Art Speaks: Reparations Reframed

An evening with the creators of the Justice League of Greater Lansing Michigan collaboration in the exhibition Farmland: Food, Justice, and Sovereignty at the MSU Broad Art Museum.

Creators presenting:

Willye Bryan, Prince Solace and Betty Sanford — Justice League of Greater Lansing Michigan

Mila Lynn — Visual artist

Greta McHaney-Trice — Pave the Way: I-496 Project

Admission is free. Reservations are recommended.

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The Justice League exhibit:

The Justice League has brought together a number of pieces that cumulatively provide a view through art of Black history that leads to/supports reparations. This includes:

• Multimedia that lays out the three-year journey of the Justice League of Greater Lansing Michigan in educating why reparations are due and how the organization is addressing the racial wealth gap in Greater Lansing.

• “The Highway Dragon,” an art installation by visual artist Mila Lynn, of Detroit. The 20-foot installation demonstrates how construction of I-496 through Lansing displaced many Black residents and businesses. It is history being confronted by the new age culture of addressing the systems that intentionally disenfranchised Black communities. 

• Photography representing the Pave the Way: I-496 Project depicts the devastation of Lansing’s thriving Westside Black community when construction of a highway displaced it in the 1960s.

• Artifacts from Lansing residents linking the area to the agricultural South.

• “Harvest,” 2004, oil on canvas, by Julian Van Dyke, of Lansing.

About the exhibit participants:

Willye Bryan, Prince Solace and Betty Sanford are among the leadership of the Justice League of Greater Lansing Michigan.

Willye, a life-long social justice activist, was moved to do “more” during the pandemic when racial disparities in wealth turned into overwhelming loss of life for the Michigan’s Black community. It led her to establish the Justice League.

Prince leads the Justice League as president, which aligns with his career goals of serving underprivileged communities by connecting those in need with resources that promote financial awareness, wealth equity and self-love.

Betty Sanford, a Justice League Advisory Council member, has five decades of social activism. The council manages the charity’s endowed Reparations Fund that addresses the racial wealth gap in Greater Lansing. With support of the U.S. Office of the Attorney General, Betty and John Sanford made history in 1971. Their marriage nullified Georgia’s anti-miscegenation laws that criminalized marriage and sexual relations between people of different races.

Mila Lynn is a multidisciplinary artist who has shown internationally. She is known for work that showcases diversity and celebration. She was reared in Lansing and now resides in Detroit. More information: https://www.mindofmila.com.

Greta McHaney-Trice helped coordinate the grant-funded initiative Pave the Way: I-496 Project that documents the impact of the then-new Interstate 496 on the city of Lansing, particularly the African American neighborhood it intersected in the 1960s.

Pave the Way: I-496 Project was an initiative to research and collect narratives of the impact of the I-496 highway on Lansing in the 1960s. The project detailed the consequences that highway location and construction had on Westside neighborhood residents who were forced to deal with redlining, segregation and relocation. The 2019 project was funded by a grant from the National Park Service, which was awarded to the city of Lansing in collaboration with the Historical Society of Greater Lansing. The project culminated in the release of its one-hour documentary, “They Even Took the Dirt.” More information: www.lansinghistory.org/i496-project.

Julian Van Dyke is a Lansing-based artist, muralist, actor and children’s book author. More information: www.vandykeart.com.

Farmland: Food, Justice, and Sovereignty is the exhibition at the MSU Broad Art Museum, Jan. 18–July 27, 2025, that explores crucial questions of food knowledge, production, scarcity, and consumption. It examines the origins and effects of food security and food justice against the background of MSU’s 170-year history in food production and consumption. 

Farmland is organized by the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University and co-curated by associate curators Teresa Fankhänel and Dalina A. Perdomo Álvarez. More information: MSU Broad Art Museum - Farmland.

For the Feb. 1 event, Art Speaks: Reparations Reframed

Admission is free. Reservations are recommended.