Tag: black history

Stories of community, business innovation and creative self-determination

July 13 – October 13, 2024

The Negro Motorist Green Book offers an immersive look at the reality of travel for African Americans in mid-century America and the annual guide that served as an indispensable resource for the nation’s rising African American middle class. The exhibition includes artifacts from business signs and postcards to historic footage, images and firsthand accounts. Together, they convey the apprehension felt by African American travelers but also the resilience, innovation and elegance of people choosing to live a full American existence. The Negro Motorist Green Book showcases the vibrant parallel world of African American business, the rise of the Black leisure class and the important role of “The Green Book” played in facilitating the second wave of the Great Migration.

The Negro Motorist Green Book was developed by the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service (SITES) in collaboration with award-winning author, photographer and cultural documentarian Candacy Taylor. The exhibition was made possible through the support of Exxon Mobil corporation. The exhibition is supported locally by the Procter & Gamble Company.

by Rev. Dr. Jack Sullivan, Jr. Texts: Proverbs 22.1-2, 8-9, 22-23 and Psalm 146

After several days of sheltering in place with my immediate family, I returned to my Ohio home.  At once, I I was greeted by two old friends who were waiting for me at my place.  They were not human beings.  Instead, they were piles of dust, behind two doors.

So, as I looked at the piles of dust, trying to decide which one I would attend to first, I imagined one of them saying to the other in an enthusiastic tone, “I have decided that I am better than you.  This means , I am worth more than you, and I am more important than you.”  So then, I imagined the other pile of dust being startled and issuing a rather stern rebuke: “Say what?  Aren’t we both just piles of dust?  How are you any better than me?”

Continue reading “God of the Oppressed”