Artists Joel Christian Gill (CFA'04) and Charles Suggs (CFA'20) discuss using their work to tell lesser-known stories from Black history
Originally published in the Fall 2020 issue of CFA magazine. Edited By Mara Sassoon. Photos by Hannah Rose
In the wee hours of May 13, 1862, Robert Smalls, an enslaved Black man, stole the Confederate ship the CSS Planter. It was the middle of the Civil War, and Smalls, one of the Planter’s eight enslaved crew members, steered the ship away from a dock in Charleston, S.C., after its white captain, pilot, and engineer disembarked for the night. Donning the captain’s hat as a disguise, Smalls picked up his family and the families of other crew members and sailed out of Confederate waters and into freedom.
Little-known stories from Black history, like that of Robert Smalls’ sail to freedom, fascinate Joel Christian Gill (CFA’04), an associate professor of illustration at Massachusetts College of Art and Design. Gill explains that he’s not exclusively interested in stories about “Black firsts—like the first person to do this or that,” but rather moments in history “that would be amazing no matter what race a person is—like, stealing a Confederate warship is amazing, but stealing a Confederate warship when you’re an enslaved African is doubly amazing.”
Inspired by the comics he loved to read and draw growing up, Gill tells these stories in graphic novels, starting with Strange Fruit, Volume I: Uncelebrated Narratives from Black History (Fulcrum, 2014), which chronicles the lives of figures like Theophilus Thompson, a former enslaved person who became the first Black chess master, Marshall “Major” Taylor, a world champion bicycle racer, and many others. The New York Times said of the book that “at a moment when racial inequities have ignited this nation, Mr. Gill offers direction for the road ahead from the road behind.”
Joel Christian Gill’s comics tell little-known stories from Black history. Pictured here, a page from Gill’s Tales of the Talented Tenth, No. 3, which tells the story of Robert Smalls, an enslaved man who stole a Confederate ship and sailed to freedom. Image courtesy of Joel Christian Gill
Gill has gone on to write and illustrate Strange Fruit, Volume II: More Uncelebrated Narratives from Black History (Fulcrum, 2018) and a memoir, Fights: One Boy’s Triumph Over Violence (Oni Press, 2020). He is also the author of the Tales of the Talented Tenth series, which comprises individual graphic novels about notable figures in African American history, and the children’s book Fast Enough: Bessie Stringfield’s First Ride (Oni Press, 2019), and has illustrated a forthcoming graphic novel adaptation of Stamped from the Beginning by Ibram X. Kendi, the Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities at BU and director and founder of BU’s Center for Antiracist Research.
Like Gill, Charles Suggs (CFA’20) is fascinated with researching lesser-known stories from Black history and exploring them in his art—a passion he only started pursuing recently. For many years, Suggs worked as an administrative assistant at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, but he finally decided to apply to BU’s MFA program. “I was feeling restless. I want to do this, why am I not? I want to be a professional artist,” he told the Boston Globe, which in May 2020 named him one of “5 outstanding art-school grads for 2020.”
Suggs admits that “sometimes I’ll end up spending so much time on research that I have to just shake myself and tell myself, ‘Get to work on something now, or else you never will.’” At first, Suggs was making mostly drawings, then transitioned to working with oil paints. “But, there were so many different mediums that I liked and wanted to use, like watercolor markers. I wanted to find a way to use them all in one way, so to speak.” That’s when he started experimenting with video and animation. “With video, you can see all the different work that I’m doing, all the mediums I’m working with. Video is a format that can output it all.”
This is evident in his video Shadrach, which tells the story of Shadrach Minkins, a Black man who fled slavery and went to Boston, only to be arrested in 1851 under the Fugitive Slave Act. Members of an abolitionist organization infiltrated the courtroom where Minkins was being tried and helped him escape to Canada via the Underground Railroad. The piece blends video footage, animated pencil drawings, digital drawings, and prints along with images from Suggs’ research.
Charles Suggs’ video Shadrach tells the story of Shadrach Minkins, a Black man who fled slavery and went to Boston, only to be arrested in 1851 under the Fugitive Slave Act. Video courtesy of Charles Suggs
Gill and Suggs spoke this summer over Zoom about why it is important to tell little-known stories from Black history through their art and using their work to address issues of race and racism.
Read their conversation in CFA
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