90-year old Elizabeth Meaders of Staten Island has one of the most interesting and extensive historic collections of African American items. The more than 20-thousand item Meaders Collection is up for auction as ONE LOT through Guernsey's auction house on March 15.
Meaders, a former New York City high school teacher, joined WBGO Journal host Doug Doyle to talk about the auction and what how she designed the history collection as a patriotic healing and teaching instrument.
"African American history has never been covered in school curriculums nationwide and just as an act of patriotism, we are owed the right to know the true history of our country. And in the case of African Americans, we were egregiously left out of the books, almost like we weren't here."
The collection is divided into categories, including the Scourge of Slavery, the Struggle for Civil Rights, Blacks in the Military, in Sports, in the Arts and Entertainment, and Legendary Black Leaders.
"The one that is the most important is the military collection because in any country you truly earn your citizenship by defending your country, so that military involvement is like the ultimate price you pay for the right to be a citizen. So in the case of African Americans, we have such a unique historical contribution and it is sort of glossed over. And yet in so many of the wars, we kind of delivered the knockout punch. We weren't brought into the war until we were critically needed. When the country is on the verge of winning the war, you are desperate for anything that's going to change the tide. In a lot cases, we were the tide changers. Everything about the military warms my soul and it kind of angers me too. We never got credit for the unique role we played in America."
Meaders hopes her beloved collection will find a home at a university or become an instant museum. She has offered to accompany the collection, assisting its new owner in navigating through the many artifacts. Guernsey's, known by many for its representation of the Rosa Parks Archive, says it's honored to be presenting this important body of material.
The Meaders Collection includes rare medals awarded to Revolutionary and Civil War soldiers, the hateful robes of the Ku Klux Klan, baseball legend Satchel Paige's rocking chairs and posters from Harlem's Apollo Theater.
The joy of collecting for Elizabeth began while her admiration grew for the man who broke Major League Baseball's color barrier with the Brooklyn Dodgers.
"When you're a teenager you have crushes and generally you can put those crushes on anybody that's a celebrity cause you get a lot of information about them. Everything about Jackie Robinson made me smile. I loved the fact that as a ballplayer, everyday he was a surprise. The very idea of someone stealing home, that's practically never been done. Everything he did was over the top. I was just a fan to the max. I started making scrap books and buying magazines, anything that was inexpensive and anything that would normally be thrown away. Yesterday's newspapers would still have a whole section on particularly the Dodgers because they were so popular in New York. I started going to sports shows. When I went to sports shows, I found that dealers had items beyond sports. Little by little I drifted in military because I was so impressed with what we as a people contributed and never got credit for it."
The auction will be held online March 15 at liveauctioneers.com and invaluable.com and conducted with Guernsey's directly via the telephone at 212-794-2280 or written bids. But Meaders invites everyone to go to the Guernsey website to talk a virtual tour of her collection.
"Really it's a history lesson. Everyone can't bid on this collection and everybody can't buy it but if you love or have a curiosity about African American history, here's a once in a lifetime chance to see something. It's not a tribute to me, I'm just the picker, but it is the history of a people and it's very much neglected."
Randy Weinstein, the Director of the W.E.B. DuBois Center says there is no collection either institutional or privately owned that represents the totality of the Black experience in America as comprehensively as the Elizabeth Meaders Collection.
