Black Museums

By: Kathleen E. Bethel

Source:

 Black Women in America, Second Edition

Black Museums

In the United States, black museums have chronicled the tragedies and triumphs of African Americans. As repositories of African American history, culture, and art, these museums offer a window on the African diaspora and the consequent struggles for freedom. Historically, in most cities blacks were prohibited from visiting museums. They formed their own cultural and educational societies and, in conjunction with educational institutions, their own museums, the oldest being the Hampton University Museum, established in 1868. Black women have been the founders, directors, board members, curators, staff, and volunteers of these institutions. They have created and maintained dynamic programming, collections, and exhibitions.

Early Efforts

Black women have long worked with established institutions to acquire and exhibit the work of black artists. The first of these institutions were not museums per se. For example, besides serving as places of worship, black churches also facilitated the exhibition of African America's cultural heritage. Black artists often exhibited their work in the halls of churches because art museums and private galleries were closed to them. Libraries serving black communities were also frequent venues for the exhibition of material culture, with the result that librarians often doubled as curators. Prior to 1950, historically black colleges were the major repositories of African American art and culture. Hampton University boasted the oldest institutional art collection, established in 1894. The art collections at Howard University in Washington, DC, and Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee, were initially acquired in the early 1930s.

Works by African American artists make up a significant part of the Art and Artifact Collection at the New York Public Library's Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture (established in 1926 with a large donation of material from Arthur Schomburg and named in 1940, two years after his death, the Schomburg Collection of Negro Literature and History).

The curator, then chief librarian, Jean Blackwell Hutson (1914–1998) led the Schomburg Collection from 1948 until 1980. There, she helped build the premier collection on black life and culture. Born in Sommerfield, Florida, Hutson attended the University of Michigan, Barnard College, and the New School for Social Research. She received her master of library science degree from Columbia University in 1936. She began to work for the New York Public Library after a brief stint as a high school librarian. After she took over the Schomburg Center, she created the Dictionary Catalog of the Schomburg Collection of Negro Literature and History, making it easier for scholars to research the collection.

Black Museum Movement

Beginning in the 1940s and flourishing through the 1980s, the black museum movement saw dozens of museums founded and maintained in black communities around the country. Cleveland's African American Museum was established in 1953 to correct omissions in the public's knowledge of black history. The San Francisco African American Historical and Cultural Society was founded in 1955 with the merging of two history clubs. Thirty-four Detroit residents led by the obstetrician Charles H. Wright founded the Museum of African American History in 1965. In 1967, the Smithsonian Institution set up a satellite museum in a theater in Anacostia, an African American neighborhood in Washington, DC. The institution's goal was to bring exhibition space into this neighborhood and familiarize residents there with museums in the hope that they would then patronize the larger Smithsonian facilities.

Black women were leaders in this movement. In the 1940s, Margaret Taylor Goss Burroughs (1917– ) joined others to form the National Negro Museum and Historical Foundation. While that effort failed, in 1961 Burroughs and her husband Charles established the Ebony Museum of Negro History and Art in their Chicago home. After the Johnson Publishing Co. trademarked the name “Ebony,” the museum changed its name, choosing to honor the city's first permanent settler, Jean Baptist Point du Sable. In 1973, the DuSable Museum of African American History moved, and Burroughs served as director until 1984. At that time, Mayor Harold Washington named her to the board of the Chicago Park District.

Born in Saint Rose, Louisiana, Burroughs moved with her family to Chicago, where she attended public school. After studying at teachers colleges, Burroughs received her BFA and MFA in art education from the Art Institute of Chicago. She taught at DuSable High School for twenty-three years. Her artwork, in various media, is displayed and collected internationally. She was the museum's director emerita, and has been a poet, children's book author, community worker, and mentor to black cultural and educational institutions.

In 1967, the Junior Council of New York City's Museum of Modern Art, later the Studio Museum in Harlem, found working space for artists in a rented loft. A 1989 Ford Foundation report noted that the Studio Museum in Harlem began a period of considerable growth and maturation in 1977 when Mary Schmidt Campbell (1947– ) was named director. Born in Philadelphia, Campbell was educated at Swathmore College and Syracuse University. An art historian, she served as director of the Studio Museum until 1987, when she was named Commissioner of Cultural Affairs for New York City. Also that year, the Studio Museum in Harlem became the first and only black museum accredited by the American Association of Museums. After 1991, Campbell served as dean of the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University.

Bertha Calloway (1925– ) founded the Great Plains Black Museum in 1974 with her husband J. T. Calloway in Omaha, Nebraska, to counteract continuing ignorance of the African American legacy in the history of Nebraska, the Great Plains, and the western United States as a whole. When she was a child in Denver, Colorado, Calloway heard stories of relatives who had been cowboys. Later, when she talked about black cowboys, such as Nat Love, she was met with disbelief. She studied at Langston University in Oklahoma and Howard University in Washington, DC, then became one of Nebraska's first teachers of black history, serving on the faculties of the College of Saint Mary and Creighton University. In 1960, backed by friends and local and state agencies, Calloway established the Negro Historical Society of Nebraska, the first of its kind in the Midwest. The Calloways acquired a building that had been constructed in 1906 and, in 1976, a federal Bicentennial Commission grant enabled them to pay operating costs. The museum's exhibits have highlighted the black women of the Plains and African American contributions to music, religion, politics, athletics, the military, and the culture of the Old West.

