW-Madison departments, but the university as a whole has not partnered with us. Letters & Science has. African American Studies has. Center for Healthy Minds has. The Osher Center has. The Wisconsin Alzheimer’s Dementia Research Center has. These are departments that we have been working with and have drafted memorandums of understanding with not so that we are a part of their research projects. We have invited them to help us measure the impact of Black community space and Black joy on Black health. That’s our idea and we’ve asked them to bring together world-class research acumen and tools to populate.”
And it will also be focused on the African Diaspora.
“We’re also strengthening and building a strong Black global sense of Black global citizenship,” Gee said. “For example, I’m entertaining dignitaries from The Gambia this week because they want to see places where the Diaspora is celebrated. We are planning economic development trips and vacations and gatherings and genealogical studies trips to West Africa, South Africa and East Africa. The Center is going to sponsor as well as hosting dignitaries when they are here. Our desire in strengthening Blackness is to strengthen the corridor between Madison and Milwaukee, Madison and La Crosse because we are stronger together. But we are also building pathways to West Africa and East Africa in helping Black people think about living in Africa, citizenship in Africa, economic development in Africa, having children spend time in Africa, but really broadening the Black network. We will become a national leader in strengthening Pan-African economic development ties for non-governmental and non-mega corporate entities. We will work with churches, nonprofits, researchers. The Black global citizenship and leadership in that are two major things that people don’t talk about when they talk about the center. But it’s really what is setting us apart.”
The good work has only now just begun.
