African American History: Online Exhibits
Scotland Photo Gallery, 1966-1970
This photo gallery is comprised of images from the community of Scotland in the late 1960s. At that time an all-African-American community of people underwent a years-long process of reclaiming their land and rebuilding their infrastructure. The images were digitized from a collection of negatives donated by Joyce Siegel, who had worked with the Scotland community during this time period. Joyce’s husband Alan was an avid amateur photographer, and took hundreds of photos of the events happening in Scotland between 1966 and 1970 with a focus on the community members and their neighborhood.
Opened October 15, 2019
Curated by Sarah Hedlund
“The Decree Had Been Handed Down” The Experience of Public School Desegregation in Montgomery County
To tell the story of the desegregation ruling, and the subsequent efforts to integrate the public schools in Montgomery County, we turn to six women who lived that experience directly. Using sound clips from their oral history interviews, along with photographs, and other historical documentation from Montgomery History’s archives and special collections, this exhibit relates the experience of the desegregation process in Montgomery County–before, during, and after–in their words.
Originally opened October 17, 2017; expanded April, 2020.
Curated by Sarah Hedlund
The Effects of Brown v. Board of Education in Montgomery County
For nearly a century, schools for black students in Montgomery County and throughout the South were denied the benefits provided to their entirely separate, but supposedly “equal,” white counterparts. In 1954, the unanimous Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka changed the face of public schools forever. For the most part, integration in Montgomery County happened smoothly, if slowly, and its school system was declared fully integrated by 1961.
Montgomery County’s population continued to grow and change, however, and issues of integration and diversity have remained central to our school system ever since. This exhibit explores ways in which the effects of the Brown v. Board of Education ruling are still being felt today, fifty years later.
A version of this exhibit was displayed at the Beall-Dawson House between Aug. 17, 2004 and Mar. 6, 2005.
Originally curated by Joanna Church