Government Support

The 1960s, with the push for civil rights and black power, saw the establishment of black history as a scholarly discipline. The rapid growth of black museums in the 1970s paralleled this interest in black studies. The nation's bicentennial prompted many to save their special history before it was lost. Federal, state, and local funds were available for the interpretation of American history. African Americans encouraged local and national institutions to document and recognize the contributions of blacks. The National Afro-American Museum and Culture Center in Wilberforce, Ohio, was the outgrowth of a congressional commission that was financed by state funds. The California Afro-American Museum was chartered by the state in 1977. Led by director Aurelia Brooks until 1989, the museum was the only state-chartered and state-funded museum in the nation.

During this time, an important step was made at the Smithsonian Institution. A research group was formed in 1972 to develop the African diaspora program at the Smithsonian Institution Bicentennial Festival of American Folklife. Following the festival, the Program in African American Culture (PAAC) continued its research and presentation as part of the now defunct Division of Performing Arts. In 1982, PAAC, which was founded by Bernice Johnson Reagon, became part of the National Museum of American History. This was the first time, with the exception of the Festival of American Folklife, that research into African American cultural history was given a permanent place at the Smithsonian. Reagon served as director until 1989, and Niani Kilkenny began her tenure as director in 1991.

Continuing their institution-building tradition, Margaret Burroughs and Charles Wright began a series of conferences for black museums. The National Association of Museums and Cultural Organizations was an outgrowth of those first meetings. In 1975, it became the Black Museums Conference. The African American Museums Association (AAMA) was formed in Detroit in February 1978 to encourage and strengthen black museums and to facilitate networking among them. AAMA was headquartered at the National Center for Afro-American Artists in Boston. The AAMA hired its first full-time executive director, Joy Ford Austin, and relocated to the Mary McLeod Bethune Museum and Archives in 1980. The organization moved to the National Center of Afro-American Artists and in 1998 was renamed the Association of African American Museums.

Not every important effort took place on a national level. In 1976, Samella Lewis (1924– ) founded the Museum of African American Art in Los Angeles, where she served as senior curator for ten years. Born in New Orleans, Lewis was educated at Dillard University and Hampton Institute, graduating with an art degree in 1945. Her advanced degrees in art history were from Ohio State University. An artist, an art historian, an educator, a filmmaker, and a writer, Lewis also founded the scholarly journal, the International Review of African American Art. Her textbook, Art: African American, is widely used.

Lois Alexander Lane started the Black Fashion Museum to highlight the contributions of black dressmakers and designers. She grew up in Little Rock, Arkansas. A graduate of Virginia's Hampton Institute, she earned her master's degree in retailing, fashion, and merchandising from New York University. She founded the Harlem Institute of Fashion; National Association of Milliners, Dressmakers and Tailors; and the Black Fashion Museum and wrote Blacks in the History of Fashion (1982.) She chose the site for the museum, 2007 Vermont Avenue, NW, in Washington, DC, because it was once the Sojourner Truth Home for Women and Girls and was recognized by the National Park Service as a possible Underground Railroad site. The museum included replicas of ball gowns designed by Elizabeth Keckley, dressmaker to Mary Todd Lincoln, and featured the work of Ann Lowe, who designed Jacqueline Bouvier's dress for her wedding to John F. Kennedy.

A New Generation

The last decades of the twentieth century brought not only an increasing awareness of black history but also the realization that African Americans themselves held that history in their own hands. Ordinary people, as well as scholars and museum professionals, decided not to wait for large institutions to recognize the importance of preserving and disseminating information about the African American past. Black museums began to emerge all over the country, and black women were much in evidence.

Bettye Collier-Thomas (1941– ) was a teacher before she became the director of the Bethune Historical Development Project for the National Council of Negro Women in 1977. Born in Macon, Georgia, and educated at Allen, Atlanta, and George Washington Universities, Collier-Thomas built the first museum and archives devoted to black women's history. From 1982 to 1989, she was the founding executive director of the Bethune Museum and Archives. In 1980, she directed the first national black museum conference. She later returned to teaching at Temple University.

Joanne Martin (1947– ) and her late husband Elmer opened the Great Blacks in Wax Museum in Baltimore in 1983. Using money saved as a down payment for a house, the Martins bought four wax figures. Educators and authors, the Martins traveled to schools, churches, and shopping areas to exhibit their black historical figures in wax. Joanne Martin was born in Yulee, Florida, and educated at Florida A&M, Atlanta, Case Western Reserve, and Howard Universities.

