On display in the Walter C. Langsam Library are two new exhibits created and installed for Black History Month. The first pays tribute to Cincinnati African American Medical Trailblazers – Lucy Oxley and O’dell Owens. The second exhibit displays the enormous loss of life in The Middle Passage.

Cincinnati African American Medical Trailblazers

On display on the 4th floor lobby of Langsam Library, this exhibit features materials from the collections of UC Libraries about Lucy Oxley, MD, the first person of color to receive a medical degree from the UC College of Medicine, and O’dell Owens, renowned physician, former Hamilton County coroner and the first African American to sit on the board of the University of Cincinnati.

The Middle Passage

On the 5th floor lobby of Langsam Library is a large map depicting the Middle Passage, which commonly refers to the experience of enslaved African people as they traveled across the Atlantic Basin to the Americas during the transatlantic slave trade. Illness, insanity, hunger, dehydration, torture, revolt, suicide and ship wreck led to the death of ~1.8 million Africans at sea during their Middle Passage.

The exhibit corresponds with the Uncommon Read of the book “Slavery at Sea: Terror, Sex, and Sickness in the Middle Passage” by Sowande’ M. Mustakeem. A Lunch and Learn with the author is scheduled for Thursday, Feb. 23 from 12:30-2pm in the Donald C. Harrison Health Sciences Library’s Stanley J. Lucas M.D. Boardroom (E005HA). Register to attend the Lunch and Learn.

Both exhibits were curated by UC Libraries faculty and staff: Meshia Anderson, Susan Banoun, Sidney Gao, Tiffany Grant, Gino Pasi and June Taylor-Slaughter. It was designed by UC Libraries communications design co-op Jakob Elliott.