African American Museum

When you live someplace for a long time, you take it for granted. We decided to be tourists in our own town. There are so many things to do in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area and a lot of them are free! 

The first place we decided to visit was the African American Museum. It's located inside Fair Park at 3536 Grand Avenue. It was started in 1974 on the campus of Bishop College. In it's small space, it exhibited the works of local African American artists. In 1979, it separated from Bishop College. In 1988, it moved to it's Fair Park location.

There's three stories to the building. The entrance goes in to the main floor. Then there's a basement floor which has classrooms and another top floor that is broken up into four sections. Each section is a different exhibit.

The historical marker outside the museum gives a little background. Entrance to the museum is free. It's closed on Sundays and Mondays. Then open 11 - 5 Tuesday through Friday. Saturday it's open from 10-5. Check it out!

On the first floor there is part of the permanent collection. There is art by African American artists as well as other items. This drawing is by Walter Cotton and is entitled "Smith, Ross and Kennedy Store 1965".

I liked this piece by Frank Frazier called "Toussaint L'Ouverture, 2012". It's done with shoe polish on paper!

There's also furniture there. This looks like a cool dresser of some kind but it's a bed!

When extended, the bed looks like this. It's a cabinet bed and it was invented by Sarah E. Goode. This was the precursor to the Murphy bed. Sarah was the second African American Woman to get a U.S. Patent for her invention.

A view of downtown Dallas from the second floor of the museum.

In gallery B on the second floor, they had an exhibit called Central Track: Crossroads of Deep Ellum. This was my favorite exhibit. There is precious little by way of historical information about Dallas. I had no idea that Deep Ellum and Central Track were areas that linked Dallas to Freedman Town where a lot of African American people lived after the Civil War. The area of town was later renamed to "Short North Dallas", then "Old North Dallas" and finally, Uptown. This is a photo graph of the Delmonico Hotel at 2309 Swiss Avenue circa 1918. More about the Delmonico Hotel

This is an old victrola. You can see the handle on the outside used to wind it up. A very cool piece of history.

Blind Lemon Jefferson in 1927. His name really was Lemon. Lemon Henry Jefferson was a gospel and blues musician.

Houston and Texas Central Railway Tracks in Dallas circa 1940.  This exhibit was really informative about the history of the area. 

There were a lot of Jewish businesses down here as well.  This photo is of the Max Utay Jewelry Store at 2220 Elm Street in 1942. Max Utay is on the left.

Another (permanent) exhibit was about the Freedman's Cemetery. I took a "cemetery" tour once with the Dallas Historical Society and one of the cemeteries that we visited was the Freedman's cemetery. It's located on the southwest corner of North Central Expressway and Lemmon Avenue. It was an active cemetery from 1869-1907 for African Americans that lived in Deep Ellum. In the 1940's, some of the headstones were removed and the area was covered with grass to make a park. When Central Expressway was being built, the stones were found.

In that same exhibit, there's a sign about where a person can sit on the train. Note that Negros, Mexicans and Dogs are all in the same category.

The exhibit in Gallery A was called "Seeing a world that Blind Lemon Jefferson never saw. Photographs by Alan Governar".  This guy drove around and took photos in rural areas. This stone is the marker for Eula King in Shanks Cemetery. She was sexually assaulted and beaten to death. Three local African American men were lynched as a result. The two white men suspected were never convicted despite the fact that there were bloody footprints leading to their house.

The dome of the museum building. The photo doesn't really do it justice. It's quite beautiful.

And finally, there's a bit of a sculpture garden in the courtyard. This is a tree made of various glass bottles. It looks pretty cool. 

I never even knew this museum was there but now that I do, I'll be checking back to see what new exhibits that they have. It's well worth the visit.