Founders’ Personal Statement
“In view of current national issues of social injustice, effects of deep-seated racist mentality is plaguing America; hatred in America runs deep,” the founder conveys. Cycles of oppression leave wounds on the victims and victors alike, scars that embed themselves in our collective psyches and are passed down through generations. Recent nationwide behaviors are evident how strong white supremacy has infiltrat-ed the minds of Americans. What can A-As do to work through this ancestral trauma for better mental and physical health is the primary question.
As Black people, their V.O.A.B.’s (Values, Opinions, Attitudes, and Beliefs), behavior, actions, and family practices have had a deep impact on the mental wiring on Blacks and passed down impacting fu-ture generations. The founder has conducted countless conversations and created warm rapport with customers, supporters, community advocates, naysayers, minors which all formed ideas to approach tar-get audience in a way that is captivating and effective. Organic research came about as the founders en-countered upwards of 100,000 booth visitors and faced a spectrum of perspectives, family stories, in-cluding values, attitudes, social cues, opinions, beliefs and habits from those of all socio-economical clas-ses, relating to A-A history that may have offered unwanted pain or refreshing joy upon one’s ob-servance of a memorabilia item(s).
AAMMCAC founder gained a natural knack to connect with her visitors whether they were supportive or challenged by provocative artifacts. The founder is superior to discern, comfort, detangle mixed emotions and chip away mental barriers for the purpose of one’s personal and educational enrichment. Most importantly, it all simply starts with a rare item, which motivates participants to inquire, analyze, or praise. Fortunately, countless, priceless rare items exist at AAMMCAC under a cultural fit, education advocate and experienced curator.
The AAMMCAC founder is tried and true to nurture the strongest adversarial standpoint on African-American memorabilia as she advances the common philosophy of knowing your past, shapes your fu-ture at all cost. An undying motivation is offered to others on the importance of “each one must teach one” as a visitor may have found inspiration or a re-connection to their personal or communal duty after they’ve touched, seen and smelled a rare object (i.e. slave shackle, slaves on Confederate money) in its true form. Either way, the general outcome is a rich experiential value that no public education entity, marketing company, a survey market research company and/or advertising agency can ever duplicate
Founders
Gail Deculus-Johnson
The driving force behind AAMMCAC; and she is the Founder, President, and Chief Executive Officer. She came from Chicago in the early 60’s and was educated in Los Angeles, earning a master’s degree in Business Administration (MBA). The founder has over 25 years of experi-ence through major corporations in Human Resources.
In the Crenshaw/Baldwin Vista area, in the mid-eighties, a deep passion for collecting Black memorabilia was started by the founder along with various family members. She has passionately traveled to countries where there are people of color, especially Africa.
The founder with family support worked full time and concurrently managed a retail business for over ten years. The founder has conducted countless conversations and created a warm rapport with customers, supporters, community advocates, naysayers, and minors which all formed ideas to approach target audience in a way that is captivating and effective.
A self-proclaimed “underground history memorabilia conductor” on finding the untold truth relating to descendants of Africa, the founder denies that she is a historian, research analyst, history expert, or psychologist. Through extensive traveling around the world (including several trips to Africa for shackles), she continues to search to find artifacts that expose the uncensored life experiences of Blacks. The venture of collecting items is a difficult task, in that most artifacts are rare, scarce resources, hard to find, undocumented, untold information, omitted or incomplete truth. The founder shared that she went through the educational system earning an MBA, but was never exposed to the true history that was obtained through treasures of information gathered from traveling and collecting Black memorabilia.
In 2013, the founder was featured on a Canadian appraiser’s reality show entitled, Extreme Collectors, where they profile the world’s most extreme collectors and offered an assessed value evaluation. Based on the auditor hired by the production company, AAMMCAC’s potential inventory evaluation stands between $500,000 and $1,000,000. Secondly, the ability to execute and integrate cutting-edge technology (virtual reality) ahead of pop culture trends into an education space may be interpreted as a trending style of consuming media. AAMMCAC will continually utilize the strategic method of placing the ”medicine within the candy” in order to translate learning points and bolster empowering experiences.
