BHTNH interns Jubilee Byfield of Durham NH and Terry Robinson of Dover NH, are creating waves. “They’re two examples of developing young power in growing communities of color across the state.”
published in the Portsmouth Herald, July 18, 2019, by Hadley Barndollar
“Duo adds youthful influence to Black Heritage Trail”
PORTSMOUTH — The community stalwarts who have worked tirelessly to tell the story of black history in New Hampshire already have tenacious, strong-willed successors, to whom they’ll pass the torch.
Jubilee Byfield and Terry Robinson, for instance, are the Black Heritage Trail of New Hampshire’s (BHTNH) interns. They’re examples of developing young power in growing communities of color across the state, which remains the third whitest in the country.
Committed to educating on the rich black history and legacy of enslavement specifically in Portsmouth, Byfield and Robinson have been mentored by devoted change-makers such as Valerie Cunningham, Rev. Arthur Hilson, JerriAnne Boggis and Rev. Robert Thompson. The duo is growing the BHTNH’s online profile, expanding programming and designing creative ways to highlight black culture.
Byfield, 23, produces weekly “Juju on the Trail” online episodes, educating on relevant issues and highlighting the trail’s work, while Robinson, 19, a creative soul and fashion designer, is working on his second Black New England Conference fashion show. They’re both former University of New Hampshire students, charting their future course.
Byfield graduated from Portsmouth High School in 2015, where she served as president of the Black Student Union and spent time raising money for the city’s African Burying Ground. She credits Hilson, who died last year, as being one of her greatest mentors and advocates in high school.
It was then she met Cunningham and Boggis, with whom she shared an “instant bond.” Byfield has been involved with the trail the last six years, most recently as its marketing intern.
“This is a very white state, and then we have the Black Heritage Trail, and it’s such a gift we have it in such a white state,” Byfield said. “So many people are thirsting for more education on it.”
Byfield has found being a young person of color in New Hampshire has allowed her to develop a stronger voice.
“People come up to me and say, ‘We’ve been following you, thank you for doing all of the work you’ve been doing,’” she said. “I have such a voice here.”
She releases a new episode of “Juju on the Trail” each Friday on Instagram and Facebook. She probes thought-provoking facts of New Hampshire black history and highlights current events. In recent episodes, she interviewed Gov. Chris Sununu and state Sen. Melanie Levesque after the bill signing that made Juneteenth an official state holiday. She’s also interviewed Jordan Thompson, a former candidate for the House of Representatives, who discussed being queer and black in the Granite State.
“It’s hard to be in a state like this and knowing all of the information you know when you’re working for a foundation that is all about black history,” Byfield said. “But what I think is so special about that is there are so many white people who want to listen, who want to hear, who want to change. That’s what we’re here for, to open people’s minds.”
Byfield, who lives in Durham, is working to establish after-school programming for children to learn about black history in New Hampshire, something she feels is deeply lacking.
“They teach just Civil War, slavery and that’s it,” Byfield said, noting Portsmouth’s deep history of enslaved people should be highlighted locally and across the state. “It’s not just black history, it’s all of our history and it’s so censored. It’s institutional racism at its core when we just hide our history.”
Robinson, who moved to New Hampshire within the last year, runs his own fashion company called House of Testament. Last fall, he organized the first ever fashion show at the Black New England Conference at UNH. The show focused on Afro-futuristic themes, and this year, it will mirror the conference’s overall theme; “Black Ink: African-American News from Slave Songs to Social Media.”
“My work here is about balancing out the history with the culture,” Robinson said. “I feel like my personal mission here is to build a platform for others to create because that’s what JerriAnne (Boggis) did for me.”
For one of the pinnacle gowns of last year’s fashion show, Robinson traveled to the same fields in Mississippi where his father and grandmother picked cotton, and crafted a crown of the same cotton.
“My mission isn’t coming into this space for my own gains, it’s creating a platform for after I leave,” he said. “My specific reason for putting on these shows is some kid is going to come to the show and say, ‘I want to do this, this guy created this space here, let me create spaces wherever that diversity isn’t.’”
For this year’s fashion show at Southern New Hampshire University in Manchester Oct. 25-26, Robinson is getting help from Dover High School students. One student is designing his own footwear.
To portray the “black ink” theme, Robinson plans for his designs to be covered in words, representing everything from Negro spirituals to the Black Panthers to “black Twitter.” He also plans to draw directly from New Hampshire’s history, where George Washington’s runaway slave Ona Judge was twice interviewed by abolitionist newspapers in the mid-1840s, “disrupting the system,” Robinson said.
Robinson, who lives in Dover, hopes to soon attend art school in Montreal.
When the BHTNH moved into its new home base at the historic house at 222 Court St. earlier this year, Robinson designed the T-shirts currently on sale in its gift shop. They read “history in progress,” something Robinson and Byfield find powerful.
“I look at Valerie and JerriAnne, two powerhouses that cannot be reckoned with,” Byfield said. “These people are going to be in history, and it’s right now. This is history in progress.”
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