“Black Dallas” Comes to Rural, Northeast Texas:
A Humanities Texas Exhibition in Celebration of Black History Month
Melpha Theater by R.C. Hickman, 1955. RC Hickman Photographic Archive, Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, the University of Texas-Austin
When? February 21, 2011-March 31, 2011
Where? Commerce City Hall
Beginning February 21, 2011, at the main lobby of the Commerce City Hall, the Converging Literacies Center (CLiC @ Texas A&M-Commerce) will present “Behold the People: R. C. Hickman’s Photographs of Black Dallas, 1949–1961,” an exhibition by the Center for American History, The University of Texas at Austin, presented in partnership with Humanities Texas, the state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Support for “Behold the People” was provided in part by a grant from Humanities Texas.
R. C. Hickman was a Dallas photographer whose thousands of images produced from 1949 to 1961 document aspects of life in an African American community in Texas. His photographs depict a community largely invisible to white Americans—thoroughly a part of mainstream America by virtue of accomplishment and lifestyle but excluded from it because of race.
Mr. Hickman worked as a commercial portrait photographer, a photojournalist for several black newspapers in Dallas, a freelance photographer for national black publications such as Jet, Sepia and Ebony and a photographer for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). His images reveal his awareness of a community within which individuals survive, grow and understand themselves.
Humanities Texas develops and supports diverse programs across the state, including lectures, oral history projects, teacher institutes, museum exhibitions and documentary films. For more information, please visit Humanities Texas online at
http://www.humanitiestexas.org or call 512.440.1991.
Contact:
Shannon Carter, Associate Professor of English, Texas A&M-Commerce
[email protected]
Where? Commerce City Hall
Beginning February 21, 2011, at the main lobby of the Commerce City Hall, the Converging Literacies Center (CLiC @ Texas A&M-Commerce) will present “Behold the People: R. C. Hickman’s Photographs of Black Dallas, 1949–1961,” an exhibition by the Center for American History, The University of Texas at Austin, presented in partnership with Humanities Texas, the state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Support for “Behold the People” was provided in part by a grant from Humanities Texas.
R. C. Hickman was a Dallas photographer whose thousands of images produced from 1949 to 1961 document aspects of life in an African American community in Texas. His photographs depict a community largely invisible to white Americans—thoroughly a part of mainstream America by virtue of accomplishment and lifestyle but excluded from it because of race.
Mr. Hickman worked as a commercial portrait photographer, a photojournalist for several black newspapers in Dallas, a freelance photographer for national black publications such as Jet, Sepia and Ebony and a photographer for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). His images reveal his awareness of a community within which individuals survive, grow and understand themselves.
Humanities Texas develops and supports diverse programs across the state, including lectures, oral history projects, teacher institutes, museum exhibitions and documentary films. For more information, please visit Humanities Texas online at
http://www.humanitiestexas.org or call 512.440.1991.
Contact:
Shannon Carter, Associate Professor of English, Texas A&M-Commerce
[email protected]
| blackdallas-pressrelease.pdf |
Jasper, Texas: The Healing of a Community in Crisis
A Humanities Texas Exhibition in Celebration of Black History Month
"Huff Creek Road," Photograph by Sarah Wilson. In the Humanities Texas exhibition, "Jasper, Texas: The Healing of a Community in Crisis," developed by Ricardo C. Ainslie with photographs by Sarah Wilson.
When?
February 21, 2011-March 31, 2011
Where? Gee Library, Texas A&M-Commerce
[Commerce, Texas]—Beginning February 21, 2011, at the first floor of Gee Library at Texas A&M-Commerce, the Converging Literacies Center (CLiC @ Texas A&M-Commerce) will present “Jasper, Texas: The Healing of a Community in Crisis,” an exhibition organized by Dr. Ricardo Ainslie in collaboration with documentary photographer Sarah Wilson, and aided in part by a grant from Humanities Texas, the state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Funding for “Jasper, Texas” was provided in part by a grant from Humanities Texas.
