African history and art have combined to create a unique learning experience at Southwestern College during the month of February. Professor Chuck Ambers is sharing his culture and artifacts with students during Black History Month.
As owner, curator and leader of the Casa Del Rey Moro Museum in Old Town, Ambers has an extensive collection of books, art and knowledge of the North American African descents on the West Coast.
Ambers will bring several of his artifacts from his museum to display in the student center as well as the Cesar Chavez building focusing on the African influence on Latin America.
Casa Del Rey Moro is named after a Moorish king and a picture of him hangs in the center of the Old Town museum. The Moors controlled Spain for 800 years and 2/3 of them were indigenous black Africans leaving a bloodline in Southern Europe where many Latin Americans can trace their ancestry.
Ambers said it is important to make these ties in ancestry known especially with the modern gang rivalries between African-Americans and Mexican-Americans.
"I'm coming to your campus to knock some of the bottom out of that conflict," he said.
With his display Ambers is making a physical connection to the influence Africans had on Spanish and Mexican culture. There are many Mexicans with families who can trace their ancestry back five or six generations to Spanish soil with some of the Africans, he said.
Arriving earlier than the Africans on the East Coast, African-Latin Americans were equals with the Spanish in the colonization of Southern California before it became part of the United States. Those of Spanish and African descent worked together to develop most of Los Angeles and San Diego.
Some of the items on display include 6-foot statues of giraffes as well as other animals. Ambers has extensive work in animal husbandry and uses live animals in many of his lessons, including teaching children in Kenya how to rehabilitate baby elephants. The size of the statues he is using created a need for a lift to have them set up in the Cesar Chavez Building.
The artifacts Ambers chose for the display are important not as art or history, but as both. He said the art acts as an educational tool.
As an educator, Ambers emphasized the resource center of the museum and the importance of interacting with the artifacts repeating several times, "We're a touchy-feely museum."
He said he does not just want to talk about history but show it for what it was and still is today.
Ambers said he would like to have many displays at SWC throughout the year educating students on the history of their own as well as other cultures.
Be the first to comment on this article!