For 100 Years, the United States of America has celebrated Black History Month to pay tribute to the great achievements of the most creative and innovative humans who contributed to the excellence found in the United States. Unfortunately, many of the achievements of Black Americans have been forgotten, whitewashed, and often attributed to others. Eleanor Kinlaw-Ross, founder of the Heritage Project, has curated an exhibition, Georgia’s Great African Americans of Historic Distinction, at the Gladys S. Denard Fulton County Library at South Fulton on Thursday, February 26th at 11:00 AM.
I asked Kinlaw-Ross how she came to curate this exhibition, and she spoke of being a CNN journalist, and in her third act of life, she was concerned with the preservation of our history. She pursued a Master's in Library Science with a focus on archiving the history and culture of her community.
She worked at the Auburn Avenue Research Library and came across so much information about African-Americans in our state that had been lost. She wrote a play and began using various platforms to share the history with others. This is how The Heritage Project was born.
Kinlaw-Ross shares a few of the stories that she found compelling, including the first African-American graduate of West Point, Henry Ossian Flipper, who hails from Thomasville, GA, and Eugene Bullard, an African-American fighter pilot from Columbus, GA, who fought in WWI. I asked Kinlaw-Ross why it is important to preserve our history and share our stories. She spoke about helping to bring history alive. She speaks about the exhibition traveling throughout our state and using multiple platforms to bring this history to the public.
Quoting Maya Angelou, “If you get, you give, when you learn you teach.” Ross explains that she hopes to share this information across multiple platforms, including posters for schools, using social media, and more.
For more information on The Heritage Project