Grand Rapids African American Museum and Archives

By Joanne Bailey-Boorsma
joanne@wktv.org

How the Grand Rapids Public Museum acquired its latest exhibit, “Changing America,” is perhaps just as fascinating as the story the exhibit presents.

It was an article in the Washington Post that lead to the Grand Rapids Public Museum President and CEO Dale Robertson to consider the exhibit. The articled was about a city in Alabama, called Demopolis. The city had had a Confederate statute that was accidentally knocked down with the citizens divided over where the statute should be put back up.

“Are we going to put it up? Are we not going to put it up. What does this mean to me? Well this is what it means to me,” was the discussion according to Robertson the town was having. The town leaders recognized that the town needed to go through a reconciliation and in that process discovered the exhibit “Changing America.”

“It was being traveled by the National Library Association but it was created by the Smithsonian Institute, so you know there is a level of quality and accuracy and factualness that is just part of it,” Robertson said.

Because the show juxtapositions two huge events in American history, the Emancipation Proclamation, which happened in 1863, and the March on Washington in 1963, Robertson talked to the museum staff about bringing the traveling exhibit to Grand Rapids. GRPM Vice President of Marketing and PR Kate Kocienski checked on the exhibit.

“She learned that the exhibit was no longer traveling but if we were interested in paying for the shipping of it, the museum could just have it,” Robertson said.

So the Museum covered the cost of the shipping and brought the panel show to Grand Rapids, augmenting it with items from the Museum’s own collection and borrowing items from the Grand Rapids African American Museum and Archives, located at 87 Monroe Center NW. GRAAMA is hosting a complimentary exhibit “American Freedom 1863-1963 Exhibit.”

“Changing America” will be at the museum through Oct. 13. The exhibit, which opened earlier this summer, has been augmented throughout the months with staff adding elements, including newspaper articles and photos from the Grand Rapids Press archives to the exhibit throughout the months.

“Changing America” and “TOYS” are part of the regular admission to the museum, which is $5 for Kent County residents and $3 for Kent County seniors. Kent County children 17 and under are free and there is free museum parking for Kent County residents when they purchase a ticket. For more information, visit grpm.org.

The Grand Rapids African American Museum and Archives is open noon – 5 p.m. Tuesday – Saturday. The museum is free. For more information, visit graama.org

By Victoria Mullen

Long before the advent of written language, storytellers used the spoken word to preserve a record of past experiences from one generation to the next. Oral history was transmitted in song or speech and took on many forms: chants, folktales, ballads, sayings, or songs–knowledge shared without a writing system. This was especially key where people of a society were denied access to education or were afraid to leave a written record of their knowledge.

In America, slaveholders forbade slaves from learning to read or write to keep them in ignorance; the idea was to discourage escape or rebellion. In fact, the legislation that denied slaves formal education likely contributed to their maintaining a strong oral tradition, a common feature of indigenous African cultures.

African-based oral traditions preserved history, mores, and other cultural information among the people. This was consistent with the griot practices of oral history in many African and other cultures that did not rely on the written word. The folktales offered African Americans the opportunity to inspire and educate one another.

It is the rich, local history that Grand Rapids African American Museum and Archives (GRAAMA) now seeks to preserve by interviewing the elders of a bygone era–the ’40s, ’50s, and ’60s. It doesn’t really seem that long ago, but once the keepers of the stories are gone, the histories will be lost forever.

The new organization has recently launched a multimedia project called ‘Grandma’s Voice.’ Made possible in part by a $25,000 grant from The Michigan Humanities Council through funding from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, the acronym is a play on the word, ‘Grandma,’ which conveys the museum’s core mission: to document the oral history from some of the area’s oldest living people–particularly women–who can offer insight into their long-ago experiences. Some people are 80 to 100 years old, so time is of the essence.

GRAAMA has teamed up with the Grand Rapids Urban League and the Kutsche Office of Local History at Grand Valley State University. The organization is looking for elderly folks who can tell the story of early Grand Rapids or the surrounding area.

You don’t have to be a grandma to share your stories. GRAAMA encourages families and individuals to inspire others by sharing skills, experiences, and knowledge with other creative minds. Call the elders of your family, and then email george@graama.org. The organization says that those who are interviewed will receive a small stipend. The finished audio/video disk will be the main attraction at Museum once it opens in 2016.

For more info, go here.

Images courtesy of GRAAMA