Race in the Rainbow City

Join our panel of experts for a fascinating conversation that will explore how issues relating to race and social inequality were manifested at the Pan-Am Expo. Each panelist will offer valuable insights and provide important context.

Our panel of experts includes:

Melissa N. Brown is Executive Director of The Buffalo History Museum, where she has worked since 1998 and led the institution since 2011. Her scholarship and curatorial work began with the 1901 Pan-American Exposition, conducting extensive research for the Museum’s signature 2001 centennial exhibition—an engagement with the exposition’s history that continues to inform her work today.

Over more than three decades in museums, Melissa has helped transform the Museum into a dynamic center for regional history, expanding public programming, revitalizing its National Historic Landmark building, and advancing more inclusive storytelling that reflects the region’s full and complex past.

She serves on the board of Visit Buffalo Niagara, co-chairs the 5/14 Buffalo Massacre Community Memory Coalition, and contributes to several regional history and civic initiatives. Raised along the Erie Canal, she holds a Master’s in Historical Administration from Eastern Illinois University and a degree in American History from SUNY Oswego.

Douglas Kohler is a local historian and author who has written extensively about early Western New York.  He taught history at Clarence Middle School for 36 years before retiring last June. In 2009, he was appointed Erie County historian. He earned history degrees from Canisius College and Pace University and is working on his PhD at the University of Reading (UK), with a focus on the portrayals of race and gender at world’s fairs and expositions.

As county historian, he is currently working with the Buffalo History Museum on developing the content for the 125th anniversary of the Pan-American Exposition. He’s a researcher and writer for Buffalo/Toronto Public Media’s award winning series, “Compact History.”

Melissa Parker Leonard is the founder of 7th Gen Cultural Resources and serves as President of the Board of Managers at The Buffalo History Museum. A lifelong Buffalonian, she works to increase the visibility and understanding of Indigenous history in Western New York through public history, education, and community partnerships. Leonard teaches social studies education at Buffalo State University and frequently speaks on the history of the Seneca people, the Buffalo Creek Reservation, and Indigenous presence in Buffalo. She chairs the DEAI Committee for the Erie County Historical Commission and serves on the board of Indigenous Women’s Initiatives, supporting efforts that elevate Indigenous women’s leadership and community engagement in the region.

Dr. Barbara Seals Nevergold is the co-founder of the Uncrowned Queens Institute for Research and Education on Women, Inc. Originally formed as a focus group of the Women’s Pavilion Pan Am 2001, it was created to document the history of African and African American participation in the 1901 Pan-American Exposition. The Institute recognizes and documents the lives of historic and contemporary WNY African Americans. Its mission is to reclaim, collect, preserve, and share the biographies and historical narratives of African American community builders. These are available through the Institute’s signature digital archive at www.uncrownedcommunitybuilders.com. The Institute observes its 25th anniversary in 2026.

Dr. Nevergold has collaborated on written and oral history projects, educational curricula, radio/television programs, documentaries, community presentations, exhibits, and preservation projects. She helped facilitate the transfer of St. Philip’s Episcopal Church’s records, Buffalo’s first African American Episcopal congregation, founded in 1861, to the University of Buffalo’s Archives.

Articles on the Pan-American Expo, 1901, include: “Doing the Pan: The African American Experience at the Pan American Exposition, 1901,” Afro-Americans in New York Life and History (January 2004) and “An Uncrowned Hero: The Untold Story of James Benjamin Parker,” Western New York Heritage Magazine (Winter, 2018).

Dr. Nevergold was inducted into The HistoryMakers in 2018, and her biographical interview is part of the organization’s Library of Congress archive. She is a fellow of the New York Academy of History and serves on the Erie County Historical Commission.