James Avery has a face -- and a voice -- recognizable from any number of films and television appearances, but he's probably most fondly remembered as Philip Banks on television's long-running Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. But in addition to his body of work, which ranges from Shakespeare to sitcoms, there's something else to which he has devoted a good part of his life: collecting Black Americana. The term Black Americana indicates items that "...refer to...[African Americans'] condition in this country, that speak to their social condition, their representation as people and the images that were put out...by others to try and say who and what we were," Avery explains. "It's interesting to look at those other images that we did not create but we were supposed to be explained by." Although Avery recognizes the fact that some objects are not politically correct and may cause people to be uncomfortable, he believes that only by acknowledging something can you get past it. (In the case of his "Colored Waiting Room" sign [figure A], for instance, he chooses to dilute the hateful associations it suggests by hanging the sign at the entrance to his living room -- so that, as he says, "this is the Colored Waiting Room -- we're in it right now.") He points out the indisputable fact that people survived the deprivations and hardships represented by these objects, and he believes that his collection helps put him in touch with their memory. He can live with what they represent in the abstract and not have to deal with it every day, as his forebears had to do. Avery's collection also serves to remind the actor that he owes his very existence to those survivors. "...[W]hen I reach out and touch these, I touch that time...," he says. "I touch the lives, however distantly, of the people that lived and the things they went through -- things that I can only imagine or read about in books."
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