Exhibits: Search Room and Traveling

Searchroom Exhibits:

Phebe Robinson Jacobsen and Alex Haley

Archives Roots: The Collaborative Research of Alex Haley and Phebe Robinson Jacobsen

Embracing the mantle of researching his family's history, Alex Haley found himself visiting numerous historical institutions, including the Hall of Records located in Annapolis, Maryland. There, he was fortunate to meet a kind, generous and experienced archivist whose passion was also genealogy, especially where it concerned persons of African descent: Phebe Robinson Jacobsen. When Jacobsen collaborated with Haley on the research for Haley's epic novel, Roots: The Saga of an American Family, they could not have predicted the fundamental awakening of interest in African American history and, indeed, all families' histories, that would come on the heels of the book's popularity.

This exhibition celebrates the collegial relationship between Haley and Jacobsen that was at the heart of a quiet revolution-a revolution still reverberating today in the popularity of learning about our "roots".

Traveling Exhibits:

Phebe Robinson Jacobsen and Alex Haley

Stories of Flight from Maryland

Currently on display at the Reginald F. Lewis Museum and the Kennard African American Cultural Heritage Center & Museum

The Stories of Flight from Maryland exhibit was created and designed between 2010 and 2011 in part to meet matching requirements of a U.S. Department of Education Office of Post Secondary Education Grant to study the Underground Railroad in five counties of Maryland's Eastern Shore, including Dorchester, Caroline, Queen Anne's, Talbot and Kent.

View the Stories of Flight Exhibit Online

To schedule this exhibit for your location, please contact Emily Oland Squires.

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