This TikToker shares stories about Black history in Arizona

Do you know the story of Calvin Goode? He was a Black janitor who worked his way through law school and became a 22-year member of the Phoenix City Council.

What about Dr. Winston Clifton Hackett, Arizona’s first Black physician? Or Veora Johnson, a trailblazing teacher at Mesa’s all-Black Booker T. Washington High School?

These are the stories Nia Watkins tells on her TikTok channel, “Arizona, But Make It Black.” It’s her attempt to illustrate the role of Black history in shaping the culture of the state. In the first video of the series, she inspiration was countless videos on social media from fellow Black creators wondering why it's so hard to find community in Arizona.

The Show spoke to Watkins in our studios last week, and she said that she gets a lot of her ideas for videos just by walking around her neighborhood.

One of her most popular videos is about Eastlake Park.

Full conversation

NIA WATKINS: Eastlake Park actually was the safe haven for Black people in Arizona. So for those that don't know that prior to 1954, Black people could not live north of Van Buren. So, Eastlake District Park was where everyone came for like the barbecues, and that's where Juneteenth originally was. Martin Luther King Day program started there originally.

So it was definitely the home of like where people came to be safe and feel like they can be around like-minded people that look for them and not get discriminated against, you know what I mean, and just enjoy it.

And it still does programs and stuff like that, but that's the biggest significance of Eastlake Park is that it was really a community gathering place for Black people when we couldn't go anywhere else in Phoenix, that is.

SAM DINGMAN: So if I may, Nia, something that's really important about these videos, in addition to the subject matter, obviously, is the way that you deliver them to the camera, which is very much the way you just told that story.

It's very much fueled, it seems to me, by your own fascination and curiosity about this subject. You talk about it like, you're telling a friend over a cup of coffee.

WATKINS: Yeah, honestly, I want to make sure that I'm in the video. My personality comes through, and that's just who I am in regular life.

DINGMAN: Yeah, if I may, here in the studio today, you're wearing an Angela Davis shirt. Have you always been passionate about this topic? I mean, you know, like revealing stories about Black history that I think it's safe to say the broad swaths of America are not aware of.

WATKINS: Yes and no. So my family was very, my grandmother who's passed away now, she was very big on Black history, making sure we knew Black history, we knew like where we came from, what was going on. So I always loved it.

This project did definitely make me a lot more passionate about Black history for my own self versus like my grandmother was like, "OK, you have to see 'Malcolm X.' You have to see 'Roots.' You have to read this book. Here's Richard Wright. Here's this. Here's 'Invisible Man.'"

It's just like, "OK, Grandma, OK." But now as I've gotten older, it's just so vital.

DINGMAN: So we were talking a little bit before we started recording. You said you moved to Phoenix about five years ago, you said?

What did you make, because this is something we talk about a lot on The Show, is the lack of visibility of Black history and to some extent Black culture here in the Valley. We've had a number of conversations about that over the years.

As somebody who has had a lifelong interest in it, is that something you noticed or made remark of when you arrived here?

WATKINS: So actually, I did research before I moved here. I'm very, I'm very intentional about the spaces I, I lived, the areas I moved to for that reason. I want to make sure that I feel included. I want to make sure I feel involved in my community. I want to make sure I feel safe emotionally, mentally.

So I actually researched before I moved to where I was going to go. And downtown there was a mural of James Baldwin, who's my favorite author. I'm like, this is where I belong. So I definitely noticed it, but I grew up in predominantly white areas, so I wasn't surprised because I've always had to find Black people in areas I've lived in, and up until I was like, up until I went to college in Atlanta and lived in like, you know, Chicago, then it wasn't as hard.

But I wasn't really taken aback by it because it's something that I've lived with.

DINGMAN: Can you talk at all about what your interactions with your viewers have been like?

WATKINS: People have given me some great ideas. Ideas about how I should do this and how I should, and for a little bit I'm like, OK, well, let me do how they want me to do it, but I'm like, no, this is my show and I want to make sure it's still authentic.

I've definitely had some people that are like, oh well, is it only about Black — and these are messages, like direct messages — oh, is it only Black history? I'm like, well, it's Arizona, But Make It Black. Yes.

DINGMAN: Taps the sign.

WATKINS: But for the most part it's been very positive and engaging and actually just kind of makes me want to do it more because I'm like, OK, it's something they don't know.

DINGMAN: It sounds like the idea of expressing history, particularly history that is not as visible as it should be, it seems like it is urgent to you.

WATKINS: Well, as we know where we are, our political climate, our, our country right now, and this is across the board, not just Black cultures, all culture, I feel like is under attack. And I think it's so vital that we tell these stories because what we're seeing right now is like things getting erased, things getting removed quietly that we don't know about.

I think it's so, so, so important, especially as a Black female, that I make sure that I tell these stories because we can't forget them. It inspires people to make a change, right? I want people to know that just because you're not an MLK or a Rosa Parks or a Malcolm X or something, you can still do small things that make huge differences, and these people did those things.

DINGMAN: Can you think of an example of one of these more small scale stories that stuck with you as an example of what you were just describing?

WATKINS: I would actually say Helen Mason. I am an arts person. I grew up in speech debate team, drama team. I was really, my brother's an actor, so I'm in the arts, and I thought, I loved her story.

She started the first Black theater company in the West, and it was in Phoenix. It was for her love of art. She thought that everybody should have an access to theater, to be in art, and, and Black kids at the time, like, it wasn't a big thing for Black kids to be in theater, right? So she's like, well, I'm going to just open one. And she opened one.

DINGMAN: I'm also really struck by this phrase you used a moment ago in describing this, this current moment, that all culture is being erased. Can you say a little bit more about what you mean by that?

WATKINS: So when I say all culture, I feel like Black history is American history. Latino history is, Latin is American history. Indigenous people is definitely American history. And right now, there's this attack on, they don't belong, this shouldn't be here, right? There's this whole attack on just a culture, a melting pot of culture that we've built here in America. Culture came from all the people that came here to make America what it is now.

DINGMAN: Is this ever difficult for you?

WATKINS: Yes.

DINGMAN: Part of the reason I asked that question is because again, the style of the videos is so notable to me in that tonally, even though sometimes you're, you're talking about very sad chapters in the American story, your tone stays conversational, friendly.

WATKINS: So that's actually a really good observation because I don't think I really realized that, but I think for me, I want this to be for everybody, right? Yes, I want to tell the story, the history of Black people, and that's what Arizona But Make It Black is about, but everyone needs to know these stories. And I know that sometimes tone, people will stop listening when you have a certain tone, right?

And even though these stories are hard to tell, and there's some bad things that happen, they still, there's still celebration in them. There's still a positive side because we're here, I'm here, you're here, we're in the same, you know what I mean like. The stuff they did, as hard as it was, it got us here, you know, so I still want to celebrate it.

So I don't want to be like, oh well, and then, you know, again here, da da da, and like it just, it just changes what I want people to take from it, because once people get a tone and they feel offended, they're going to stop listening. So, that's why I keep it conversational.