Tour with Tica Taylor and Nana at Ujima Spirit

Some spaces hold objects.
Others hold memory.

This episode of Camera Rolling documents a tour through Ujima Spirit led by Tica Taylor, guided by Nana—a living archive of lived experience, cultural preservation, and spiritual practice.

What begins as a walk through a home unfolds into something much larger: a layered conversation about ancestry, travel, resistance, art, and the responsibility of remembering.

A Space That Lives and Breathes

Ujima Spirit is introduced not as a museum, but as a living cultural home. Objects, books, masks, altars, textiles, and sculptures fill the space—not arranged for display, but kept with intention.

Each room carries meaning. Each object holds memory. The space itself reflects a way of living alongside history rather than separating it from daily life.

What becomes clear early on is that preservation here is not institutional. It is personal.

Objects as Living Archives

As the tour continues, Nana responds to the space with familiarity and recognition. Jewelry, artifacts, journals, and books surface as entry points into broader reflections—on ancestry, lineage, and the ways memory is held in physical form.

Writing has always been part of this preservation. Nana shares how she has kept journals since childhood, recording life as it unfolded rather than waiting for permission to document it. The objects are not collected for rarity, but for relationship.

Learning Through Movement

Travel emerges as a central thread in Nana’s life story. She reflects on moving through Africa, the Caribbean, South America, and beyond—not as tourism, but as education.

These journeys were shaped by curiosity rather than certainty, often taken without financial security but always guided by purpose. Travel becomes a teacher—expanding perspective and deepening understanding of culture, history, and self.

Civil Rights as Lived Experience

Interwoven with stories of movement are memories of Nana’s involvement in the civil rights movement. She speaks openly about organizing sit-ins, being jailed, and witnessing pivotal moments before they were written into history.

Names that now exist in textbooks—Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr., James Baldwin, Muhammad Ali—appear not as icons, but as people encountered in real time. The stories are shared without spectacle, grounded in lived experience rather than legacy.

Generations, Gaps, and Responsibility

As the conversation slows, attention turns to what is passed down—and what is lost when stories aren’t shared directly.

Nana reflects on generational gaps, on how knowledge disappears when oral history is not recorded or honored, and on the responsibility of sharing stories while the storytellers are still here.

Tica listens not as an interviewer, but as a witness—allowing the conversation to remain open rather than resolved.

Why This Moment Matters

This episode of Camera Rolling does not attempt to summarize a life. It preserves a moment within it.

The pauses, detours, and reflections are part of the record. Together, they form a living archive—one that values presence over polish, memory over metrics, and conversation over conclusion.