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Feature Focus: In Celebration of Black History
Black History Month
FEATURE FOCUS |
In Celebration of Black History
By Jennie Renner
When Marsha Smiley attended Central High School in Fort Wayne in the late 60’s, she said that black history wasn’t taught properly. Her grandfather, who raised her, was a high school principal and was teaching her the African American history that was being left out of her formal education. Smiley inherited her grandfather’s passion for the past, which led her to earn a bachelor’s degree in history from Indiana University in 1973.
While on the board of the African / African American Historical Society Museum in Allen County, she told fellow-board member Curt Witcher about her desire to preserve some family documents in her possession. As the Genealogy Center Manager at the Allen County Public Library, Witcher was uniquely qualified to help her, and the “Marsha Smiley African American Collection” was born in 2011.
The documents that started Smiley’s collection were from her uncle’s mother. His mother, Josephine Gaines Williams, was a native of Fort Wayne and died in 2009 shortly before her 95th birthday. Williams was well-known for her community service and involvement in women’s clubs. “When she passed, she had five boxes of things on women’s history here in Fort Wayne,” said Smiley. attention to women reading that because it is about women empowering their community at a time when there were drawbacks to doing so.”
When asked what she would like to highlight in the collection, Smiley drew attention to the African American women’s clubs. “These colored women’s clubs were groups that began to address their own wishes to advance, but then grew from that into something bigger,” she said.
She talked about the significance of these clubs in a paper she wrote called “Extolling Indiana’s Colored Women’s Clubs.” The paper is available in the publications section of her collection on the ACPL’s website. “I would really like to draw Smiley also started a black history club at the Boys and Girls Club in the late 1990’s, which grew into workshops called “Spirit Flight.” For the curriculum, she connects virtues with stories of African American achievements. “‘Spirit Flight’ is a celebration of the human spirit because in spite of all that stood in their way, black people made significant achievements,” she said.
One example that she cites in the workshops is Bessie Coleman, who she links with the virtue of determination. Coleman wanted to learn how
to fly, but because she was a black woman, she was not accepted at any flight schools in the United States. Encouraged to go to France to learn to fly, she got her international pilot’s license in 1921, becoming the first African American woman to do so.
Smiley wants her collection on the genealogy website to be educational as well as a celebration of black history. She emphasized that Fort Wayne is a composite of many communities and that we need to learn about each other and focus on our common humanity.
“As one, we’re whole,” she said. “We’re all in this together.”
To view the “Marsha Smiley African American Collection,” visit https://www.genealogycenter.info/search_marshasmiley.php a
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