Fighting Dark Video Tour

Download an audio transcript of this video (PDF, opens in new window)

The Shed commissioned Kamau Ware (Black Gotham Experience) to create digital audio and video tours titled Fighting Dark in dialogue with the investigation of the legacy of racial violence in the United States in the exhibition Howardena Pindell: Rope/Fire/Water. Tracing back 100 years from the May 1963 Children’s Crusade in Birmingham, Alabama, explored by Pindell in the exhibition’s Shed-commissioned film, Ware’s tours draw a line between that moment in the civil rights movement and New York City’s 1863 race riots. Within this historiography, Fighting Dark speaks to a dark side of American history as well as the dark-skinned people who have been impacted by it, especially the Black New Yorkers who fled in the dark of night during the 1863 riots and those who enlisted in the Union Army during the Civil War in what was called the “Colored Troops 20th Infantry” from New York City. Fighting Dark ultimately provides a platform to draw out lessons on how Black people find resilience in the face of racial violence.

The video version above offers the chance to experience this history from wherever you call home—from Ocean Hill, Brooklyn, to anywhere in the world.