Embodied Legacy: Malcolm Davis and the Living Story of Monk Estill

To witness Malcolm Davis perform is to witness a reclamation.

His body, voice, and presence channel histories that were nearly lost—stolen by erasure, whitewashing, and cultural neglect. As a cultural activist and storyteller, Davis doesn’t just preserve Black performance traditions; he embodies them, breathing new life into ancestral truths and affirming their power in our present moment.

At the core of his performance work is Monk Estill—a real man who was enslaved in Kentucky in the late 1700s. Davis performed his one-man show The Slave, Monk Estill daily at the 2025 Smithsonian Folklife Festival.

Born and raised in Kentucky, Davis was deeply shaped by his father, Hasan Davis, who performed historical reenactments of Black figures in churches and schools. He portrayed historical figures like York, an enslaved man from Kentucky who was part of the Lewis and Clarke expedition, and Angus Augustus Burleigh, who fought for the Union during the Civil War—names missing from many students’ history books.

“I remember watching him as a kid,” Davis told me. “He would bring York to life in front of white kids and Black kids. And those Black kids—man, they lit up. They had never seen themselves in that way before.” It left a mark. “That’s the work I saw him doing. And that’s the work I do now.”

While Davis holds degrees in theatre and political science, his work isn’t bound to academia. His art is rooted in community, memory, and spiritual reflection. “I represent something bigger than me: my ancestors, my people, these stories.”

Davis centers his performances on “Affrilachian” culture—a term that affirms the Black presence in Appalachia and actively counters the myth of an all-white mountain South. “There are people who are still here,” he said. “And there are people who were pushed out violently during the Great Migration. They act like we were never part of it. But we were, and we still are.”

Monk Estill’s name first appeared to Davis in a social media post during Black History Month. “I saw his name, and I just thought, ‘Why don’t I know who this is?’” he recalled. “It bothered me. So, I started digging.”

That simple act of curiosity became the catalyst for a powerful connection. Davis began researching Estill’s life, piecing together what little documentation existed—from land records to local folklore. But the project quickly became more than historical.

“I started to feel this connection,” Davis explained. “It wasn’t just academic. It was ancestral.”

Estill is remembered as the enslaved man who saved his enslaver’s life and was granted freedom. But Davis wanted to dig deeper. “We know he was a skilled woodsman, an herbalist, someone who knew how to survive in nature. That’s not a side of him we’re ever taught. I wanted to tell his story not through the lens of who enslaved him—but through the lens of who he was.”

That meant not just writing a script but taking a pilgrimage. Davis traveled to the land where Estill lived, fasted, and sat in silence. “I asked for permission,” he said. “And when I felt it, I knew I could begin.”

The result is a performance piece that’s intimate, spiritual, and defiant. Davis hums, chants, prays, and weeps. He shifts between spoken word, gospel cadence, and Appalachian rhythm. Yet he’s clear: this isn’t a religious performance.

“It’s more ancestral than religious,” Davis said. “Working on Monk Estill’s story really made me reflect on my own spirituality, how I live, what I believe.”

That spiritual connection grounds the performance in something deeper than fact—it becomes a form of remembrance. “Monk Estill isn’t just a character,” he said. “He’s an ancestor.”

Through his work, Davis challenges the ongoing erasure of Black narratives in American and Appalachian history. “We are part of this land,” he said. “Our people shaped these towns, these rivers, this culture. But we’ve been scrubbed from the record.”

To fight that, Davis founded the Affrilachian Arts Institute, an organization that supports Black Appalachian artists in reclaiming historical figures and producing their own performance work.

“I’m not just here to perform—I’m here to sponsor, to support, to help others tell their stories,” he said. That includes financial backing, mentorship, and helping young artists trace local figures from their own hometowns, just as Davis did with Estill.

He sees this as a form of cultural inheritance. “Young people don’t have to start from scratch,” he said. “Their stories are already in the land—they just have to find them.”

Davis’s work serves as what scholars William Cross and Jean Phinney would call “identity anchors”—touchstones that affirm, rather than distort, Black identity. For young people navigating a world that devalues or flattens their culture, this type of art can be transformative. “It’s a healing act—for me, for them.”

He also emphasizes the importance of setting boundaries around that storytelling. “Sometimes people want me to perform in spaces that aren’t right. Places that don’t honor the work or the people behind it,” he said. “And I’ve learned to say no. Because this isn’t just content. This is sacred.”

Despite some people being resistant to this work, Davis has witnessed moments of progress. He described a mural in Mount Sterling, Kentucky, in which, despite tension over racial politics, the town voted to include Monk Estill’s image. “They weren’t thinking about politics,” he said. “They were thinking about history. And sometimes, that’s what opens the door.”

Davis believes reclaiming these stories is how we reclaim ourselves. “If we don’t tell our stories, someone else will. And they’ll get it wrong,” he said. “We have to hold the pen.”

Whether mentoring students, leading workshops, or performing on a stage, Malcolm Davis remains rooted in that mission. “This work isn’t just about remembering the past,” he said. “It’s about restoring what was stolen.”

Jeffrey Gerald is a program intern at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival through Urban Alliance and a recent graduate of BASIS DC. A self-taught photographer and community leader, he is passionate about cultural preservation and plans to study psychology and African American studies at Bowie State University.

References

Cross, William E. Black identity viewed from a barber’s chair: Nigrescence and eudaimonia. Temple University Press, 2021.

Phinney, Jean S. Ethnic identity in adolescents and adults: Review of research. Routledge, 2013.