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In honor of Black History Month, MAAV interns took a trip to the African American Story Boards, located in downtown Christiansburg, Virginia. The African American Story Board Tour was given by staff from both The Christiansburg Institute and The Montgomery Museum of Art and History. During the tour, MAAV Interns gained insight into the process for putting up the storyboards and the rationale for the story telling methods both organizations used. One concept that remained clear throughout the tour was the staff’s intent to keep joy and celebration at the center of the work, rather than limiting the memory of local African American families as being only “enslaved” or having “suffered”. While those darker parts of history need to be told, the storyboards (as pictured here) hold space for the stories illustrating the joys and successes, such as African American leaving legacies of business ownership, graduating from high school, or attending important celebrations. As interns walked by the storyboards, they noticed that the storyboards depicting this wide array of history live side by side to illustrate how both histories live together simultaneously, telling the full story of African American life in historic Montgomery County.
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