Lady Sala Shabazz, who died in 2002, was founder and curator of the nonprofit Black Inventions Museum, a traveling exhibition based in Los Angeles. The museum, founded in 1988, became the International Black Inventions Museum in 1994. It presented a history of African American inventions in more than a thousand venues, from elementary schools, correctional institutes, and historically black colleges to the DuSable Museum and the Los Angeles Museum of Science and Industry.

The sister of Motown Records founder Berry Gordy Jr., Esther Gordy Edwards, held various jobs within that organization. Early on, she began collecting bits of memorabilia. Her foresight in preserving history fostered the creation of the Motown Historical Museum, which she founded in 1985. Born in Oconee County, Georgia, she was the first woman to sit on the board of the Greater Detroit Chamber of Commerce in 1973.

The 18th and Vine Historic District of Kansas City, Missouri, revitalized the area and presented new museums. The Black Archives of Mid-America, the National Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, and the Kansas City Jazz Museum, which opened with two thousand items on display and a new jazz club called The Blue Room, were central attractions. The 18th and Vine Historic District Authority was led by Rowena Stewart, the executive director and a noted museum professional. The director of the Rhode Island Black Heritage Society and president of the AAMA, Stewart led the Afro American Historical and Cultural Museum in Philadelphia and the Motown Historical Museum.

Peggy Montes founded the country's first African American children's museum, the Bronzeville Children's Museum, after starting her career as a teacher in the Illinois public school system. In the 1980s, she had served as a volunteer in the DuSable Museum of African American History. In 1989, she was named chairperson of the board of trustees and headed the construction of the Harold Washington wing of the museum. Then in August 1993, Montes and a group of interested business, civic, and educational leaders founded the Bronzeville Children's Museum in a shopping mall in Evergreen Park, a suburb just south of Chicago. Montes's experiences at the DuSable Museum taught her how to educate and expose children to the culture and heritage of African peoples through activities, interactive exhibits, and games. She also was appointed by Harold Washington as executive director of the Chicago Commission on Women's Issues.

The River Road African American Museum, located in rural Ascension Parish in Louisiana, was founded by Kathe Hambrick and opened on 12 March 1994. An IBM employee in California, she returned to her hometown in Louisiana in 1991 to help run the family funeral home. Once there, she discovered that most people in the area still had little knowledge of African American history and the contributions made by black residents in that area. She went on plantation tours along the Mississippi and heard a highly romanticized version of the antebellum South and life on the plantations, whereupon she resolved to create a museum, the River Road African American Museum, to tell the true story. First located in one room of a historic plantation, the Tezcuco, the museum was relocated after a fire to downtown Donaldsonville, Louisiana. Three historic buildings were donated to the museum and moved to its permanent site.

Fredi Brown (1923– ) was the founder and director of the Family Heritage House Museum, located in the town where she was born, Bradenton, Florida. While writing for the school paper at Florida A&M, she decided to become a journalist. She moved to Kansas, where she began writing for the Kansas City Call. She also met Ernest Brown, whom she married a short time later in Detroit. Ernest Brown was hired by the Detroit Urban League, and soon both husband and wife became involved in the public and civic life of Detroit. They began to collect materials related to African American life in Detroit, and amassed information on and artifacts of everything from civil rights triumphs to the destructive riots of 1967. In 1976, the Browns relocated to Bradenton and, while teaching at Manatee Community College, Fredi Brown shared their collection with students. After retirement, the Browns organized the materials that would become the Family Heritage House Museum. The college administration and community were so responsive that a new wing was added to the library to house the museum. Heritage House Family Museum opened in 2000, the only museum of its kind on a community college campus.

Another Brown family, that of the historic Supreme Court decision, Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, created a museum documenting school segregation and integration. Linda Brown Thompson and Cheryl Brown Henderson, daughters of the late Rev. Oliver Brown and Leola Brown Montgomery, cofounded the Brown Foundation for Educational Equity, Excellence, and Research. The museum site was the former Monroe Elementary School, where Linda Brown attended classes with other black children in the 1950s. The sisters drove efforts to turn the old school into a museum and won landmark status for the site and federal funding for the $11.3 million renovation. The national historic site opened on the fiftieth anniversary of the Brown decision, 17 May 2004.

Millennial Museums

The twenty-first century began with a growing movement to create major African American museum sites. The College of Charleston began to work with the International African American Museum project. Florida's American Beach Museum was established, documenting one of the nation's few remaining black resorts. Under way were the U.S. National Slavery Museum in Fredericksburg, Virginia, and the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati, Ohio, to name just a few. After a fifteen-year battle to authorize a National Museum of African American History and Culture on the National Mall, the city of Washington, DC, began construction of a center that would house the stories of African American culture. Decades after the first effort to establish such a monument, the African American community was finally going to get a national black history museum.

See also Bethune Museum and Archives and Reagon, Bernice Johnson.

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