The Journey of the African American North Symposium for New Mexico’s African American Legacy exhibit

Learn more about the African American experience in northern New Mexico, and share your own family’s story, during a symposium in conjunction with the exhibit New Mexico’s African American Legacy: Visible, Vital, Valuable. “The Journey of the African American to Northern New Mexico” takes place 2-4 pm on Sunday, June 12, in the History Museum Auditorium. The event is free with admission; Sundays are free to New Mexico residents.

Rita Powdrell, president of the African American Museum and Cultural Center of New Mexico and one of the symposium’s organizers, sees it as an interactive opportunity for panelists and audience members to share information. The museum, which is still seeking a physical home, helped pull together the African American Legacy exhibition, which focuses on Albuquerque, Las Cruces, and the post-Civil War community of Blackdom. The AAMCC is actively collecting information about other parts of the state to one day expand the exhibition’s reach. People with oral histories, as well as photographs, diaries and other ephemera are encouraged to attend.

The symposium will divide the topic into eras, from 1880 to the present, with discussions on original families, churches and social organizations, patterns of integration and segregation, and entrepreneurship.

“We will cover some issues that are unique to Santa Fe,” Powdrell said. “Why African Americans came to Santa Fe and northern New Mexico. What social constructs they found when they arrived. What types of social constructs they put in place to enhance their survival and collective identity. How did they interact with other ethnic groups in the area? What types of dynamics in schools and the job market might have mitigated against a stronger African American presence there.”

Mable Orndorff-Plunkett will moderate the discussion. Panelists include Ernestine (Tina) Lawrence, great-granddaughter of William Slaughter, who came to Santa Fe in 1884; poet and health activist Doris Fields; Gary Williams, deputy director of the New Mexico Office of African American Affairs; and Jermaine LeDouix, a 2011 graduate of Santa Fe High School.

New Mexico’s African American Legacy: Visible, Vital, Valuable is on display in the museum’s second-floor Gathering Space through Oct. 9. A second symposium, “Entrepreneurship in the African American Community” will be held from 2-4 pm on Sunday, Sept. 25.

The exhibit joins three other summer exhibitions celebrating the unsung heroes of the West:

Home Lands: How Women Made the West, June 19-Sept. 11, originally organized by the Autry National Center in Los Angeles, features additional materials from the History Museum’s collections. The largest of the summer’s four exhibits, it sweeps across the centuries in three regions: the Rio Arriba of northern New Mexico; Colorado’s Front Rage; and the Puget Sound.

Ranch Women of New Mexico, April 15-Oct. 30 in the Mezzanine Gallery, highlights 11 women in this excerpt from an exhibit originally prepared by photographer Ann Bromberg and writer Sharon Niederman.

Heart of the Home, May 27-Nov. 20 in La Ventana Gallery, spotlights historic kitchen items from the History Museum’s collections.