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A Study of the RR Moton Museum in Farmville, Virginia

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W&M ScholarWorks Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects Theses, Dissertations, & Master Projects 2015 African American Civil Rights Museums: A Study of the R.R Moton Museum in Farmville, Virginia Christina S. Draper College of William & Mary - Arts & Sciences Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.wm.edu/etd Part of the African American Studies Commons, American Studies Commons, and the Museum Studies Commons Recommended Citation Draper, Christina S., "African American Civil Rights Museums: A Study of the R.R Moton Museum in Farmville, Virginia" (2015). Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects. Paper 1539626780. https://dx.doi.org/doi:10.21220/s2-tgmt-yq93 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Theses, Dissertations, & Master Projects at W&M ScholarWorks. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects by an authorized administrator of W&M ScholarWorks. For more information, please contact [email protected]. African American Civil Rights Museums- A Study of the R.R. Moton Museum in Farmville, Virginia Christina S. Draper Richmond, Virginia B.A, Hampton University, 1997 M.A, Virginia State University, 2003 African American Civil Rights Museums- A Study of the R.R. Moton Museum in Farmville, Virginia presented to the Graduate Faculty of the College of William and Mary in Candidacy for the Degree of Masters of Arts American Studies Program The College of William and Mary August 2015 This Thesis is submitted in partial tuKHiment of the requirements for the degree of Masters of Arts (OCwjit Christina S. Draper Approved by the Committee, April, 2015 Committee Chair Duai|e A. and Virginia S. Dittman Professor Grey Gundaker, American Studies and Anthropology, NEH l&messor Michael >pol la American Studies Associate Pro .ynn M. Weiss, American Studies of Wiliam and Mary ABSTRACT This study describes, in depth, the origin and development of the R.R. Moton Museum (Farmville, Virginia) in the context of the rise of African American museums in an America where black historical and cultural events have been considered of marginal interest to the community and nation. TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements ii Chapter 1. African American Community Museums: Hiimble Beginnings to the National Mall 1 Chapter 2. African American Museums within the American Museum Movement 11 Chapter 3. Civil Rights Museums 22 Chapter 4. The Robert Russa Moton Museum 31 Bibliography 47 i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to everyone who supported me throughout this process. I would have never been able to finish without the guidance of my committee members, help from friends, and support from my family. I am especially thankful for Professor Grey Gundaker, whose inspiring guidance, invaluable constructive criticism, and encouragement pushed me to completion. 1 African American Civil Rights Museums- A Study of the R. R. Moton Museum in Farmville, Virginia Introduction On an evening in the late 1920s, the newest New Negroes, the colored literati of Lynchburg, Virginia step through a gate into the magnificent garden of poet Anne Spencer to greet writer James Weldon Johnson who was visiting from New York. They sip tea as the sun descends behind the fragrant bowers. The place is a sanctuary. Edankraal, Spencer’s charming, one-room writing cottage, is nestled to the side. The name Edankraal springs from three distinctive surnames: Edward, her husband’s first name; the Garden o f Eden from the Bible; and the African krall, a term for a southern African village.1 Near the tiny cottage the water-spouting, dark head, “Prince Ebo,” in the round reflecting pool is a gift from W.E. B. Du Bois. Langston Hughes, Gwendolyn Brooks, Martin Luther King, Jr.— they all came to Edankraal. “In their home and garden the Spencers formed an intellectual oasis for notable Black scholars and travelers who enjoyed their hospitality regularly since there was no local public accommodation for Blacks at that time.”2 For years after Spencer’s death in 1975 the Spencer home was shut and the garden ran to weed. Today, the Spencer House and Garden Museum is a Virginia landmark on the National Registry of Historic Places. Restoration began in the 1980s and still continues.3 Would we not want to preserve the place, the garden in which such distinguished Americans once sat and debated issues of the struggle for social justice in their day? Museums have been created traditionally to do just that: to protect 1 (White 2011) 2 (White 2011) 3 (White 2011) 2 treasures as well as the cultural heritage and spaces they represent, so that they can be shared with future generations. The goal of this study is to describe, in depth, the origin and development of one Civil Rights museum set in the context of the rise of African American museums in an America where black historical and cultural events have been considered of marginal interest to the community and nation. The term community is defined as a group of people who