Strange Fruit #208: Museum Celebrates "The Ordinary Extraordinary Colored Girl"




Strange Fruit show

Summary: This week we speak with Vashti DuBois, Executive Director and Founder of The Colored Girls Museum in Philadelphia. DuBois says she was inspired to create a physical space celebrating "the ordinary extraordinary colored girl" because black girls and women have been contributing to the world in a powerful way but getting no recognition. "I use colored because I really think of how the world takes its Crayola crayon to the black girl and colors her whatever they want her to be," DuBois says. "Color her promiscuous, color her too angry, color her too assertive. And many of us will take that same crayon and color each other, because that's what we've been taught to do." She joins us to talk about what kinds of objects and experiences she seeks to share, and her own most transformative moment in the process of bringing the museum to life.