Acknowledgment Charles Henry Rowell, Editor I want now to express my appreciation to those individuals who, in their selfless and tireless efforts, were instrumental in and dedicated to the creation and publication of Callaloo • Art. First, there was Percival Everett, who is always prepared to listen to my complaints about Callaloo and the woes there are editing and publishing it. When I complained to him about not having enough space in the quarterly journal to help adequately support African American visual arts communities here in the United States, he came back with a very strong challenge. “Why not create another publication for Callaloo art?” he asked on the California end of the Texas-initiated telephone call I had made to him. His question was a jolting push—ultimately, a command, a direct challenge—which was all I needed, for within a few weeks I consulted William “Bill” Breichner, Publisher of the Journals Division of the Johns Hopkins University Press (JHUP). As usual, Bill was encouraging and asked me to create a proposal for the then embryonic idea I was discussing with him. And, within a week or so, I passed to him my detailed proposal. A few weeks after he received and read it, he and I met over lunch in Baltimore, the home site of JHUP, the nation’s oldest (1878) and one of the nation’s most distinguished university presses. The more Bill and I discussed my proposal, the more I, too, realized how reasonable and easily executable such a needed project would become. So when I returned to Texas A&M University, I passed on a more polished copy of my plans for Callaloo • Art to Dean Antonio Cepeda-Benito and to Provost Karan Watson for their approval and support, which each one graciously and immediately gave me, along with their usual encouragement. Their approval authorized me to submit my official and formal proposal again to Bill Breichner at JHUP for his official approval. Once I resubmitted the final version of the Callaloo • Art proposal to our publisher, I immediately made plans to meet with three of the most enterprising and engaging curators and art critics of Houston’s Museum District, the three individuals who are instrumental in helping to transform the museum culture of Houston into one that is inclusive enough to represent and exhibit work by artists whose aesthetic productions transgress and transcend the destructive and dehumanizing boundaries of the prevailing racial politics that continues to plague the visual art establishment throughout the United States. The three Houston, Texas, residents I am referring to are African Americans, widely known across the USA for their superior curatorial work and critical commentaries on visual art: Valerie Cassel Oliver (Contemporary Art Museum, Houston), Franklin Sirmans (The Menil Collection, and now the Los Angeles County Museum of Art), and Alvia Wardlaw (formerly curator at the Fine Arts Museum, Houston, but now exclusively directing the Texas Southern University Museum in Houston). I invited the three of them to lunch at Houston’s Raven Grill to discuss the Callaloo • Art proposal and to enlist their support in inaugurating, developing, and sustaining the annual project. After a series of relevant and critical questions, they, to my surprise, unanimously agreed to work with the Callaloo office staff and me in producing this annual project. Not long after that working lunch, I met with the three of them again, and appointed each as an associate editor. These appointments mean that in the not so distant future each one of them will be responsible for guest editing a single issue on a subject or focus of her/his choosing. We are fortunate to have [End Page 1033] these three individuals join us, along with others as associate editors and as advisory and contributing editors, in the annual production of Callaloo • Art. They too, of course, fully recognize the need and significance of Callaloo • Art, and they are willing to help rectify the problem caused by the absence of such a long-needed publication. I also want to thank three other people who, without rancor or envy, have worked tirelessly with me to produce a representative and balanced inaugural issue of Callaloo • Art. First, there are...