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Donald Hyman — prospector, panning for the gold of forgotten history
Donald Hyman brings history to life by portraying people from the past.
Albany hotelier Adam Black Jr.; James Matthews, the state’s first African-American judge; and James Dickson, a New Scotland native and general manager for the Slingerland family, will be reborn on Oct. 5 for those attending the New Scotland Historical Association meeting.
“They come back to me like I’m listening to lyrics in a song,” says Hyman in this week’s podcast.
Hyman researches the often-forgotten men he portrays both online and through original documents like letters and church records. “I try to find in their own words things they would say,” he says.
He likens it to being a coffee or wine taster — finding the subtle differences, the idiosyncrasies that distinguish one from another.
Hyman concludes of these 19th-Century African Americans, “If the door were open, they would definitely go through it.”
Hyman, who grew up in Brooklyn, has a particular fondness for Harlem and its rich history. He studied fashion design at Parsons, focusing on styles during the Jazz Age of the Roaring Twenties, and on the rock-and-roll era of the 1950s.
A world traveler, Hyman embraces all of history. Travel, he says, “keeps you from being brainwashed.”
He has written plays for the State Museum and portrayed enslaved people at the Schuyler Mansion.
Hyman says of the Capital Region, “I just stumbled upon it, like a gold mine.”
When he first arrived in Albany, Mary Liz and Paul Stewart, who have restored the home of abolitionists Harriet and Stephen Myers for their Underground Railroad Education Center, walked him around the neighborhood and he felt its richness.
Hyman likens what he does now to prospectors who pan for gold, sifting through the debris to find the nuggets.
Rather than celebrating baseball players or rappers, he likes to portray individuals who prevailed and overcame. In Jamaica, Hyman said, they would say of these individuals, “They overstood.”
“It’s not about me,” he concludes of his work. “It’s about their legacy.”
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