UR Sponsors New Exhibition on History of Black Equality
Image courtesy of Boatwright Memorial Library's Dr. And Mrs. Wyatt Tee Walker Collection.
A new exhibition sponsored by the University of Richmond is now on display at the Virginia Museum of History and Culture.
In commemoration of the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the first enslaved Africans in British North America, Determined: The 400-Year Struggle for Black Equality examines the ways in which the arrival of enslaved Africans in 1619 shaped the U.S. that we know today.
UR’s Tucker-Boatwright Professor of the Humanities Ed Ayers and Associate Professor of Leadership Studies Julian Hayter are two of 12 distinguished scholars, museum professionals, public historians, and civic leaders who serve on the 1619 Advisory Committee at the museum.
Ayers, a Civil War historian, and Hayter, a historian with expertise in African-American history and the American Civil Rights Movement, helped guide the exhibition’s development.
“The anniversary of the arrival of the first African peoples in British North America provides an occasion to reflect on the burdens African Americans have borne and the remarkable achievements they have made despite those burdens,” said Ayers. “The Determined exhibit documents the full range of the black experience in Virginia and I’m delighted to be a part of it.”
The exhibit showcases 30 individual profiles, more than 100 evocative objects, and interpretive multimedia content.
Three objects on display at Determined are from University of Richmond Boatwright Memorial Library’s Dr. And Mrs. Wyatt Tee Walker Collection. Items on loan from the prominent civil rights leader’s collection include a letter from Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. to Rev. Walker about the 1959 Pilgrimage for Prayer; a telegram from President John F. Kennedy inviting Rev. Walker to the White House; and his wife Theresa Ann Walker’s tin cup from her 1961 arrest in Mississippi as a Freedom Rider.
Determined: The 400-Year Struggle for Black Equality is on display through March 29, 2020.
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