The founder has spent over 150 hours for the purpose of presentations and/or speaking engagement at middle and high schools. As an avid vendor at statewide conventions, concerts, expos, street festivals and more, she has conducted one on one survey with thousands of people encountered over the past three decades. The founders launched a web show and in the 25 years of vending she has appeared in countless local and major news and magazine articles as well as television shows (i.e. Extreme Collectors, featuring Penny Marshall; Living with Soul, and Celebrity Hobbies featuring the late James Avery).
In 2014, the founder’s photo and interview testament were featured in the book Dark Girls, by Bill Duke, director of the NAACP award-nominated documentary which celebrates dark-skinned women.
The CEO uncovered that in 1797 it was declared that a rare, inherited disease called “NEGRITUDE” caused skin color of Blacks; and it was the reason for segregation so that Whites would not be “infected”. It was discovered that in 1851 a Louisiana physician claimed two mental diseases peculiar to Blacks, which justified their enslavement – “DRAPETOMANIA” a runaway slave and “DYSAESTHE-SIA AETHIOPIS” impaired sensation. She believes that psychiatry and psychology’s racist ideologies continue to light the fires of racism to this day.
Through a Sable Images presentation (Brown Sugar – the Power of Imagery through Black Children) at the 2016 Leimert Park Village Book Fair, the CEO shared her theory on what may have put A-A’s in the present state of complex race relations. She contends that her Did You Know ArtiFACTs Presentation exposes the sociological, psychological, physiological and economic impact from enslavement and systemic derogatory images and treatment made on the imprinted mental psyche of Americans – Blacks and Whites! AAMMCAC will exhibit a hidden treasure trove, which shows a reflection of the past. AAMMCAC is devoted to discovering and promoting American history, heritage and cultural preservation.
Bervick J. Deculus, II
The visionary for AAMMCAC was born and reared in Los Angeles. The co-founder and filmmaker, graduated with a B.A. degree in Communication from Howard University while completing major cine-ma electives at USC as an exchange student. He naturally possesses the eye of a director and has acquired a comprehensive understanding of production aspects while working in all visual mediums since 2000 within the industry. This found love for filmmaking as not just an art form for business and creative endeavors, but he later learned filmmaking is an antidote for adversity. His professionalism and creativity have been battle tested to handle film/television production of any size while facing uncharted project constraints and setbacks; this experience is an asset to AAMMCAC.
The co-founder is an all-around true example of “grace under fire” which will be invaluable at AAMMCAC. His attention to detail combined with his sizable skill set of production management under stressful conditions ensures that every production maintains the proper level of quality and efficiency will be a part of AAMMCAC. He is a large proponent of accountability and uses market strategy trends to advance the development of business and/or creative vehicles. In addition, he has a gift for story de-velopment, scriptwriting, producing and cinematography.
Bervick has developed and created film/television projects with well-known celebrities such as Vanessa Bell Calloway (Shameless), Wood Harris (The Wire) and Doug E. Fresh (Hip Hop Legend). Bervick has directed, produced, written and/or camera operated over 750 hours of content, including NBC’s Online NFL Pre Game Segments, Gladys Knight & The Pips LIVE in Las Vegas, a short film entitled Me Iz Manimal, an official selection at San Diego Black Film Festival (2010), Friend Box, a top finalist for the Hollywood Hills Screenplay Competition (2015), and Mouthful, a talk show web series featured on his YouTube channel; Team Follow Thru (2016).
The co-founder will craft quality stories/concepts for both mainstream and niche audiences ahead of current market trends for AAMMCAC. His concept of visual style, storytelling skills and directing ability, combined with his tasteful creativity, super team mindset, passion to achieve excellence and drive to motivate change are characteristics necessary to enforce the mission of AAMMCAC by providing the foundation for a successful thematic museum.
Through the co-founder’s vision, he designed the actual programming to combine both the museum and the retail cultural hub Sable Images which will be the basis for expansion. Additionally, he designed a sustainable business model, wherein the actual museum and community center can be experienced by the community through a vendor approach – multiple businesses and nonprofit organizations sharing space while providing thematic-based services to the community.
