Immigration is at the forefront of conversation in today’s political landscape – and an exhibit at Roanoke College from Museum on Main Street, a program with the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service, seeks to explore America’s long and rich history with the movement of people.
If you walk into the Journey stories exhibit from Main Street in Salem, you can use interactive features to hear the sounds of the stories told.
There are familiar stories such as the slave forced from Africa and the westward pioneer, but as Jason Hawke, history department chair of the college explains, there are other stories to be told as well.
“This looks at the stories of various groups that might not be as well known. So, various kinds of immigrant groups and their experiences and travels, both in terms of coming to this country, but also once they were here.”
Hawke says some large movements of American people can get lost in mainstream U.S. history.
“For example the great migration that took place from the south toward the north, particularly of former slaves and their families. I think this exhibit does a nice job of introducing people to it in a way that they might not have seen before.”
Including other lesser-known stories shows a larger shift in how U.S. history is being told, Hawke says.
“The discipline, I think, of History, has been one for the last 30 or 40 years which has sought to include more of these kinds of stories that are outside of the sort of the mainline narrative. And it’s not necessarily a way to debunk the central sort of narrative, but I think it’s a way that historians are trying to enrich and amplify or knowledge.”
The Exhibit will be open to the public through mid December in the newly renovated Back building of Roanoke College on Main Street in Salem.
