The Buxton Initiative: Sacred Spaces for Black Futures
How did we get here? That is a question that I continue asking myself and get asked all the time. Sometimes I can give an answer to that question, and sometimes it’s one of those things where I wake up shocked by the support and the love that I receive. I begin to question if I am even worthy. I dispel those thoughts and keep working.
Even when I was beginning, I knew subconsciously that I wanted to work in this particular field, but I didn’t know how or where to start. So, the best way that I could talk about the creation of the nonprofit and how it all came to be is to start at the beginning. (I know what you are thinking—-but this will not be a full autobiography, only a highlight reel of enlightenments and realizations.)
I am from Birmingham, Alabama, and I was born to a family built on community. My mom was one of ten, and so I was never short on cousins and family that I could connect with who understand my plight or understanding of the world. It wasn’t until after my early years that I realized other people weren’t growing with as many soundboards as I was. That being said, my family really kept me grounded, because despite the world’s notion of who I was and who I could be, they always saw me for my true self and helped me nourish that person inside of me. They are the value system that continues to guide me as I continue to build my nonprofit.
One of the fondest days that I had with my family is when we would have fish fries. Now, this isn’t as intimate as the ones we would have on regular Saturdays, where it would just be my immediate family and my grandmother. No, we would go all out. All of my aunts would be in the kitchen deboning, seasoning, and covering catfish. I can only akin it to an assembly line of perfection. There would be mounds of catfish. Outside, the plums of vinegary black smoke and heat radiated from the charcoal from the grill. My uncle stood over it, meticulous with a beer in one hand and a brush in the other. Two separate coolers, one filled with Capri Suns and the other was untouchable unless you were asked to fetch a beer for an adult. The sound of R&B and soul filled the air. My aunts and uncles reminisced on the fun times they had together while slamming cards at an intense game of Spades.
At the request of my Auntie, there was a bounce house in the back, along with a basketball hoop my Uncle had installed months back. Families flocked to my Grandma’s corner of the street, filled their plates up as high as they could, and joined in the fun. Everybody was welcome and could be their true selves. For a moment the struggles and worries of life didn’t exist. People were just able to be.
And that is what Buxton is. It is a place where Blackness runs wild and free. For so much of our lives, society has always tried to stifle us from being who we are. Whether it is the over policing of our neighborhoods, the deeming of our clothes and hair as unprofessional, the way we speak is associated with being poorly educated—-the list goes on. We need and deserve a space in which we can be ourselves unabatingly. When someone is constantly worried their true selves would be accepted in “the world,” this prevents that person from growing. Buxton is a place where we believe in providing water and nourishment to Black people and presenting them with the beauty of Blackness on every facet, to illustrate that the barometer that is used and governed by whiteness has no effect on you.
Having the realization, these principles, and aspiration to create a space for Black people to exist freely in Iowa, you might be shocked, as I was, that such a place existed at one point. It was a small Iowa mining town: Buxton, my nonprofit’s namesake.
Like Tulsa, Oklahoma, Central Park in New York, and the once thriving town that is now Lake Martin, Alabama, every state has its own secrets that it tries to bury deep within itself. Iowa had one, and it was founded in 1900 as a mining town. As a lot of mines were closing, it was open for business. The company that owned the mines also recruited a lot of Black mine workers from the South. With those two circumstances, Buxton was Birthed. In the community, the majority of the population was Black. Black citizens were owners of business with their white counterparts. In a country plagued by the oppressive system of Jim Crow, Buxton was a sanctuary. Not only did the story of Buxton represent my aspiration of what I want my nonprofit to imbue, but it also was a direct representation of my own personal story: a Black man from Alabama, moving to Iowa for an opportunity. Seeing these similarities made Buxton a no-brainer for the name of my organization.
Being uninhibited by oppressive systems allowed a lot of the Black families in Buxton to dream and create futures that were extremely difficult to attain in other spaces in America. At my organization, our goal is to create spaces in which we remember and celebrate the accomplishments that we have made in America from art, music, film, and literature, despite all of the obstacles that stood in front of us. Through showcasing the beauty of the uninhibited Black spirit, we are encouraging the creatives and activists to look beyond our current circumstances and realize the potential that lives within them.
The perfect example of providing space for dreams and discovery to happen is our Black’d Out Books program. This program was enacted in the spring of 2021, creating space to provide Black neighborhoods with free libraries that only encompass Black books by Black authors. The project was created as a necessity, firstly to create a space for banned books to continue to be able to serve the community despite many school boards trying to remove Black books from libraries and classrooms. On top of that, I also realize the lack of diversity when it comes to the school curriculum as it is. Growing up in Alabama, I only know of less than ten books that we had to read throughout my whole school curriculum. So I understand from personal experience that it is hard for someone to be able to truly understand / love themselves as a person, when that is not being taught in school. This program aims to provide literature that represents all facets of the diaspora, in hopes that anybody who interacts and takes a book will see themselves represented and seen.
When I first moved to Iowa, the first couple of weeks were hard and exhausting. It took me a while to be aware of myself and understand that the fatigue I was feeling was a product of being in all white spaces. I always had to be on, and I felt like a spectacle. After finally finding and talking with other Black people, I found out that I was not alone. The space that we were looking for didn’t exist. I created The Buxton Initiative because I knew the space I was looking for needed to exist. Not only for myself, but for the Black kids that feel isolated in public school, for the college student who just had their hair touched and has no outlet to express frustration. For that Black engineer who just transferred here for a job and can’t find a bar that is playing music he wants to hear. Buxton is for you. I truly believe that finding out that you are not alone and your story is valid is the key to unlocking the potential for a beautiful Black dream. I mean, that is how Buxton was created. As each dream becomes a reality, it creates space for more dreams to happen, and more space to assist others in bringing their dreams to reality too. We did it. Now what is stopping you?
