You have another chance to visit the Clarissa Uprooted Exhibit through December 2025 at the Rochester Public Library!
Experience intergenerational stories of the changing landscape of Rochester’s Clarissa Street through visual and interactive media.
FALL/WINTER HOURS:
Wed 3pm – 6:30pm // Sat Noon – 4pm
Rundel Memorial Building, 115 South Ave (riverside), 2nd floor
Rochester NY
Parking and Bus Info available here.
Contact ClarissaUprooted@teenempowerment.org to schedule a Group Visit, including a guided tour, community conversation, or field trip. We will work to accommodate your schedule within Rochester Public Library hours.
Clarissa Uprooted’s goal is to inspire and empower young people and adults in the Greater Rochester community to look to the past to understand our present so that we can identify actions that will help heal our future. This Sankofa experience (“go back and fetch it”) has been created by elders who lived through the uprooting of the Clarissa Street community and Teen Empowerment Youth History Ambassadors who are living with the consequences today.
“In order for us to play a role in changing Rochester, we need to learn where it started.” –Briana Williams, TE Youth History Ambassador.
Teen Empowerment Youth History Ambassadors are proud to share their documentary, Clarissa Uprooted: Youth and Elders Uncover the Story of Black Rochester, now available for screening.
Clarissa Uprooted depicts the Third Ward as a microcosm of Rochester’s—and many northern US cities’—history. From neighborhood camaraderie, international jazz music, and thriving black-owned businesses, to redlining, urban renewal, and other racist policies. The film features some of the elders who lived this history and the youth who are living with the consequences today.
The 25-minute Clarissa Uprooted documentary short has won four national media and film fest awards.
Check out our new mural on West Main at W. Broad Street, Rochester, NY!