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Hermione Museum, Tallulah

Antioch Baptist Church-Sheveport

Displays at the Multicultural Center of the South-Shreveport

Galliee Baptist Church-Sheveport

Galliee Baptist Church-Sheveport

Hermione Museum

In my travels, people naturally ask, “Where are you from?” Proudly, I say, “Louisiana!” More often than not, they assume it is New Orleans and even when I say Grambling, they still assume it is near our state’s most famous city. I had one colleague whom I had befriended at several national meetings through the years call me to tell me he is in New Orleans and ask, “Can we meet and have dinner?” I had to explain that I live five hours away in North Louisiana— 40 miles from the Arkansas border.
 
Welcome to the other Louisiana— way north of New Orleans.
 
Looking for black history at former plantation homes and plantations is ironic, especially for some African Americans. This has been a subject of debate ever since the first Southern plantation homes tours started in the 1930s, glorifying the Ante Bellum Southern culture built on slave labor. These tours too often ignored the African captives’ presence, contributions and treatment. Now, in many plantation venues, Black stories are told side-by-side with white stories, and these places warrant a visit, because as Americans, we need to understand our history in the real context of its making.
 
As I travel toward Mississippi, I view the terrain and recall the history of the area from the lens of an African American who grew up nearby. A native of North Louisiana, I am familiar with this Louisiana trail. I was born in Monroe, lived in Arcadia and call Grambling my hometown.
 
Looking outside my window, I compare the rhythms of the music on the radio with the rhythms of the machine-made rows of newly planted crops of soybean and cotton—miles and acres of cotton along this I-20 stretch. I can’t help but think that these fields, first tended by the hands of African captives, helped create the culture that I explore on this leg of the heritage trail.
 
As you get closer to the Mississippi River, you can tell you are entering the delta area. The music and the terrain change, and I always surf the local radio stations on both sides of the Mississippi River— the rhythm and blues, the gospel music, religious talk and church news will tell you that you’re in the Deep South.
 
U.S. Interstate 20 is the main drag on this North Louisiana African American Heritage Trail between the Texas and Mississippi borders. Culturally, this North Louisiana trail is bounded east and west by cotton-rich river bottom plantation cultures— the origins of a lot of good music. The Red River borders on the west and the Mississippi River on the east.
 
In between the two are piney rolling hills, small farms and plenty of timber. When I grew up on this stretch in the 1950s and 1960s, the towns and cities in this area were bastions of racial segregation where blacks were denied the right to vote. There were separate water fountains and waiting rooms in public places. Because of lawsuits and protests, things are different now. The official color line is gone. African Americans are the majority in the larger municipalities. Even in the parishes where blacks are not in the majority, through the concept of single-member district representation, they now wield considerable political influence.
 
I could have started this trip in Grambling where I live, the middle stop on this heritage tour, but our journey as a people in the U.S. did not start in places like this. It started in places like Tallulah in the Mississippi Delta where agriculture shaped the lives of generations.
 
Hermione Museum
The first stop on this journey is the Hermione Museum.  To get there, take the Tallaluh exit off I-20. It is a scenic drive into this city of about 8,000 that winds along Brushy Bayou.
 
Signs along this section of U.S. Highway 65 (also called Bayou Drive), direct the traveler to the Hermione Museum. Also called Hermione Plantation House, this structure was moved here from its original location 2 miles south of Milliken’s Bend on the Mississippi River, the site of a famous Civil War battle between black Union and Confederates soldiers.
 
Like most plantation homes on this stretch of the Mississippi, the Hermione is modest compared to many of the lavish plantations in South Louisiana. By contrast, Hermione, as was often the case in this area, was owned by absentee landlords who lived across the river in Mississippi--- many on large estates, like the ones in Vicksburg and Natchez. Modest or not, it is good that we still have the likes of Hermione at all. Before the Civil War, there were more than 70 plantation homes in Madison Parish, and all but three were destroyed by the Union troops. Hermione was spared because it served as a hospital for federal troops during the Civil War.
 
When I visited Hermione, there were three exhibits on African Americans. The most prominent was the one on Madame C.J. Walker, an African American who in the early 1900’s became the nation’s first self-made female millionaire by manufacturing cosmetic products for black women. The child of slaves, she was born Sarah Breedlove in 1867 in the Madison Parish village of Delta on the Robert W. Burney plantation.
 
The display has some of her personal correspondence, photos, news articles and samples of her products -- including, ironically-- a tanning cream for whites. There is also a poster-sized copy of the 1998 U.S. Postal Service stamp honoring her. The exhibit tells the story of how in the 1890s she saw the need for and developed cosmetic and hair products for black women. To sell her line (manufactured at a plant she owned in Indianapolis) she developed an elaborate national marketing system that employed thousands of African American women. This was the forerunner of the marketing concept used later by such companies as Avon and Mary Kay cosmetics.
 
