Multicultural BRIDGE
  • Home
  • About Us
    • Staff And Volunteers
    • Board and Advisory Council
    • Partnerships and Coalitions
    • Organization Members
    • Impact
    • Support Us
  • Programs
    • Happiness Toolbox Summer Program >
      • HT2022 Photos
      • HT2021 Photos
      • Happiness Toolbox Sessions
      • HT Bios
    • Community Education >
      • Cultural Competence Community Training
      • Real Talk On Race
    • Youth >
      • Happiness Toolbox >
        • Happiness Toolbox Blog
        • Coloring Pages
        • Happiness Toolbox Photos
      • Real Talk
    • Towards Racial Justice And Equity In the Berkshires >
      • TRJ-South
      • Race Task Force
      • Great Barrington Trust Policy
      • Honoring Du Bois's Life & Legacy >
        • Du Bois Legacy Participants 2022
      • Not In Our County - Berkshires
    • Women To Women >
      • Immigrant Women's Group
      • Professional Support/Community Integration
      • Mindfulness and Movement
    • New Pathways >
      • New Pathways Social Justice Conference 2020 >
        • New Pathways Conference Keynote
        • New Pathways Conference Videos
        • New Pathways 2020 Conference Bios
      • New Pathways Labs
      • New Pathways Talks
      • New Pathways Podcast
      • New Pathways Bios
    • Food Sovereignty & Sustainability >
      • Resource Kits
      • Distribution Sign Up
  • Services
    • Business >
      • Educational Support
      • Workplace Programming
      • State Vendor: Supplier Diversity Program
      • Recruitment
      • Language Access Services
    • Memberships
    • IDEA Institute Trainings
    • Online Training >
      • Virtual Training Hub >
        • Cultural Competence Foundations
      • Inclusive Leadership Cohort >
        • ILC Project Proposals
  • Ways To Give
  • News And Events
    • Mosaic Stories
    • Catalyst.Love.Impact GALA >
      • Gala Photo Gallery
      • Gala Impact
      • Gala Bios
    • Events >
      • Event Photos
    • Announcements
    • In the News
    • Press Releases
    • Photo Gallery
  • Resources
  • Contact
    • Join Our Mailing List
  • Members
    • Member Resources

Museum exhibit highlights the African-American experience in the Berkshires

2/12/2019

0 Comments

 
PictureThe exhibit 'Their Stories: Oral Histories from the NAACP' at the Berkshire Museum in Pittsfield tells the story of the African-American experience in the Berkshires. Photo courtesy Berkshire Museum
Hannah Van Sickle } The Berkshire Edge

Pittsfield — Wray Gunn grew up in what he calls a “heavily segregated” neighborhood in Henderson, North Carolina. His family, which consisted of three boys, lived next door to a white family, also with three boys. On Saturdays, it was not uncommon for the six friends to meet at the movies. Despite separate entrances—Gunn and his brothers used the rear entrance while their neighbors used the front door—the boys created a common ground of sorts in the balcony of the theater where, if each trio of brothers sat at the partition, they could enjoy the movies together. This anecdote of Gunn’s is but one of many voices featured in “Their Stories: Oral Histories from the NAACP,” currently on display at the Berkshire Museum. The exhibit, a collaboration of the Housatonic Heritage Oral History Center at Berkshire Community College and the Berkshire chapter of the NAACP, documents the stories of individual African-Americans in the Berkshires.

Visitors are invited to explore the history of African-Americans in the Berkshires through compelling, contemporary stories from today as recorded by leaders from the local African-American community and the NAACP Berkshire chapter; original portraits by photographer Julie McCarthy bring to life the incredibly rich history of African-Americans in the Berkshires throughout the past 200 years. An illustrated timeline highlighting significant events in the history of the African-American experience in the region, complement the stories and photos. In 1800, the Berkshire County population was 33, 885; the Black population was 494. By 1840, these numbers swelled to 41,745 and 1,333 respectively.

“In my school …we were very few,” recalls Evelyn Pratt. “You could count them. The principal called one of the Black brothers in there and they were told, ‘Don’t ask any white girls out.’ They would not allow that at North High School … I was thinking, as they say, ‘stay in your lane.’” These anecdotal accounts of growing up in the Berkshires, and elsewhere, are balanced by events with more regional and national significance. For instance, in 1865, the year slavery ended in the United States with the passage of the 13th Amendment, Frederick Douglass lectured in Pittsfield. Interestingly enough, slavery was abolished in 1783 in Massachusetts—through a judicial interpretation of the state constitution—thanks to a crusade led by Elizabeth “Mumbet” Freeman. In 1868, the year the 14th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified—guaranteeing equal protection under the law to all citizens, including Blacks, to whom citizenship was granted—W. E. B. Du Bois was born in Great Barrington; he would later go on to become the first Black person to receive a doctorate from Harvard, and co-found the NAACP in 1909—the Berkshire County chapter was organized in Pittsfield in 1918.

