It may be fitting that an African-American museum is located in a six-room house that was once a women’s hat shop. In the African-American culture, they are not just hats. They are crowns – a suitable metaphor for a people descended from African kings and queens.

The symbolism will be present again, next year, when the Northeast Louisiana Delta African-American Heritage Museum moves into a new facility. The new $2.5 million building will be located on what was once the Killoden Plantation in Chennault Park. On this ground, where Africans once toiled in captivity, in the new museum, the story of their contemporary contributions and noble ancient history will be told.

“We are descended from the Egyptians,” said Lorraine Slacks, the museum’s executive director. “The background of African-Americans is not just as slaves and in chains.” The museum is intended to speak to the struggles but more importantly -- to the positive message about African-American contributions to our culture.

And that is the message I got when I visited this hat shop-turned-museum. The late Nancy Johnson, a former Carroll High School English teacher, owned the hat shop and when she closed it, donated the building to the museum committee. Construction will soon begin on the new 18,000 square foot building. When the new museum opens, its collection will expand to include history from surrounding parishes. Right now, the museum holdings are mostly from Ouachita Parish. It now consists of just four rooms crammed with artifacts, relics, documents and historical displays. In the new museum, these items along with others will weave an informative narrative of both the struggles and contributions of African-Americans in a 15-parish region of Northeast Louisiana and the United States.

Life-sized figures of three famous African-Americans are the first displays that greet visitors – abolitionist Frederick Douglass, cosmetics millionaire Madame C.J. Walker and noted educator Mary McLeod Bethune. The mannequins tell their story through recordings when visitors push a button. Also in one of the front rooms are a portrait of the founder and the museum’s “Hall of Fame Wall” which highlights the contributions and achievements of local people.

Johnson got the idea for a museum after she visited at the DuSable Museum of African American History in Chicago in the early 1990s. As a teacher, she wanted a place where students could go to learn about African-American history, especially local history.

As a result, school tours and community outreach programs are an important part of the museum’s agenda. The museum hosts regular tours for school groups from the Northeast Louisiana region, South Arkansas, Detroit and Jackson, Miss. A visit to the museum is a requirement for a multicultural class at the University of Louisiana-Monroe. The other two rooms in the museum focus mostly on local history.

These rooms brought back memories of my childhood growing up in North Louisiana. There were references to Dr. John I. Reddix. He was my dentist when I was growing up. He was also a black activist in the Civil Rights Movement in Monroe. As a child, my parents drove the 36 miles to Monroe because they did not want their children to go to segregated offices in Lincoln Parish where there were no black dentists or doctors at the time.

It was almost as if I were reliving the 1950s and 1960s as I glanced over newspaper clippings recounting the Civil Rights Movement, school integration lawsuits and other prominent black institutions that are now closed. Two of Grambling High School’s former sports opponents – Terzia and Richardson high schools, come to mind. Many of these institutions – both public and private – founded in the era of racial segregation, were closed, ironically, becoming victims of integration.

Federal Judge Ben C. Dawkins ordered the desegregation of schools in North Louisiana, which in most cases meant the closing of many black schools as well. For many, the schools were the cornerstones of viable black communities. These schools, along with the black churches and black-owned businesses were important components of the segregated black social structure of the time. These segregated communities, for the most part, were self-sustaining. Their demise, many believe, has left a critical void in the black community.

I saw pictures and references to Robinson Business College where my late father graduated in the 1940s. Robinson Business College no longer exists. But the real emotional moment for me came as I was looking at a World War II group photo of an all-black platoon at the Selman Field U.S. Army navigation training station in Monroe. Sitting in the center was my dad, Master Sgt. Charles H. Owens, platoon sergeant in the 599 Infantry Company.

Less emotional, but just as familiar, was the adjoining room filled with farm artifacts I recalled as a child from visiting great-grandparents and other relatives who lived in rural areas – iron kettles, wash boards, a wood burning stove, a wash bowl and water pitcher and a bale of cotton, among other memorabilia.

Monroe is the appropriate place for this museum to tell the story of African-Americans in the Northeast Louisiana delta region. Monroe was what my dad used to proudly call the “Queen City.” Historically, where there were large numbers of African-Americans with means, they developed social institutions to provide for their community. These institutions, developed as a consequence of segregation, not only helped blacks in the affected community, but they also attracted blacks from all over the region.

Monroe was the economic, social and political center for many who ran away from life on nearby plantations and farms. Monroe was where blacks went to school when there were no schools in the surrounding delta communities. Monroe was where blacks didn’t have to sit in segregated places when they went to the movies or to the doctor. North of the railroad tracks on Desiard Street, Blacks had a thriving black-owned/controlled downtown business community adjacent to the white one.

 
Please visit these other important spots along the North Louisiana African American Heritage Trail:
 
Hermione Museum
 
Grambling State University/The Eddie G. Robinson Museum
 
Southern University Museum of Art at Shreveport/Multicultural Center of the South