When We First Met

Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University's Black Archives building is, from my experience, one of the most educational and informational black history museums that I have toured. The Black Archives building is one of the first black history museums created. It sits 3 stories high and contains so much of our past history not only about the alumni's, past presidents, and founders of FAMU, but also about the history back when slavery was all blacks knew.

The first room that I was introduced to, which was located on the first floor, was the Solute to Women room. The room was dedicated to the alumni that were, at that time, all women and also any successful women who helped to fund FAMU or contributed in anyway. Also in the first room we were shown the furniture that was donated to Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University from many of the successful alumni that were wealthy and black. The first room also shows us how students used to protest back then to get whatever they wanted to be done accomplished. They were known as the foot soldiers because they would march from FAMU all the way to downtown so that they could protest and be heard. Plenty of times they were hosed down, beaten, and gotten substances sprayed in their eyes in order to seize the protest, but our FAMU soldiers wouldn't let that stop them.

On the first floor in FAMU's Black Archives building there was also a FAMU Sport Room. This housed all the great history of those students that participated in FAMU's sports.

Players such as Robert Bull, Andre D, Clemin J, Alonzo G, and Tommy Lee all have their history housed in this building not to mention many of the great coaches that paved the way. It was said that due to the fact that blacks or dominant in sports FAMU's sports team was not known to loose. This was until the white colleges began to offer full ride scholarships as a bribe so that they could get the black athletes to play for their schools.

There are other rooms such as the presidential room that houses all history of the past presidents of FAMU in chronological order providing viewers with the history of the changes these presidents brought to the table in order to improve the university. There is also a black church room which in this civil rights movement played a big role. This is so because in order for the blacks to have private meetings without being interrupted they would meet in the church, sadly that was the only places blacks felt safe. The furniture in the room was the exact furniture donated from a black church. Another room that FAMU's Black Archives building houses is the derogatory room. This room is exactly what is sounds like. It was a room to show how back in the day blacks were degraded with such ugly and hideous images. They were portrayed in a very dark color, rugged hair, and always eating watermelons. The watermelon image came about because in the slave field they were caught

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