Longing for space, these Black Iowans seek to uplift their families and their communities

Part of a series for the Des Moines Register's 175th anniversary that examines Iowa's past and future demographics.

Rachelle Long wanted everything to be just right. With an hour left before the Independence Day parade began, Long and her friends scrambled to decorate their display.

At Valley High School, where she graduated decades ago, the 63-year-old Long scurried to wrap patriotic garlands around golf carts and helped a couple of volunteers unroll the bright banner that placed her personal project front and center.

For Long, her appearance at the annual local parade meant more than celebrating the national holiday. The West Des Moines native, whose family settled and still remains in historic Valley Junction, is part of the living history of an area once dominated by rail lines and a bustling commercial district that was home to many Black and Latino families.

Long and her siblings are the children of the late John and Barbara Long, a pair of dedicated civic leaders and advocates who fought for their community. The couple, who died 11 years apart — John Long in 2010 and his wife in 2021 — were the first West Des Moines residents to be honored with a street named for them and the first Black individuals to have their names on any city-owned property. Their children's presence, along with their storied family name and legacy , are constant reminders of what was, what is and what could be.

Long is the executive director of the Taste of the Junction , a multiday cultural event that seeks to preserve, collect and share the stories of the people who lived in the junction. The event, which began in 2011 and now spans over Labor Day weekend, includes live entertainment, music and food. The centerpiece is the open mic night, which welcomes residents back to their hometown to reflect on their neighborhood, Long said.

Understanding who you are and where you come from has inspired Long, artist Robert Moore and other Black Iowans of today to find ways to bring their communities together and to remember that they have long been part of the state's fabric.

Places that once belonged to Black Iowans have vanished, with the historic Center Street neighborhood as a prime example. A thriving Black community stretching from 15th Street to Keosauqua Way fell victim to the construction of Interstate 235 beginning in the late 1950s, displacing more than 1,000 families and Black-owned businesses.

Gone were the grocery stores, jazz clubs, restaurants and doctors' offices. A marker unveiled last year stands on the site of the once-vibrant neighborhood.

After losing many of their historical places, today's Black Iowans are creating new types of spaces, through physical gathering spots, artwork, storytelling and activism, to cement their place in Iowa history and to help their communities to flourish.

Creating a space for Valley Junction residents to tell their stories

The open mic night, Long explained, was the reason she launched Taste in the first place. Long, who joined the Valley Junction Neighborhood Association , heard from older residents how they wanted to write a book documenting their memories and experiences. They felt books depicting West Des Moines' history dedicated only a few lines to the junction, failing to capture its spirit and importance, she said.

"From hearing them and being around them, I was like, you know what? I'm going to start getting these stories, and I'm going to put them in a space where they can get outside of our living rooms," Long said in an interview with the Des Moines Register in late June, just days ahead of the July 3 parade.

Oral storytelling is integral practice in Black and marginalized communities. That's how sermons, songs and traditions — all of which shape people's identities — are passed down from one generation to the next. Storytelling connects people and often creates an intimate experience.

Stories from Long's grandparents have revealed how their families were part of the Great Migration, which the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration describes as "one of the largest movements of people" in the country's history. From the 1910s to the 1970s, about 6 million Black people moved from the South to northern, Midwestern and Western states.

Long said she knew her grandparents traveled from Oklahoma, Arkansas and Kansas, finally settling in Iowa. Some stayed in Valley Junction while others went on to Mason City and Manly.

But, she said, one of her cousins was able to peel back the family's history further, presenting her findings during annual reunions. That's partly the reason Long said she sought to start Taste of the Junction. Her cousin spent months digging through documents and tracing their ancestry to a slave ship. When she relayed those details, the experience was eye-opening and powerful.

Tracing family history to a slave ship is "almost an impossible task," Long said while sitting at the Eddie Davis Community Center , the nonprofit her parents established 30-plus years ago to help people in need, work that she and her siblings continue. "You're being enslaved. You're being bought, and you're being sold."

Re-creating shared spaces and memories through artwork

The Highland Park and Union Park neighborhoods are other longtime centers of Black life in the Des Moines metro. Des Moines artist Robert Moore said his grandmother Virginia Thomas, lovingly known as "Virgie," raised him there while his mother struggled with drug addiction and was in and out of his life.

Moore, 39, explores the Black experience through his artwork. In his latest exhibit, titled "In Loving Memory," Moore re-created his grandmother's living room, seeking to convey "happy memories" from his childhood.

