The “Pathways to Freedom” Exhibit at the WorldBeat Center
The WorldBeat Center in San Diego, California, in collaboration with the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Task Force in Southfield, Michigan, and Mexico Negro, A.C. in Guerrero, Mexico, is the host of the traveling exhibit: “Pathways to Freedom in the Americas: Shared Experiences Between Michigan and Guerrero”. The “soft opening” of the exhibit was in July 2022. A grand opening with international guests is being planned and will be announced in this publication.
The exhibit was inspired by the chance meeting of two business professors of African descent, Patricia Ann Talley from Michigan, and Candelaria Donají Mendez Tello from Guerrero. Under a grant funded by the Michigan Humanities Council, the teachers embarked on a two-year research project that resulted in the “Pathways” exhibit and website.
This video tells their shared stories. It was produced by the Charles H. Wright Museum of African History in Detroit, Michigan, and Southfield Cable 15.
The “Pathways” exhibit is in English and Spanish and uses video, maps, photographs, art, and music to depict a different aspect of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. It tells the story of enslaved African-Americans escaping south to freedom in México; the arrival of Africans on the Pacific Coast, especially in the Costa Chica region of Guerrero and Oaxaca, and the migration of Mexicans to Michigan after the Civil Rights Movement.
The exhibit will be at the WorldBeat Center for 5 years with plans to expand it by adding research about the history of enslaved Africans who escaped to Spanish Florida and then into the Bahamas and Caribbean, as well as the heritage of the Black Seminoles who made it to Texas when it was a part of Mexico.