Murv Seymour:
Oh, Alex Gee. I have to take a deep breath — this is a big moment.

Alex Gee:
Oh yes it is.

Murv Seymour:
Thirty-one million-plus?

Alex Gee:
That's right. $32 million but who's counting?

Murv Seymour:
Now, you and I, a lot of people don't know this, but you and I grew up together on the south side.

Alex Gee:
That's right.

Murv Seymour:
Middle school classmates. Is there any world at all that you dreamed that you and I would be sitting here, me interviewing you, you opening this grand facility? Did you see it coming?

Alex Gee:
I did not see it coming. No, it's a pleasant surprise, but it's a surprise nonetheless.

Murv Seymour:
Tell me about the vision in terms of what you saw, and what you're seeing now as we've hit the grand opening.

Alex Gee:
Sure, this community, Madison in general, but south Madison specifically, gave so much to my mom who came here, ending a bad marriage and wanting something better for her two children. I don't think she ever dreamed that 50 years later her children would be designing something that would make Madison better. She knew Madison would make us better, but I'm not sure she knew that we would make it better. I noticed a lot of people in our community who leave for greener pastures. You left Madison, you know, for college and then afterwards, but not many come back. As I listen to people and ask, "Why are you leaving and why aren't you coming back?," and they talk about the lack of places to celebrate culture and to feel completely themselves and to express themselves. And so I started conducting surveys, asking questions of the community members, and over 800 of them were part of my study. They said, "We want a place to belong and to celebrate and to bring our culture to the table. We want this to really feel like home." And that was really the fuel to want to create this Center for Black Excellence and Culture.

Murv Seymour:
Yeah, I want to talk about that name because I think a lot is in the name.

Alex Gee:
Oh, a whole bunch.

Murv Seymour:
You know, and...

Alex Gee:
...I know where you're going.

Murv Seymour:
No, you don't, do you?

Alex Gee:
I do.

Murv Seymour:
Really?

Alex Gee:
I can read minds.

Murv Seymour:
You and I spent a lot of time at the south side Madison Neighborhood Center.

Alex Gee:
That's right. And we called it the Center.

Murv Seymour:
We called it the Center — the word center is in the name.

Alex Gee:
That's right.

Murv Seymour:
Is that purposeful?

Alex Gee:
Oh, it's definitely purposeful. I wanted lifelong Madisonians to know that I didn't forget that. It's now part of the Boys & Girls Club, but back in the day when we were on the south side, it was called the Center. We'd say, "Hey, Murv, you going to the Center after school? You going to play basketball?"

Murv Seymour:
That was place to be.

Alex Gee:
You can get summer jobs there, but grandmas were there, kids were there — young, old — and it was a microcosm of the broader community. I wanted people who were from Madison to know that I didn't forget that space that was occupied through the South Madison Neighborhood Center. So I shortened the Center for Black Excellence and Culture to the Center. I just had this conversation with our friend Tim. He's like, "Hey, you called that the Center. Was that because?" And I said, that's why I said, Murv, I know what you're going to say. So yep, I did it exactly because of that because it's a throwback to a time where we really felt a sense of belonging, a sense of pride. And this really felt like home to us — we lived like this was home.

Murv Seymour:
Yeah, I love that. Now, as I think about everything you've done to get to this point, clearly the heavy lifting is, you know, seeing it, raising the funds for it, but I'd imagine sustaining it is going to be a heavy lift. How can Wisconsinites support what you're doing here, even if they don't live here in the Madison area?

Alex Gee:
Sure, well, first of all, let me say, this place tells the story of Black first from around the state. So, you know, I'm expecting to see the mayor of La Crosse here with a bus full of folks, elected officials are coming from Milwaukee here in Madison because this tells the story of Black greatness and excellence in the state of Wisconsin. So we don't want people to do us a favor, we want us to understand this is our story. This helps Wisconsin living to its state motto of being "Forward." And so the easiest thing is go to our website and to click that red button that says, "Please donate." But the other thing is get on our mailing list. So, when we have lectures and comedians and plays and dances — come. If you really want to support it, come and take advantage of it. Hold an event here. But we want Madison and Wisconsin to be great for everyone. And so I felt that if we built the space where the Black community could be its best, then we could give our best at work. But it's hard to demand that of us when we're the first and only every day, and then when we want to go out and play, we're still the first and the only when we're looking for jazz clubs or bookstores or coffee houses or things that you find easily in places where you've lived and I've vacationed. But I just said, "We're smart enough. We're strong enough here to do this in Madison." I will also add that the fundraising is not the hardest part of this.

