February 2026 marks 100 years since the first Black History Week in 1926. How are we celebrating 100 years?
Along with our Year of the Book Display, commemorating Georgia history in Black Voices, we have installed a display from the Sewjourners Quilting Guild. The Sewjourners and the Atlanta Quilt Festival also donated Good Trouble Quilts: A Tribute to Congressman John Lewis, a reference book in our collection detailing over 80 quilts dedicated to John Lewis.
The displayed Black History collection from the Sewjourners includes six quilts. A “Walk to Freedom”, a quilt designed with symbols from the Underground Railroad Quilt Code. An intricate set of designs that were used to help slaves escape to freedom. These symbols include: the drunkard’s crooked path, north star, flying geese, bowties, log cabin, a crossroads, tools, bear’s paw, monkey wrench and wagon wheel, and shoofly and scatter. It also details the importance of reading and voting in the Black community. One of the three smaller quilts represents the Quilt Code again, with a sailboat, shoofly, log cabin and a bowtie.
While Juneteenth is not held in February, they have represented the importance of the day through the quilt “Breaking Every Chain”, with the colors red, yellow and green vividly represented and the chains of slavery being broken. The final large quilt, “A Declaration of Liberty by the Representatives of the Slave Population of the United States of America”, includes John Brown’s version of the Declaration of Independence to present abolitionists’ explicit views on why slavery must be ended.
In addition to this collection, for our older patrons, every week in February we have shown a Black History movie, starting with Sarah’s Oil, The Rosa Parks’ Story for our teens, and ending with The Great Debaters. These movies have shown the great accomplishments of Black Americans throughout history. Our adult book club also focused on Black stories this month, as they read Percival Everett’s James, a reimagining of Huckleberry Finn, told from the perspective of the enslaved Jim, offering readers an opportunity to explore new perspectives.
For our younger patrons, we hosted multiple Black History Month crafts and two Black History Month Storytimes with local author Rashad Patterson, which included a fun DIY lava lamp! We will also end the month with another Black History month crafting session, where we will create our own artwork in the style of Jacob Lawrence!
In addition, we hosted our inaugural open mic and poetry writing session, with performers coming from all over the city to workshop with other creatives. This event will return in April, for Poetry in Motion.
Typically, during the holiday season we offer jazz performances in our lobby, however, local performers from the COMAS Jazz group gave our patrons a lovely selection of jazz music this month! What a treat it was to listen to a style of music that originated in African American communities this month! We may have missed Mardi Gras, but the library was filled with swing and harmony!
Happy Black History Month Fulton County!
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