The Buddy Holly Center to Host Highways and Borders
Highways & Borders: 100 Years of Jim Crow is a group art exhibition of artworks by Jarys Boyd, Danielle Demetria East and Danna Simone. This exhibition explores the effects of Jim Crow laws in Lubbock, Texas, and these laws actively affect our community. The Jim Crow laws were state and local laws introduced in the Southern United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries that enforced racial segregation, “Jim Crow” being a pejorative term for an African-American. Such laws remained in force until the 1960s.
This exhibition highlights the 100-year-old law, Lubbock Ordinance 223 of 1923 (March 8th), which states “no persons of negro blood shall reside past Ave C” and the race relations bottled up in the community through present-day segregation. This exhibition highlights the stifling effects of a city known as the “friendliest place in America” and the “Best place to live” that actively displays some parts of the town as growing and some as facing discrimination, dilapidation, and dwindling resources. The artworks in this exhibition explore how skin color and economic status create borders like the highways of Interstate -27 and the Marsha Sharp Freeway in Lubbock. The works in this gallery explore how disconnected the historically Black and Latinx neighborhoods are from the entirety of this municipality.
Highways and Borders opens April 1, 2023, in the Fine Arts Gallery and runs through May 22.
The Buddy Holly Center is located at 1801 Crickets Ave. For more information about this exhibit or other events, please call (806) 775-3560 or visit www.buddyhollycenter.org.
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