A Note From Morgan Monceaux

I grew up in Louisiana in a time when it was said that if you had just a drop of Negro blood you were black. I was eight years the summer I learned that I was also part Indian.

All that summer, our relatives kept arriving. I think my great-grandmother Nana knew she was dying, and she called her children and their families to pass along her blessing to them. They came from all over: Shreveport, Louisiana; Michigan; and Oregon. The cousins fit right in with the neighborhood kids, and every night after dinner we’d play cowboys and Indians. My friend Larry insisted on being the sheriff, because he had a badge. “There must be law and order in this black town,” he’d say.

It was my Uncle George who got us thinking about things. The first time I saw him, he was getting off the train in his cowboy boots and a big Mexican hat. He wore a gun belt but no guns. He was very tall and dark, with a big thick mustache, and when he walked he jangled. He smelled of cigars and rose water and sweat. I learned that night that he was Mama’s younger brother. He’d left home when he was thirteen, and had lived in Texas, California, and Mexico, where he owned a ranch.

Uncle George became a hero to us kids that summer. Every night he’d bring out a watermelon and talk to us about Mexico and its people, and about the West. He held us spellbound with his stories about cowboys and Indians, and our games took on a new life.

He started the other grownups talking, too. Mama told us about the Maroon people – fugitive slaves from the West Indies – in Florida. Our great-grandmother told us her mother was from the great Seminole nation that once ruled Florida, and she herself was the daughter of a Creek chief. My cousins and I realized that we had Indian blood in us, too.

One day Papa, my great-grandfather, came out of his workshop to stop a fight between a kid named Renard and my sister Elaine. Renard said there was no such thing as black soldiers in the West. We already knew better, but that day Papa told us about how the buffalo soldiers were called buffalo soldiers because people thought their hair looked like a buffalo’s mane.

Later that summer, Uncle Joe and Uncle George took us kids to Texas to see our first black rodeo. We knew about rodeos, but we had never heard of one where all the cowboys were black. I saw bulldogging for the first time. When we got home, I tried it on my dog Jeff, and he bit me.

That summer helped me see the connection between our games of cowboys and Indians – and the Wild West of the movies – and a history in which my family had a place. It showed me that our heritage included Native Americans, too, and it sparked my lifelong fascination with the West, which I’ve tried to capture in these portraits.

Taken from the book My Heroes, My People by Morgan Monceaux and Ruth Katcher, published by Frances Foster Books in 1999.

This is an installation performance piece incorporating headless baby dolls, entitled "The Cost of Not Preventing Crack Babies".

This exhibition and performance is based on the universal theme of human frailty, tragedy and suffering - art reflects life. You, the viewer, as participants, are challenged to respond, to be alive and to value humankind.

My intention was to draw attention to the problem of crack addiction and to highlight where the responsibility lies.

This piece was first performed at Artscape 2003 in Baltimore. The format was that of a funeral, complete with readings, personal testimonials and a final procession. Included within the space were headless baby dolls, drug paraphernalia and a coffin.

Originally recorded on VHS.