Christensen: African room brings in relevant culture, history

Porching it last Thursday night after a four-hour study session in the Cathedral, some friends… Porching it last Thursday night after a four-hour study session in the Cathedral, some friends and I discussed the various merits of our school’s Nationality Rooms. When we reached the African room in our discussion we were faced with a conundrum: Why does Lithuania get a whole room to itself, whilethe entire continent of Africa is condensed into one little classroom? It didn’t seem fair. At least upfront, it seemed like an almost condescending, gross oversight.

Understanding the genesis of the continental cultural room requires a little backtracking. According to Pitt’s website, interest in establishing a room for the African community began in the 1930s, but it didn’t fully evolve until 1972. That year, a committee was formed under the chairmanship of Walter Worthington to create an African Heritage classroom. Because the African-American community came from all over Africa, the committee decided that incorporating several cultures into one room would be less exclusionary than choosing a single country to model the room after.

That’s why, like the Israeli room, the African classroom is referred to as a Heritage Room, rather than a Nationality Room. The policies of the Nationality Rooms required that the history depicted in the room predate 1787, the founding of the University of Pittsburgh. In 1987, Dr. Laurence Glasco, a Pitt professor of African-American history, traveled to Ghana to research room prototypes. The room is designed after an Asante Temple courtyard, which is a common architectural archetype seen in different communities throughout Africa.

The design also incorporates themes from other cultures — a West African “Queen Mother,” a lectern stemming from a Benin stool, and a Nigerian carved chalkboard, among others. The entry door’s wooden panels depict nine ancient and medieval African kingdoms: Pharaonic Egypt, Nubia, Ethiopia, Benin, Kongo, Mali and more.

E. Maxine Bruhns, director of the Nationality Rooms and Intercultural Exchange Programs at Pitt, said that the African Heritage Room represents more than historical heritage; it also represents highly personal stories.

The room was the product of a grassroots movement, with donations dating back to when  the University’s Black Action Society collected $208.95 at a 1973 fundraising dance. The campaign planning coordinator, Nancy H. Lee, spent 15 years collecting more than $250,000 to construct and dedicate the room, as well as extra money for summer scholarships for Pitt students studying in Africa.

“It was a highly personal journey,” Bruhns said. “I still water Nancy’s potted plants on the Cathedral’s 12th floor.”

But still: Why did the room have to compartmentalize the African continent into a single space, as opposed to displaying individual nationalities or ethnicities?

Bruhns said that the Nationality Rooms Committee wanted to plan a Latin American continent room so that the African Heritage Classroom would not be “all alone” in representing a single continent. But time, space and money were short, and the project never came to fruition. That’s the problem with the Nationality Rooms — there just isn’t enough space and energy available to represent every single community, however deserving of attention and space.

Also, Bruhns doubted that a Nationality Room for a specific African country could be realistically constructed in the Cathedral. Even though Pittsburgh has large populations from countries such as Somalia, establishing a Nationality Room requires at least a decade of patience and a lot of money and dedication. “If it’s a nation on the continent of Africa, it is not likely to get a room. The nationality rooms are running out of space,” she said.

I have the tendency to be a hopeless idealist. In the perfect scenario, the Cathedral would have endless rooms to devote to conveying the various merits of every country and nation in the world. But in this case, perhaps less is more. Rather than attempting to present a glossed-over history of Africa — or worse, excluding 52 of the African countries in favor of one — the committee sought to incorporate as many heritages as possible with what room they had.

Incorporating elements of literature, art, music, science and mathematics, the designers made African history relevant to the University setting. My friends and I were wrong: The African Heritage Room is not a product of oversight. Instead, it presents a lot, integrating many cultures into a solid representation of African heritage’s influence in America.

Write Caitlyn at cac141@pitt.edu.