AMHERST — As the 250th anniversary of the United States and the American Revolution is celebrated, leaders of Ancestral Bridges say the contributions of Black and Afro-Indigenous peoples often remain invisible or wiped from the historical narrative, even in Amherst.
In a continuing effort to confront this challenge, the Cottage Street museum has launched “Revolutionary Responses,” an exhibit that includes a series of art pieces installed amid the archives.
This comes as the museum undertakes research projects that aim to better understand the lives of those buried in the nearby West Cemetery, the final resting place for generations of Black residents and those who once made their homes in the Westside Historic District, such as famed banjo player Gil Roberts.
Christina Miles, a researcher and assistant curator, said the new exhibit, which launched in July and runs through May, features several original works of art that both reaffirm and question what it means to be revolutionary, and help to reclaim the word revolutionary, even when obscured in history.
The hope, Miles said, is to highlight the determination of these individuals and their own revolutionary responses.
“What we’re doing is reclaiming that there’s always been arts and culture here,” Miles said.
A piece near the entrance evokes traditional African metalsmithing, a metal work titled “Saartjie” by local artists Kamil Peters and Noland Anderson. In it, Peters and Anderson depict Sarah Baartman, who was kidnapped from Africa, and aim to counter the stigmatization of the Khoekhoe woman who was exhibited across Europe in the early 19th century.
To tie this to local history, the sculpture features a braided palm leaf reflecting the hat business that was prominent in Amherst in the 1800s and supported by Henry Jackson, a Black man who brought the palm leaves to the Amherst hat factory owned by a white businessman.
Peters’ works continue in other spaces, with another sculpture interpreting the character in the novel “James,” by Percival Everett, put in a place of prominence in the Freedom Room. In it, the enslaved Jim in Mark Twain’s “Huckleberry Finn” reclaims his name as James, after being reduced to a caricature in the original story.
That large piece contains both the Adinkra and Sankofa symbols, which originated with the Akan people of Ghana and the Ivory Coast.
In another room is a portrait of Elizabeth Freeman, produced as a three-way collaboration between Peters, Anderson and Meclina Gomes. Freeman, in the late 1700s, filed and won a lawsuit to secure her freedom from slavery in Massachusetts.
Miles said the exhibit is the first time Peters’ work is not displayed linearly, noting this should also be seen as a revolutionary response to how things are done differently at Ancestral Bridges.
In the library, a piece displayed on the wall shows how media can be reclaimed, even when it is meant to degrade people.
“Apache in Wonderland” by artist Douglas Miles prompts viewers to think about how Black and Native imagery is excluded from classic texts, such as “Alice in Wonderland” and other fantasy stories.
“For many Native youth, they don’t see themselves accurately portrayed in media,” Miles said.
The bookshelves contain both modern stories of Black and Afro-Indigenous people, as well as stories that have false representations. “It can show how far we’ve come,” Miles said.
This reclamation and reuse has included Ancestral Bridges founder Anika Lopes fashioning a duster that is identical to the one Charles Thompson used as custodian at Amherst College in the 19th century. By having this replica near his portrait, the museum ensures his name is known again, rather than being referred to by his nickname, “the Professor of Dust and Ashes.”
As part of her work following her graduation from Brown University, Miles produced “Where We Walk,” a three-minute video that offers an overview of what visitors will encounter at the museum and on the walking tours of the West Cemetery and the Westside Historic District.
Miles said she appreciates that Lopes and Debora Bridges, who is also a curator at Ancestral Bridges, have given her the space to think creatively about what is displayed at the museum.
Bridges praised Miles for her contributions. “She understands what it means to be a descendant-led place, and she’s doing this because so many Black and Afro-Indigenous folks have been erased,” Bridges said.
The work of mapping the West Cemetery is leading to an intergenerational dialogue, Miles said, with Bridges offering input and allowing “to really ask people to question how they think about the West Cemetery.”
For many visitors, West Cemetery is best known as where Emily Dickinson and members of her family are buried, yet a significant portion features the unmarked graves of those who faced segregation and racism.
“We started with the cemetery because the headstones are of people whose lives were on Hazel, Baker and Snell,” Bridges said.
The 40-acre Westside Historic District was one of the few neighborhoods in town where Blacks and Indigenous people could live and own homes.
“West Cemetery mirrors what’s happening in the historic Westside, documenting ancestors and telling their stories as holistically and wholly as they can be,” Miles said.
This will be integrated into a digital walking tour that aims to introduce area college students and visitors to both sites.
Lopes said that she recently led a group tour that started on Hazel Avenue, the focal point of the Westside Historic District. “We can bring them back in time if we’re with them at Westside,” Lopes said
Letters written between 1920 and 1934 by Gil Roberts are helping to expand not only the story of his life but to provide insights into the life of his father, Perry Roberts. As a child, Perry Roberts was enslaved on the same Maryland plantation as abolitionist and orator Frederick Douglass.
Lopes said traffic from Route 9 and the activity near the Amherst College playing fields fade away as she takes people back to a time when the neighborhood was filled with music and family activities.
“Several remarked that they won’t see Amherst in the same way after this experience,” Lopes said.