Optimism and faith permeate many of the messages: “Always try to help: if you can help someone, as you pass along the way, then you can live in the world and not be in pain,” reflects Magdalene Adams in a paraphrase of one of Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous speeches. She adds, “You have to have patience to see wisdom and faith come alive.” Adams served as the president of the local chapter of the NAACP in Pittsfield when it was reactivated in 1983. The following year, Stephanie D. Wilson graduated from Taconic High School and went on to become a NASA astronaut; when she went into space in July 2006 as a crew member of the Space Shuttle Discovery, she requested that James Weldon Johnson’s “Lift Every Voice and Sing” be played as the wake-up call for astronauts. Portions of that song—along with the lyrics to 200 other popular songs, not to mention books and poetry—were composed while simultaneously working against discrimination in the early quarter of the 20th century.

“I feel like I’ve lived into being an African American woman,” says Gwendolyn VanSant. “In a way, I was avoiding it as a young scholar wanting to be acknowledged as smart and capable just because I am, not because I was the Black girl in the room. It’s very different trying to fit in rather than being honored for my intrinsic value as a human being.” This powerful sentiment is balanced by two women on the exhibit’s timeline: the first, May Edward Chinn, was born in Great Barrington in 1896; she went on to be one of the first Black women to become a medical doctor. The second, Margaret Hart of Williamstown, became the first Black graduate of the State Teachers College of North Adams in 1935; she went on to become the first Black teacher in Pittsfield.

Read the full article
0 Comments

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    Archives

    February 2025
    January 2025
    July 2024
    October 2023
    July 2023
    August 2022
    July 2022
    May 2022
    February 2022
    April 2021
    March 2021
    January 2021
    November 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    April 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    May 2017
    February 2017

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

Contact Us

Stay Connected
via Our Newsletter

SUPPORT US
Donate
  • Home
  • About Us
    • Staff And Volunteers
    • Board and Advisory Council
    • Partnerships and Coalitions
    • Organization Members
    • Impact
    • Support Us
  • Programs
    • Happiness Toolbox Summer Program >
      • HT2022 Photos
      • HT2021 Photos
      • Happiness Toolbox Sessions
      • HT Bios
    • Community Education >
      • Cultural Competence Community Training
      • Real Talk On Race
    • Youth >
      • Happiness Toolbox >
        • Happiness Toolbox Blog
        • Coloring Pages
        • Happiness Toolbox Photos
      • Real Talk
    • Towards Racial Justice And Equity In the Berkshires >
      • TRJ-South
      • Race Task Force
      • Great Barrington Trust Policy
      • Honoring Du Bois's Life & Legacy >
        • Du Bois Legacy Participants 2022
      • Not In Our County - Berkshires
    • Women To Women >
      • Immigrant Women's Group
      • Professional Support/Community Integration
      • Mindfulness and Movement
    • New Pathways >
      • New Pathways Social Justice Conference 2020 >
        • New Pathways Conference Keynote
        • New Pathways Conference Videos
        • New Pathways 2020 Conference Bios
      • New Pathways Labs
      • New Pathways Talks
      • New Pathways Podcast
      • New Pathways Bios
    • Food Sovereignty & Sustainability >
      • Resource Kits
      • Distribution Sign Up
  • Services
    • Business >
      • Educational Support
      • Workplace Programming
      • State Vendor: Supplier Diversity Program
      • Recruitment
      • Language Access Services
    • Memberships
    • IDEA Institute Trainings
    • Online Training >
      • Virtual Training Hub >
        • Cultural Competence Foundations
      • Inclusive Leadership Cohort >
        • ILC Project Proposals
  • Ways To Give
  • News And Events
    • Mosaic Stories
    • Catalyst.Love.Impact GALA >
      • Gala Photo Gallery
      • Gala Impact
      • Gala Bios
    • Events >
      • Event Photos
    • Announcements
    • In the News
    • Press Releases
    • Photo Gallery
  • Resources
  • Contact
    • Join Our Mailing List
  • Members
    • Member Resources