The project presents Jasper’s experience as a model for other communities while also facilitating healing in the town itself. Residents of the town praised the project for focusing attention on the strength of their community—a subject often overlooked when the eyes of an international audience were focused on the gruesome crime.
The exhibition offers images of the idyllic Huff Creek Road, its residents, and the church where Byrd’s battered body was discovered the next day by a six-year-old Marlon Forward and his stepfather. In directing viewers’ attention to Forward and other lives changed by the murder, the photographs suggest the extent to which James Byrd Jr.’s death was a communal tragedy for this small town in the Pine Timber Belt of East Texas. Other photographs layer the account of the murder with a narrative of how Jasper ministers used their relationships with each other and with their congregations to keep the incident from becoming a catalyst for more violence. The Ministerial Alliance, a group comprised of clergy from black and white Catholic and Protestant churches in the area, had been meeting together for years before it was called upon to respond to this tragedy.
The exhibition will be available to the public from (February 21, 2011) to (March 31, 2011).
According to project director Shannon Carter (Associate Professor of English, Texas A&M-Commerce), several additional Humanities Texas exhibitions will be on display in Commerce, including “Behold the People: R. C. Hickman’s Photographs of Black Dallas, 1949–1961” (at Commerce City Hall) and “Literary East Texas: An Exhibition Honoring 25 East Texas Writers” (Hall of Languages, Texas A&M-Commerce). The fourth exhibition, “Images of Valor: U.S. Latinos and Latinas of World War II,” will be on display at the Audie Murphy Cotton Museum in Greenville, Texas. All exhibits will be free and open to the public from 2/21/2011 until 3/31/2011. Carter is Co-Director of CLiC.
For more information about viewing hours visit CLiC online at http://convergingliteraciescenter.wordpress.com/
Humanities Texas develops and supports diverse programs across the state, including lectures, oral history projects, teacher institutes, museum exhibitions and documentary films. For more information, please visit Humanities Texas online at
http://www.humanitiestexas.org or call 512.440.1991.
Contact:
Shannon Carter, Associate Professor of English, Texas A&M-Commerce
[email protected]
| jaspertexas-pressrelease.pdf |
Literary East Texas: A Humanities Texas Exhibition Returns Home
All these years, Charity, that I was in you, crystal dazzling in the radiant shell of mornings, east going over and over you, reflecting everything and wondering, I never said anything, but only waited for some speech, that the breath of the house was breathing into me. –The House of Breath, by William Goyen
When?
February 21, 2011-March 31, 2011
Where? Hall of Languages, Texas A&M-Commerce
[Commerce, Texas]—Beginning February 21, 2011, at the Hall of Languages at Texas A&M-Commerce, the Converging Literacies Center (CLiC @ Texas A&M-Commerce) will present “Literary East Texas: An Exhibition of Photographs Honoring 25 East Texas Writers,” a Humanities Texas exhibition with an origin story that has deep East Texas roots. Support for “Literary East Texas” was provided in part by a grant from Humanities Texas.
Honoring 25 of the more than 200 writers who have called East Texas home, this program brings together passages from their works with photographs taken especially for this exhibition. Project created by Dr. Fred Tarpley, Professor Emeritus of Texas A&M-Commerce, in collaboration with project co-director and photographer Nell Blakely, also of Texas A&M-Commerce (retired) for Humanities Texas when A&M-C was still ET (East Texas State University).
As the creators explain in the booklet accompanying the exhibition, “the photographer and project director . . . traveled more than 4000 miles [and took] more than 1600 images. The variety of East Texas fiction provided scenes from the Red River through the Piney Woods to the Gulf Coast, of oil, cotton, and urban settings. Often there was a disappointment of learning that a building used for the setting of a novel had been razed, but occasionally a substitute could be found that matched descriptions of the original. . . . The goals Literary East Texas are to encourage readers to discover and rediscover writers of the region, to match the words of these authors with photographs of the people and landscape described, and to honor representative writers of the region” (Tarpley and Blakely).
