"New Rochelle's Black History" exhibit explores the pain and pride of the Black experience
NEW ROCHELLE, N.Y. -- In Westchester County, there's a powerful reminder that Black history is American history.
A new exhibit explores the pain and pride of the Black experience in New Rochelle.
New Rochelle is focusing on the future with record downtown development, even as a new exhibit acknowledges those who laid its very foundation.
"When the French Huguenots, the Protestants fleeing their homeland, first came to New Rochelle, they brought enslaved individuals with them," City Historian Barbara Davis said. "The enslaved individuals that did the heavy lifting."
Davis worked with the New Rochelle Council on the Arts to produce the extensive exhibit called "New Rochelle's Black History," which covers four centuries of local Black history.
Just 200 years ago, enslaved people made up more than 10% of the New Rochelle population, a painful fact in a city that now prides itself as welcoming and diverse.
"And if we're honest with each other, and have the opportunity to talk about our differences, it happens when we each come from a place of pride, a place of respect for our heritage and the heritage of others," said Leslie Demus of the New Rochelle Council on the Arts.
The exhibit has new information on the key role abolitionist Joseph Carpenter played in the Underground Railroad, and looks at New Rochelle's history of thriving Black neighborhoods, some of them bulldozed in the name of progress.
The exhibit takes a deep dive into the pivotal role Black New Rochelle families played in desegregating schools in the Northeast. The 1961 Taylor case helped end the gerrymandering of school zones to prevent integration, inspiring Ruby Dee, Ossie Davis and other prominent African-Americans to relocate to New Rochelle.
The local NAACP president hopes students visit, and learn.
"Our history is more than slavery. Our history is a vast and beautiful and honorable history," said Minister Mark McLean of the New Rochelle NAACP. "We celebrate the best of our ancestors and the best of us."