This exhibition explores the fraught, circuitous and unfinished course of emancipation over the nineteenth century in Cuba and the United States. People — enslaved individuals and outside observers, survivors and resistors, and activists and conspirators — made and unmade emancipation, a process that remains unfinished and unrealized. Exhibit Tours Tours of the exhibit may be arranged for classes and other groups by contacting Rachel Bohlmann at (574) 631-1575 or Bohlmann.2@nd.edu. Additional curator-led tours are open to the public at noon on the following Fridays:Sept. 1 Sept. 15 Sept. 22 Oct. 13 Oct. 27 Nov. 17This exhibit is curated by Rachel Bohlmann, American History Librarian and Curator, and Erika Hosselkus, Latin American Studies Curator and Associate University Librarian. This and other exhibits within the Hesburgh Libraries are generously supported by the McBrien Special Collections Endowment. All exhibits are free and open to the public during business hours. Open to undergraduates, graduate students, postdocs, faculty, staff, the  public, alumni and friends.

From its origins on campus in the late nineteenth century, football at Historically Black Colleges and Universities has held a central place in the African American sporting experience, in the landscape of Black higher education, and in the broader African American community. During the era of Jim Crow segregation, the vast majority of African American college students and student athletes attended HBCUs. Over the first half of the twentieth century, many of the yearly gridiron contests between rival HBCUs developed into highly anticipated annual events that combined football with larger celebrations of African American achievement and excellence. The yearly games brought together members of the African American community and came to include a wide range of associated events including dances, parades, musical shows, fundraising drives, and other festivities. We are pleased to exhibit a selection of sources from the Joyce Sports Research Collection that preserve the history of HBCU football. The programs, media guides, ephemera, guidebooks, and other printed material on display document the athletic accomplishments, the celebrations, the spectacle, and the community-building that accompany football at Historically Black Colleges and Universities. This exhibit is curated by Greg Bond, curator of the Joyce Sports Research Collection and the Sports Subject Specialist for Hesburgh Libraries. This and other exhibits within the Hesburgh Libraries are generously supported by the McBrien Special Collections Endowment. All exhibits are free and open to the public during business hours. Open to undergraduates, graduate students, postdocs, faculty, staff, the public, alumni and friends.

The Congregation of Holy Cross, Midwest Province Archives, holds a large collection relating to Brother Columba O’Neill, C.S.C. (1848-1923), dating from 1895 to 1997. This includes thousands of letters written to Brother Columba, who was known as the Miracle Man of Notre Dame and the Divine Healer. John O’Neill was born in Mackeysburg, Pennsylvania in 1848 and entered the Congregation of Holy Cross in 1874. For the next 42 years, he labored in the humble capacity of a cobbler, repairing shoes and fabricating special shoes for people with foot and ankle problems. Brother Columba had a remarkable devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary and a greater love of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Around 1900, he began making Sacred Heart badges (30,000 of them). Many were given to students when they came to pick up their shoes. He told them to pray a novena, say five times a day, for nine days (or more, if not cured), “Sacred Heart of Jesus cure me!” As early as 1907, reports of many “miracles” wrought through the prayers of Br. Columba began arriving at Notre Dame. For years after his death in 1923, letters from South Bend and all over the world continued to arrive at Notre Dame. Of more than 10,000 letters in the collection, hundreds thank Brother Columba for cures, from chronic headaches to blindness. For 30 years after his death, people came daily to visit his grave on the Notre Dame campus. Brother Columba died on November 20, 1923, in the Community House — now Columba Hall — from complications related to the Spanish flu. Br. Isidore Alderton wrote, “News of his death soon spread to the people of South Bend, and dozens of members of the community, sisters and strangers were lining up to pass before his casket. For the past two days and nights the parlor in the Community House has become a veritable shrine.” Items on display in the spotlight exhibit are on loan from the Archives of the Congregation of the Holy Cross. This exhibit is co-curated by Brother Philip Smith, C.S.C., Archivist, Midwest Province, Congregation of Holy Cross, and Aedín Clements, Irish Studies Librarian. This and other exhibits within the Hesburgh Libraries are generously supported by the McBrien Special Collections Endowment. All exhibits are free and open to the public during business hours. Open to undergraduates, graduate students, faculty, staff, postdocs, public, alumni and friends.