When I was in my junior year, in my second semester, my professor gave us a final assignment. She told us that we could paint whatever we wanted and to go crazy. I really had no idea what to paint so I started to conduct research and read articles. There was one that stuck out to me about feminism. But it wasn’t really feminism in it of itself that stuck out to me, but rather, It was the fact that while they were marching, multiple black girls were missing, and no one was saying anything about it. I was thinking, there’s a disconnect here. You’re marching for women, but these girls – Black girls – are missing. Something isn’t right. So I took it upon myself to make a poster of some sort using the painting as a means of communicating an issue that was overlooked and to some extent, overshadowed. I started the painting in 2017, but after the semester ended it just became one of the couple of paintings that I left unfinished because I just forgot about it, didn’t feel like it, or wasn’t motivated enough to complete it. Fast forward to three years later – January 1st to be exact, I decided to start painting again and to begin with the same painting I took a break from. It took me most of this year to finish it and was completed in October. The name of the painting is, Dear Little Black Girl, I’m So Sorry I Let You Down.
What you see pictured is a Black girl on top of what appears to be the White House or the Capitol Building holding a sign that reads, “Find Our Girls”. There’s a single girl because so often we feel as though the only people that can help us and are willing to help are ourselves and our community. And if we have to do that, then so be it. The building she is sitting on represents any form of government. And if you’re really paying attention or just have an eye for details, you can see that building she sits on isn’t level, and it isn’t accurate. The building’s foundation isn’t perfect and is unlevel so as to reflect our government. Its corruption starts at its roots, at its very foundation which has sullied its progression, which is exactly how thousands of Black girls could not only be missing, but also not searched for, sought after, and simply, not valued. Now, the figures inside the dark spaces, the windows, are the souls of the girls and women who have died, as well as those we don’t even know about. The flower patches directly in front of them are flowers for the women and girls whose families were lucky enough to get closure. They’re also for the families who didn’t. This is simply my way of calling out the system and its corrupt nature. This could be my mother, one of my four sisters, one of my friends. This could be me, and it would make me rest a little easier if I knew that someone would do that for me – would care, would search, would fight, and would do all they could to find me. In a country that does not care much for my skin, for me, I want girls who look like me, who also have my skin to know that I care, that their life matters to me, and if no one else will call it out or simply doesn’t know, I hope my painting is the first step to you caring, to you becoming aware of just how pervasive a problem this really is in our world today.
A Blog Post by Rhoda Clayton