have cultivated values, interests, and social responsibilities through shared experiences. In this study I also explain how the museum concept gained acceptance among African Americans as they grappled not only to build pride in cultural and educational achievements among the race, but also to command recognition and respect for their cultural contributions among people across the spectrum of society at the sites where these contributions originated. Advancements and achievements attributed to the struggle for equality against adversity laid the foundation for all that followed, even today's Civil Rights Museums. For this reason I have chosen to focus my study on the Robert Russa Moton Museum, a Virginia Civil Rights Museum. This museum provides context for understanding the transformation of a historically fraught building from a rural, segregated high school to a Civil Rights museum. Sixty years ago, the students enrolled in the R. R. Moton High School brought American history, and in particular, the story of Virginia’s pursuit of massive resistance in face of the fight for school integration to a world audience. Today, the museum site changes the historic landscape by moving it from a place where the preservation of segregation marked its purpose to an interpretive place where integration of schools and the attainment of equal opportunity in education for all students became the accepted social order. Thus, the “change in the historic landscape” resulted from what happened there: the student strike of 1951. 3 The definition of the phrase “change the historic landscape” signifies the cultural transformation of the site. The R.R. Moton School evokes the memory of racial segregation and massive resistance as it moves to racial integration; however, that memory is created in a context of preserving and interpreting the untold story of the students, alumni, and local residents. This study, although focused on a single museum, also builds on highlights of broader research available: (1) how American museums grew from private collections of art, historic Americana, and natural history artifacts4 as well as (2) how the possibility of African American cultural and historic museums captured the imagination of some private collectors who wanted to preserve records of events marking social, educational and legal advancements among the race. Moreover, cultural contributions were prized and preserved for fear that these might have been lost or omitted from the telling of a larger American story. I argue that Civil Rights museums present to the public a challenge to the experience of visiting a museum. They offer an interactive experience, resulting in a profound encounter with the historic events that occurred at the site. While earlier studies open the readers’ eyes to the importance of museums as institutions of value to all Americans, often they provide no opportunity to consider the Civil Rights Movement and the historic societal changes left in its wake. African American Community Museums: Humble Beginnings to the National Mall A museum’s journey begins with a commitment to tell stories through material culture. However, representations of peoples of color in anthropological museums have been 4 A number of scholars have worked on the history of the American museums. See Mary Alexander’s, Museums in Motion: An Introduction to the History and Functions o f Museums (American Association for State and Local History, 2007); Hugh H. Genoways and Mary Anne Andrei (eds.), Museum Origins: Reading in the Early Museum History and Philosophy (Left Coast Press, 2008); Hugh H. Genoways, Museum Philosophy for the Twenty-first Century (AltaMira Press, 2006). 4 limited, racially segregated, and framed by stereotypes that render these peoples as primitives locked in static past.5 Such segregation continued in museums devoted to American history which emphasize progress and change yet, in practice, reduced “American” history to European American history until a more inclusive approach began to take hold after the 1960s.6 As Fath Davis Ruffins has argued, “African Americans had few opportunities to preserve their history until the 1820s, when communities of free Black people grew large enough to give birth to Black newspapers and other institutions.”7 Since then African American communities have been telling their stories in print and materials from the past. Though it has not always been so, these stories today, especially those highlighting struggle and celebrating personal achievement, are a source of inspiration to most Americans. Across the United States, an urgency to preserve the unknown stories of the people before the stories are lost motivates institutions whose mission it is to preserve African American history and culture. Early efforts among the people may be described as having “humble beginnings.” For example, Nikki Giovanni, poet and noted member of the Black Arts Movement, defined a museum in her childhood neighborhood. Her explanation still resonates with African Americans: As a Black woman I never visited a museum until I enrolled at Fisk in Nashville.
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