Midnight Care Collective founders,Triniti (iii) and saylem mississippi celeste, reading from their “Statement on Care” at the Black Salt Press launch event, Feb. 6, Detroit Public Libary main branch.

Midnight Care Collective is a Detroit-based Black feminist and transformative justice collective that came together in 2023 under the care and stewardship of saylem mississippi celeste and Triniti.

On February 5th of this year, the collective launched The Black Salt Press, defined by the collective as a print project that centers the legacy of Black Feminist Archival practices through print. The event took place at the Main Branch of the Detroit Public Library as a part of the Black History Month programming that DPL has to offer throughout the month of February.

To celebrate the latest addition to Detroit’s extensive independent Black publishing legacy, community members were invited to listen in on an intergenerational panel and to engage with printed materials, current and historic, from the respective presses that were on display on tables throughout the venue.

Black Salt Press founders– Triniti and saylem mississippi celeste were joined by Broadside Lotus Press members Dr. Gloria “Aneb” House, Aurora Harris, and Chris Rutherford in conversation to explore the enduring legacy and evolving future of independent Black publishing in Detroit.

“We as a people at that time, needed to have our own literature, right? And it needed to be accessible to everyone. It didn’t need to be in libraries. It didn’t need to be in academic halls. It needed to be where you could walk up to the street corner and get a poem,” Chris Rutherford, the current president of the board for Broadside-Lotus Press, explained.

House opened the panel with a poetic offering that honored the ancestral knowledge embedded in care, endurance, and memory, setting the tone for a discussion centered around the sacred work of remembrance.

“Those risen saints left us cheering these Holy Sacraments of endurance. They guide us from the place they call upon, keep us on the righteous path, so the world we call freedom someday will come true.”

The panel then introduced members of Broadside-Lotus Press, each sharing their personal connections to the press and its mission.

In this, Aurora Harris, who first began working with Broadside Press as a poet in residence, traced her poetic and activist roots back to her childhood and detailed her work documenting oppression, jazz, and healing. Reflecting on the broader purpose of the evening, she shared, “Part of this [conversation] is for talking about care. That began early on with me. How do you recover from trauma when you’re a kid?” Harris’s words grounded the conversation in the lived realities that make Black publishing a necessity for healing and truth-telling.

Together, they recounted the histories of Broadside and Lotus Press as declarations of self-determination, community resistance, and cultural legitimacy. Dr. House said,“If the white Western world doesn’t value this literature, then we have to value it enough to do the work to make it visible in the world.”

In 1965, Dudley Randall published “The Ballad of Birmingham,” a poem that was written in response to the 1963 bombing at 16th Street Baptist Church, which claimed the lives of four African American girls. Randall’s self-published poem helped birth Broadside Press, a pioneering publishing company that would go on to become a cornerstone of the Black Arts Movement, the cultural and artistic arm to the Black Liberation Movement of the 60’s and 70’s.

Throughout the years, Broadside Press has published a long list of writers that would go on to create timeless pieces within the literary world– including, but certainly not limited to, Nikki Giovanni, Gwendolyn Brooks, Sonia Sanchez, and Audre Lorde.

Seven years later the Lotus Press, founded in Detroit by Naomi Long Madgett, would join this budding legacy of independent Black publishers. Created in a society that attempts to deny Black people of their value and voice, Broadside Press and Lotus Press each were brought to life with the intentions of resisting against the assumptions that white publishers often made of Black poets. They did this by functioning as a space and platform that Black writers had for expression while simultaneously ensuring that the literature created was accessible enough to be in the hands of every [Black] person.

Gloria “Mama Aneb” House, the current vice-president of Broadside Press, asserted, “What our writers, what our poets are producing is just as valuable, just as beautiful, and it needs to be available to the world.” Broadside Press and Lotus Press merged in 2015 to become Broadside-Lotus Press in order to keep this commitment alive.

As the evening moved into a conversation on continuity, Triniti and saylem mississippi celeste shared how they came to learn about Broadside Press while preparing zines for a Black Zine Fair in Brooklyn, New York. “I was sitting in a workshop and they started talking about Broadside, and I was like, wait—this is Detroit? This is us?” Triniti recalled. “It was humbling. We were already doing the work, but hadn’t realized we were continuing a legacy that had been laid down decades ago.”

As they began researching, they discovered a direct lineage between their present work and the historic efforts of Detroit’s Black publishing pioneers, and that the work they were engaging in was an inheritance and continuation of a legacy they hadn’t initially realized that they belonged to.

The night served not only as the convergence between past, present, and future, but as a declaration that Black publishing is a living, breathing act of resistance and remembrance. Through zines, presses, poetry, and care, these writers are not only preserving history—they are actively reclaiming and shaping it together.

“It’s been a huge labor of love and also a reclaiming act,” saylem mississippi celeste explained.

“I think Black Salt is that attempt to remember and to continue the legacies of what’s come before, and to also insert ourselves in that truth, you know, we are also living memories in this moment. So whatever we put out currently, it’s not just an oath to the past, but it’s also a promise to future generations,” Triniti shares.

“We’ve seen spaces say they’re about healing,” saylem mississippi celeste shared, “but end up enacting harm. That labor, of constantly navigating hypocrisy, drains the time and energy needed for real connection.”

Triniti echoed the emotional and spiritual need for a different approach to organizing: “Midnight Care was something envisioned by saylem to really think about how we center and prioritize care, both within the personal and within community. As a recovering perfectionist, I feel like that space has been really fruitful for me to practice just doing first– or to practice just showing up.”

Their publishing project, Black Salt Press, emerged as a natural extension of that care practice. “We wanted a way to interact with our community and share the artwork we’d been making at a sustainable pace,” saylem mississippi celeste explained. “The zines don’t have deadlines. It’s not linear. Someone could pick up this piece of paper in 50 years and still feel what we were trying to say.”

Much of their practice involves resisting the speed and extraction that is asked of people within the structures of our society. “Publishing with intention is our way of resisting urgency culture,” Triniti said. “We move slowly on purpose. The work comes when it’s ready.” saylem mississippi celeste added, “We don’t want to build a machine—we want to build relationships.”

When asked about the ancestors that guide their work, Triniti immediately referred back to the concept of Black matriarchal lineages. “For me,” she said, “it always starts with my grandmother. She was always writing and journaling, and even though she didn’t publish her work, that modeled for me what it means to be a witness, a recorder, a caretaker.”

Triniti extended this idea beyond family, identifying Detroit itself as a living ancestor. “Whether through music, language, or organizing history, Detroit holds so much Black genius. It gives permission to show up fully, and that has been deeply affirming.”

Their influences are deeply rooted in care-based theory and community writing; saylem listed off texts that have shaped them: “Care Manual” by Sadiya Hakeem, “Tenderness” by Annika Azora Hanstein, and “Decolonizing Nonviolent Communication” by Menakem. “Especially that last one,” they said. “It taught us how to unlearn carceral communication and replace it with something rooted in truth and mutual understanding,” saylem mississippi celeste shared. “We are the reminders… that we have existed—and will continue to exist—through our abilities to care for one another.”

All people are encouraged to get involved and engage with their work. “Right now,” saylem mississippi celeste said, “if you show up, you’re in. That’s where we’re at.” Their goal isn’t just growth for growth’s sake—it’s resonance, alignment, and care. “Sometimes people ask, how do I support?” Triniti said. “Just come. Be present. That’s more than enough.”

Information on Midnight Care Collective events and publications from Black Salt Press can be found at: midnightcarecollective.com.