Black History Month: Colored Girls Museum Celebrates Black Women's Extraordinary Journey Through Life
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- Here at Eyewitness News, we believe Black history is a huge part of American history. So for the next 28 days, CBS3 will introduce you to students and educators, families and friends, who are making the ordinary extraordinary.
We are calling them unsung heroes, and they are making a difference one small victory at a time. We begin Black History Month with a museum like none other.
The Colored Girls Museum takes you into the lives of ordinary girls and women through artwork and artifacts, celebrating their extraordinary journey through life.
Nestled in the heart of Germantown sits the unassuming Colored Girls Museum. The 135-year-old house it's located in is just as much a part of the museum as everything inside.
"This is a seven-room victorian twin," Vashti DuBois said.
DuBois is the executive director and founder of this one-of-a-kind museum in Philadelphia. Each room is designed to tell a story of Black girls and women and their journey through life.
"We celebrate the ordinary extraordinary colored girl through the submission of art and artifacts which is significant to her experience," DuBois said.
The museum will soon celebrate its seventh year with ever-changing exhibits. It's been closed for a year and a half due to the pandemic, but it's reopening with a theme that accentuates the life-shuttering, life-changing pandemic experience.
"This show is called the One Room Schoolhouse and it's the One Room Schoolhouse because essentially, all of us have essentially been operating and living out of one-room schoolhouses," DuBois said.
The vivid artwork displays everyday girls and their experience takes you through a wave of emotions from its brightness to the heaviness of the Black woman's experience as a domestic worker whose hard labor often carried the family.
"Moving through this museum I think people have a range of different feelings and emotions, especially in this room," DuBois said.
This unique journey evokes an array of emotions which is exactly the mission, leaving you with a piece of nostalgia and a glimpse of colored girl pride.
"The feeling that we wanted to evoke throughout the museum is just the creativity. Ordinary folks -- in this case, ordinary Black women and girls -- do so much for so many, have done so for so long and we deserve a space that celebrates that," DuBois said.
All of the artists featured in the Colored Girls Museum are local, giving the museum even more of a community feel.
The museum will officially open to visitors again in March after being shuttered because of the pandemic.
The One Room Schoolhouse exhibit will be the first to be displayed and the theme and artwork will change later in the year.
