A cheerful, felt banner which reads “The Souls of Black Folk: The American Journey” greets students entering Mudd Library this month, announcing an exhibit assembled by library staff members in honor of Black History Month.
The arrangement consists of six cases, each with a different theme in celebration of African-American achievement in the fields of music, art, economics and sports. There is also a case devoted to the Civil Rights movement.
Cecilia Robinson, a library employee who works with government documents, first had the idea for the display. She enlisted the help of her student assistants, sophomore Malini Kochhar and senior Martha Snodgrass as well as the library diversity associate, Oberlin graduate Maria Paz Esguerra.
“I thought it would be interesting to incorporate materials from Oberlin’s other libraries,” Paz Esguerra said.
In addition to government documents and facts taken from the U.S. census, the display includes sheet music from the Conservatory library, materials from special collections, videos from audio visual services and books from the art library as well as from Mudd.
Ade’s Place, a store downtown, contributed some cloths and masks to spruce up the cases and several library employees lent items from their personal collections of books and memorabilia.
“The library doesn’t have just books,” Paz Esguerra said.
One of the most interesting and thought-provoking pieces on display is the heavy, rusted chain, once used to restrain slaves in Jamaica. The chain was taken from the Anti-Slavery Collection, which has a permanent exhibit in special collections on the fourth floor of Mudd.
This sobering reminder of the inhumane treatment of African-Americans is particularly interesting when juxtaposed with the case containing memorabilia from the Civil Rights movement. This case includes a book from the art library open to Norman Rockwell’s “The Problem We All Live With,” a painting which depicts a scene from New Orleans in 1964. Ruby Bridges, an elementary school student, is walking past a wall riddled with racial slurs on her way to her newly desegregated school. She is protected on either side by U.S. marshals. Another book is propped open to a photograph of the real-life Ruby Bridges and a caption explains her contribution to the Civil Rights movement.
The entire display took roughly a week to construct and it required a fair amount of work. “It took a lot of research,” Paz Esguerra said, “but it was a fun kind of research.”
Paz Esguerra said she worked especially hard to assemble the collage that hangs on one side of the banner that announces the exhibit. “I enjoyed doing the collage the most,” she remarked, “It came out much better than I expected.”
The collage includes black and white photographs of historical African-American figures from Frederick Douglass to Duke Ellington to Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Paz Esguerra also included some short inspirational quotations. Coretta Scott King’s words stand out from the center of the collage: “We have come too far to be discouraged or to lose hope or to stop believing in the dream.”
The collage is an imaginative addition to an already creative and colorful display that is as educational as it is celebratory.
“I think the best thing about this is that it brings together a lot of people’s ideas,” Paz Esguerra said.