Mount Airy Woman Provides 1000 Artifacts To New Smithsonian Museum
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- The buzz is growing around the new Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture that opens next month in Washington, DC. It will feature thousands and thousands of artifacts. A Mount Airy art collector made a significant contribution.
"I feel like the keeper of this history," says Beverly Richards. She is curator for A Cinema Apart, a collection of early Black film memorabilia.
"This room actually holds every race film that is available," she told KYW Newsradio during a tour of her Mount Airy Home.
The collection of Race Films spam from the early 1900's to 1950's and feature all Black casts and Black themes from a time when Hollywood put few Black faces on screen.
"If an African American went to the movies to see a Hollywood film the black person in the film was usually cooking, cleaning and singing in the film," says Richards, "but in a Race Film, they were doctors, lawyers, flying planes-- fighting monsters-- Black people felt empowered when they saw those films.
This separate world of cinema fascinated Beverly's husband Larry Richards, a historian and librarian. Over the course of 20 years, Larry collected 2100 artifacts, including soundies, cartoons, posters and even fashion connected to this film genre, many including superstars like Paul Robeson, Lena Horne and Dorothy Dandridge.
"Larry went on EBay, bought from studio sales, estate sales, family members," says Richard, "he catalogued the items and preserved them-- he knew what he was doing."
When Larry died suddenly in 2008, Beverly contacted the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture. The museum has acquired more than 35,000 objects; 1,000 are from this collection. Notable items are the shoes Sammy Davis, Jr. wore and a rare poster of Bill Pickett, a cowboy, rodeo and Wild West performer featured in some of the earliest Race Films.
"I am just so excited that Larry's dream is coming to fruition," says Richards, who notes the pieces will be featured in the Taking the Stage Exhibition once the museum opens on September 24th.
In addition to the 1100 pieces of the collection that remains, Richards recently wrote and produced a documentary, titled "Birth of Black Film." She plans to use the film coupled with lectures to educate the world about the Race Films that gave African Americans so much hope.
"It's bittersweet," she says, "my only regret is that he isn't here...this was his dream-- I'm just excited that the work he had done is valued and appreciated."
The National Museum of African American History and Culture opens on September 24th.
