WBHSM Projects

I worked at the Wisconsin Black Historical Society Museum over the past few months. I helped out with several tasks related to keeping the museum running, whether preparing for exhibits or organizing objects of interest in the storage area.

3/4/11 - On our first day, we had our work cut out for us. The WBHS had inherited a collection of books (from the now-defunct American Black Holocaust Museum) that had originally belonged to James Cameron, a civil rights activist who had survived a lynching attempt in 1930 when he was 16 and later founded three NAACP chapters. He was well-educated and well-read; interestingly enough, many more of his books dealt with democracy than directly with African-American topics. We had to sort these books and determine which would be most useful to keep.

3/11/11 - After selecting the most exhibit-worthy books, we boxed the rest and placed them in storage. Clayborn Benson, the founder and curator supervising us, talked to us about a couple of Black History topics. He talked about Spain's role in the slave trade, Chief Justice Taney's ruling on Dred Scott, the 13th-15th amendments, and Wisconsin's role in charter and choice for public schools.

3/18/11 - We had to clean out some boxes from the back storage area. Clayborn referred to himself as "the garbage collector for the community." In the back, I saw a fancy hat in a case and asked him about it. It turns out the hat belonged to Mattiebelle Woods, often called the "the first lady of Milwaukee's black press." She wrote for the Milwaukee Courier when she died in 2005 at the age of 102 as probably the oldest working journalist in America. She spoke three languages and, as evidenced by her hat, was quite fashionable.

4/8/11 - Friday fish fry! Other members of the group had helped with some of the setup earlier, so there wasn't much for me to do. On the wall are pictures of the Civil Rights Tribute Bus, which ran during the 96th NAACP convention in 2005 in Milwaukee.

4/29/11 - We cleaned up and vacuumed the area, which was mostly empty after all the work the previous weeks. When that was finished, we went through old newspapers, clipping articles that related to local African-Americans. Pictured first is (finally!) Clayborn.

Every task we completed had both smaller and larger scale implications. On the more immediate small scale, we were helping with the operation of the museum and getting in our service learning hours. But on the larger scale, we were contributing to the community in preserving the cultural history, all the while learning about the history ourselves.