The origins of the museum date to the late 19th century when objects collected from disparate sources made their way to Emory College in Oxford, Georgia. These sources included Emory faculty conducting research and Methodist missionaries living and working abroad. Active collecting efforts supported international research by Emory scholars and brought the outside world to…

Curated by Kali-Ahset Aman As an early 20th-century American public intellectual, James Weldon Johnson influenced the worlds of literature, music, diplomacy, and civil rights advocacy. Often remembered as a literary pioneer of the New Negro Era, Johnson’s roles as U.S. Consul to Venezuela (1906-1909) and Nicaragua (1909-1913) are frequently overlooked. Yet, Johnson’s official diplomacy informed…

The nanny photographs in this exhibition, dating from 1840 to 1920, offer early and consistent visual documentation of African American care givers and white children. These photographs, along with written narratives and visual materials from Rose Library’s book and manuscript collections, supply critical counter-narratives to the well-known “mammy” stereotype and emphasize the undeniable humanity of each…