Dream Street.

While still living in Springfield, Illinois, Judy Spencer became increasingly bothered by the media images she was seeing all around her of contemporary African American life. The images were too dark--or to borrow a photographer's term, underdeveloped. In particular, she noticed the way many Martin Luther King Drives in different U.S. cities were being photographed by white Americans.

"I was struck with how negative they all were." Missing from the picture, Spencer felt, were not only the celebrations and ordinary struggles of everyday life--the family wedding, kids at play, an unwelcome trip to the barber, going to church on Sunday--but the realization that, contrary to all the dreary portrayals, there thrives in the black community "a power that can `find a way out of no way,'" says Spencer, quoting Dr. King.

And so Spencer came to know--a knowing she describes as nothing less than spiritual--that she needed to begin her own documentary of life along Martin Luther King Drive. And eventually she did begin it, on Martin Luther King Day 1997, when, at the spur of the moment she decided to photograph Springfield's annual march along that famous street. "I got up and looked out the window. It was the bluest sky I'd ever seen. I threw on my clothes, packed 10 rolls of film, and thought, `OK, God, here we go.'"

Deanna Blackwell wrote her first poem when she was 11. "I had a lot on my mind, a lot of feelings to get out. Through writing I could express things I couldn't say directly to people." Blackwell accompanied Spencer on nearly every photo shoot in their year-long quest to document the spirit of Martin Luther King Drive on film and paper. "It was a different way of doing poetry, an adjustment," she says.

With photography, "Judy was constantly jumping into situations" to angle her camera for the best shot. "With the writing, I was sitting back more, taking in the full picture. I spent a lot of time simply sitting with people. It was great fun.

"Photos are taken at the speed of light," Blackwell explains. "They are moments frozen, captured. Even the most active scene contains an element of silence. The poems are able to present an audible voice. When a poem is read, it is internalized to some extent. The reader hears his or her own voice and for a split second the poem, the photo, the people cannot be separated from the reader," she says.

"The project combines these powerful elements, and we hope that it affects people deeply and positively."

RELATED ARTICLE: Like me

  Today,
  in church
  we are celebrating
  the work
  of Dr. Martin Luther King
  it makes me glad
  to think
  that he was
  a little brown boy
  like me
  he would get up
  in the morning
  and go to school

  and on Sundays
  put on a tie
  to go to church
  like me

  Dr. King loved brown people
  and white, yellow
  and red people, too

  he also loved God

  Dr. King once brought
  all the people that he loved together
  250,000 of them
  to march on Washington

  they held hands
  and shared stories
  about their dreams

  King's dreams

  I think sometimes
  about what I will do
  or be

  a brown boy
  who goes to school
  and church

  and has dreams

RELATED ARTICLE: Georgia 

   let loose of me, gal
   let loose!

   sittin' me down
   in this chair
   tugging on my hair
   like I'm some
   kind of child

   don't you know
   who I am?

   used to walk through
   town with my head
   reared back and laughing
   at the sun

   stop tuggin' on my hair
   with that comb!

   I ain't your child
   didn't ask to be
   here, in this cruel
   airless container--swimming
   around this
   tank like an angelfish
   in a sea of guppies
   and I am mad.

   don't you put none of that mess
   on my hair!

   think I'm gonna sit
   still like some cooped up
   rooster can't nobody
   hear crowin'

   but I ain't