Panel topics include J. Mason Brewer, Siddie Joe Johnson, William Goyen, William Owens, William Humphrey, Thomas Thompson, Francis E. Abernethy, Suzanne Morris, Madison Cooper, Elizabeth Forsythe Hailey, William Brammer, Leon Hale, Jewel Gibson, and Frank X. Tolbert.
The exhibition will be available to the public from (February 21, 2011) to (March 31, 2011).
According to project director Shannon Carter (Associate Professor of English, Texas A&M-Commerce), several additional Humanities Texas exhibits will be on display in Commerce, including “Behold the People: R. C. Hickman’s Photographs of Black Dallas, 1949–1961” (at Commerce City Hall) and “Jasper, Texas: The Healing of a Community in Crisis” (Gee Library, Texas A&M-Commerce). The fourth exhibit, “Images of Valor: U.S. Latinos and Latinas of World War II,” will be on display at the Audie Murphy Cotton Museum in Greenville, Texas. All exhibits will be free and open to the public from 2/21/2011 until 3/31/2011. Carter is Co-Director of CLiC.
For more information about viewing hours visit CLiC online at http://convergingliteraciescenter.wordpress.com/
Humanities Texas develops and supports diverse programs across the state, including lectures, oral history projects, teacher institutes, museum exhibitions and documentary films. For more information, please visit Humanities Texas online at
http://www.humanitiestexas.org or call 512.440.1991.
Contact:
Shannon Carter, Associate Professor of English, Texas A&M-Commerce
[email protected]
| literaryeasttexas-pressreleasemh2.pdf |
Images of Valor:
A New Humanities Texas Exhibition on Display in Greenville, Texas
Joe Bernal at age 17, in Salinas, California, on September 1, 1945. Courtesy of the US Latino and Latina WWII Oral History Project
'I was a young man with seemingly a lot of time and energy and I wanted to do right . . . ' Joe Bernal, b. 1927, San Antonio, Texas
[Greenville, Texas]—Beginning February 21, 2011, at the Audie Murphy Cotton Museum, the Converging Literacies Center (CLiC @ Texas A&M-Commerce) will present “Images of Valor: U.S. Latinos and Latinas in World War II,” an exhibition created by the School of Journalism and Center for Mexican American Studies at The University of Texas at Austin and produced by Humanities Texas, the state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Support for “Images of Valor” was provided in part by a grant from Humanities Texas.
Through images and stories, this twelve-panel exhibition provides a historical overview of U.S. Latino participation in World War II.
In addition to photographs from the project's archives, “Images of Valor” incorporates contemporary photographs of men and women of the WWII generation by photojournalist Valentino Mauricio. The exhibition focuses on individual stories that reveal larger themes such as citizenship and civil rights and features excerpts from the more than 500 oral history interviews that were part of the project.
The exhibition will be available to the public from (February 21, 2011) to (March 31, 2011).
According to project director Shannon Carter (Associate Professor of English, Texas A&M-Commerce), several additional Humanities Texas exhibits will be on display in Commerce, including “Behold the People: R. C. Hickman’s Photographs of Black Dallas” (at Commerce City Hall), “Jasper, Texas: The Healing of a Community in Crisis” (Gee Library, Texas A&M-Commerce), and “Literary East Texas: An Exhibition of Photographs Honoring 25 East Texas Writers” (Hall of Languages, Texas A&M-Commerce) All exhibits will be free and open to the public from 2/21/2011 until 3/31/2011. Carter is Co-Director of CLiC.
For more information about viewing hours visit CLiC online at http://convergingliteraciescenter.wordpress.com/
Humanities Texas develops and supports diverse programs across the state, including
lectures, oral history projects, teacher institutes, museum exhibitions and documentary
films. For more information, please visit Humanities Texas online at
http://www.humanitiestexas.org or call 512.440.1991.
Contact:
Shannon Carter, Associate Professor of English, Texas A&M-Commerce
[email protected]
