Arts&Living

“Ancestral Bridges”: Exploring BIPOC History in Amherst

Noor Rahman ’25 Managing Arts & Living Editor

On Thursday, Feb. 9, Frost Library hosted a reception in honor of the opening of “Ancestral Bridges,” an exhibit featuring photographs and artifacts representing the lives of Black and Afro-Indigenous residents of the town of Amherst in the 18th through 20th centuries, some of whom were employed by the college.

The exhibit, which will be on display through summer 2023, is the product of a collaboration between Amherst College and the Ancestral Bridges Foundation, a local nonprofit organization that uplifts Black and Afro-Indigenous arts, history, and culture in Western Massachusetts.

The individuals featured are also ancestors of Ancestral Bridges Founder Anika Lopes, who curated the exhibit. At the opening reception, Lopes noted that the collection seeks to celebrate the buried histories, not only of her family, but of all BIPOC residents of Amherst, “who gave so much to the town that they loved, but did not love them back.”

While the exhibit pays tribute to the overlooked achievements and contributions of the Black and Afro-Indigenous members of the Amherst community, it also serves as a record of the persecution they endured. Sarah Barr, the advisor to the provost on campus initiatives and director for community engagement, who helped put the exhibit together, highlighted “the ways in which her family story really fits into a broader story about what happened in the United States at the time.”

One photograph depicts Perry

Roberts, an employee of the college who was born into slavery and later emancipated, standing in front of Porter House. The exhibition also features a set of Amherst College dishware from Lopes’ family collection, decorated with former college mascot Lord Jeffrey Amherst, who encouraged the use of smallpox-infected blankets as a means of warfare against indigenous people, aiming weapons at Native Americans.

But the antique artifacts and black-and-white photographs also tell a more optimistic story: a narrative of surviving and forging paths forward in the face of horrifying oppression and humiliation. Aging family photos depict three generations of the family in their residence on Snell Street. A display case contains an engraved ivory cane that belonged to Gil Roberts, an acclaimed jazz musician. The cane was gifted to Roberts by King Farouk of Egypt after he performed in his court.

At the opening reception, faculty, staff, and community members packed into the second floor of Frost. It was a unique and diverse gathering, with faculty from the Five Colleges, elderly residents from across Western Massachusetts, and local politicians present. But the most notable attendees were Lopes’ family members: her mother Debora Bridges and her great-aunt Edythe Harris (née Roberts), affectionately known as “Aunt Edie.”

As the guests started to file in, Roberts escorted the 95-year-old aunt around the hallway where the photographs were displayed. Harris excitedly pointed out herself in the family photos, as well as her parents and her grandfather. The emotion of the moment was tangible to those around them — for me, witnessing their emotional response to their family mementos was just as important as seeing the exhibit itself.

The event kicked off with Dr. Shirley Jackson Whitaker, a film producer and friend of Lopes, delivering a beautiful vocal rendition of “Lord Remember Me.” Her rich voice conveyed both the sorrow of a painful history and the joy of a triumphant moment for the community.

Harris, who worked as an educator in the Amherst public school system, shared her experiences growing up during the Great Depression. She recalled stopping by the college’s fraternity kitchens, where her father and uncles were employed, to get cookies on the walk home from school as a young child.

“There is a very important message to be seen here in the photos,” Harris said. “And that is [that] people of color have been an integral part here in Amherst, Massachusetts, for many, many years.”

Lopes’ mother, Roberts, also shared a story from 1961, when she was a fourth grader in the Amherst school system. “We were doing our social studies lesson,” she recalled, “and my teacher asked me, ‘You’re a little colored girl, what do you think it was like to be a slave?’ I think that was the first time I’ve ever felt singled out.”

Lopes later told The Student how much the event meant to her personally: “I was just at a loss for words. I felt very emotional in a way that I hadn’t expected.” The reception continued long after the conclusion of the formal programming; a sense of true community enveloped the room, as old friends embraced one another and new connections were forged.

