Arts This Week – Jefferson School African American Heritage Center
By Ben Larsen
Ben Larsen: You are listening to WTJU Charlottesville. The Jefferson School African American Heritage Center is opening the newest installation of Pride Overcomes Prejudice, entitled Toward a Lineage of Self, Saturday, September 21st. For Arts This Week, we spoke with Jordy Yager, the Director of Digital Humanities at the center.
Jordy Yager: My name is Jordi Yeager. I am the Director of Digital Humanities at the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center. I am one of the writers and curators of Toward a Lineage of Self, which is a new installation of the Pride Overcomes Prejudice, permanent exhibition at the Heritage Center.
This Saturday, September 21st at 10am at the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center, we are opening our new installation of Pride Overcomes Prejudice, entitled Toward a Lineage of Self. The Public is absolutely welcome. We’ll do several tours starting at 10am and then another starting at 11am. They will feature portions of the Jefferson School outside and inside, but really centering along this first installation of the downstairs on the first floor of the Jefferson School city center. It is a giant digital panel, so a digital, interactive set of stories. There are about 121 stories altogether that are woven all throughout a map based program. So you’ll be able to see the interconnected relationships between people and over time throughout 13 historically black neighborhoods in Charlottesville. It’s a permanent installation. It will continue to grow. And so the wonderful nature of having a digital exhibition is that you can add to it. So we are currently in the process of including incorporating oral histories. We have about 100 oral histories in our archive at the Heritage Center, and we’re including those into the exhibit. We’re also filming and recording current oral histories that will be included into the exhibit as well.
Ben Larsen: For those who don’t know, could you tell us more about what the Jefferson School does and how people can get involved?
Jordy Yager: So the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center is located on Fourth Street, on the corner of Fourth Street and commerce Street in the home of the original 1926 Jefferson High School. It was created the Heritage Center was created about 10 years ago after a coalition of both alumni and allied community members pooled their resources and saved it from development destruction, a whole number of things that were posed for the historically black school. But thankfully, it was saved. And one of the longest tenants there currently is the African American Heritage Center, which is rooted on the second floor, but also has a cafe on the first floor, next to Pearl Island, and has this exhibit, as well as another on Vinegar Hill photographs on the first floor. And so the role of the Heritage Center really is to preserve the legacy of African American History and Culture throughout Charlottesville. And so it’s done through a number of different programming events, from Kwanzaa to we just celebrated a greens cook off, where we have a competitive, friendly, but competitive event, where folks come out with their best recipes for greens and mac and cheese and all sorts of desserts. We also have the Charlottesville players guild, which is an all black theater. It’s directed by Leslie Scott Jones, who is our curator of the Charlottesville players guild.
We have a number of community facing and community driven projects from my side, I do all of the digital humanities and the research. And so we have a number of different projects. The first that comes probably foremost is the black land repository. So this project is happening in tandem with this installation of the permanent exhibition Toward a Lineage of Self. And what it is is really cataloging the entirety of black land ownership, from the point of emancipation in 1865 all the way to 1950 when our property records in the city stopped being segregated, and with that amassing of records, we are then mapping that over time so that we can see not only the points of origin for black neighborhoods, but also how they develop and how they evolve, and the threats that are facing them today, how those are historically rooted as well. So to do that work, we have digitized and analyze hundreds of thousands of pages of property records, but we also could use the community support in going through those records. And so if you or anybody you know, is interested in doing some of this public history, we have tutorials, we have hands on sort of training sessions and work sessions, and we’d love to have more and more folks get involved with that.
Ben Larsen: You can catch the opening of the newest installation of Pride Overcomes Prejudice, titled Towards a Lineage of Self, Saturday, September 21st at the Jefferson School, African American History Center. Arts This Week is supported by UVA Arts Council and Piedmont Virginia Community College. PVCC Arts presents a rich array of dance music, theater and visual arts programming. Learn more at pvcc.edu. You’re listening to WTJU
