NEW HAVEN — In a nondescript storage room on Fitch Street, amid the busy din of Southern Connecticut State University, a community’s cultural heritage sits in hundreds of boxes like a twinkling treasure waiting to be set free.

In a sense, that’s exactly what it is.

Tens of thousands of items here — books, photos, news clippings, film footage, diaries, letters, trophies, posters, transcripts, records and even a stained glass window — document more than a century of African-American experiences in New Haven. It encompasses all walks of life and all manner of personal and professional endeavor.

As cultural caches go, the collection is highly significant, observers say.

“You name it, we have it,” explains Valerie Bertrand, president and co-founder of the Greater New Haven African American Historical Society. “This gives you a glimpse of not only the Dixwell neighborhood, but of neighborhoods from all over the city. I’m amazed by it.”

And now it’s getting some well-deserved attention.

With the help of some state grant money and expertise of the Greater New Haven African American Historical Society and the Ethnic Heritage Center, this historical material is slowly being sorted, cataloged and preserved. A new exhibit featuring highlights of the material will open Feb. 4 at the Ethnic Heritage Center, an umbrella association of local Irish, Italian, Jewish, Ukrainian and African-American historical societies.

The new exhibit, “New Haven’s African American Heritage: A Bridge to Today,” will continue through April 25.

“I think this will turn out to be one of the biggest archival collections of African-American history in New England,” says Ann Newhall, the center’s executive director. “It documents a huge portion of the population of New Haven and gives a view that is so much deeper and richer than what people had up to now.

“It covers church life, the arts, philanthropy, civil rights, schools, the military, sports,” Newhall adds. “And we’ve only examined the tip of the iceberg.”

In the way of historic photos, here are a few of the highlights that will be on display:

‰A 1902 picture of the Wooster Guards, an all-black company of the Connecticut National Guard.

‰A group shot of the Troop 24 Boy Scout Orchestra from the Dixwell Avenue Congregational Church, taken in the 1910s.

‰A 1950s photo of dozens of students at the Dixwell Community House, including future mayor John C. Daniels in the back row.

‰An undated interior shot from the Hannah Gray Home for elderly black women, on Dixwell Avenue.

‰A studio portrait of Mrs. Ernestine Ross, an original member of the Women’s Twentieth Century Club, which operated the Hannah Gray Home after Gray’s death in 1861.

‰An exterior photo of the original Dixwell Community House on Dixwell Avenue.

“This is the ultimate candy store,” Bertrand notes, as she lovingly leafs through some of the items. “Just look at this,” she says, cradling an image of Laura Belle Read McCoy, who organized the first African-American Girl Scout troop in the country.

“She was my mother’s Girl Scout leader,” Bertrand says.

A moment later, Bertrand steps into a storage space where more boxes await. She lifts the lid of one box and finds a 16-mm film of African-American businesses in the Dixwell area in the 1940s. If the film is in good enough condition and can be transferred onto a digital format, Bertrand says, it may be included in the upcoming exhibit.

“For anyone interested in history, it’s very important to get a taste of this collection,” says Howard el-Yasin of New Haven, artistic director and co-curator of the exhibit along with Joan Cavanagh of the Ethnic Heritage Center. “It’s been fascinating to see. I’ve heard many stories about old New Haven from my parents and grandparents, and this documents many facets of African-American culture in New Haven.”

“It is a part of history that has not been told, and it needs to be told,” says Sheila Jewell of New Haven, recording secretary and board member for the Greater New Haven African American Historical Society. “What it does is point up our commonality, while at the same time it acknowledges our diversity.”

The story of the collection’s journey here is equally interesting.

Essentially, these are the holdings of the old Connecticut Afro-American Historical Society, which was founded in 1971 by local residents. That group was led by the late Ernest Saunders.

The books, photos and other items were housed for years in a building on Orchard Street, until financial issues in the 1990s made relocation necessary.

That’s when the Dixwell Community House came to the rescue. The “Q” House, as it was called, gave the artifacts a home in 1996. In 2000, the Q House even organized public viewings of the collection.

But economic woes of its own made it impossible for the Q House to fund any kind of comprehensive preservation of the material. The Q House eventually closed in 2003, but the archive remained in storage there.

“I’d heard about this collection for years,” says Newhall, who was part of a cadre of local historians and civic-minded individuals, including Q House trustee Michael Daly, who sought a more public role for the collection.

Last March, the Ethnic Heritage Center got permission to retrieve the collection from the Q House and was named custodian of the items. Meanwhile, SCSU President Cheryl J. Norton agreed to provide extra space next to the Ethnic Heritage Center for housing the collection.

In a prepared statement, Norton says the university is “honored to support this exhibit, which focuses new attention on an important, distinctive area of the cultural history of New Haven.”

Barry Herman, president of the Ethnic Heritage Center’s board of directors, echoes Norton’s enthusiasm. “This treasure trove of local African American history and culture will enable students, researchers and interested parties to study and learn about their heritage,” Herman says.

At this point, Cavanagh, archivist Geraldine Poole of the Greater New Haven African American Historical Society and others have inventoried about 10 percent of the items.

“We’re not going to find the Magna Carta in every box, but the sum total of the collection is what makes it rich,” according to Newhall. “It’s a great treasure for the city and the nation.”

Jim Shelton can be reached at (203) 789-5664 or jshelton@nhregister.com.