Capturing the heart of a neighborhood

11:46 a.m., Dec. 22, 2004--As Thristina Jackson moved around the room looking at pieces of her past being laid out for the pages of a book, she flashed back to when she was a child living in the area of Newark around New London Road and its side streets, called “The Village.”

“I remember the horses, the day the horses ran through our neighborhood. They escaped from Green’s field and ran through ‘The Hollow,’ turned toward Ray Street near Corbit and out West Main. That was 50 years ago,” she said.

Jackson, several other residents of The Village, UD Profs. Bernard Herman and Virginia Bradley and their students gathered in the Mount Zion UAME Church on Saturday, Dec. 12, to discuss their projects focusing on the history of The Village, an African-American neighborhood in the heart of Newark near UD’s campus.

It’s memories of the community like Jackson’s that Herman, Edward F. and Elizabeth Goodman Rosenberg Professor of Art History, and his 12 American material culture seminar students are trying to celebrate and preserve in the book they are compiling about the African-American community in Newark bounded by New London Road from the train tracks north to Clayton Hall, including Rose, Ray, Corbit and Mill streets.

Bradley, professor chairperson of the Department of Fine Arts and Visual Communication, heads the “Art as Social Activism” project of which Herman’s book is a part. Bradley and her students are working on a variety of art projects celebrating the neighborhood, including a sculpture to be designed by Lily Yeh, an internationally known artist and executive director of The Village of Arts and Humanities in Philadelphia. Yeh is Distinguished Artist in Residence at UD this year. She is working with the faculty, students and local community leaders to develop a set of public art and local history projects.

“Some call it The Row, others call it The Village,” but this African-American community, established in the mid-1800s, still has a deep sense of itself, Herman said. “The book is written entirely in the words of the community.” The photos and memorabilia in the book come from the residents, and Herman credits Raymond Nichols, professor of fine arts and visual communication, and UD’s Raven Press as partners in guiding the project to fruition.

Herman, whose house backs up to Pilgrim Baptist Church on the edge of The Village, started compiling oral histories, photos and artifacts after he was asked to give a talk on the history of the area at the nearby Elks Lodge. “People said they liked hearing about the history of the area,” so, he thought he’d give his students a small writing project, a 12-page booklet on the history of The Village, he said. When they started, Herman said he told his students their projects had to “remember, honor and respect” the subject matter.

The project ballooned, and the chapter turned into a book when he saw how involved his students became. The students involved in the project are Nikki Rose Bernardo, Alison Medland, Daniel Lisowski, Elizabeth McGinn, Lenora Costa, Jill Rotanelli, Jennifer Cucura, Rebecca Lebsock, Natalie Okin, Rachael Grove, Kristen Martensen and Robin Maybruch.

Cucura, a senior visual communications major, is writing the Ray Street chapter. “We want the community to be represented as a close-knit family. It was a family in the past, and we want this book to bring that feeling back.” She said she’s learned a lot about where she lives on Corbit Street. “It’s in the heart of the old community. I had no idea of the history of where the dorms are now. There are so many stories.”

One Terry Lane resident, Sarah Patrick, told Cucura that she, her husband and three children moved into their house on Terry Lane in 1956. “I was pregnant at the time and my husband was in the service.” She told Cucura that they financed the house through the G.I. Bill, and that she still lives in that house.

“The old neighborhood was like a big family; we raised each others kids,” Jackson said. “For Easter sunrise services, we’d go from church to church, and after the last service, we’d all have breakfast. At Christmas time, when the kids had toys to put together, the men in the neighborhood would go from house to house putting them together. I’m glad they decided on a book,” she said.

Herman and his students have raised $7,500 so far to publish the book. He said he needs about $5,000 more to publish about 200 books, most of which will go to the residents of The Village.

To make a donation, or for more information about the project, e-mail [bherman@udel.edu] or call (302) 831-8793.

Article by Barbara Garrison

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