The “Breaking Uncommon Ground on the Delaware River” is a multi-year project expected to last four to five years, according to a press release. As Essence stated, The new project is an extension of the “Tides of Freedom: The African Presence on the Delaware River” flagship exhibition, introduced in May 2013, which focuses on “the concept of freedom through the lens of the African experience along the Delaware River.” Since its debut, the presentation has been a staple for the maritime museum, which is dedicated to sharing and keeping the historic stories of the Black community alive.

“I believe that the only limit to our success with this project is time; with every obituary that appears in the newspaper, the stories of the African-American community in the last quarter of the 20th-century are lost forever,” Independence Seaport Museum’s CEO and president Peter S. Seibert said in the same press release.

“This is why developing this oral history project has been so exciting and incredibly important for the ISM,” he added. “Collecting and preserving the stories of this community will be the first and most critical step, and then returning those stories to the community through a number of different avenues, including as part of a substantial expansion of our permanent exhibition, Tides of Freedom.”

The immersive experience will feature “oral histories from African-American Philadelphians who lived and worked along the Delaware River in the mid to late 20th and 21st centuries.” Guests of the museum will be able to listen to men and women from that era share their perspectives on how the construction of I-95, the longest north-south interstate in the U.S., forced them to uproot their lives.

Paul D. Best, who serves as an educator at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, the Penn Museum, is spearheading the new exhibit. He also has ties to the City of Brotherly Love’s Black community.

“Through Breaking Uncommon Ground, we are helping change the narrative of this complex relationship of Blacks to the Delaware River,” he said per the press release. “Rather than appropriate their lived experience, ISM is taking the uncommon approach to museum exhibitions by including the voices of the community in the collection, curation, and presentation of these stories to the world.”

He continued, “By creating a physical, social, and emotional space for the community to tell and access these stories, this project is a removal of a gate that has separated many museums from the community and therefore is an act of social justice.”

This exhibit was made possible through the sponsorship and support of The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage and the William Penn Foundation.