'Freedom Papers' in many forms on display at Johns Hopkins

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Deep within the Special Collections at Johns Hopkins University, curators found a yellowed photo from 1930: About 40 black women are posed on a ship's deck, staring at the camera as they hold up American flags.

As curators learned, the women were on route to Europe to find the graves of their loved ones, part of a post-World War I effort by the U.S. government to honor the Gold Star mothers and widows of fallen American soldiers. Despite their sacrifices, and despite activist uproar, these black women were segregated from white passengers aboard the ship.

The photo is one of several relics of the world wars that appears in the Freedom Papers: Black Assertions from the Archives exhibit, which explores five historic narratives in total. A group of Johns Hopkins staffers and local book artist Martha Edgerton organized the display at the Sheridan Libraries.