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Leila Mottley Named 2018 Oakland Youth Poet Laureate

Published

8 years ago

June 8, 2018

Oakland Post

Leila Mottley, 16, a student at Oakland School of the Arts, has been chosen as Oakland’s 2018 youth poet laureate.

Serving until recently as the 2017 vice youth poet laureate, she said the program has been a blessing in her life.

“I learned so much about what it means to hold space and occupy my voice, and I am so excited to get to do that as 2018 Oakland Youth Poet Laureate,” she said.

The finale of this year’s competition was held in the James Moore Theater at Oakland Museum of California on June 1, where Mottley was named poet laureate.

She was awarded a $5,000 scholarship, and for the next year will be an ambassador for literacy, arts and youth expression.

A poet with a passion for social justice, she hopes to use her new title to address local issues. “I really want to focus on giving voice to the harrowing experience of displacement for youth in our communities, so I’m really excited to see what I can do,” she said.

Mottley is founder of Lift Every Voice, a youth-led art workshop series hosted in the Oakland Public Library’s “Teen Zone” in partnership with Beat Within Workshops. She created the program to connect incarcerated youth with their peers who are outside of the system.

“While I think that programs that put incarcerated and formerly incarcerated youth in mentor relationships with adults have great value, I also think that there is a certain kind of support that can only be provided by people in the same age range,” she wrote on the program’s GoFundMe page.

“Youth who have become entangled in the juvenile justice system are habitually underestimated, but I’m confident that if peer advocates utilize our access to resources, and devote our time and energy, we can amplify marginalized voices and help transform this perception.”

Samuel Getachew was named the 2018 vice laureate. He is the sophomore class president at Oakland Technical High School, where he is an editor of The Scribe, a long-standing student publication.

He has performed poems during protests, and his poem about gun violence on the steps of his high school during the National Student Walkout landed him an interview on KTVU.

The youth laureate program is an Oakland Public Library sponsored program for ages 13-18. Library assistant Peggy Simmons said, “these young people give me hope.”

Simmons said the program gives youth a chance to wrap their heads around the changes their city is going through, and to be the leaders they want to be.

Mottley is the Oakland’s eighth youth poet laureate. To learn more about the program, or to book Leila Mottley for a performance or workshop, visit www.oaklandlibrary.org/teens/events-programs/youth-poet-laureate-program

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Oakland Post: Week of April 8 – 14, 2026

The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of April 8 – 14, 2026

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Oakland Post: Week of April 1 – 7, 2026

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April 6, 2026

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Black Artists in America, Installation Three Wraps at the Dixon Gallery and Gardens

TRI-STATE DEFENDER — With 50+ paintings, sculptures and assemblages, the exhibit features artists like Varnette Honeywood from Los Angeles, whose pieces appeared in Bill Coby’s private collection (before they were auctioned off) and on “The Cosby Show.” Also included are works by Alonzo Davis, another Los Angeles artist who opened one of the first galleries there where Black Artists could exhibit.

Published

2 weeks ago

March 24, 2026

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By Candace A. Gray | Tri-State Defender

The tulips gleefully greet those who enter the gates at the Dixon Gallery & Gardens on an almost spring day. More than 650,000 bulbs of various hues are currently on display. And they are truly breathtaking.

Inside the gallery, and equally as breathtaking, is the “Black Artists in America, From the Bicentennial to September 11” exhibit, which runs through Sunday, March 29. This is the third installment of a three-part series that started years ago and illustrates part of the Black experience through visual arts in the 20th century.

“This story picks up where part two left off,’’ said Kevin Sharp, the Linda W. and S. Herbert Rhea director for the Dixon. “This era is when we really start to see the emergence of these important Black artists’ agency and freedom shine through. They start to say and express what they want to, and it was a really beautiful time.”

With 50+ paintings, sculptures and assemblages, the exhibit features artists like Varnette Honeywood from Los Angeles, whose pieces appeared in Bill Coby’s private collection (before they were auctioned off) and on “The Cosby Show.” Also included are works by Alonzo Davis, another Los Angeles artist who opened one of the first galleries there where Black Artists could exhibit.

“Though [Davis] was from LA, he actually lived in Memphis for a decade,” said Sharp. “He was a dean at Memphis College of Art, and later opened the first gallery in New York owned and operated by black curators.”

Another featured artist is former NFL player, Ernie Barnes. His work is distinctive. Where have you seen one of his most popular paintings, Sugar Shack? On the end scene and credits of the hit show “Good Times.” His piece Saturday Night, Durham, North Carolina, 1974 is in this collection.

Memphis native James Little’s “The War Baby: The Triptych” is among more than 50 works featured in “Black Artists in America, From the Bicentennial to September 11” at the Dixon Gallery & Gardens, the final installment of a three-part series highlighting the impact and evolution of Black artists through 2011.

The exhibit features other artists with Memphis ties, including abstract painter James Little, who was raised in a segregated Memphis and attended Memphis Academy of Art (before it was Memphis College of Art). He later moved to New York, became a teacher and an internationally acclaimed fixture in the art world in 2022 when he was named a Whitney Biennial selected artist at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York.

Other artists like Romare Bearden, who had a Southern experience but lived up North, were featured in all three installments.

“During this period of time, he was a major figure,” said Sharp. “He wrote one of the first books on the history of African American art during a time when there were more Black academics, art teachers, more Black everything!”

Speaking of Black educators, Sharp said the head curator behind this tri-part series and Dixon’s partner in the arts is Earnestine Jenkins, Ph.D., an art history professor at the University of Memphis, who also earned a Master of Arts degree from Memphis State University (now UofM). “We began working with Dr. Jenkins in 2018,” he said.

Sharp explained that it takes a team of curators, registrars, counterparts at other museums, and more, about three years to assemble an exhibit like this. It came together quite seamlessly, he added. Each room conjured up more jaw-dropping “wows” than the one before it. Each piece worked with the others to tell the story of Black people and their collective experience during this time period.

One of the last artists about whom Sharp shared information was Bettye Saar, who will turn 100 years old this year. She’s been working in Los Angeles for 80 years and is finally getting her due. Her medium is collages or assemblages, and an incredible work of hers is on display. She’s married to an artist and has two daughters, also artists.

The exhibit catalogue bears some of these artists’ stories, among other scholarly information.

The exhibit, presented by the Joe Orgill Family Fund for Exhibitions, is culturally and colorfully rich. It is a must see and admission to the Dixon is free.

Visit https://www.dixon.org/ to learn more.

Fun Facts: An original James Little design lives in the flooring of the basketball court at Tom Lee Park, and he makes and mixes his own paint colors.