Esther Rolle's collection is here and very proud to have the Emmy that she won in 1979.

My love for history started with bad Black history.

I did not get the best Black history education in my K12 experience, but it took me going to Florida A&M University, taking my first Black history class there, actually changed my major.

I was so electrified and just had so much passion for it.

I knew that this is something that I wanted to do as a part of my career.

What people should know about the African American Research Library and Cultural Center is that when it was created in 2022, it was only one of three such institutions in the nation.

It was really inspired by the Schomburg Center for Research and Black Culture, which is a part of the New York Public Library System and the Auburn Avenue Research Library, which is attached to the Fulton County.

This is a publicly-funded space that intentionally collects the history of African-descendant people.

And there really aren't that many places that do this.

I guess often hear people ask, "Well, why do you need such a space?

Isn't it exclusionary?"

Really when you think about it, the majority of these institutions over the existence of the United States, as long as there've been archives here, have heavily focused on the story of other groups of people.

And so we have to be very intentional about what we collect, what we preserve.

And AARLCC is an amazing place that does this for this region and for the state.

Part of what we we do in the geography is significant.

Being on historic Sistrunk Boulevard named of course after Dr. James Sistrunk, who in the years of segregation, when Black people couldn't go to white-owned hospitals, couldn't go to white medical schools, he was trained at a HBCU and for 16 years was the only licensed doctor who practiced among the Black population here.

This was the Black business district.

This was the place where people got congregated in this northwest quadrant of Fort Lauderdale, which because of segregation or because of the railway, was designated as the place where Black people were allowed.

And so our communities grew up over decades here.

And so AARLCC is a part of that legacy.

We actually took the place of the Mizell Library, which was the segregated library branch for this region.

We still have those books as a part of our collection.

We have carried that legacy forward with this institution.

And so as we move into the future, we do hang on to the remnants of our story.

They did happen, segregation was real for us.

What was really important for me and what I love to uplift is the ways that people of African descent survive, the creativity, the wherewithal, the self-determination, all of that is represented when I think about Historic Sistrunk and its legacy.

And AARLCC is proud to be a part of that.

People are so impressed by this facility.

And all credit to Samuel F. Morrison.

He was the Director of Broward Libraries and was the individual who conceptualized, came up with the idea for the creation of such a place.

There is intentionality in every portion of it.

This 60,000 square foot building, two stories, from the outside you see Adinkra symbols, which are from the Akan people in West Africa.

They are visual symbols of cultural values.

Everything from the flooring to the columns to the welcome desk were designed intentionally to represent and evoke this connection between Africa and America.

On the first level is our cultural center.

We have a 300 seat auditorium.

We have a museum gallery.

We have meeting rooms and spaces and a beautiful wide open lobby.

The Harambee Room is an intentional space.

It is a piece of public art designed by artist Gary Moore.

It is a circular room, which makes it really interesting in not only visually but acoustically.

On the floor, there is a pattern that represents the transatlantic slave trade and this journey that was made by our ancestors from the continent of Africa to America.

That's on the floor.

On the walls is a graphic design that includes elements from African culture all the way through the civil rights era.

You'll see pictures of Dr. James Sistrunk, Eula Johnson, and the wade-ins that desegregated Fort Lauderdale Beach and the lyrics to the Negro National Anthem, "Lift Every Voice and Sing."

On the second floor, we have stacks in adult information services and youth services.

In youth services, there is a real focus on diverse literature that features characters protagonist of color, which is really important for the self-esteem and development of young Black children.

And we do some excellent programming out of our youth services division.

But the real gem, what makes us special, what makes us a flagship within the library division is our archives.

We have a special vault that is climate-controlled and we have over a million items from rare books to manuscripts to art that we keep and preserved here on site.

It's important for us to make sure that we're telling stories that don't just start in slavery.

We want people to have a connection to the African continent.

Part of the tragedy of the transatlantic slave trade is that many African Americans don't know exactly where they came from, what region.

So we tend to embrace all of it and try to uplift as much as we can.

Since October, we have offered Black history classes one Saturday a month here in the building.

And I can just tell you it's been a tremendous response from the community.

So much so that we recently announced that we are going to start adult cohorts.

There are people who got no Black history or bad Black history when they were going through school.

They wanna be a part of the conversation and it makes sense if we are gonna have the type of substantial change that we need, we all have to start number one with a basic set of facts.

You can teach the kids, but the adults need to have the same information as well.

And so if there's any indicator of the power of this history, it's been the parents who have sat in the classes with the students and their attention, their amazement, their questions are really just an indicator of the gaps in knowledge that we have or the misunderstanding, the things that we haven't shared and talked about.

And for me that is a really important part of how we build the future, build a better future, an inclusive future, an honest future is starting with basic facts of history.

What people of African descent have had to contend with since coming to these shores has been combating negative racial stereotypes.

And I think the only way that we can ever build a future where there is equal, truly equal opportunity for everyone is if we interrogate what got us to this point, if we understand the roots of racial disparity, we understand the structures that maintained it over the years, but more importantly how people survived it.

What were some of the survival mechanisms that they put in place to keep their communities intact?

That's the real work and that is what we need to continue to celebrate and to pass down.

I find this place to be a place of empowerment, knowledge of self, knowing the story of your people, what it took for them to survive.

The creativity, the determination, the grit, the ingenuity, the beauty, all of it are part of the stories that we tell and keep here at AARLCC.

But we definitely want people to understand that this is not just for people of African descent.

Certainly we do prioritize those stories, but this is something for everyone and we all need to know about each other if we're ever going to prevent the type of marginalization and stereotyping that has happened before, we have to have people who are willing to lean in, who are willing to come out.

This is here for them to enjoy as well and we welcome that.