Murv Seymour:
No?

Alex Gee:
No. Galvanizing the community because that takes — I mean, you can raise $32 million if you get two or three of the right people. Now, we didn't have that benefit. We have close to 1,300 donors. So we had to ask a lot of people for smaller amounts. But once you have a vision...

Murv Seymour:
...And that tells you that the community's bought in, right?

Alex Gee:
That they're bought in. But I started with asking the Black community, "What do we want? What will move the needle? Everyone's talking about us around the country — Race to Equity, health disparities, economic disparities, academic disparities. What do we want people to know about us? And what do we want to know about ourselves? What do we want to study?" They started telling me, and I built that into that. So when we did our first fundraising effort, my first 300 donors were from the Black community. We have Black donors from around the state. When the broader community saw that, seven-figure gifts started coming in. Kim Sponem started from Summit with $2 million, AmFam with $2.5, Ascendium with $2.5. When they saw that the Black community was behind this, and this wasn't some demagogue's vision — this was not a part of my church or part of Nehemiah — this was something that was brand new, fundraising. And it took a while because it was, you know, COVID was going on, but the resources started coming in. But the 10, 20 years of being an academic advisor at the university, a recruiter at the university, a pastor for the last 40 years, and listening to people's stories, it took decades to build a credibility that I would do with the money what I said I was going to do with the money, and that people would show up if I would ask them to come. That was the hard part, 'cause that took decades. Raising the $32 million only took three-and-a-half years.

Murv Seymour:
I wonder what do you think they saw that made them jump onboard with those kinds of numbers?

Alex Gee:
Black people. They saw us coming together and wanting to be masters of our own destiny. That we weren't coming together saying, "Fix us, give us something, share something with us." We came together as retired state employees, lawyers, doctors, educators, professors, teachers, and said, you know, "This is what's working around the country." This is what we want to do. We don't want you to design it for us. It doesn't need to be remedial. It doesn't need to be a human service. We want a place where we can have plays and think tanks and lectures and bid whist games, and plays and comics. And we don't want to have to dumb down. And we want our children to meet viable mentors who want to pour into other children. We want to create a community like we had at Lincoln 40 years ago. You know, whether you lived in Bram Hill or Bayview or south side, we were south side as we knew how to band together. We've lost that over the years. I want this space to bring that back. We might not have had a lot of money or a lot of degrees, but we were healthier than we are right now. And so I'm really into community development. My goal is to make sure that Black people live more fulfilled lives, which will play itself out in physical and emotional health. That's my real desire. But I believe that play and culture and being around each other can help that to happen.

Murv Seymour:
Yeah, with all the things you've got, Alex — the library, the stage, a sound studio, I mean, and the list goes on and on — I mean, can you experience all the value of this space in one sitting?

Alex Gee:
No, it's sort of like Disney World. You got to come back for two or three days. But we're here for the long haul. We want grandparents to come in here and say, "You've got a library? I can bring my grandbabies here?" We want that to happen. And we want moms to be here for programs, mom and dads to be here for programs, and realize you have purposely opened your library in the evening so that when we come to programs, our children can go and work on literacy and storytelling and listening and communication. So yeah, it'll take you more than one visit to get the fullness of it. I want to add that this is rooted in the celebration of Black culture, but anyone's invited, because as Black people, we're generous and we like to share, particularly stuff that's our culture, taste our soul food, do this dance, come see our movie. Have you seen Sinners? We love it when non-Black folks partake in our culture, because that's our heart and that's our soul. And when you respect that, not just consume it and not invest in it, but when you celebrate it, it means something to us. We've created a cultural ecosystem where Black culture isn't just consumed, but we're asking the broader community to invest in it so that podcasters and t-shirt makers and playwrights can learn to make money on their side hustle, 'cause that money can make the difference between their child going to college or not.

