Visiting the exhibit, \u201cDetermined\u201d, there was plenty of information presented that I had never learned or knew of before. While it was exciting to learn of information and facts that would normally not be given to me, other historical figures that I expected to be in the exhibit were omitted and their narratives weren\u2019t told. Thinking of this, I remembered Free\u2019s query prior to going upstairs to the exhibit: \u201cDo we even want the museum to tell our stories and narratives or do we want to be able to tell the history ourselves?\u201d<\/p>\n
The section of the exhibit that interested me the most was entitled, \u201cFrom Brown to Green\u201d. This exhibit listed out several laws in the U.S. that directly affected the African-American population during its time and beyond. The first law included Brown v Board of Education, a law passed to integrate schools in the U.S. that ultimately did not result in integration. The entire section listed out laws such as Brown v Board, that were put in place by the Supreme Court to improve the status of African-Americans in their respective communities. The final law, Green v New Kent County was another attempt to desegregate schools in the U.S. and also took place in Virginia.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t believe there was anything pertinent missing from the exhibit that I would\u2019ve wanted to see there. I think it was very interesting the stories that were chosen and I am interested in learning more about how these stories were chosen and why they were showcased in a certain manner. I also saw a lot of bias from the museum\u2019s exhibit, especially in the way it was physically constructed.<\/p>\n
When we stepped into the museum, after receiving our tickets, the first thing I saw was an engraving on the wall of names and organizations that contributed to and sponsored the museum and exhibit. I recognized a few of the names as some of them were names of buildings on our campus. I thought about all the history I had learned about those people, and I knew that all of them were white or of European descent.<\/p>\n
Before even walking up to the exhibit, I imagined in my head what the exhibit would look like and what stories it would tell. \u201cNothing fancy, straight to the pint, gets a message through, checks all the boxes.\u201d In my time here in Richmond so far, I see a habit of checking the boxes when it come to the African-American or colored community and their requests. While the museum did shed some light on historical beings that were new to me, the information as a whole was not impressive and did not touch me.<\/p>\n
This year being the 400th anniversary of forced African Migration to the U.S., specifically Virginia, this museum had a lot of artifacts to pull from and gather in order to showcase to the world a holistic view of the 400 years my people have been on this American soil. This holistic view, in my opinion, was not presented because African-Americans were not responsible for telling their own narratives to the world. Instead, the sponsors and members of the Virginia Historical Society were the authors and the African-Americans were the characters.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Visiting the exhibit, \u201cDetermined\u201d, there was plenty of information presented that I had never learned or knew of before. While it was exciting to learn of information and facts that would normally not be given to me, other historical figures that I expected to be in the exhibit were omitted and their narratives weren\u2019t told. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3454,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[102487],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-297","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-week-three"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/danceandcommemorativejustice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/danceandcommemorativejustice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/danceandcommemorativejustice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/danceandcommemorativejustice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3454"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/danceandcommemorativejustice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=297"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/danceandcommemorativejustice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/danceandcommemorativejustice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=297"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/danceandcommemorativejustice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=297"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/danceandcommemorativejustice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=297"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/danceandcommemorativejustice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=297"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}