Carol Gordon placed a fresh needle and an Ella Fitzgerald record on a windup Victrola in her Massapequa living room surrounded by African American artifacts, and smiled. In addition to the music, she said, she heard history.

As Ella Fitzgerald sang, Gordon spoke not just about the singer, but labels such as Black Patti Records and Black Swan Records, the latter of which made the Ethel Waters record hanging nearby on the wall.

“It’s one of the first major African American record label companies that started in the United States in 1921,” Gordon, 72, said of Black Swan. “It was founded in Harlem by African Americans. Ethel Waters was the first person singing on that label.”

She then placed a tiny figurine representing a Ragtime tap dancer on the record player and it danced and spun around.

Gordon is an avid collector of Black American memorabilia and has assembled a traveling history museum that she takes to schools, churches and other organizations, including recent visits to Freeport and Merrick schools during Black History Month. She also opens her home for private tours. Gordon began collecting seriously in the early 1990s, and her assortment includes items dating from when the first enslaved person arrived in America to those from the present day.

She founded Unspoken History Treasures, a company built around that collection of African American antiquities. “My kids came up with the name,” she added. “They said it’s unspoken history and it’s a beautiful treasure.”

After Gordon, a retired patient advocate with the Department of Veterans Affairs at the Northport VA hospital, began collecting, she saw that people wanted to see more. Gordon said she lets her “things” do the talking — with some help from her.

She shows objects related to African Americans’ successes and struggles — from items used to shackle enslaved people to celebrations of Black inventors like carbon filament light bulbs designed by Louis Latimer — bringing things from the pages of history books into the present.

While some collectors avoid objects tied to the more painful parts of Black American history, others say they can facilitate discussion on tolerance. David Pilgrim, founder of the Jim Crow Museum at Ferris State University in Big Rapids, Michigan, said they can be powerful teaching tools when presented with the proper context.

“The attitudes, tastes and values of a culture are revealed by the objects produced in that culture,” Pilgrim said in an email. “Blackface lawn jockeys, mammy kitchen kitsch, and hundreds of similar objects both reflected and shaped attitudes about African Americans. The objects are evidence, a way of documenting the past — and they show us how we are still living in the residue of our Jim Crow past.”

Gordon’s sister, Frances Reed, 80, of Riverdale, retired from teaching history at the Beacon High School in Manhattan a decade ago. “Many students get history lessons,” Reed said. “But when you see the artifacts, you get a whole new idea of what’s going on.”

The Collector

Gordon was born in Harlem and moved with her family to Amityville when she was a month old. Her father, from Eleuthera in the Bahamas, became a cook, and her mother, who was part Cherokee and Irish, was a homemaker and later a registered nurse. Gordon got pregnant and married in her teens while in high school.

“I graduated on time, with my husband and my 2-year-old daughter in the bleachers,” she said. “I was queen of the prom.”

She had two sons and two daughters, got divorced and said she worked as many as three jobs at a time — days at the VA, nights at the now-defunct retailer Sears and for the U.S. Postal Service from 10 p.m. to 2 a.m.

Tragedy struck when her son, Anthony Holmes, 22, was killed while visiting Virginia in 1995. “He went to help somebody in a fight,” she said. “Somebody shot him in the back.”

She took out a Black doll in a blue dress. “Everybody asks me what’s the most valuable piece of my collection,” she said. “This would be it, because my son gave it to me.”

And the Collection

Collecting runs in the family. Gordon’s uncle, fashion designer Thomas Bramble Jr., started collecting African American memorabilia such as posters, salt-and-pepper shakers, cookie jars and dolls set Gordon on her course.

“He gave her a poster of Josephine Baker and told her, ‘This is something special. If you want to continue, do so,’ ” said Reed.

A posted of Baker and the 1927 Paris event the Bal Negre is prominently displayed in the living room. Each of Gordon’s rooms has a different theme.

Her kitchen is filled with Black Americana, including ads for products such as Gold Medal Flour featuring a Black woman presenting food.

A Pepsi ad shows a Black couple with a soda and the words “Perfect anytime.” “That’s a positive thing,” Gordon said. “Pepsi-Cola had African Americans doing something other than cooking in the kitchen.”

There are political pins, like Black Power and Black Lives Matter buttons. There is also a Jesse Jackson “Keep Hope Alive” and a “Shirley Chisholm for president” button, and objects from the 1995 Million Man March in Washington, D.C.

Gordon also has magazines like Ebony, Negro Digest/Black World, Crisis Magazine (founded by W.E.B. Du Bois in 1910) and Jet with articles about civil rights. An old barber chair near the door tells a personal story. She said her grandfather, Thomas Bramble Sr., worked in a bank in Harlem during the Depression and was among the first let go. He was told it was because he was African American, she said.

“He opened a barbershop,” Gordon said, near a sign in her home indicating haircuts cost $1.75. “The barbershop became the meeting place.”

She has his original cash register and a business card, alongside hair and cosmetic products, including bleaching cream to make skin lighter.

She acknowledged the negative stereotypes implied by objects such as the mammy figures showing Black women doing chores, but said she thinks they can also show might.

“Look how proud she stands, hand on her hip, always looking up,” Gordon said of a ceramic salt-and-pepper shaker. “Proud, strong, in spite of all she’s been through.”

Taking it on the road

Gordon has spoken and showed objects at Hofstra University, Suffolk County Community College, libraries, churches and various school districts.

Some of the most powerful, and shocking, items she purchased from Danny Drain, the owner of the now closed Slave Relic Museum, in Waterboro, South Carolina, she said. These items can evoke an emotional reaction and change people’s minds forever.

“I remember seeing a girl at Wyandanch Junior High School,” Gordon said. “When I saw her years later, she said … ‘Because of you, I majored in political science and African American history.’ ”

While some of her collectibles evoke deep trauma, Gordon said manumission, or freedom papers, can highlight resilience and hope. She showed a document from March 1808 formally freeing a man known only as “Jerry” in Maryland. The document indicated only his first name, that he spoke fluent German and English and that he had a scar on his arm and a missing tooth.

“I speak for my ancestors giving them a voice,” she said. “The artifacts from our ancestors keep them alive by telling of the rich history and how they shaped America.”