The Esther M. Lee African-American Heritage Center got a good introduction to the public Feb.27 at the Kemerer Museum of Decorative Arts on New Street in Bethlehem.

About 100 attendees at the afternoon reception and fundraiser packed the lower floor of the museum. They saw some of the many artifacts that document Bethlehem’s black diaspora.

The Esther M. Lee African-American Heritage Center has grown out of Founding Director Rayah Levy’s efforts to document the history of Black African-Americans in Bethlehem from the earliest days.

With the assistance of her husband and videographer Dr. Shlomo Levy, she has been, over the last two years, interviewing black residents of Bethlehem and others who have traveled back to Bethlehem to be interviewed. Having documented, recorded and videoed their stories, individual by individual, Levy also took digital pictures and scans of photographs, newspaper articles, charity event programs, political mementos and the other items people have kept in their scrapbooks and attic trunks.

Levy was assisted in preparing for the exhibit by Elizabeth Saraceno and by Kemerer Museum of Decorative Arts’ Director of Marketing, Collections and Programming Lindsey Jancay.

In the collection so far, are documents, photographs and stories that are the warp and weft that make the French Bayeux-like tapestry of how enslaved people in Bethlehem, over time, became the complex and interconnected network of the diaspora.

Photographs and documents also tell of families coming from the Jim Crow South Carolina to the Jim Crow Bethlehem.

“Jim Crow was different in Bethlehem,” said Levy in an interview. “There weren’t the signs [for example, ‘Colored Only’ signs], but people knew where they weren’t allowed to go.”

The pictures and documents and oral histories paint a vivid picture of the African-Americans of the city. One oral history tells of how a little black girl brought cupcakes to school for her classmates, only to see a teacher refuse to let the other children eat them. This oral history also tells how that same little girl earned a doctorate and came back to teach in that same school district.

The documents include the story of a Bethlehem man, Bert Tarboro Jr., who started Bethlehem’s first all-black baseball team, the Bethlehem Giants, in 1961.

Among the stories collected by Levy is the story of a Black Bethlehem Steel worker whose continuing sense of public service prompted the City of Bethlehem to name a park, Enix Park, after him. It is located at the intersection of Pawnee and Mohican streets in Bethlehem:

Most striking of the images mounted on the museum’s wall for the occasion of the fundraiser were the ones that showed the joys of everyday life in the Black community here in Bethlehem.

Pictures of weddings, pictures of friends relaxing, pictures of women outside their homes posing for snapshots taken by friends and a picture of young girl in her dance costume.

The guest of honor at the event was Esther Lee, who was accompanied by her daughter, Jessica Lee. Esther Lee is currently the president of the Bethlehem Chapter of the NAACP and is a veteran leader in Bethlehem’s civil rights movement out of the Jim Crow era.

Rayah Levy, the founding director of the Esther M. Lee African-American Heritage Center is herself a dynamo whose lyrical accent (she is an “Island Girl” who was born in St. Vincent and the Grenadine and raised in Brooklyn, N. Y.) seems perfect for her poetic style of speech. She enraptures her audience with descriptions of the work she has accomplished to date and inspires people to participate, to help in whatever way they can.

Lee was regally dressed in purple for the occasion and wore a hat, a trademark by which people instantly recognize her. Age has forced her to sit in a wheelchair, but it took on the aspect of a royal throne as guests queued up to greet her, offering congratulations and well wishes.

Lee shared some of her perspective. She described what it was like to be a Black woman working in a white-dominated world in the 1950s and 1960s.

Among the guests attending the event were Dr. Donald A. Outing, Lehigh University’s vice president for equity and community, and Dr. Seth Moglan, a professor of English at Lehigh University.

Center city residents Dr. Steve and Mrs. Barbara Diamond attended, as did retired educator Dr. Wandalyn Enix, recently appointed member of Bethlehem City Council.

Magisterial District Judge Nick Englesson and his wife, former Bethlehem City Councilwoman Olga Negrón, came to support the project and to honor Lee.

Rev. Clinton Bryant, formerly with the U. S. Army’s 82nd Airborne Division, attended. His friend, U. S. Marine Corps veteran Ronald Kennedy from Jersey City, N.J., also attended.

Regina Kochmaruk attended as did state Rep. Steve Samuelson. Lehigh University student Nahjian Miller and retired Bethlehem Area School District educator Tomacene Nickens also attended.

The exhibit at the Kemerer Museum of Decorative Arts ran through March 25.