Joe Minter

American, born 1943

BiographyJoe Minter was born in Birmingham, Alabama in 1943. His father, who served in WWI, was a gifted mechanic, but due to discrimination of the Jim Crow era, he was unable to find work in his chosen field and instead became the caretaker of a white cemetery. In 1965 Joe Minter was drafted into the military, discharged two years later. Of his family’s service, Minter has said, “All three of my mother’s sons served in the defending of America in the U.S. Army. We have joined a long line of Africans that have put their life on the line to come back to America and be treated as less than a human being. We as Africans have given America all that we can give, but there is no love in America for the African. God will have to judge America, for man’s heart has hardened in America. May the Lord have mercy on America.”

As a young man, Minter worked as a dishwasher, among other low-paying jobs. He then worked in metals for over a decade, constructing furniture, exercise equipment, and truck beds, in addition to auto-body work, road work, and construction. After exposure to asbestos in his eyes, he had eye surgery and now has glaucoma. Upon retiring from this work in 1979, Minter realized his calling as an artist. His practice was a way for him to heal the wounds of the world with so much pain.

Minter began his project known as the “African Village in America” in the late 1980s in response to learning that a civil rights museum would be built in Birmingham that failed to tell the story of the people on the ground doing the hard work in the freedom struggle. He has said, “And I thought about the journey we have made through America for four hundred years. God gave me the vision of art, to link that four-hundred-years journey of Africans in America, link that truth to the children who are turning away from us…[the “African Village in America”] tries to tell the story of that life we have spent here.” The works displayed in the sculpture garden explore topics such as the jailing of Martin Luther King Jr., commemorate those killed at Sandy Hook Elementary, and the bombing at the Boston Marathon.

The artist has also created works that operate independently, such as How Do I Look? that have been collected by major art institutions including the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the High, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, among others.

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