Feature: Dear Mr. Mandela, Dear Mrs. Parks--A Global Education Project
The MSU Museum is leading a program featuring letters to Nelson Mandela and Rosa Parks, two iconic figures in civil rights.
Global lessons on the struggle for human rights—in the United States and in South Africa—are at the heart of a new educational program being led by the MSU Museum.
“Dear Mr. Mandela, Dear Mrs. Parks: Children’s Letters, Global Lessons” will present the very personal and very powerful letters children wrote to the two revered civil rights icons. At the same time, MSU Museum will be the new home to steward and share Rosa Parks’ legacy.
Earlier this year, Gregory Reed, the personal lawyer of Rosa Parks, announced a planned gift to the Michigan State University Museum of a collection of letters children wrote to Parks. A similar collection of letters to another civil rights hero, former South African president and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Nelson Mandela, exists at a new museum in his ancestral home in rural South Africa, the Nelson Mandela National Museum in Eastern Cape Province. Working together, the two museums will use these letters to raise awareness of the deep parallels between the struggles for racial justice in the United States and South Africa.
Also planned are a touring exhibit, an online gallery of letters and music to accompany the exhibition.
Going a step beyond, schoolchildren will be encouraged to write letters to their own heroes who embody the values of Mandela and Parks.
The project is part of a new grant awarded by the American Association of Museums, Washington, D.C., and the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA). MCCA is designed to strengthen connections between people in the U.S. and abroad through museum-based exchanges. The MSU Museum is one of four museums across the country to receive a grant.
“Cross-cultural skills are critical in today’s global economy,” said Ford W. Bell, AAM president. “The museums participating in these four projects will help people better understand themselves and one another by working together across borders, and the connections made will help develop innovative solutions for important community issues. These projects demonstrate that museums can be key partners in bridging cultural differences and addressing social concerns.”
The MSU Museum has had a significant history of work with colleagues in South Africa and in communities across Michigan and the U.S., including exhibition development, training and technology for South African museum professionals, and leading an MSU Study Abroad course in Expressive Arts, Cultural Heritage, and Museum Studies in South Africa.
“The MSU Museum will be able to build on these relationships to engage youth for rich educational opportunities that will enhance their personal development and worldview, as they examine the lives of these extraordinary individuals who dedicated their lives to support human rights and social justice," explains MSU Museum Director C. Kurt Dewhurst, the project organizer and a senior fellow for MSU University Outreach and Engagement and professor of English.
"The MSU Museum is honored to be able to collaborate with the Nelson Mandela Museum to develop innovative community programming that will present the lessons learned from the lives of President Nelson Mandela and Ms. Rosa Parks in schools and communities in South Africa and the United States,” he adds. MSU Museum’s leadership in the project will center on the life and legacy of Rosa Parks.
"In this project, the letters—primary materials for research and education—will be used to raise awareness of the contributions of these two international leaders of human rights,” explains Marsha MacDowell, MSU Museum curator of folk arts, who is helping lead the effort. “Youth in Michigan and South Africa will also use these letters as models to write their own letters to individuals they identify in their own experience who exemplify the kind of work that Mrs. Parks and Mr. Mandela have championed."
Across the Atlantic in this cultural partnership, the Nelson Mandela National Museum, Mthatha, Eastern Cape Province, South Africa, has an exhibit and special events planned marking the 90th birthday of Mandela on July 18, 2008.
Other museums in this AAM project include programs with the New York Hall of Science, Queens, N.Y. and National Council of Science of India; Museo de las Americas, Denver; El Museo Nacional De Etnografia y Folklore, La Paz, Bolivia;and Black Pine Animal Park, Fort Wayne, Ind., and the Dushanbe Zoo, Dushanbe, Tajikistan. Of the 8,000-plus museums nationwide, the MSU Museum is among only 10 percent that are accredited by the American Association of Museums, reflecting the highest standards of collections care, exhibitions, research and programs.
For more information, visit museum.msu.edu. Also, visit the Nelson Mandela National Museum at www.nelsonmandelamuseum.org.za .
Lora Helou, M.A. ’90, is communications director at the Michigan State University Museum.
GREGORY J. REED
Attorney, author and Spartan alumnus Gregory J. Reed, ’70, has applied seemingly boundless energies in many ways that serve MSU, the state and society.
Reed graduated from MSU with a degree in engineering and went on to earn a M.S from Wayne State University before going on for a law degree there, and then became the first African-American in Michigan to receive a master’s degree in taxation law. He also is Michigan’s first recipient of the American Book Award for his “Economic Empowerment through the Church – a Blueprint for Progressive Community Development.” While running a noted entertainment and sports law practice based in Detroit, he remains close to MSU, serving as vice chair of the MSU Foundation, and as a member of the MSU Museum Development Council. Meanwhile, Reed also established the Keeper of the Word Foundation, a Detroit-based organization to preserve and share our nation’s history in arts, literary work and activism.
With the donation of Rosa Parks’ letters and other historical documents to Michigan State University, Reed saw a chance to draw these currents together.
“The decision to donate the letters was made to perpetuate Rosa Parks’ legacy for individuals in the 21st century,” says Reed. “I recognized that words of heroes (like Parks) can be buried for a number of years if someone does not come forth to highlight their contributions in our country.”
And the South African connection offered a unique opportunity to examine not the legacy of two civil rights icons, but to consider the struggle for human rights worldwide, Reed explains. “This is an opportunity for global education,” he notes. “I trust the letters in the exhibit will help break down barriers people have when they don’t understand one another.”
“I am honored and happy to be able to give something back to an institution in America [Michigan State University] that was the first to divest it self from the apartheid regime,” Reed adds.
“I recognize that the work that is being done by MSU has raised the bar for others to step up and be counted in the 21st century, demonstrate the power of one can make a difference and I wish to be a part of this tradition.”
MSU MUSEUM AND MSU’s YEAR OF ARTS AND CULTURE, 2007-2008
This program at the MSU Museum is produced as part of MSU’s Year of Arts and Culture. The MSU Museum also presents a year-long look at human rights with, “The International Print Portolio: Artists’ Expressions of Universal Human Rights” and “Quilts and Human Rights,” now on exhibit. The MSU Museum is also commemorating American's New Deal Heritage and the nationwide 75th anniversary of the New Deal in 2008 with “The Federal Art Project: Supporting Good Artists During Bad Times.” Michigan State University and MSU Museum collections are rich with examples of a WPA legacy of art and craft.
Michigan State University has a vibrant cultural community with countless public performances, exhibitions, programs and special events throughout the year. These arts and culture offerings educate and engage audiences by exploring the diversity of human expression, while contributing to the creative and economic vitality of the region. Members of the university and greater communities and visitors from near and far delight in music, performing arts and concert centers, libraries, museums and galleries, gardens, public art and historic sites across the MSU campus. At the same time, audiences on campus and around the world take advantage of academic and research programs, public broadcasting, online resources, publications and outreach initiatives.
Other highlights of MSU’s Year of Arts and Culture are milestone anniversaries the MSU Museum, Wharton Center for Performing Arts and the Department of Theatre, the expansion and move of Kresge Art Museum, the opening of the new Residential College for the Arts and Humanities, and much more.
Join Spartans everywhere in celebratingMSU's Year of Arts and Culture. Learn more at artsandculture.msu.edu.