Both Lopes and Barr emphasized their hope that this exhibit would be the beginning of a meaningful partnership between the college and the Ancestral Bridges Foundation. Lopes highlighted her hope “that people will leave in the look at [the exhibit] and be curious and question how they can be involved. There are so many stories within the stories that need to be discovered.”

“Students, faculty, staff [and] community members all have an opportunity to get involved in the project — of shared memory and of history and telling stories,” said Barr, echoing Lopes’ sentiment. “It really was meant to sort of create an invitation for people to get involved.”

Barr and Lopes, the co-organizers of the exhibit, felt that the collection was an important way to bring to light the shared history of Amherst College and the BIPOC residents of the town of Amherst. Lopes remarked that “there's no time period, unless we're talking about when we predated the college, that there was not the connection with Amherst College in some way.”

“I think it helps us know our own history in very important and powerful ways because I think we don’t often talk about the staff experience at Amherst College,” remarked Barr. She hopes that this exhibit and this nascent partnership with the Ancestral Bridges Foundation can be the beginning of the student body becoming more integrated with the town. “Maybe what Ancestral Bridges offers us is an opportunity to get to know each other better,” she said.

Lopes emphasized the importance of the celebratory aspect of the exhibit. She would like for BIPOC history to involve “learning more about your history than just being a slave or genocide.” She continued, “We’re not used to hearing these types of stories.”

Lopes and Barr are both enthusiastic about the potential of the exhibit to help us understand racial and economic stratification in the present day. Barr personally felt that she gained a greater understanding of how historical injustices impacted BIPOC families: “It’s very real and present, it’s not like some far off historical thing. It’s a thing that had an impact on that family.”

In the same vein, Lopes wrote in her curatorial statement, “I hope these images and stories raise questions, prompt further research, and challenge us all to meet our collective responsibility to build a more just and equitable future.”

She hopes that the exhibit will make people question the idea of Amherst’s racism as a historical narrative, as opposed to a present-day reality: “Where do we go from here? Yes, it’s history, but it isn’t really, in terms of action and how people are living? Is it that far away?”

“We can’t really do much about what happened in the past, but we can certainly move forward,” said Lopes, “It’s really about what action can we take and learn from this and from certain struggles and wrongdoing, and turn that into benefits for our future generations.”

Kobe Thompson ’24 Staff Writer

“...so I sent him a screenshot of the Fantano tweet and I said, ‘Fuck you, look at me!’” Gregory R. Smith III ’25E is an outspokenly confident musician with many achievements under his belt. I had the opportunity to speak with Smith about the “Context” of his guitar-playing, the “Creation” of his live and recorded performances, and how he sees himself on the “Come Up,” as he gains more appreciation and recognition both online and on stage.

“Suga Fingaz,” “Street Whisperer,” “He Who Stalks the Night and Devoureth Whole,” “Black Pinocchio,” or just “Greg,” — Smith’s choice of name reflects his personal mix of humor, creativity, and defiance, traits that are emblematic of his music. “I think aliases are hilarious. Who’s going to tell me I can’t [have them]?”

Smith particularly loves the name “Suga Fingaz,” a suggestion that came from an Instagram poll nearly a year ago. The name sits alongside Smith’s real name on his account, and has emblazoned posters and announcements for the various live performances he’s done.

A multi-instrumentalist, Smith said that his first love was the guitar. “My second semester of freshman year of high school I was dating a girl and she played the guitar. I was like, ‘Damn, I’m trying to impress shawty.’” An interest that outlived his relationship, Smith’s motivation to play guitar eventually changed, from wanting to be better than his sister at the guitar, to wanting to make music just for the sake of it.

“At 16 I wrote my first song, it was awful. I’m not even gonna tell you the name of it, but it’s out there.” Regardless, the song motivated Smith to play more and more, leading to songs he described as “Art Pop… Dream Pop… Bedroom Pop kinda stuff.” Greg’s musical progression was accompanied by consistent, four-hour-a-day practice sessions on the guitar and lessons that were available to him at the School of the Arts in Tacoma, Washington.

