When meeting Joe Minter, you must be prepared for a conversation that will meander and include at least one spiritual sung in Joe’s slow, melodic baritone. Talking with him brings back childhood memories of listening to my elders’ stories in fan-cooled living rooms or on sunny porches.

I met Joe at his home in Birmingham, Alabama, where he has been creating An African Village in America since 1989. The Village, an immersive art environment, is his religious testimony, set under the natural dome of God’s church—though Joe often works on it under the shade of a metal carport. His continuous work on the site is an acknowledgment of the past (and the "100,000 ancestors" in the historically Black cemeteries near his home), gratitude for the present, and a prayer for the generations yet to come.

Joe Wade Minter Sr. was born in Birmingham in 1943, the eighth of ten children to Lawrence Dunbar and Rosie McAlpin Minter. His parents raised their children to hold themselves with dignity and pride despite the racist views of the time.

Like his father before him and one of his sons to follow, Joe served in the United States Army. From 1965 to 1967, he operated military generators in South Carolina, Missouri, and Texas. Like many Black veterans, he struggled to find consistent work after his service, taking a series of construction, automotive body repair, and metal-working jobs to support his family. Work-related contact with asbestos permanently damaged Joe’s eyesight and brought an end to his ability to hold a full-time job.

And it finally came back to me that the only way was through art, art is the universal thing. Make the art and put a message with it that could heal the wounds everywhere. Communicate to the world a message of God—love and peace for all. I then took on the name “Peacemaker."

Joe Minter, Souls Grown Deep Oral History

It was after this significant setback that Joe listened to his life-long calling from God to become a visual griot, documenting the history and lineages around him as well as responding to contemporary events using the available materials from the community.

Joe conceptualizes the Village as a garden, constantly tended and growing. He sees his individual works, such as Unlocked Chain, as seeds to be sprouted in collections, allowing his message to reach new places.

The whole idea handed down to me by God is to use that which has been discarded, just as we as a people have been discarded made invisible. That what is invisible, thrown away, could be made into something so it demonstrates that even what gets thrown away, with a spirit in it can survive and grow. A spirit of all the people that has touched and felt that material has stayed in the material. God supplies me with what is needed, what other people throw away as junk, what I find on streets, and in flea markets, outlet stores, Goodwill, Salvation Army.

Joe Minter, Souls Grown Deep Oral History

Repurposed materials such as dolls, cast concrete dogs, signage, crutches, and shoes are used to respond to wide-ranging subjects like the transatlantic slave trade, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Letter from the Birmingham Jail, the Foot Soldiers of the Civil Rights Movement, the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing, the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami and Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident, the Sandy Hook school shooting, support for voting rights, and his prayers for understanding and peace.

Beyond the visual, other sensory aspects of the Village are an essential part of the visitor experience. Joe often “activates" the site by shaking his walking stick adorned with found objects or playing percussion instruments to greet ancestors. The environment lends more sounds like dogwood leaves rubbing against each other, freight trains blowing their horns through crossings, and flying wasps and bees buzzing swiftly by. I still recall the feel of the cool breeze drifting through the site from the adjoining New Grace Hill Cemetery, a historically Black cemetery. Joe acknowledges this breeze as the ancestors’ blessings. There was the shocking cold of an unexpected rain shower that hydrated Mrs. Hilda’s elephant ear plants, and the comforting warmth of the afternoon sun on my skin. I chuckle thinking of the stray cats that lounge and play just within companionable range only to dart after green anole lizards.

In harmony with the seasons and weather, the site’s atmosphere is distinctive to this place and the loving couple who shaped it. The Village is Joe’s testimony before God and for all of us. Joe will not want you to leave without hearing the rhythm of his drum and his heartfelt prayer for understanding between all people.

The Village is deeply tied to its place and space in the historic Titusville neighborhood. To enter Joe’s built environment, you turn down a dead-end residential street headed by Shiloh Baptist Church. This holy house prepares you for the spiritual nature of Joe’s property and the surrounding cemeteries. Throughout the Village are  expressions of his faith, his gratitude to God for 52 years with his late wife, Hilda Jo Patrick Minter, and scriptures and prayers asking for peace. 

