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Communiqué
Feature Articles
August 2009 Issue

Jubilee: African American Celebration
On view through September 20, 2009


Rev. Wilbur Dameron, pastor of Shiloh Baptist Church, conducts a riverside baptism in Lerty, Virginia.
Photography by Steven M. Cummings.

Do you need to escape the daily grind? Jubilee: African American Celebration offers a display of occasions celebrated in African American communities nationally and worldwide. At the heart of the exhibition are issues that make us human; the beliefs, history, triumphs, and traditions that join us together. Visitors have the opportunity to learn the origins of many traditional American holidays as well as African American culture and the occasions within.

Jubilee guides visitors through a seasonal journey of African American history, mapping lifetimes of struggle and success. Before integration, African Americans created holidays as a mode of support and to celebrate gain in the face of slavery and segregation. These holidays remain entirely unique, illuminated by distinct African American experience. Permeated by the effort of a creative and determined people to gain normalcy in oppressive times, Jubilee’s celebrations are significant. Though simple, they emphasize the long running struggle of African Americans to assert their humanity. The luxurious clothed Pinkster King in the introductory Winter section reveals the struggle for privilege and status in a reality that granted African Americans neither. This section also marks many triumphs, some curtailed by setbacks. Here visitors celebrate the end of the transatlantic slave trade, but lament at the survival of slavery in the United States. The achievement in the emancipation proclamation is felt as well as the influence of Jim Crow later in the show. With the inclusion of Martin Luther King Day, Jubilee showcases holidays as markings of important milestones in African American history. The bridal gown in the Spring section made for an enslaved African by her mistress challenge common notions of enslavement. Summer vacation brings to light the threats of traveling under segregation and the necessity of travel guides to find establishments friendly to African Americans. African American culture’s self-determination and organization created substitutes for basic rights and protection denied to them by unjust laws. Mutual aid societies, also displayed in the Summer section, served as basic insurance by providing a support system of money and care for burials, illnesses, and other basic human needs. The final Autumn section brings the Jubilee and the African American experience full circle, displaying thanksgiving holidays and celebrations post-integration.

Jubilee presents a culture that has endured harsh times and flourished despite near-impossible odds. Each celebration seeks to commemorate a personal, community, or cultural achievement and observance. Visitors of all ages and backgrounds are welcome to take part in exhibition activities. Youth and adults may compete for a prize with the Jubilee scavenger hunt, and children are encouraged to create their own holidays with an activity sheet at the museum entrance. What are you waiting for? Join in the Jubilee!

Seperate and Unequaled: Black Baseball in the District of Columbia
On view indefinitely.

Josh Gibson, Homestead Grays. Image courtesy of the Art Carter Papers, Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University

With the Nationals summer season in full swing, you may be singing "Take me out to the ball game!", but do you know the rich history of players and citizens that made these games possible? The rise of black baseball players from neighborhood teams to the Negro Leagues and finally to integrated major league baseball in Washington, D.C. is a compelling and inspiring story. Come see the exhibition Separate and Unequaled: Black Baseball in the District of Columbia at the Anacostia Community Museum. Discover the sport so relevant to community life and influential in changing racist norms worldwide.

Separate and Unequaled details the saga of the African American community through the struggles, obstacles, and triumphs encountered through the growth of baseball in D.C. The exhibit draws from D.C.'s unique baseball history of 150 years, including black baseball clubs during the civil war up and the return of professional baseball with the Nationals in 2005. Rediscover Washington's National Negro League (NNL) champions, the Homestead Grays, winners of nine straight NNL pennants and two consecutive Colored World Series. The heroes of yesterday survive in memories of black players such as Jackie Robinson, pioneer of integration in major league baseball, and Josh Gibson, record-setter in 1943 for most home runs in one season at Griffith Stadium. Gibson was known to say, "I don't break bats, son. I wear them out." Integration of major league baseball shattered the notion that African Americans could not compete with the very best, opening the highest level to many talented players and rousing the African American community.

A visit to the museum for Separate and Unequaled is well worth the trip. In one stay, visitors can witness the history of baseball in D.C., the hardships faced by players and executives under segregation, and the victories gained for the African American community in trumping it all.

The Community Documentation Initiative:
2009 Houses of Worship Ward 8 Documentation Project
Ongoing Longitudinal Study

East of the river unite! This summer, the Anacostia Community Museum is surveying houses of worship in communities east of the Anacostia River in the 2009 Houses of Worship Ward 8 Documentation Project. This project is part of an ongoing initiative to research and document the histories of these communities and is unique to the Anacostia Community Museum. The combined efforts of community members, the Museum staff, volunteers, and interns endeavor to maintain a Community Documentation Center. The Community Documentation Center will provide public access to community history in the form of photographs, maps, family histories, slides, audio recordings, and articles from both community members and museum archives.

The 2009 Houses of Worship Ward 8 Documentation Project aims to provide a thorough understanding of concerns, challenges, and accomplishments faced by communities of faith today. Data collected includes depictions of congregations, church history, and outreach. Surveys from each church include photographs and written histories, enabling us to delve into the American religious experience.
Through the 2009 Houses of Worship Ward 8
Documentation Project, the Museum can work to understand the role of religious institutions in
community development locally, nationally, and
internationally, build an information base to share
with the community, and provide technical support to religious institutions for research and preservation.

Active citizen participation drives The Houses of Ward 8 Documentation Project, creating and maintaining a sense of community and civic ownership of place in the process. Members in communities east of the Anacostia River are encouraged to share family, business and church histories with the Museum to contribute to the story of their communities. Are you a member of a community east of the Anacostia River? Do you have history to share? Contact the Museum at (202) 633-4820 Mon-Fri.

Jerusalem Church of God in Christ. Photograph by Peter McElroy, 2009

Museum Academy

Anacostia’s youth are the future of the community. The Anacostia Community Museum strives to teach children to strengthen their self-esteem, interpersonal relationships, cognitive development, and critical thinking. The Museum Academy grew out of a partnership between the Anacostia Community Museum and local area churches in Ward 8. Focusing on reading, writing, cultural studies, music and the arts, it incorporates the skills of the Anacostia Community Museum and Smithsonian Institution educators, historians, curators, and researchers, as well as local artists and writers. According to program director Linda Maxwell, “The Museum Academy provides a culturally based experiential learning experience which corresponds to the D.C. Public Schools standards of learning."

The current Summer 2009 program involves a partnership between the Anacostia Community Museum and Birney Elementary School. Grades 3-5 take part in instruction involving music, history, and art. Fields trips include the Museum of Natural History, the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, and Lincoln’s cottage as part of a lesson plan called “Jubilee: African American Celebrations and Family Traditions.” Highland Beach, the resort founded by Frederick Douglass’s sons for vacationing African Americans, is included in upcoming field trips. This season’s projects include interviewing family elders in the community and an oral history project in which the young participants are interviewed about their lives. The oral history project composite video is comprised of about 30 interviews, and the student interviews will be preserved in the museum's archives.

This Fall, the Museum Academy program will involve a partnership between the museum and The Center City Public Charter School. To learn more about the after-school academy, please contact us at (202) 633-4849 or e-mail MaxwellL@si.edu.