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While conducting research for “Small Axe,” his 2020 anthology of films about resilience in the city’s West Indian community, McQueen had come across a photograph of a Black boy on a train station platform awaiting evacuation during the Blitz.

It was while writing 2020’s “Small Axe,” his anthology of films about the lives of West Indian immigrants in London, that McQueen came across a photograph that brought “Blitz” to the forefront of his mind: an image of a young Black boy in an oversized coat with a large suitcase, standing on a railway platform during World War II. The unidentified boy, one of more than 800,000 children evacuated from cities in the U.K. during the war, was a striking discovery.

Sure, then-City Council president Nury Martinez — who disparaged Oaxacans and described a young Black boy as a monkey — resigned and has stayed away from politics.

He tells me he beat a Black boy with a tire iron and how if I keep getting in his way, that’ll happen to me.

You only have to open Richard Wright’s “Black Boy,” Agnes Smedley’s “Daughter of Earth” or Justin Torres’ “We the Animals” to see their protagonists’ appreciation of beauty and ability to experience profound pleasure – yes, all while experiencing poverty.