Celebrating the Charles L. Blockson Afro-American Collection’s 40th Anniversary at Temple University

There’s just over a week left to catch the Creative Philadelphia’s Art In City Hall-hosted exhibit: Celebrating the Charles L. Blockson Afro-American Collection’s 40th Anniversary at Temple University. It will be worth the trip to City Hall to experience an insightful journey of African and African-American history organized by Dr. Diane Turner and archivist Leslie Willis-Lowry. The exhibit is culled from The Charles L. Blockson Afro-American Collection known worldwide. It’s a remarkable time capsule of the Black global experience. Blockson, who died last year at age 89, helped to officially secure a designation of the Underground Railroad as a national treasure. He started a local initiative of placing historical markers at sites recognizing African-American milestones; it has emerged as the nation’s largest historical marker program. The Charles L. Blockson Afro-American Collection is one of the nation’s leading research facilities preserving the important but often overlooked history of people of African descent. The exhibit focuses on Blockson’s career as an author, bibliophile, historian, collector, and athlete. On display are some of the treasures housed in the Blockson collection of more than 700,000 items such as books, magazines, awards, photographs by John W. Mosle, and artifacts. It honors the curator’s lifelong mission of collecting, uncovering, and documenting Black history. Free, open weekdays, 10 a.m. EST to 4 p.m. EST. City Hall (2^nd-floor hallway, northeast corner), Broad and Market Sts. 215-686-8446 or https://library.temple.edu/libraries/9.