Wide Enough For Our Ambition

New Online Exhibit Explores the History of DC's Segregated Schools

The 2010 Washington, DC Big Read has come to a close, but the final product will be a permanent part of the Humanities Council's Resource Center. On Wednesday, May 26, Kim Roberts unveiled her online exhibit of DC's historic segregated schools entitled, Wide Enough for Our Ambition. The exhibit functions as a walking tour, a photo essay, and an engrossing story of Washington's historic struggle for racial equality in education. Roberts' text, like most meaningful humanities narratives, touches on provocative issues, and questions conventional knowledge. Specifically, Roberts explores the paradoxes that characterized the DC segregated school system during the early 20th century; a time when a substantial proportion of educators in African-American schools held the highest degree in their fields. During this time period, Washington, DC's segregated African-American schools ranked as some of the best in the nation, regularly outperforming their white counterparts.

The images for the exhibit are a combination of historic photos culled from collections at the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian Institution, and modern photos provided by photographer, Sam Vasfi. Vasfi's images reveal the architectural character of the historic school building in stunning detail. Vasfi's unique approach to digital photography allows viewers to more of each building in a single two dimensional image than would typically be possible. There are images of schools in every DC Ward which allows the exhibit to function as an expansive survey of the city's architectural history.

The images and the text are compiled using open source museum and archival software developed by the George Mason University's Center for History and New Media. The program, called Omeka, allows a database of properly tagged images or artifacts to be seamlessly arrayed as an online exhibit. The layouts are fully expandable and customizable, which will allow for updates to the exhibit as more images or information become available.

(Above Image Courtesy of the Scurlock Collection at the Smithsonian Institution)