Blacks helped build Baton Rouge from the ground up, putting planks on the streets and laying tracks on the railroads, LSU Director of the Africa and African American Studies Program Joyce Jackson told NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune.
But with all the history and accomplishments achieved by blacks, one was hard-pressed to find any published record of it, according to Jackson.
LSU Libraries special collections is hosting an “Blacks in the Red Stick” exhibit, which features photographs taken of blacks in the Baton Rouge area from 1890 to 1947.
Jackson, who began collecting these photos years ago and loaned them to LSU, selected images from the Andrew D. Lytle Photograph Collection and the Alvin E. Rabenhorst Photograph Collection in LSU Libraries Special Collections, as well as prints from Esso and the Farm Security Administration held at the Louisiana State Library.
Both Rabenhorst and Lytle were white businessmen who took up photography as a hobby, Jackson said. Many of the people in photographs, however, were left nameless.
“It was common for photographs of African Americans to be unidentified,” she said.
White photographers, Jackson says, didn’t take time to identify blacks in the photos but were interested in photography as an art form.
The exhibit tries to show a holistic view of blacks during the 1800s and the early 1900s. “We were trying to get a rounded view of the community, not just one side,” Jackson said.
Jackson, who was born in New Orleans but raised in Baton Rouge, began her quest after someone asked to her to do an article on blacks in Baton Rouge.
“I noticed there wasn’t much published work done on this community,” she said. “Hardly any exhibits.”
The display will run from Feb. 25 through April 13, and admission is free and open to the public during regular museum hours.
Jackson hopes people will learn the importance of the black community in Baton Rouge through the exhibit.
The LSU Africa and African American Studies Program is also sponsoring a conference with the same name as the exhibit on March 8 inside Hill memorial.
Academicians from Southern University and LSU will present on history, education, crime and politics in Baton Rouge.
“I’m one of those people who really try to bridge the community and the university,” Jackson said. “Here we are right on the edge of a black community and most of the time, we don’t cross these borders.”