Free Library exhibit highlights “Philadelphia’s Black Dreamkeepers”

PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — The Philadelphia Free Library will be extending its display celebrating Black educators through the end of the year.

The Teaching Freedom Display is showcasing Philadelphia’s Black Dreamkeepers in an exhibit at the Parkway Central Library, honoring 50 years of Black educators from 1976 to 2026.

Dr. Guy Sims, the Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer at the Free Library of Philadelphia, says, “It’s a great opportunity for people to come by and see how people took their educational practices and brought alternatives to the people of Philadelphia.”

Sims comes from a family of educators: his father was a professor and administrator at Montgomery County Community College, and his mother was a Philadelphia school teacher who last taught at Frederick Douglass Elementary in North Philadelphia.

Sims’ mother taught in the kind of classroom highlighted by the Black Dreamkeepers exhibit, modeled after the one-room schoolhouse, and which catered to multiple age groups from one community.

“You might have had an older person who maybe… didn’t excel or didn’t progress through,” Sims explained. “It was their opportunity… to be a part of a school and get the level of education that they needed before they could move on to something else.”

Through photos and audiovisual displays, the exhibit showcases a number of different schools like this in Philadelphia.

The goal of these schools, Sims said, was, “To build a cultural consciousness… in how we’re teaching our children beyond the ABCs and one-two-threes, but to build their character, to build their cultural content.”

Sims hopes that visitors’ takeaway from the exhibit will inspire people to come up with new paths to an education that supplements the basics with culture and character.

Philadelphia’s Black Dreamkeepers exhibit will be on display in the West Gallery of the Parkway Central Library at 1901 Vine Street from now until Dec. 31.