Shirley Woodson Reid is a visual artist, educator, mentor, and art collector who is known for her figurative paintings of African American history. Some of her works from the last sixty years are on display at the Detroit Institute of Arts, where she is an official DIA Curator of the Center for African American Art.
Reid shared how every Black woman has the superpower to endure and flourish.
As a Black woman, what do you feel your superpower is?
I was asked that last year at the awards in 2022. I feel that my life is pretty much aligned with all other Black women. I don’t know any Black women who are not super at what they do. For example, I just met you. I know that you have a stunning background. It was hard work. You overcame lots of obstacles or rejections, but they had enough things to do with what you had to do. That was just something that was there, and you overcame that and you moved on, which of course gave you even more power. I think that it’s a tradition.
Black women are the most educated women in America, Black women are the most educated in the world. Those are the kinds of things I think that we should know about. This is not something that is unusual. These are the stories and these are the applications that we should do. When you put your mind to it, there’s a way to succeed. Maybe not the way you thought it would go, but you’ve made your mark, you enhance your community, and you have a concept of learning and growing. So, to endure and flourish. We got to do more than just endure, we have to flourish and understand what these experiences are all about.
What key skills or qualities make you unique as an African American female leader?
Well, I certainly don’t feel unique. I meet women every day, and I learn about women every day who are spectacular. I’m just glad that I’m included in that group, but in some ways, I learned about Black women who have just done everything. People I’ve admired through the years, I’ve met them because I came up under the impression – as we all did – that we would be the first ones to do anything because they left the history out. We know they’re up there moving fast to continue that trend. What I feel most concerned about is our young students or young people dropping out of school, in middle school and high school, and thinking there’s something else out there. But it takes hard work, and maybe even applying yourself to others, but there are so many other things that are trying to keep us out of that range. That’s where the difficulty comes in. Then we don’t set our goals high enough. We think if we have a couple of TV spots, that’s it. That’s not it. Everything else goes with it. You’re going to have to know how to read your contract.
