June 12 – August 14, 2026

Located in The State of Tennessee Gallery and Included with Museum Admission

Too often, stories about Black life are framed through struggle, hardship, and harm. While those histories are real and necessary to confront, they are not the whole story. Black Joy, in Spite of… offers a different perspective, centering joy, connection, community, and self-determination alongside a long history of oppression.

Through photographs made across Tennessee, guest curator Brigette Janea Jones brings together images of the enslaved and their descendants across time, from enslavement and Reconstruction through the modern civil rights movement and into the present. What visitors encounter are not only the conditions people endured, but the lives they built within and beyond them. The exhibition captures moments of belonging, pride, tenderness, and resilience that reveal the fullness of Black life and remind us that these stories have never been one-dimensional.

In conversation with these historical images, contemporary works by Tennessee artists, including TC, Joseph Patrick, and a number of emerging voices, carry that story forward. These works respond to the past while remaining firmly rooted in the present, offering their own perspectives on what it means to live, to resist, and to claim joy today.

At the National Civil Rights Museum, this exhibition extends conversations taking place across the campus. Many visitors encounter histories of protest, injustice, and social change in the Lorraine galleries and Legacy Building. Black Joy, in Spite of… invites us to spend time with what exists alongside those histories: the relationships, creative expression, and acts of care that sustain people and communities across generations.

In that way, this exhibition becomes part of a larger story. Not just about what people fought against, but what they fought to protect. Not just about survival, but about the possibility of living fully.

About Brigette Jones, Guest Curator

Brigette Janea Jones is the founder of Bridge Builders Historical Consulting LLC, a research and interpretive resource for museums and other nonprofit institutions that focuses on empathetic cultural remembrance, and the assistant executive director of the Arabia Mountain National Heritage Area outside of Atlanta, Georgia. Before she took on these roles, Jones served as director of equitable partnerships for Belle Meade Historic Site and Winery and curator of social history for the Tennessee State Museum.

Her work has concentrated on the social histories of the diverse cultures that inhabit Tennessee, including those related to African Americans, Latinos, Native Americans, and Middle Eastern Americans. She also studies the legacy and ongoing ramifications of enslavement in Tennessee and surrounding areas and the need for reparative action as it relates to American descendants of enslavement.

Jones was born and raised in Memphis and holds a bachelor of arts degree from Tennessee State University. In 2019, she gained certification through the National Association of Interpretation and the Smithsonian Institute’s National Museum of African American History and Culture to be an official interpreter of the African American experience.

The Music of Black Joy

As part of our the exhibition, we’re creating a Black Joy Community Playlist and would love your help. What song brings you joy? It could be a song that makes you smile, gets you dancing, reminds you of someone you love, or simply lifts your spirits.