Murv Seymour:
And culture's for everybody, right.

Alex Gee:
That's right, everyone has culture.

Murv Seymour:
Right?

Alex Gee:
Everyone has culture. And everyone's had the ability to keep their culture. Ours was stripped and we weren't allowed to have it. But we held to it. You know, 100 years ago, Murv, during the Northern Migration, it was Black art that kept us alive when we moved away from sharecropping farms. That was the rise of the Harlem Renaissance and Black playwrights and novelists and poets and singers and dancers. Art was how we survived the Spanish Flu, it's how we survived Southern racism and Northern racism. It was music in our song that kept our souls intact. And then something happened and we started, everyone just said, "You need more human services, you need more programs, you need more pity." But our art and our story and our culture has kept us for half a millennium in this country. So why not try it? So I just pulled a page out of the history playbook, said, "We're going to use history and culture to take us into the new millennium."

Murv Seymour:
Yeah. And I'd be remiss if I didn't mention your mom in this. I see you've proudly got her picture on this wall back here. I have to go back to something a little personal for you and I. I remember when you broke ground on this, I sent you a message and I said — and you had lost your mom by then — and I sent you a message saying, "I know you wanted your mom to be here to see this." And I said, "But she knows." How do you feel? What do you think she's thinking as she's looking down on all this that you've accomplished with what you're doing?

Alex Gee:
You know, my mom was a seer. I believe what she would say is, "I knew it. This is why I pushed you so hard. This is why I told you I believe in you." She would not be surprised at all. When I was a kid, my mom told me that she thought I would always write the Great American Novel. So I thought, "Oh no, I'm slacking. I'm getting a C in English and my mama thinks I'm going to be the Great American Novel."

Murv Seymour:
I wonder if she was thinking about me when she said that.

Alex Gee
She must been thinking about you. Well, you know we have the same birthday. So she might have been getting mixed up.

Murv Seymour:
That's true. I forget about that.

Alex Gee:
Must have gotten mixed up. But she would be so pleased, not only that I'm doing it Murv, but that I'm doing it in Madison, because again, this community helped to bring my mother out of deep, deep depression. She got two degrees from Wisconsin and she didn't go to high school. And so she modeled brilliance, but she also modeled blooming where you're planted. I know that things would've been probably easier economically, probably even academically, if I had moved after high school to go Hampton or Morehouse...

Murv Seymour:
...or Southern University.

Alex Gee:
Or Southern University. But to stay here, and to bloom where you're planted — to grit and commitment and conviction. She would be very pleased that I didn't leave the place that gave so much to our family and that I'm going deep here. That would mean so much to her.

Murv Seymour:
Yeah. Last question. This is clearly your baby, many babies with all the different things you've got going on. What part of this baby is your favorite baby?

Alex Gee:
Oh, you're not supposed to have favorites, but, you know, my favorite is that private lounge upstairs, Club Afrique.

Murv Seymour:
Oh yeah.

Alex Gee:
And, you know, this is really pan-African in its nature. So it looks at celebrating the culture of Afro-Latinos, folks from Africa, the Caribbean, North America. But that's the place where we want to bring our various associations together and entertain our dignitaries when they're visiting the United States from Africa or the Caribbean. But that's my place, because we're going to play grown folks music up there. It could be a sports bar one night, it could be HBCU night the other, it could be pan-African night, it can be waffles and fried chicken another night. And then there are times or spaces where we can bring our colleagues and allies who are not Black to celebrate our culture and to see Black excellence with us. I'm looking forward to people saying, "That's what you mean when you talk about Black excellence." I want to say, "Yep."

Murv Seymour:
Alex Gee, we appreciate you. Congratulations.

Alex Gee:
Thank you, I'm really happy. Thanks for having me here.