Author Archives: maford

The Colored Museum: An Ethnographic Look at the Black Kids at Vassar Sitting Together

In my ethnographic video production for this research project, I studied the Black student community at Vassar and, by extension and focus, the Ebony Theatre Ensemble’s 2014 production of “The Colored Museum”, the first all-Black production at Vassar in over a decade. My purview is to contextualize and visualize the Black Vassar student community. The basic tenet question is that posed by Beverly Daniel Tatum, who asks with her book, “Why are all the Black kids sitting together in the cafeteria?” I further ask what it means to be a Black Vassar student, how one navigates the Vassar campus as a Black student, how the production of the play might change those dynamics, what the play brings/means to the Black Vassar student community, and how being a senior soon to leave this space might complicate or influence that experience.