Carlton Mackey 05T stands in front of his Black Men Smile apparel collection at Target.
Artist, scholar, and community advocate Carlton Mackey 05T serves as assistant director of education, community dialogue and engagement at Atlanta’s High Museum of Art. He’s also the creator of multiple brands and empowerment movements, including Beautiful In Every Shade and Black Men Smile.
This year, Mackey is one of four Black artist/designers who are featured partners in the Black History Month collection at Target stores nationwide. The collection—which includes his brand Black Men Smile—is available through mid-March at 1,900 Target stores across the country, plus on Target.com.
We recently caught up with Mackey to celebrate this accomplishment. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
How did this opportunity come about for you and Black Men Smile?
We’ve been pushing the brand and the message of Black Men Smile since 2014. When I created it, I was also working at Emory as director of the Ethics and the Arts program.
In February of 2022, I got a message on the Black Men Smile website from someone who identified themselves as a senior buyer at Target. They wanted to talk to the person who created Black Men Smile about potentially doing something in collaboration with the store. I didn’t think it was legit! But a couple of weeks later, I got an actual email.
As it turns out, every year Target has a collection of Black-owned or Black-narrative centered brands for Black History Month. In the past, it has been created by an internal set of designers from Target. But the buyer had been watching our page and our growth and our messaging… and once Target identified that this year’s theme would be around Black Joy, the buyer put my name in the hat and was really enthusiastic about bringing us on board.
What has been most exciting about this experience so far?
One, it’s a huge honor, but two, the brands that they chose are unbelievable. A lot of people are saying that it’s clear a lot of time and energy and thought went into this particular group of brands, people, and products that are part of this year’s Black History Month collection.
There are four of us who are featured partners: Black Men Smile; Legendary Rootz; The House of Aama; and the Gee’s Bend Collective. The four of us make up what Target calls #BlackBeyondMeasure.
I’m honored to be one of them, and most notably to be alongside the historic Gee’s Bend Collective, whose quilting tradition dates back 200 years—and now their designs have been translated into this new medium at Target. That’s kind of unbelievable. We have Gee’s Bend Quilts in the High Museum. That’s major major.
You started Black Men Smile in the wake of Michael Brown’s murder in Ferguson. It seems noteworthy that such a time of deep pain and anger ultimately birthed this empowerment movement focused on Black joy. How did joy present itself as the way to move forward?
I wanted to do something that would be valuable and relevant at the moment. One word that comes up during any of these moments is “resistance.” When people resist, you think of protests, marches, protest signs. People are resisting the feeling of inferiority; they’re pushing back against notions that they aren’t worth the same dignity that everyone else is. So I wanted to create something that could be a modality of resistance as well.
The statement on the tags for all our products, and on the Black Men Smile hoodie, is “Black Joy is Revolutionary.” The whole point of any form of marginalization or oppression is to attempt to take away people’s dignity, joy, pride. To resist that attempt—to embody and say, ‘I’m still worthy of dignity and my humanity’—to have and express joy is an act of resistance. We believe that Black joy is revolutionary because of all that it must resist, the ways that it must persist, and how it must insist in order to simply exist.
Click on the image to watch the video.
In a video posted to the Black Men Smile Instagram account (which has 96.5 thousand followers last we checked!), viewers witness you visiting the brand’s display in a Target store for the first time. What was that moment like?
You know when an athlete has been training and they’re competing in the Olympics, and they run the race? It’s not the race itself they’re celebrating; it’s that the Olympics are every four years, and they finally ran this 30-second race that they’ve been preparing for since they were two! It’s all the build-up. So for me there’s that sense, that exhale.
Mike Brown was killed in 2014. This is 2024, so that means a decade of us pushing this movement, this mindset, this vehicle for what I like to believe is an embodiment of a form of resistance, a form of self-love. And our product is a component of that, but it’s always been about the message and creating a mind shift. So, however you encapsulate that kind of patience or persistence is all over my face in the video.
My life has been a pushing for joy in the midst of grief. This year, my grandmother passed away. She was my last living parent. In fact, the year anniversary of her passing is coming up next week. And my dad passed away three years ago. So I’m standing in this moment celebrating and happy, but also… I know they’re here with me, and they would be going crazy.
I’m from a little tiny town that has two traffic lights. There is no Target. [Laughs] These things matter not only to me, but to people all around me who I bring with me, who I represent, who I carry with me.
Speaking of who you carry with you: Your 13-year-old son was alongside you on that first visit to Target to see the Black Men Smile display. Nine years ago, Candler featured you in a story on “prophetic alumni,” which included this quote from you about how he inspired your work:
“I want to create an environment for him where possibility is greater than limitation. Then he can create his own reality, come into his own understanding. I want him to experience that.”
What does that quote mean to you now nearly a decade on, particularly in light of him getting to witness this milestone alongside you now, as a teenager?
I think about what it means for him to have had a front row seat to the good and the bad, the ups and the downs of my experience. He’s seen me lose my parents, seen me diligently do the things that I’ve had to do to grow this brand. He’s seen me make mistakes. He’s seen what I reflect on. All of those could be considered limitations—but he’s seen that there is still greatness, that great things are possible.
Having him be there to witness and feel like he’s part of my success… I think of the saying, “If you can see it, you can be it.” It’s raising his level of awareness. He can’t un-see that moment. He can’t un-see going in a store that’s a major retail brand and seeing things made by people who look like him—and not only that, his dad. His reality has shifted to an “it’s possible” mindset. I’m his dad; for him, I’m not exceptional. And I’m doing these things. And that’s what’s amazing. He saw it, so his baseline is now, “Oh, that’s possible.”
Read the Atlanta Voice article about Black Men Smile at Target.