Under the baobab: Art installation at The Print Factory explores Black history in Bellefonte

We first came to Centre County during the last century, about the time that Penn State joined the Big Ten. I remember a conversation I had with a worried student. He was from West Philadelphia, an African American and was terrified about living in rural central PA. He had heard that there was an active KKK chapter in a nearby town and that State College until recently had been racially segregated. For him Happy Valley seemed alien and hostile.

I tried to explain to him that nearby Bellefonte historically had been home to a thriving African American community. In 1850, a generation before the Civil War, most people of color in the rest of the country still languished under the system of chattel slavery. Scholar/historians Philip Ruth and Racine Amos tell us that the Black population of the city was almost 8%. They listed among their ranks barbers, tailors, shoemakers, farmers, blacksmiths, laborers. Many had settled in the county seat having escaped slavery on the Underground Railroad. Some had ancestral roots that went back to the Revolutionary War.

Their community and history are represented today by St. Paul’s AME Church, an active historically Black church, recently pastored by the late Rev. Dr. Donna King.

“Unmonument Bellefonte: Fabricating Networks” is a mobile public art installation that opened at The Print Factory, 130 S. Allegheny St. Bellefonte, on Dec. 14. The exhibit helps memorialize this repressed history of some of these Black Americans. It is the third of five collaborative “Unmonument” interventions in the built environment by the Black Reconstruction Collective (BRC). Each location will host an interactive, iterative intervention designed by a founding BRC board member. The previous two installments were in Chicago and Brooklyn. The installment will move on to Los Angeles and Atlanta after its stay in Bellefonte, which runs until Feb. 28.

Associate professor of architecture Felecia Davis in the College of Arts and Architecture’s Stuckeman School is the local BRC organizer of the Bellefonte exhibit. Prof. Davis and the work of her students in the ARCH 497 studio class is a response to the call set forth by researchers with the “Black History in Centre County, Pennsylvania: A Collaborative Public History and Arts Project,” which is exploring the lives of Black communities within Bellefonte.

The Print Factory is a “antiracist feminist & queer-inclusive artist & worker-run bookstore & culture space” operated by Dara Walker, Mandisa Haarhoff, Andrea Miller, Kathy Pletcher, Jonathan Eburne and Elena Quinones. The Factory is founded on the premise that the most important places for creativity and inventiveness are those that are local, accessible, and near-at-hand.

Webster’s Bookstore Cafe in State College, run by Elaine Meder-Wilgus, has been operating on these inclusive progressive principles for decades. This past week Webster’s Community Gratitude food and music fest offered discounts on books and other merchandise from their vendors. The Community Diversity Group led by Carol Eicher and Naana Nti held its annual International Holiday Potluck “celebrating holiday traditions from around the world.” Nearly 100 community folks shared fellowship and feasted on foods of a dozen world cultures.

Elsewhere in Happy Valley, congratulations to Coach Katie Schumacher-Cawley and the women’s volleyball team. They will be playing Louisville in the Sunday finals of the NCAA tournament, after a reverse sweep of No. 3 Nebraska. This is the 11th time we have made it to the finals.

And Coach James Franklin and the Nittany Lions are playing SMU at Beaver Stadium in the first round of the College Football Playoff. It is the team’s well earned first foray into this rare ether.

Sisters and brothers we wish you a joyful, blessed and peaceful holiday season. Many of us are trying to heal from disappointment and fear, both personal and political. This too will pass away, you are seen and you are loved.