Take a walk through New Brunswick's rich Black history — virtually
The exhibit will be at UNB Saint John until the end of the month
In 1901, Mary Matilda Winslow entered the University of New Brunswick where she graduated with honours four years later.
The Woodstock-born woman is considered the first Black woman to attend and graduate from the Fredericton university.
Winslow's story is just one that people can read about while browsing a virtual catalogue of New Brunswick's Black historical figures, trailblazers and important events organized by the New Brunswick Black History Society.
"We're trying to show the rest of the community, the rest of New Brunswick, that we are getting our history brought back to the forefront so people can realize that Black people were a part of building this province, the same as everybody else that came here," said Ralph Thomas, founder of the society.
For many years, history sat in boxes and attics collecting dust. Then, with the hope of getting it out of boxes and onto display, the New Brunswick Black History Society heritage centre opened in Saint John.
And now, some of that history has been digitized so that it can be taken on the road.
The project takes the form of a large touch-screen television where users can interact with it on their own to explore Black history and important Black figures from the 1400s to the 1900s.
While the society's heritage centre in Brunswick Square is filled with history and artifacts, it isn't easily movable.
Mutiat Adeleke, the project co-ordinator at the society, said they were getting so many requests from community partners and schools to do Black history presentations, that a self-serve, movable option was determined to be an ideal solution.
"The beauty is that you can travel as far as the requests come in and more people will have access to it as it travels," she said.
From October to the end of February, the screen has been in the University of New Brunswick library commons on the Saint John campus, but Adeleke said there are already requests on places for it to go next.
So far, Adeleke said the response to the digital project has been amazing.
"People are happy that they are able to access the information, self-served," she said.
"You get to choose how long you want to spend on the exhibits — you can take as little as five minutes or you can use as much as one hour."
The 72-inch touch screen is set up so when users click start, they can pick a time period to explore. Users can pick names or historical events within those time periods. The system will then tell them about the person's contributions to Black history or the event's significance.
Thomas said some of the people in the virtual exhibit include Belleisle-born Abraham Beverley Walker, the first Black lawyer in Canada, and Cornelius Sparrow, a runaway slave from Norfolk, Va. who settled in Saint John.
The project is called the Interactive Time-Walk Exhibit and Thomas said it was one of the technicians who put together the exhibit that suggested the name.
Thomas said he and some of the other board members agreed that "time-walk" is a good fit for what it is.
"We take people on a journey," he said.
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