Presentation helps create personal connections to Black history

Delbert Richardson has been collecting historical artifacts for about 35 years and now utilizes them in a traveling educational experience on Black history. He is halfway through a series of presentations at TAF@Saghalie school in Federal Way that shares history in order to empower students.

Richardson said he is an educator, not a teacher, with “a unique pedagogy that focuses on primary resources, which are the artifacts, storyboards and the ancient art of storytelling.” This traveling education experience is called The Unspoken Truths and takes participants on a journey through American history through an Afrocentric lens.

In his presentation at TAF, he explored the question of “how do we incorporate history foundationally in a way that supports the importance of Black and brown students seeing themselves in the story of STEM?” The first artifacts that Richardson shares in this educational experience are examples of African science, technology, engineering and math. He shows examples of advanced metallurgy and other technological advancements already present in the continent.

It is only after establishing this connection that he introduces American history, including the slave trade, emancipation, the Jim Crow era and current issues around mass incarceration. The last section of his presentation focuses on the long list of modern inventions that came from the Black imagination.

As someone who was born the year of the Brown vs. Board of Education Supreme Court decision that made segregation illegal, Richardson said he was taught that his history as a Black American started with slavery. In his work now, he seeks to change that.

By including both the pain and the perseverance, Richardson works to help people find a personal connection to history.

“My history was taught through a Eurocentric lens,” Richardson said, which for him meant that it began with slavery and he was never “taught anything positive.” For him, the collection of historical artifacts and the traveling museum are actually his story. They are “a way for me to heal, but also to to feel empowered as a result of what we’ve accomplished, what we’ve been through, and the ability to persevere in spite of it. So the goal is to inspire other Black and brown children, but also to inspire other ethnic groups and white children as well because we’ve been told a false narrative about each other.”

’Federal Way is the new Central Area’

The Unspoken Truths presentation travels all over the United States, but Richardson’s work is typically based around Seattle. He more recently has begun to shift to be more focused in South King County, leading to his presentation in Federal Way.

Richardson said “Federal Way is the new Central Area,” referring to the the Central District in Seattle that is a historically Black neighborhood.

As participants in his educational experience will learn, many areas in Seattle and the surrounding cities were systematically discriminatory including racial restrictions on land deeds and “red lining” practices by insurance companies that restricted where they would offer home loans to whom.

These practices also existed in Federal Way.

“We’ve been all pushed down the I-5 corridor,” Richardson said. “That’s the new Black community. So there’s a desire for me to expand my work … because that’s where the majority of our Black and brown children are.”

In Richardson’s event at TAF@Saghalie on Feb. 9, he invited parents and community members to join so they could engage with what students were learning.

Personal connection is a big focus in his work. In his section on the era after emancipation, Richardson focuses on history in Washington state. This includes KKK rallies, racially restrictive covenants and discriminatory practices that he said often surprise people in this area.

Although much of his collection is part of his traveling educational experience or personal collection, there is a permanent display at the Puget Sound Educational Service District building located at 800 Oakesdale Ave. Southwest in Renton. The exhibit is open Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.

In his exhibit Unspoken Truths, collector and educator Delbert Richardson pairs primary sources like this bell collar that was put on enslaved people that ran away with stories of how people resisted the 400 years of forced labor. Photo by Keelin Everly-Lang / The Mirror

Racial restrictions were common throughout the past century in Seattle and the surrounding cities, including Federal Way. Delbert Richardson points out a restriction example in North Bend. Photo by Keelin Everly-Lang / The Mirror