America I Be

From Sea to Shining Sea....

Picture above taken with my camera phone of a restaurant advertisement entitled, "Coon Chicken Inn"

The American I Am: The African American Imprint was an exhibit that was promoted by Tavis Smiley and went to different major cities in America such as L.A., Philadelphia, and Chicago.

I saw the exhibit March 2010 when it came to L.A. at the California Science Center in Exposition Park, which is interesting because the African-American Museum is right next to the Science Center (and in talking to a volunteer of the exhibit, she expressed her disdain for this exhibit not being hosted in the AA museum).

The overall theme--or the main question the exhibit asked the audience to keep in mind was a question posed by W.E. Dubois: "Would America have been America without her Negro people?"

The exhibit was a combination of pictures, videos, artifacts, and oral history. The oral history part was relayed by volunteers, presumably experts, on the subject of various aspects of African American history. So at different points of the exhibit one would come across a person giving an oral explanation of the pictures, videos, artifacts that the audience had just come across--and often in these oral explanations would relate it to people in the crowd (e.g. talking about young black men facing the possibility of being lynched--and the volunteers would use young black men part of the audience as part of the relaying this information).

This aspect definitely made the exhibit more "personal" and revealed the attempt to establish a "history of the present". Which makes sense because of who was heading this project, Tavis Smiley, an radio/TV personality who is outspoken to his commitment to the black community and black youth.

This exhibit was for all ages and all people from all communities were welcomed of course, but this was definitely aimed at those who identify part of the African-American community, one of the reason the exhibit opened in major cities with large African-American populations. 

Encourage you to click the link above and read the LA Times article about the exhibit, gives great overview.