Just beyond the property line are the final resting places of Joe’s father; his wife, Hilda Jo; and both of their children, Joe Jr. and Alfonzo. Joe has chosen his final resting place: between Hilda Jo, “his queen, his African matriarch, his angel,” and the Village, his decades-long creation. This land is as tied to Joe as Joe is to this land.

On quiet occasions, Joe will sit in one of the many contemplative spaces and listen to nature’s communion with his testimonial work. In these moments, I hear divinity. Joe constructed symbolic gates leading from the Village into the cemeteries. The portals honor the 100,000 ancestors Joe estimates are buried beyond the fence line, both direct and indirect lineages, and how their lives shaped Joe’s—and now, by extension, ours.

Joe’s creation has been called the “last true yardshow.” Yardshows are site-specific, outdoor assemblage environments found in the American South. They are a uniquely African American form of artistic expression that marks ownership and agency over space and identity.

Yardshows draw on a history and visual language that reaches across centuries and the Atlantic Ocean. They combine the cultural practices that enslaved Africans were able to retain and pass down through generations with their specific American experiences and materials. Meanings vary from artist to artist, but the expressive practice is often spiritual and social. Yardshows document their makers’ lived experiences, tracing creative lineages and acting as extensions of their spiritual practices. They were particularly important in times when African Americans had more restrictions placed on their lives, with limited outlets for participating in the formal art world.

Cultural practices have reduced time spent outdoors, resulting in fewer yardshows, but the art form continues to enrich and define outdoor spaces.

I am incredibly fortunate to be part of the “village” that is documenting, preserving, and defining the future of An African Village in America. This village of care includes filmmakers, conservators, curators, arts administrators, urban engineers, geospatial experts, artists, groundskeepers, neighbors, community members, and even cats. The organizations involved include the Mellon Foundation, 1504, Create Birmingham, Navigate Affordable Housing Partners, Souls Grown Deep, the National Endowment for the Arts, South Arts, Alabama State Council on the Arts, University of Alabama, Auburn University, Tuskegee University, New York University, Regions Foundation, the Joseph S. Bruno Charitable Foundation, and the Birmingham Museum of Art.

In summer 2025, a team of faculty, graduate students, and visiting scholars from New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts and Tandon School of Engineering used aerial drone surveys, terrestrial laser scanning, and photogrammetry to make high-resolution 3D models. The team also completed oral history interviews with Joe and other community members. In summer 2026, a part of the stakeholder village came together to discuss the future of the Village and Titusville. The resulting reports will be used to integrate community development opportunities, explore the legal structures around future ownership models, inform future funding goals, document the present condition, and make recommendations about long-term preservation.

As a living environment tended by its aging creator, the Village poses intriguing questions about its future care in the face of weathering, material limitations, and community rejuvenation such as but certainly not limited to:

What can be replaced and what is irreplaceable? Who makes this decision and who replaces components?

Do we stockpile replacements for potentially unstable materials or field specific donations from the community?

How can we balance site visitation with habitation for the surrounding neighborhood?

How can future caretakers carry forth Joe's decades-long mission to be a “Peacemaker"?

The answers to these questions are as complex as the site that raised them and will continue to spawn new questions to guide the work of the village as An African Village in America and Titusville bloom.

About the Author
LaStarsha D. McGarity is the conservator and co-director of the Tuskegee University Legacy Museum in Tuskegee, Alabama and a PhD student in the Preservation Studies Program at the University of Delaware. Her doctoral research focuses on culturally contextual conservation and collections care. She was the Andrew W. Mellon Fellow in Objects Conservation at the National Gallery of Art from 2019 to 2023, completing research on African American assemblage art with a forthcoming article. McGarity received the 2022 American Institute for Conservation’s inaugural Emerging Leader Award, the Buffalo State Alumni Association's 2022 Young Alumnus Achievement Award, and the Texas Southern University National Alumni Association’s 2024 Excellence in Achievement Award in Arts.