It’s not a passive exhibit. As you enter the space at the Kitsap History Museum on Bremerton’s Fourth Street, there is little written prompt to guide your experience. It’s the kind of exhibit where you have to dig in, maybe do your own research, sign up for a talk by the collector Roosevelt Smith or search our YouTube for past recordings. It’s an exhibit that requires viewers to do the work themselves. See the connections. Explore the history. Then dig into your emotional reaction.
Roosevelt Smith’s exhibit, “State of the Union in Black and White,” is more than a collection of Black Americana. It holds the history of the Black American experience. The good and the bad. The celebration of Black identity through Black Power art of the 1960’s and ’70s, the brutal history of enslavement and everything in between – chronicling the portrayal of Black people through media, objects and images.
Alone, one of these items happened upon in our day to day lives may go unnoticed. The stereotypes and caricatures of Black people permeate popular media to this day — our movies, our books, even our newsfeeds. But put these items together, hundreds of them organized on glass shelves, and it becomes gut wrenchingly apparent how egregiously Black Americans have been portrayed through the ages. For context, Smith’s collection includes some slavery-era items — a KKK application, slave rattles and ID tags, to name a few — to illustrate the beginning of the story. But many artifacts come from our not-so-distant past of the 1940s through ’70s. My parent’s generation. More recent still, my life growing up in the ’80s was filled with the Aunt Jemima Mammy and Uncle Tom archetypes. Smith’s collection forces you to take notice. It’s time we all stop looking away and instead, face the reality of how society continues to depict Black Americans. These images are so ingrained in the fabric of the American story and, consciously or no, absorbed by each and every one of us.
Photo of Richard Baxter Leach courtesy of Roosevelt Smith
It’s hard for me as a white woman to understand the emotions that motivate building a social movement around the mere fact of my existence. I have never felt my life or my being challenged. Nor have I felt the need to declare it so. Baxter Richard Leach states “I AM A MAN!” He is not property. He is not ⅗ of a person. He is not an immature boy. He is a man. A man that deserves respect, same as any white man. A man that works long hours to provide for his family, same as any white man.
The “I AM A MAN” slogan resonates in my ears and rolls around my brain repeatedly, even after experiencing this exhibit on a weekly basis since last June. I think it’s because it feels so familiar. Nearly 50 years after Baxter Richard Leach Black Americans are still, to this day, campaigning for their very existence to be acknowledged. Today the quest for racial equity sounds like “Black Lives Matter.” I am a man. I am a human being. My life matters. It matters as much as yours. Hear me. I exist. Same as you. See me. These are platforms of basic minimums.
Thank you to the Black Americans pushing for social change. Baxter Richard Leach, Roosevelt Smith and so many others – your lives matter so very, very much.
Mary Phelps works part-time for the Kitsap History Museum, currently displaying “State of the Union in Black and White: The Roosevelt Smith collection of Black Americana”. The opinion expressed is her own, not on behalf of the organization.