Dark and Tender: Healing Black Men with The CUT Project — The Evergreen Echo

Prentis Hemphill and Aaron Johnson on stage and in conversation at Seattle Public Library screening of “Dark and Tender” in April 2025.

"The Black community has been inundated with messaging that leaves us “confused by the culture that dominates our knowing, putting constraints on value rather than allowing us to exist inherently” (Prentis Hemphill). This messaging causes hopelessness and—as we have learned so far through Aaron’s work—forces the reflexive response of Black men believing they don’t need touch. It forces them to engage with grief in secret, rather than in community."

— Raegan Ballard-Gennrich, Points of View Series in The Evergreen Echo