Joe Minter with African Matriarch

Joe Wade Minter (1943- ) is a self-taught artist who specializes in assemblages made from wood, metal, and found objects. He is a leading figure in the Birmingham-Bessemer School of Art, a group of artists related by their geographic proximity, similar artistic methods, and shared themes. Minter is best known for his expansive yard exhibit, African Village in America, through which he tells the 400-year history of Black Americans.

Minter was born on March 28, 1943, in Birmingham, Jefferson County, to Lawrence and Rosie McAlpin Minter. One of eight surviving children, young Minter lived with his family in a farm pump house in the city’s Titusville neighborhood and was reared on the ethos of making use of what one had. His father was a World War I veteran and later caretaker at the all-White Elmwood Cemetery; others in Minter’s family worked as blacksmiths. Minter attended Washington Elementary School, Center Street Middle School, and Ullman High School, graduating in 1961.

Coming of age at the height of the civil rights movement, Minter experienced racial injustice and brutality firsthand. One of his earliest encounters with segregation was aboard a city bus, on which Black passengers were required to sit at the back. In 1961, Minter and his brother were awakened from their sleep by city police and taken to Memorial Park, where his brother was badly beaten by officers. Minter later witnessed the aftermath of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church bombing; he was at a nearby café when the explosion occurred.  

After graduation, Minter went to work at the Constantine Drive-In, later taking a job at the University of Alabama at Birmingham hospital as a messenger and orderly. In 1965, Minter was drafted into the U.S. Army and assigned as a combat engineer. Although never deployed to Vietnam, he was trained in mechanics at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, and operated generators in South Carolina, Missouri, and Texas before being honorably discharged in 1967.

Upon returning to Birmingham, Minter worked at Southeastern Metals assembling school furniture from steel parts. In February 1969, Minter married Hilda, with whom he would have two children. When Southeastern Metals closed its doors in 1979, Minter found employment at a paint-and-body shop and performed various construction jobs around the city. But after years of exposure to asbestos dust, Minter developed glaucoma and was forced to retire.  

Joe Minter Home

According to Minter, in the summer of 1989, he received a vision from God instructing him to tell the 400-year story of Black Americans through art. Further, after learning that Birmingham was drafting plans for a civil rights museum, Minter grew distressed that the story of the movement’s foot soldiers might be omitted from the narrative. Donning the title “peacemaker,” Minter began building the African Village in America sculpture environment around his Titusville home to tell the story of his ancestors and the foot soldiers. Purchased by Minter in 1970, his property overlooks New Grace Hill Cemetery, the gravesite of his father, wife, and son, and Shadow Lawn Memorial Park, the largest Black cemetery in Birmingham.

Using raw materials such as metal and wood, discarded objects, and items from flea markets and thrift stores, Minter creates sculptures that explore numerous themes in his work, including the African diaspora, enslavement, racism, the civil rights movement, religion, and natural disasters. Several versions of Slave Ship America, made from combinations of wood, metal, and chains, illustrate the transatlantic slave trade. The largest of these, entitled The Destruction of Two Cultures: Slave Ship, is an interactive installation made from cement bricks, wooden boards, and metal railings.

Minter often imbues his sculptures with human-like features and characteristics. Composed of wooden boards, tennis rackets, crutches, mattress box springs, and a car light, African Matriarch stands watch over Minter’s African Village. Two nearby sculptures of Zulu warriors (soldiers from Southern Africa) made from oxidized metal guard the matriarch.

Four Little Girls and MLK

Minter pays tribute to the Birmingham foot soldiers in several sculptures, including Forgotten Foot Soldiers, Monument to the Foot Soldiers, and Birmingham Jail, a large installment featuring a metal cage, or jail cell, with the names of key figures and places from the civil rights movement painted on its doors. Three wooden crosses draped in barbed wire are attached to its top. Dog statues made of concrete guard the metal cell of a Black prisoner fashioned from wood. Other defining moments from the civil rights movement are honored in the African Village, including the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church bombing, in Four Little Girls and Martin Luther King Jr., and Bloody Sunday, in Bloody Sunday Memorial.

Following Hilda’s death in September 2021, Minter created several pieces in her memory. Placed at the front of the African Village, Hilda is composed of vertically stacked red and yellow wooden letters and topped with a metal crown. Minter’s most recent project centers on the written word, and he has devoted his latter years to painting metal and wooden signs with messages relating to religion and race.

Although much of Minter’s work is showcased on site as part of the African Village, his prolific production far exceeds its confines. In 2001, Minter bought the house and land adjacent to the African Village and converted it to an exhibit space, providing additional space for his artwork to be displayed. Other pieces are housed within museum collections, including the New Orleans Museum of Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum, National Gallery of Art, and High Museum of Art. Minter’s work has been prominently featured alongside other Black artists in numerous exhibitions, including History Refused to Die: Highlights from the Souls Grown Deep Foundation Gift at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. His most recent solo exhibition, Joe Minter is Here, was organized in October 2024 by Navigate Affordable Housing Partners and Create Birmingham. Minter is represented by March Gallery in New York City and in 2024 was selected as a recipient of a $100,000 grant from the Ruth Foundation for the Arts.