Director of black history museum to speak Thursday at Berea

February 23, 2010

Anonymous The Richmond Register Tue Feb 23, 2010, 10:41 AM EST

BEREA — A Berea College graduate who has directed major museums interpreting the experience of black Americans will speak 3 p.m., Thursday, in Phelps Stokes Auditorium as part of the college’s Black History Month celebration.

Dr. John Fleming, who graduated from Berea in 1966 and earned a Ph.D. from Howard University, was the founding director of the National Afro-American Museum and Cultural Center in Wilberforce, Ohio, and then director of the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati.

He is the executive producer for "America I Am: The African-American Imprint," a nationally touring museum exhibition celebrating nearly 500 years of black people’s contributions to the nation through artifacts, documents, multimedia, photos and music. It opened a year ago in Philadelphia and will travel to 10 metropolitan locations over four years.

Among the exhibition's more than 250 artifacts from every period of history is a 19th century wood plane from the Appalachian Artifact Collection of Berea College. The plane belonged to John Henry Jackson, an early black student at Berea. Jackson used the tool to plane the floors of Fairchild Hall during its construction between 1871 and 1873. Fairchild was the first permanent building on Berea's campus and the earliest brick building constructed in Madison County. Jackson graduated from Berea in 1874 and later became the first president of Kentucky State University.

Fleming also is the author of three books that highlight the black experience in America: “A Summer Remembered, A Memoir: The Case for Affirmative Action for Blacks in Higher Education,” (co-authored with Gerald Gill and David Swinton), and “The Lengthening Shadow of Slavery: Historical Justification for Affirmative Action for Blacks in Higher Education.”

Fleming is a past president of the Association for the Study of African-American Life and History and a former president of the Ohio Museums Association and the Association of African-American Museums. He was elected a trustee of Berea College in 2007.

For more details, call the Berea College Black Cultural Center at 985-3797.

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