On a snowy highway between Little Rock, Arkansas, and Minneapolis, CC Mercer Watson found herself driving into a new chapter of her creative life — one stitched not just in fabric, but in memory, identity and Black history. That road, in all its uncertainty, became the foundation for “The Road Less Traveled: An Ode to the Green Book,” Watson’s latest textile exhibition, now on view at Soo Visual Arts Center through June 29.
Part spiritual cartography, part love letter to the Black travelers who dared to chart their own paths through America, Watson’s exhibition is anything but conventional. “I knew I was going to have to make that drive again. I knew it would be hard,” she recalled.
“But I also knew I would be honoring the people I come from. And I thought, what better way to do that than through art rooted in the Green Book?”
The Green Book, officially known as “The Negro Motorist Green Book,” was first published in 1936 by Victor Hugo Green, a Harlem-based postal worker. Created during the Jim Crow era, the travel guide served as a vital lifeline for Black Americans navigating a deeply segregated country. It listed safe places to eat, sleep and refuel — offering protection and dignity to travelers who risked hostility, violence, or denial of service on the open road.
More than just a directory, the Green Book was a bold act of resistance — a testament to Black resilience, entrepreneurship and community care. Today, its legacy is being reexamined not only as a historical artifact, but as a cultural blueprint for safety, self-determination and survival in a country still grappling with racial inequities.
Watson — a poet, playwright, actress, activist, and self-described “magnetic gem from the Natural State” — brings more than 1,000 hours of hand-stitched labor into this immersive installation. Every fabric choice, every poem, every line of thread is deliberate.
The result is a powerful artistic fusion: an intersection of visual art, literature, ancestral storytelling, and historical reverence that centers the experiences of African American roadtrippers who used the Green Book as both a compass and a shield.
But her inspiration didn’t stop at history. It included one of her greatest childhood influences: “The Wiz.”
“‘The Wiz’ is the ultimate hero’s journey,” she said. “Dorothy had to go on this wild, winding road to discover that everything she needed was already inside her. That speaks to Black travel. That speaks to womanhood. That speaks to how we move through the world as Black people — searching, surviving, becoming.”
Watson’s own journey is steeped in personal legacy and cultural memory. Raised in a family of community builders and truth-tellers — her father, the late attorney Christopher C. Mercer Jr., was a prominent civil rights lawyer — she sees art as an extension of activism.
“I’m a culture bearer,” she said. “I honor the dead through my living. Through every stitch, I hear my ancestors telling me, ‘Keep going.’”
Watson’s commitment to hand-stitching is more than a technical choice — it’s a form of devotion. “I stitch exclusively by hand. Every single thread, I put in myself,” she said. “You have to be a special kind of maniac to pour that many hours into your work, and I love it.”
It shows. Her pieces hum with texture, story and time. One of her quilts features a vibrant yellow robe that once served as the aisle runner at her 2023 wedding. Another, a wedding gift to her husband, honors their shared commitment to heritage and future-building. Others in the series were built from scratch, guided by intuition, design diaries, and fabric combinations that refused to sit quietly on shelves.
Alongside the textiles is “The Green Book of Poems,” a companion literary work that offers a deeper entry point into the exhibit’s themes of travel, safety, grief and self-discovery.
“Poetry was my first language,” Watson said. “I’ve been writing since I was six years old. Some of these poems were written for specific quilts. Some came before. Some arrived at the last second — just in time.”
This blending of mediums — poetry and quilting — acts like a call and response. The visuals speak, and the words echo, challenge and expand what the eye can see.
Watson’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, from Ghana’s The Studio Accra to Little Rock’s Mosaic Templars Cultural Center. But “The Road Less Traveled” marks a turning point.
It’s not just a show — it’s a reclamation. And Minneapolis, especially in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, offered fertile ground for that reclamation to bloom.
At her artist talk the day after the show’s opening, Black audience members shared powerful stories of their own — growing up in majority-white schools, surviving systemic erasure, and finally seeing themselves reflected in Watson’s textiles.
“A woman told me she saw Elizabeth from ‘The Wiz’ in one of my pieces and burst into tears,” Watson recalled. “That’s the impact I want. I made the art, but it doesn’t belong to me — it belongs to the people who find themselves in it.”
Her collaborator and fellow artist, Khadijah Muse, also contributed deeply resonant work in an adjacent gallery. The conversation between the two exhibits sparked broader dialogue about community, memory, and Black womanhood.
“That’s what I love about Black folks,” Watson said. “We don’t just look — we feel, we connect, we remember.”
Beyond the gallery, Watson is building more than art — she’s building infrastructure. She’s the founder of A BLACK SPACE, a nonprofit that centers cultural preservation, healing and storytelling through oral tradition and ancestral craft.
“In Arkansas, we are both blessed and burdened,” she said. “It’s a red state, and the oppression is real. But there’s beauty here. We bloom in spite of it.”
Founded on Juneteenth — a holiday she calls “deliciously Black” — A BLACK SPACE holds programming, sends out a monthly newsletter called “The 19th,” and speaks directly to Black audiences about liberation and legacy. This Juneteenth, Watson will speak at a family reunion, reflecting on how freedom lives in the bloodline.
“Our joy is resistance,” she said. “Our stories are sacred.”
“I am walking Black joy,” she said plainly. “It’s not always easy. Getting this work to Minneapolis was hard. I slept on the gallery floor one night finishing the Harriet Tubman piece. But I knew somebody, somewhere, would see it and feel seen.”
She paused.
“When that happens, that’s the reward. That’s the return. That’s why I do it.”
See the work: “The Road Less Traveled: An Ode to the Green Book,” now through June 29, Soo Visual Arts Center, Minneapolis. For more information, visit www.soovac.org.
