[MUSIC]
>> The greenbook was a guide for African Americans to travel
safely to find shelter food and gas in a time when these basic
rights were not guaranteed
Every trip through America for a black person during those
times was potentially fatal.
The assumption is that at some time it stopped. And that's not
the case it never stopped.
"Traveling While Black" exhibit is kind of a parallel to the
greenbook, it kind of documents how the black community had to
take precautions when traveling through the U.S. people often
think this is just something historic and it's in the past.
But the film makes a really strong connection to what's
happening socially right now. This exhibit is really unique
in that it brings virtual reality as the means to build
this bridge.
You know, if you're watching just a flat screen TV you see
something, you don't like you can turn away, right? But for
the virtual 360 experience to turn away you're seeing this
moment where Ms Rice is having a really profound conversation
and it's too much and you turn away. What do you see? You see
faces of the others in the room crying. The turn to this side
you see the other faces.
So if for a moment that lets you experience what it might be
like to live in someone else's shoes.
We said you can't deal with the challenges on the ground unless
you get to the root causes of what is happening in our
community. You can't understand what it's like to be a person
of color if you're not a person of color, but you can't start
to deal with it unless you understand the root causes that
get us to the inequities that exist today. The goal of the
film this to be a conversation. Starter is to ask what can you
or me as a person coming into the world
interacting with our black community members. How can we
be a part of the solution towards dismantling racism.
We thought we we don't want to make a documentary. We really
don't want to make something that is going to be shown once
or twice and then go away. We want to make an impact to
the communities and start a dialog. It was always a
question where to put it. You know, where do we film
this. And I said, well, I live in Washington and there's a
place called Ben's Chili Bowl where the community gathers
black, white. You know, these issues come up every day.
We talk about them in the worst of times during the riots,
the community gathered there. There's only one place for this
film and it would be at Ben's Chili Bowl.
When we opened the Chili Bowl in 1958 my husband and I knew
that we wanted to be a part of a community
and that was an amazing community. I came to Washington
from Virginia in 1952 to a segregated city. Now, Virginia,
you know, is very segregated and I'm thinking Washington was
a little bit more progressive. No, we couldn't go downtown to
dinner or to the restaurants or to the theater, but we didn't
need to. We had everything we needed and it became a
gathering place it became a meeting place. It became a
place for the media when they wanted to get the black
perspective on the new baseball football coach or whatever they
wanted. It was Ben's Chili Bowl that they came.
This was the last stop in DC before they went to the south
for 10 hours. So Ben's Chili Bowl has been an anchor our
local neighborhood for many years. And so we want to have
that set here. The artist wanted to have the set here and
really evoke that feeling of what it is to be a community
center. The "Traveling While Black" experience is very
emotional and powerful to watch and so at the end of that he
wanted to have people have a way to process what they saw.
So we created some reflection prompts like: I can I didn't
know I know I will My family just to get them started on
thinking about what they've watched, what they can do with
information they have and walk out as change makers. This one
starts with we can we can all do our part to educate
ourselves and be better to one another in small ways on a
daily basis as we work to effect real change and
dismantle systemic racism.