Introduction

Peabody Institute, c. 1902

The Peabody Institute was founded with ideals of being an inclusive and generous gift to the city of Baltimore. Despite this, it has a long history of racism and exclusion, a legacy that remains to this day. By recognizing and learning about this part of Peabody's past, it becomes even clearer how much work we still have to do when it comes to representation and inclusion of African-American musicians at Peabody.

This is an online exhibit that is meant to serve as an extensive and interactive appendix to the paper attached below. Neither the exhibit nor the paper present a complete story of the Peabody Institute's relationship with African-American musicians in Baltimore or of the experiences of African-American students and faculty members at Peabody. Rather, this is meant to open up conversations and shine light on a long history that is often dismissed or forgotten. The exhibit and the paper follow the same general timeline, but while the exhibit gives an overview through images and supplementary text, the paper gives a clearer and more in depth picture of the story the images represent. The section headings in the exhibit correlate to the headings in the paper, so if you choose to do so you can easily download the paper below and click through the exhibit as you read.