HBCU Exhibit Opens at Smithsonian African-American Museum
President Trump has made eradicating DEI initiatives part of his administration, including references to history made by women, African Americans, and the LGBT+ community.
But the rich history of HBCUs can’t be denied. The Smithsonian Museum of African American History and Culture opened an exhibit this month focused on five HBCUs – Clark Atlanta University, Jackson State University, Florida A&M University, Texas A&M University and Tuskegee University.
The exhibition, which runs at NMAAHC through July 19, is called At The Vanguard: Making and Saving HBCUs. For tickets, click here.
What most people don’t know, especially if they didn’t attend an HBCU, is that many of them have on-campus galleries, archives, and museums of cultural significance. The exhibit features more than a hundred artifacts from those collections.
“This exhibition honors the legacy of HBCUs as cultural and educational powerhouses,” Shanita Brackett, acting director for NMAAHC, said in a press release. “Through these collections from our partner institutions, we see the breadth of Black intellectual excellence, activism and artistic achievement, reinforcing the vital role HBCUs play in shaping American history.”
Included in those archives are on-campus photos shot by HBCU staff photographers, including Doris Derby, Chester Higgins, Earlie Hudnall Jr., and P.H. Polk, as well as artwork by John Biggers, Elizabeth Catlett, Robert Pruitt, and Renee Stout.
The collection also includes first editions of author Margaret Walker’s novel Jubilee and her poetry collection For My People. Historic scientific journals from Tuskegee and a rare (color!) video of Tuskegee’s George Washington Carver, a scientist and educator who revolutionized agricultural and farming methods is on display as well.
The traveling exhibit will head to five more cities through 2029. For information on what cities it’s heading to, click here. Watch the video below for more information on how it came together:
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