Drawing on a New Generation of Heroes : Art: A ‘60s exhibit at CSUN hopes to boost the self-esteem of blacks.

“How much is this one?” A novice collector visiting the Los Angeles home of Cecil Fergerson was eyeing a shadow-boxlike assemblage titled “Joe.” The box held memorabilia--a clock, a pair of boxing shorts, fight programs and flyers--gathered by muralist Elliot Pinkney from the fighting days of Joe Louis.

“You probably can’t buy that one,” Fergerson said. “You know, these artists were in their early 20s when they did these. They’ve kept them all this time; I doubt they want to sell.”

It was a week before the Fergerson-curated exhibit, “1960s Second Generation,” in the South Gallery at Cal State Northridge (on display through Nov. 29) was to begin. Artwork by African-American artists who came of age between 1965 and 1975 were spread across tables and chairs and propped against the walls of Fergerson’s living room and dining area. His personal collection of work from the same era was temporarily displaced amid the chaos.

“They came on the heels of the civil rights struggle,” Fergerson said of the artists whose work is on display. “They weren’t into the busing and sit-ins, and they didn’t understand Martin Luther King Jr. They had new heroes--Angela and Stokeley and Malcolm X.”

Turning to the collector, Fergerson said, “Now Joe Louis, he was the symbol of black people during the Depression. Most white Americans turned to the movies--Shirley Temple, Mickey Rooney. But black people in the movies were stereotypes. Joe Louis represented a different kind of hero for young black men. He was champion of the whole world.”

Like any good storyteller, Fergerson captured the attention of everyone in the room: the collector, a visitor, an artist, a neighbor and Fergerson’s wife, Miriam. Interspersed with snatches on his view of the world, Fergerson conducted a tour of the art that comprises “1960s Second Generation.”

Richard Wyatt Jr.’s “Trapped Series,” were the first works to come under his gaze. The portraits of blacks framed in wood slats were described by exhibit essayist Greg Pitts as “structural barriers that allude to the mental, emotional and physical struggles of buying into/escaping from the American Dream.”

Also in the exhibit are Wyatt Jr.’s paintings on the subject of black self-hate, “The Oreo” and “Skin Whitener.” “He painted this a long time ago,” Fergerson said, “and we still have to deal with this.”

On the mantle and resting on an end table were wood sculptures by Charles Dickson. Inspired by the Black is Beautiful movement, they show what Fergerson’s wife calls “the majesty and beauty of the African-American woman.”

“Masud Kordofan is going to do a 1989 version of that one,” Fergerson said, referring to a 1971 piece titled “Dressed to Kill,” which shows a man in a Ku Klux Klan hood with a noose around his head. “In 1989, the dress changes to a white shirt and tie; the noose is the tie.”

Then Fergerson brought out collage works by La Monte Westmoreland, including “Cream of Wheat,” a series in which the image of the black Cream of Wheat man is placed in scenes of war and revolution. In one, a box of Cream of Wheat replaces the U. S. flag in a photo of the Iwo Jima memorial. “He takes a passive, derogatory image,” Fergerson said, “and makes him a revolutionary . . . with a grin.”

When Fergerson turned to “Portrait of the Living Dead: The Black College Student,” he allowed the artist, Olu Kwasi Osei, to speak for himself. “I spent a week looking at my peers and just drew what I saw,” Osei said. What he saw was a black student population corrupted by money, sex and greed, among other things.

Also part of the show are video works by Ulysses S. Jenkins Jr. and a one-woman performance-art piece by Rhodessa Jones, which is scheduled for the South Gallery at 8 p.m. tonight.

A panel discussion on the political implications of the show is also scheduled today at 9 p.m. Appearing will be Fergerson; Cynthia Hamilton, an associate professor of Pan African Studies at Cal State L.A.; Pitts; Selasse Williams, department chairman of Cal State Northridge’s Pan African Studies program; and the artists in the show.

“The civil rights struggle began when the first slave was brought over from Africa,” Fergerson said. “But every generation of young blacks think they have to start all over again. They don’t remember the struggles of the people who came before them. A lot of the young people in the second generation of the ‘60s looked down on the older generation who endured racism in the South. You’d hear a lot of labels, like Uncle Tom. In fact, when Martin King came to Los Angeles they booed him.”

Fergerson, 58, said he became politically active in the mid-1960s. His career in art, however, began nearly 40 years ago when he went to work for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art as a janitor. He rose through the ranks to become an exhibit installer and eventually a curatorial assistant (he retired in 1985). As Fergerson became more knowledgeable, he began to organize shows of black artists’ work in Los Angeles’ black community. His personal mission, even in retirement, is to raise the pride and self-esteem of blacks. “The media has all our young people looking like Michael Jackson,” he said. Fergerson tries to counteract these images with heavy doses of exposure to art, but it isn’t easy to control the images even his own children are exposed to.

“You know what he has up on the wall of his bedroom?” he asked as a young Fergerson raced by. “Mickey Mouse. That’s what he likes.

“And he’s always watching that ‘Nightmare on Elm Street’ show. Our young people look for heroes and they give us Freddy. I hate Freddy. But you can’t kill Freddy, because they keep bringing him back. So I give him an alternative, the art in this house. He may watch Freddy at night, but he passes by Joe Louis when he walks into the kitchen.”