Opinion: Columbus' Aminah Robinson filled 'blank pages' with joys, horrors experienced by African Americans

Before I met Aminah Brenda Lynn Robinson in the late 1980s, I had never heard of the Blackberry Patch, the impoverished area that preceded Poindexter Village and that had been settled by many who had left the Jim Crow South.

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I also did not know about Poindexter Village, one of the first federally funded apartment complexes in the country, or Granville T. Woods, an African American mechanical and electric engineer who held more than 60 patents related to safety improvements in trains and streetcars.

During years of having the privilege of sharing a deep and warm relationship with Robinson and, since her death in 2015, examining the art and journals that she left to the Columbus Museum of Art, I continue to learn, understand and appreciate her intention: “to fill the blank pages of American history.”

From the time she was very young, Brenda Lynn absorbed the stories of her elders.

She received the name “Aminah” from a holy man in Egypt in 1979 and legally appended it to her given name.

Her mother’s oldest brother, Alvin Zimmerman, pointed out to her that the history most Americans know was written and edited by white men.

The blank pages that need to be filled in, she strongly believed, were the multifaceted stories of people of color, and especially of Black women.

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Early work she did as a schoolgirl reflects her surroundings in Poindexter Village, where she lived for the first 17 years of her life, and the bustling thoroughfares of Mount Vernon Avenue and Long Street, the adjacent commercial areas.

Her older and younger sisters became frequent subjects in drawings, watercolors and oil paint because she wrote, “they were always available and I didn’t have to pay or flatter them.”

Later, when she worked in the history/geography department of the public library, she foraged through historic maps, old newspapers on microfiche and city directories that documented the streets of Columbus.

Embracing the African concept of Sankofa — the requirement to understand and learn from the past — she researched African and African American history, recording her findings in more than 150 journals and in drawings, watercolors, rag paintings, sculpture and monumental tapestries she called RagGonNons.

Making the invisible visible, she revealed a world that most people — regardless of race — know little about.

She was inspired by the rich art and culture of Africa and also committed to documenting the horrors of those who were kidnapped, forced to endure the Middle Passage and enslaved in the Americas.

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In series such as Dad’s Journey; Themba: A Life of Grace and Hope; and Presidential Suite, she captured the resilience and triumphs of Black people through the darkest of times. 

While examining any individual drawing, rag painting or sculpture by Robinson is revealing to viewers, those who consider the arc of her work critically, have the opportunity to reconstruct their knowledge by using her art and writing to fill in missing gaps.

In addition to being a moving, personal perspective, Robinson’s work is of great importance because it provides a path to a more inclusive and honest understanding of history, culture and race.

Note: "Raggin’ On: The Art of Aminah Brenda Lynn Robinson’s House and Journals" is on view at Columbus Museum of Art, 480 E. Broad St., Columbus, through Oct. 3.

Carole M. Genshaft is curator-at-large at the Columbus Museum of Art. She began her relationship with Aminah Robinson in the late 1980s.