Exhibit Dates:
2/9/2007 -
4/15/2007
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The Palmer Memorial Institute
The Palmer Memorial Institute, a traveling exhibition of documentary photographs and audio, was organized by the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University. The exhibit premiered at the Charlotte Hawkins Brown Museum in Sedalia, North Carolina, in March–April 2005.
The Palmer Memorial Institute was an African American preparatory school attended by more than 1,000 students from 1902 until it closed in 1971. The exhibit includes black-and-white photographs of student life at the school, circa 1947, by Griff Davis, an accomplished African American photojournalist whose work appeared in the New York Times, Atlanta Daily World, Ebony, Time, Fortune, and Negro Digest. Davis's work visually depicts an often-neglected piece of American history — that of middle- and upper-middle-class African Americans.
The exhibit also includes Davis's 1947 Ebony magazine spread on The Palmer Memorial Institute, text panels, and an audio documentary including interviews with Palmer Memorial Institute graduates.
The exhibit provides the opportunity for dialogue about segregation in education, black women's leadership and business development, the complexity of economic and educational standing of African Americans in the South during the Jim Crow era, and educational institutions' roles in developing strategies for economic success for African Americans, among other topics.
Charlotte Hawkins Brown (1883–1961), born in Henderson, North Carolina, and raised and educated in Massachusetts, named the Alice Freeman Palmer Memorial Institute (PMI) in Sedalia, near Greensboro, after her mentor and benefactor, the second woman president of Wellesley College. Brown's reputation grew nationally as she raised funds to expand campus facilities and worked to strengthen PMI's artistic and scholarly offerings, and through her efforts, the school evolved from an agricultural and manual training facility to a fully accredited, nationally recognized African American preparatory school. In 1987 the Charlotte Hawkins Brown Museum opened on the PMI grounds, North Carolina's first African American state historic site. |
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Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Inc., Rho Psi Omega
Beta Delta Boule Sigma Pi Phi Fraternity
Dr. James Barksdale
Roger S. Harrison, Jr.
Gwendolyn Mulliens James
Sandra Waters McDonald
Mr. and Mrs. Rowe R. Motley
Eleanor and Bill Neal
Beulah Melchor Quick
Jeanne Lanier Rudd
Dr. Jerelyn Smith
Mr. Asa T. Spaulding, Jr.
Charlotte Rose Walker, M.D.
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