Inside the Des Moines Art Center, Moore sat on a patterned couch like the one his grandmother had and spoke of going to Thomas' home after school. Thomas lived blocks away from Finley Elementary School and across from Harding Middle School, both of which he attended. Moore's mural illustrating his version of the popular American comic strip "Peanuts" covers four 30-foot tall panels on Harding's exterior walls and features life-size members of the beloved characters but as children of color.

He previously told the Des Moines Register he hoped students could see themselves represented in the image.

With the living room installation, Moore wanted to get the details just right. The couch in the display mirrors the one in a framed portrait of his grandmother and father that hung above a wooden TV console. The photo, taken in 2006, showed Moore's father nestling his head against Grandma Virgie's. It was among the last photos of Thomas, who in that same year lost her battle to cancer.

"I asked him recently what he was doing," Moore said, recalling his conversation with his father. "He said, 'I was trying to remember my mom's smell.'"

In many ways, the room itself feels like a time capsule, with the deep brown carpet, stack of Jet magazines and corded phone on opposite end tables, the mustard-yellow armchair and collection of family photos resting on the TV, which played reruns of black-and-white home videos.

Moore said he wants the room to resonate with viewers and remind them of their own loved ones.

"This is a very intimate space," he said.

Using storytelling to reinforce the community's past, fight for its future

With storytelling, Long said, the hope has always been that the stories would live on — that they would land in the hands of the right people who would carry them forward. But the reality is that some will be lost and go untold.

"That's why we called it the 'Taste of the Junction,'" Long said while at a table inside the Eddie Davis Community Center, which in addition to serving residents in need now houses her pop-up museum dedicated to Valley Junction's history. "The first and second generations are already under the ground. There's many stories that we'll never know."

"I knew when I started this I wasn't going to be able to tell this whole story," she continued. "I wasn't going to be able to find all the stories about my family and everyone else, but I knew I could get a taste of it. I knew I could get enough of it."

People's stories — their entire existence — are at risk when their communities are at risk, Long said.

Long recalled Valley Junction as a redlined neighborhood where banks wouldn't provide mortgages to the nonwhite population and her parents, like many other residents of color, struggled to purchase a home for their growing family in other parts of the area.

The Longs took matters into their own hands.

"They tore the house down and built one," Long said. "That was like, 'Wow!' We were like one of the first people in the neighborhood to have a new home."

Taking initiative and standing up are building blocks of impact, of space — of legacy. The fight could be as loud as the George Floyd protests that erupted in Des Moines in the summer of 2020 or found among the pages of " The People's History: Volume 1," a study released by the Des Moines nonprofit Just Voices chronicling the civil unrest that took place that summer and the demonstrators whose lives were forever changed.

The fight also can be found in the works of Moore, whose lifelike portraits of Black men, women and children — some of which include his loved ones — are tucked on the lower level of the Des Moines Arts Center.

"Protesting can be loud and emotional and in charge. And that's OK. It's needed. It's necessary. There's also silent protesting," which is equally necessary," Moore said. "Because people's languages, the way they communicate, respond to sound is the same as in a romantic relationship. You yell at your partner ― some partners are OK with that. Some partners shut down and actually stopped listening."

Turning feelings into action: 'Be part of the solution'

Lori Young, communications director at Just Voices, spoke openly about "the rage" she felt in 2012 when news broke of the death of Trayvon Martin, 17, who was shot by a white community watch volunteer while walking through a Florida neighborhood. That same feeling returned two years later when Michael Brown, another unarmed Black teen, was killed by a Missouri police officer. And it continued to return as more and more names followed.

The lifelong Des Moines native and community activist said she used Facebook to process her pain and wrote an essay asking, "What do you do with the rage? Do you just tuck it down, stuff it down, swallow it down, and try to go on. Do you seek revenge? Do you cry?"

A mother of two Black sons, Young, 60, said those feelings weren't anything new.

"Black people have been feeling that rage for centuries at the hands of injustices, and we have to swallow it down. We have to take it," she said. "We have to survive it — be decent human beings. If we were as vengeful as we are justified in being, we would have had race wars years ago.

"But Black people, by and large, are not. We're good, loving, Christian people, and we don't seek revenge or retribution. We try to find justice."

Seeking justice can set people on different paths, she said. That could come in the form of advocacy, reaching out to local public officials, joining organizations or even embracing who you are. These are all stepping stones to paving the way for a better future, Young said.

"Be part of the solution. Get active in your community. Give back in some way," she said.

F. Amanda Tugade covers social justice issues for the Des Moines Register. Email her at ftugade@dmreg.com or follow her on Twitter @writefelissa .

This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: Longing for space, these Black Iowans seek to uplift their families and their communities