Flags, Fences, and Faith 

Sheryl Renee Dobson | Staten Island, New York, USA 

Subtly visible in Flags, Fences, and Faith is a repeating silhouette of a burdened Black man, emblazoned in a houndstooth pattern, ascending the segregated stairs of a Southern theater. He frequently appears in my works as a symbol of ascension amidst unfathomable challenge and as a reminder that when divisive taxonomies recede, community, in its broadest and truest sense, will emerge. This double entendre of “theater” as community and “theater” as a fence, inspired me to use a right side up and upside-down image of the Middlebury Theater (taken a mere twenty years after the Civil War) as a symbol of the two worlds that Vermonters of color deftly navigated in 1885 and beyond. The dearth of archival material about these Vermonters obviously reflected the myopic lenses of collectors from bygone eras. Undeterred and fully supported by the Henry Sheldon Museum’s accomplished archivists, I embraced several stunning images of African American children whose lives, ensconced in the succor of the Black church, were intergenerationally connected in community by their faith, resilience, and family ties. As the granddaughter of a farmer and descendant of African American and Native American people, I instantly knew the children in the archives, now ancestors, as spiritual kin. When we, as a human family, honor the collective achievements of extraordinary Vermonters like Mrs. Lucy Terry Prince, Reverend Alexander Twilight, Mrs. Mary Annette Anderson Smith, and Mr. William John Anderson, Jr., Americans all, we dissolve remnant fences, tighten multifaceted fabrics of community, and inch closer toward realizing a more perfect union.