Background Image
Table of Contents Table of Contents
Previous Page  28 / 48 Next Page
Information
Show Menu
Previous Page 28 / 48 Next Page
Page Background

Stephen Marc

28

F E AT U R E S

Black

Heritage

Project

nyone who has sat in a classroom struggling

to understand a difficult concept (and who

hasn’t?) until an illustration suddenly, almost

magically, clarified it knows the power of images.

Images help us to understand and to remember.

They attach color, emotion, form and context to

information, anchoring it to keep it from floating

away in the depths of our brain.

With that in mind, after one sees the cutout

photo of Curley Jett standing tall and proud in his

police uniform in front of City Hall — overlaid

with an image of his wife pinning his chief insignia

to his collar — it would be hard to forget that he

was the first African-American Chief of Police in

the history of Williamsport. Similarly, after one

sees the aged family photo of the descendants of

Bishop Joseph Thompson, side-by-side with an

image of the man himself, it would be difficult to

forget that he arrived in Williamsport in 1834 at

the green age of 16 as a runaway slave.

These photos and many other moving digital

collages, were created as a part of the Black

Heritage Project, a collaboration between Lycoming

art professors Lynn Estomin and Michael Darough,

P R E S E R V I N G H I S T O R Y T H R O U G H A R T

Art department

collaborates

with community for

“The Williamsport area black

community has a long and rich

history that is often hidden.”

Lynn Estomin, art professor

By Matthew Parrish ’06

Estomin’s commercial design students,

photographer and digital artist

Stephen Marc, and members of the

local African-American community.

The purpose of the undertaking was

to discover, preserve and remix the

stories and artifacts, memories and

photographs, of Williamsport’s black

culture and history.

The project was not the first time

Estomin and Marc have collaborated

to shine light on buried elements of

Williamsport’s black history. They first worked together ten

years ago, during Marc’s initial stay as a visiting artist at

Lycoming, documenting local Underground Railroad sites

and creating movable billboards. Then Estomin worked

with art alumnus Tom Lee ’99 to create Freedom Bound a

website featuring the stories of Mamie Sweeting Diggs, the

great granddaughter of a local conductor on the Underground

Railroad.

This time around, many fascinating stories were told by

members of the black community and gathered by students.

“I was particularly excited to help Sam Belle ’61, Linda

Jackson and Velna Grimes create their pieces detailing

the history of The Center [now known as Firetree Place],”

Estomin said. “Mr. Belle’s grandmother was one of the

original founders of The Center, which was founded as an

African-American branch of the YWCA because African-

American girls were not allowed to use the facilities of the Y

at that time.”

The Black History Project culminated in an art exhibition

in the expansive Moltz Rotunda Room in the James V. Brown

Library early last year. The opening reception was packed,

filled with professors, students and community members,

young and old alike, pointing and smiling as the images of

cultural pioneers found homes in their memories.

A