“I took a really good theory class. I took audio recording, that’s how I learned how to mix as an engineer and set up mics. Then I took classical guitar which is also really important because it’s good for [technique].”

And the extra time afforded to Smith during the Covid-19 pandemic gave him the opportunity to learn other instruments, such as the bass guitar and drums, and to master the art of mixing music. Smith admits that his virtuosity across multiple instruments was born out of impatience. “I don’t like doing everything myself. But I’m a very impatient person so I don’t want to wait for people to get shit back to me.”

Smith had more to say on his repertoire of self-taught instrumentation. “I’m always a guitarist, I will always have the most fun playing the guitar. Except sometimes I really like playing the drums and recently I got a killer bass … Once you know one [instrument], you kind of know them all.” He attributes his ability to learn to instruments to the patterns present in music, translating sounds between instruments, how the guitar voices a lick versus the bass. Listening, Smith notes, is also an important part of learning how to play. He explained his influences, which starts with “A lot of Neo-Soul. I was born in Philly in 2002, and my parents were … going around listening to Erykah Badu, Jill Scott — concerts and all that.” Smith’s soulful playing, with emotional and at times mournful singing, highlights these inspirations. Through a strong emphasis on rhythm and a personal exploration of the Black struggle, Smith mixes R&B, soul, and funk in his music, following his stylistic admiration of artists and bands like Funkadelic, Jimi Hendrix, D’Angelo, and Lianne La Havas.

Smith’s style of music contains touches of all these genres but is still a far cry from sounding truly similar to these artists. “I suppose I didn’t strive to be unique, I suppose I ended up being unique. It’s not like I want to go around playing guitar like oth- er people. But I wasn’t trying to play like myself, I was just trying to play the guitar and I knew how because I taught myself,” he said. “I played by myself in my room for six years so it was nobody’s style, but the way that I came up with that works for me.”

Speaking from personal experience, Smith’s playing style is unorthodox, using hand positions and finger techniques that the average guitar instructor might frown upon. But Smith more than makes up for it with the inventiveness of his unique approach to the guitar. Since his days in his childhood bedroom, Smith said, his style has developed in unexpected ways. “I went from, in 2018, emo music, which is really funny, to really laid back R&B with really big vocal stacks. Weirder harmony, crazier guitar solos, wider mixes, as well as a little more variance in song structure and funkier basslines. Crazier drums, if I had to guess,” he said. “If I had to describe my style it would be moody and spacious.”

Songwriting is an integral part of Smith’s music, which provides him another avenue of expression. While capable of harnessing emotion with his stringed instruments, the ability to explicitly explore topics through lyrics is a muscle he enjoys flexing. “I like writing and I like the strength of language. I like figurative language, and for a while I was a big philosophy guy, a big poetry guy,” he said.

While Smith does get creative with his songwriting, he says “all of it is real.” It comes from a place deep inside him, experiences and emotions that are sincere regardless of an inevitable shuffling-around of events.

Smith also professes to have a predilection for live performances.

“When I’m outside busking, I just play like I would play at home, but I get to turn my amp up louder.” Smith’s playing was a common sight on campus, in and around whatever dorm he’s living in. He also busks as a side hustle when he is back home in Seattle.

In the past few months, Smith has received a surge of support and appreciation for his work. He had the chance to play on stage with R.A.P. Ferreira (FKA Milo), an alt hip hop artist who is a personal favorite of both Smith and myself.

Smith was pleased to have secured a follow from the artist on Instagram, prompted by a positive review in a retweet from popular music reviewer Anthony Fantano.

“I was chilling in my room and I looked at my phone and I was like, ‘No way!’ But the Milo-follow happened because I’m a little asshole,” he said. “I DM’d [Milo] before the Fantano tweet, but he didn’t respond — but he read it, because he’s reachable. So I sent him the screenshot of the

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