RICHMOND, Va. — Richmond’s Black History Museum is celebrating Black History Month in February with two impressive exhibitions, “Visions of Progress” and “Stolen Lives, Dreamed Lives.”
Mary Lauderdale, the Black History Museum’s director of collections, said Carter G. Woodson started Black History Month in 1926 in Richmond.
Woodson, who is often referred to as the father of Black history, selected, the birth month of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass to honor them.
And each year always has a theme.
“The Arts, African Americans, the Caribbean Americans, the African diaspora and the arts,” Lauderdale said. “And so we are really grateful to open up two exhibitions.”
WTVR“Visions of Progress” depicts African Americans as they wanted to be seen in the late 1800s to early 1900s.
“What we’ve done here in Richmond is to add to this exhibition by pulling photographs from our collection, primarily the Browns, and showing African Americans in their finery in the same time period,” Lauderdale said.