AMHERST – There was a time when talking about Black history in Amherst was taboo.
While the situation has improved much since then, Darlene Strong feels it’s vital for the African Nova Scotian community to do everything in its power to share its stories.
“If we don’t do it, who’s going to do it for us?” Strong said. “If we don’t recognize where we came from, future generations won’t know where they’re going. Our own local history is too important not to share.”
Strong, an Amherst author and artist, is partnering with the Cumberland County Museum to celebrate African Heritage Month in February with a new art exhibit, Exploring Sand Hill – Faces and Places. The exhibit features 10 original fine art pieces and a mini-publication written by Strong.
She said the exhibit was created from her memoirs and musings of bygone days.
“This exhibit focuses on some of the significant landmarks,” Strong said. “It’s a didactic exhibit in that it features writing, photos and art combined to educate. It’s a visual art exhibit highlighting a few of the places in our community.”
Among those landmarks is the East Pleasant Street School, which served Black and white students until its closure in 1939; and Maria’s Place in Brookdale, a favourite meeting place for Saturday night shortwave radio and on Sundays after church for cake, biscuits and buttermilk.
Another painting is a remembrance of the 1933 cross burning on the grounds where Amherst Regional High School stands today.
The pieces are all 12×12 or 9×12 oil on canvas board paintings.
The exhibit, that runs at the museum throughout February, is a continuation of last year’s Sand Hill exhibit at the museum that celebrated the rich history of Amherst’s Black community and showcased landmarks such as the former Highland View hospital, the Old Stage Coach Stop that was owned by Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson’s uncle, Douglas Gay, as well as open spaces like Dickey Park and the Amherst Stadium.
During the 1800s, Sand Hill had one of the largest Black populations in Cumberland County and had a strong concentration of skilled labourers, educators, musicians, cooks, millwrights, entrepreneurs, blacksmiths, farmers and tradespeople.
Frederick Parsons, known as “Sand Hill’s engineer,” played a prominent role in Amherst history by designing a number of its streets and helping to lay out the town’s cemetery.
It’s these contributions Strong has attempted to share through her books and her art. Twenty years ago, when the community first started to record its history through art, music and literature, it wasn’t available.
“There was a time not too long ago when Blacks were thought of not too important subject matter,” Strong said. “It appears a lot of information wasn’t reported because people didn’t think it was important. When I wrote the history of Sand Hill in 2007 we had a very favourable response but there were a few people who felt children should be studying anything by Black history.”
She said there are now many more opportunities to share Black history, whether it be in town halls, government offices, libraries, museums and schools.
“If we don’t share our history now, it’s our fault,” Strong said.
Museum manager Rebecca Taylor said Sand Hill is an important and vibrant part of the community and today’s generation needs to learn about its people’s contributions to Amherst’s history.
“Many people have many fond stories they share when talking about Sand Hill,” Taylor said. “This is very nostalgic and people will find a personal connection to these.”
Museum board chair Lisa Emery said Strong has done a series of exhibits at the Church Street centre and each is better than the one before. She said the walking trail exhibit from last year was very educational and she’s excited for this year’s because there are many more paintings.
“The paintings really show the Black culture from the area,” Emery said. “Darlene is a very talented artist who wants to share the experiences and the history of Sand Hill. It’s Amherst history because the Black community was here before the town was even born.”
The art featured in Strong’s exhibit is also being featured in an online art show and sale at Jiggity.ca Grove Cottage Fine Gifts, as well as in the museum’s gift shop.
Admission to the exhibit is $5 per person and the museum is open Tuesday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Each day in February, the museum’s Facebook page will feature a post about a notable African Nova Scotian from Cumberland County and the museum is inviting people to comment and share stories on those individuals. Some of those memories and anecdotes will be preserved in the museum’s archives.
On Saturday, Feb. 27, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., the museum is hosting an African basket-weaving workshop with Clara Clayton Gough. Participants will learn how to make a basket using Nova Scoian red maple – just like her mother taught her when she was a girl.
Cost is $65 and includes a light lunch. To register, email [email protected] .
LONDON (AP) — With a few daubs of a paintbrush, the Brontë sisters have got their dots back.
More than eight decades after it was installed, a memorial to the three 19th-century sibling novelists in London’s Westminster Abbey was amended Thursday to restore the diaereses – the two dots over the e in their surname.
The dots — which indicate that the name is pronounced “brontay” rather than “bront” — were omitted when the stone tablet commemorating Charlotte, Emily and Anne was erected in the abbey’s Poets’ Corner in October 1939, just after the outbreak of World War II.
They were restored after Brontë historian Sharon Wright, editor of the Brontë Society Gazette, raised the issue with Dean of Westminster David Hoyle. The abbey asked its stonemason to tap in the dots and its conservator to paint them.
“There’s no paper record for anyone complaining about this or mentioning this, so I just wanted to put it right, really,” Wright said. “These three Yorkshire women deserve their place here, but they also deserve to have their name spelled correctly.”
It’s believed the writers’ Irish father Patrick changed the spelling of his surname from Brunty or Prunty when he went to university in England.
Raised on the wild Yorkshire moors, all three sisters died before they were 40, leaving enduring novels including Charlotte’s “Jane Eyre,” Emily’s “Wuthering Heights” and Anne’s “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.”
Rebecca Yorke, director of the Brontë Society, welcomed the restoration.
“As the Brontës and their work are loved and respected all over the world, it’s entirely appropriate that their name is spelled correctly on their memorial,” she said.
