A Black Heaven in Merced, CA

Kim McMillon is a creative artist who has conversations with the dead. It's not unusual. I do too. The result of her foray into the occult is the play, "Black Heaven: A Theatrical Conversation Across Eternity," which has a short run this weekend in Merced, CA, Feb. 28, 6:30 and March 1, 1:30 pm. Tickets are $15. 

The topic is Blackness and the artists gathered reflect and pontificate. Still filled with earthly importance philosophers and authors blame the times and period for their errs in judgment. Booker T. Washington facilitates. Central to the discussion are WEB Dubois and August Wilson who frames the position of most of the artists gathered dead and still alive.

The living artists are present in their dreams. The dead call them in. It is a lively, funny crew who have those assembled as witnesses in stitches as the topic at center in national debate stirs the dead even more.

Violence is not allowed, and who heard of hurting a spirit? It's not possible. 

Kim McMillon, Ph.D., is a familiar whose creative work and relationships within and beyond the ancestral realm is evident here. The cast of characters both alive and dead are moderated by a living God and an Archangel Gabriel complete with horn. 

The actors do the celestial cast well. Most dressed elegantly in black or a blended design tapestry the consensus is any soul who lived its earthly time melanine covered was indeed blessed despite the racialized oppression and structural hindrances and resultant suffering. 

Certainly Blackness is next to godliness. The white ancestors were all claiming dark souls inside and hoping to reincarnate so designed. 

In their dreams, I thought. 

The songs, prayers and poetry, Kim's lovely and lyrucal writing and even an original score and Tyler Wickler's musical direction lifted Black Heaven into a presence that welcomed as it warned, warmed as it sent prescient chills down spines.

The play opened on a planetary alignment which while not visible in the cloudy Merced sky that evening was certainly felt in the powerful assembly. 

When we call the ancestors they come. Kim has a relationship with some of the deceased artists and with most of the living ones. Much of their dialogue was from interviews. 

Black Heaven is an invocation and a blessing. The venue, Unity of Merced Church, was perfect. It was an easy pleasant two hour drive from the Bay Area.

The themes, love and forgiveness were certainly present as well. 

I have issues with some of the celestial cast. I know their back stories and to see them pontificating was rather annoying given their unresolved issues with Black women, wives and daughters. 

Kim and I had a conversation about Alexander Dumas (père, author) and his children's story adaptation of E.T.A. Hoffmann’s 1816 German story "Nutcracker and the Mouse King." Dumas nutcracker (1845) is the genesis for the Tchaikovsky’s 1892 ballet performed seasonly today. No one knows Dumas was a Black man. Kim knew his The Three Musketeers (original French title: Les Trois Mousquetaires), which was first serialized in 1844, but not this story until our conversation. 

I was happy to see this story incorporated. He bemoaned the fact that his work and name languished in obscurity until recently when in 2002, President Jacques Chirac honored him by ordering his reinterment in the Panthéon in Paris. 

I thought about Josephine Baker (1906-1975) who was similarly honored in 2021. She was the first Black woman so honored and first American-born citizen, first entertainer.  Baker who worked as an agent in the French Resistance and promoted civil and human rights her entire adult life. She adopted and cared for so many orphaned children. She received the Croix de Guerre and Legion of Honour. Baker was an amazing human being.

Missing from this heavenly pantheon were 19th century Black women writers, Dubois's peers whom he sampled generously academically. Kim's Heaven has patriarchal leanings.

Dubois stole Dr. Anna Julia Cooper's scholarship. She is not credited with her work he cites as his own. Dubois was also stingy with his influence when asked for help. He too as many a white racist claimed "was a man of his time." Patriarchy is an indelible stain on this landscape divine and otherwise to date. 

However, I take issue with this convenient excuse.  James Baldwin, also present at this heavenly gathering, was a person of his time, so was Maya Angelou and Nina Simone. All three, Baldwin, Simone, and Angelou lived interrogated deeply reflective lives. 

Simone so loved Lorraine Hansberry. It would have been nice to let them hug or at least greet one another. "To Be Young Gifted and Black" is such a tribute to her friend's incomplete legacy.

Grief. There is so much grief entangled in Black legacy. The song "Weeping" doesn't address the loss, but it at least recognizes it.

It is hard to have an honest conversation about Blackness with nonblack souls.

Skin pigment is a flesh thing that colors one's earthly life; however, for white characters to claim Blackness as a thing when color consciousness is no longer a thing has no validity. It is more a fashion statement. 

I like Toni Morrison's assertion that she wrote for Black people. August Wilson wrote for Black men. He was writing himself into being just as President Obama found himself in historical Black men like Malcolm X and a living mentor, Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright, Pastor Emeritus of Trinity United Church of Christ. 

Kim's "Heaven" is a place all are welcome. I don't want to go there. I know too much of the backstory and some of these spirits do not deserve to shine my ancestors' shoes. My academic degrees and scholarship are in philosophy, depth psychology, women's spirituality, writing, journalism, poetics and critical thinking, I have studied these spirits' lasting works, work that shapes popular thought. I can only hope the forum was in a neutral space that will be duly saged and purified once the conversation ends and these Black wannabees return to location wherever that be. 

Oh, I also wondered about the white images of divine on a curated slide presentation at the show.  Reminded me of Orisha Yemanja painted as a white skinned Mary in Cachoeira, Bahia. In a 2014 field research project, I visited Irmandade da Boa Morte or The Sisterhood of Our Lady of the Good Death. It was a great trip!

Boa Morte are a Catholic sorority of 19th century freed and enslaved Black women who would purchase the freedom of enslaved people so the enslaved people would not die as slaves. Yet, these freedom fighters still depict divinity in a white woman's body. I know the divine doesn't have a flesh body. However, these colonial images of divine work subliminally on Black consciousness. Hopefully, these intentional colonial relics have been removed. 

"Black Heaven" is funny, sacrilegious, engaging, and hecka thoughtful. Kim's writing is poetic, musical too. Her scholarship is evident in the discourse between artists and in the depth that resonates when certain voices speak.

Apologists have their say. It is so much chatter like litter along the roadside. The central query is how has my black body shaped worldviews and outcomes? How has my Black presence crumbled situations, edifices shaped by fallacies?

How has Black brilliance lit your world? How does Black brilliance light the world today (even now,) despite temporary cloudiness?

What is inclimate passes. Black Heaven is what happens when Black spirits get together and enjoy each other. 

The other folks were present as yardsticks to measure the width and breath of our collective journey and survival. 

Ain't no stoppin' us then or now, 'cause as Curtis Mayfield sings, "We're a winner. And everybody knows the tune, we keep on pushin'" (1967)(https://youtu.be/ZoQWKtppNrg?si=vuElD_-JrwHjsNgg).

You can catch Kim McMillon's play Black Heaven: A Theatrical Conversation Across Eternity this afternoon, Sunday, March 1, at Unity of Merced, located at 305 West 26th Street in Merced, California.