Date: February 26, 2025
The African American Episcopal Historical Collection (located on the lower level of the Bishop Payne Library) has curated an exhibit now on display in the Commons of the Library. It celebrates Black History Month (annually, in February), although the exhibit will continue to be on view after the end of February. The title this year is, “I’m Workin’ on a Building: Honoring Black Ministry in the Episcopal Church.” Each of the 63 items on display, be it a photograph, certificate, or letter is taken from the AAEHC physical Collection.
Many members of the VTS community would be surprised to learn just how extensive the Collection has become over the course of its 20+ year history. In it, you will find images of early, black clergy and students –virtually all of whom were educated at the racially separate Bishop Payne Divinity School in Petersburg, VA. And until in 1953 John Walker (who would ultimately become the Episcopal Bishop of Washington), enrolled at VTS, no black student had ever stepped foot into a VTS classroom or walked across the stage at graduation to receive a diploma. That story is told in the exhibit, as well as the stories of the black women who became Episcopal clergy and studied or taught on the VTS campus.
Each item on display is taken from the AAEHC permanent collection. Included (in the Lucite box) is the beautiful and poignant Madonna icon, painted by the great Black artist, Alan Crite. Several of Crite’s most admired works can be seen just outside the AAEHC on the Library’s lower level.
And for the first time a Black History exhibit also focuses on the Black laity in the Episcopal Church. It demonstrates how customary it seems that a lion’s share of the most prominent and influential among them were in that 20th century vanguard that successfully dismantled the nation’s racial strictures in law, policy and in the Church. They include Pauli Murray (years prior to her ordination), the Hon. Spottswood Robinson, and the Hon. Thurgood Marshall, Sr.
The exhibit contains photographs of other black Episcopal laity who have most recently sat for oral history interviews. Each interview is now fully accessible. Among them you will find the oral histories of the Hon. Michael Powell, former FCC chair and son of the late US Secretary of Defense Colin Powell and his wife Alma. Additionally, you will find a portrait of Thurgood Marshall, Jr who in his oral history shares stories about life as a boy in the Marshall household as his father led the legal teams to smash legalized racial discrimination, and how he (Thurgood, Jr) happened upon the realization that his father’s work was important, and not from his father, but from countless others.
Finally, the younger ordained leadership of the church is featured in their oral histories, and their photos are shown in the exhibit. They include among others, the Rev. Philip Jackson, Rector of Trinity Wall Street and Chairman of the Trinity Wall Street Foundation, along with recorded sessions with the Rt. Revs. Jennifer Baskerville Burrows, Phoebe Roaf, Robert Wright, and Gail Harris. Finally, a most important new acquisition is the oral history of the first black Presiding Bishop of the Church, the Most Rev. Michael Curry, taken during the final weeks of his term. Don’t miss it.
Please stop by the commons and allow it to lead you downstairs and into the rich holdings that comprise the AAEHC.
The Very Rev. Ian S. Markham, Ph.D.
Dean and President of Virginia Theological Seminary and President of The General Theological Seminary