Another exhibit on local African American leaders and achievers brought back memories for me of the 1960’s Civil Rights Movement in North Louisiana. Titled “They Made a Difference,” this exhibit recognizes some of the Blacks in Madison Parish who first attempted to vote in 1947 and continued their efforts for two more decades before achieving this right.  These efforts were led by members of the NAACP in Madison and surrounding parishes. The exhibit pays specific recognition to two people in that struggle: Zelma Wyche, the first black police chief in the Tallulah, and Moses Williams, a prominent civil rights worker. Others cited include: Adell Williams, the city’s first black mayor; Dr. Leander Anthony, who served two terms as mayor and was the second black to practice veterinary medicine in the state and Martin Williams and his daughter, Linda, who were both plaintiffs in the court case that eventually resulted in the historic desegregation of schools in Madison Parish.
 
Civil rights was big news for me as a young man. I recall the resistance of local governments to allow blacks the right to vote in many parts of the state, especially in these Mississippi Delta parishes. Under court order, Madison (Tallulah) and East Carroll parishes were two of the last three parishes in Louisiana to open their voting rolls up to blacks, in 1962 and 1963 respectively. The neighboring delta parish of Tensas was the last when, in 1964, they finally allowed blacks the right to register to vote.
 
However, it is important to note that, even in slavery, African Americans have always been in the majority in this Mississippi Delta plantation region. And so, in the 1970’s, armed with the right to vote, blacks could (and did) drastically change the political and economic landscape of this region. Municipal and parish governments in most of this area are now headed by African American elected officials.
 
The final exhibit relating to African Americans at the Hermione focuses on the 1930s Delta Project/Thomastown Project designed to transform sharecropper farmers into landowners through low-interest loans and other programs. This New Deal project involved a resettlement program where African American tenant farmers were moved from Transylvania to Thomastown, an area near Tallulah. As a result, Thomastown grew into a viable community during the 1940s and 1950 with a black high school which closed in the 1960s. Many of its graduates went on to professional careers in education, medicine, accounting and the military among others. 
 
The Northeast Louisiana Delta African American Museum
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 History Museum moves into a new facility. The new $2.5 million building will be located on what was once the KillodenPlantation 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.
 
 
Grambling State University
With great pride, I announce the next stop on this tour, my hometown, Grambling.
I recall from my earliest years, it is not uncommon to have this kind of conversation:
“Where are you from?”
“Grambling.”
“No, I mean what town are you from?”
“Grambling.”
“There is town called Grambling?”
 
Yes. For Grambling natives, it is an old, familiar encounter. Most people who have heard the name associate Grambling solely with the university, not the community that spawned it. The most recent Grambling Chamber of Commerce magazine proudly boasts: “Grambling, La. is the story of a village that raised a university.”
 
It is an American success story that began more than 140 years ago when newly freed slaves settled here to build a farming community and other self-help institutions including one that would become Grambling State University. Street names, churches, historic markers and buildings make the community and the university a virtual living textbook of African American history.
 
I take special pride in this community’s history as members of my family played a role in its early development. My great-granddad, Phillip Lewis Sr., was the first elected president of the Liberty Hill Baptist Association, founded in 1882. According to one source, it was his organization, along with the North Louisiana Colored Agricultural Farmers Relief Association Union, that in 1899,  started an industrial training school that would eventually become Grambling State (although a historical marker at the original site of the university lists the founding year as 1896). Another great-grandfather, Gene Younger, was a member of the Farmers Relief Association Union.
 
These two organizations wrote a letter to Booker T. Washington at Tuskegee Institute in Alabama with the request for someone to help with their fledgling school. Answering this call for aid, Washington sent Charles P. Adams, who arrived Aug. 4, 1901. Adams got the school on a good footing – expanded the curriculum, added teachers (mostly from Tuskegee) and increased the enrollment. But the relationship between Adams and the local groups ended in a dispute in 1903 over the direction of the school when the farm organization filed a suit to oust Adams as head of the school. Adams lost at the district level, but won on appeal. Adams wanted an industrial education school styled after Booker T. Washington’s Tuskegee Institute. The farmers wanted a more liberal arts school to also train ministers.
 
At this point, Adams and his local supporters raised money and bought land about a mile and a half east of the original school – the present site of Grambling State University. In the process, at both locations, Adams often used his own money to keep the schools going.
 
Since that time, the small school, started by black farmers and ministers, nurtured by Booker T. Washington’s student, Charles P. Adams, has evolved into a world renowned institution with more than 5,000 students.
 
In its early years, the school catered to students primarily from surrounding parishes. I know of several families who moved here, some as early as the 1920s, so their children would be close to a school. Schools for blacks back then were rare in most rural areas of the south. Now, more than 40 percent of its students are from other states and around the world. 
 
In 1941, two events would put the school on a path to world fame: A four-year curriculum was instituted and legendary coach Eddie G. Robinson was hired.
 
Robinson immediately went into the surrounding communities recruiting talent for his football team. Meeting with and convincing the parents were his brand of recruiting. One of his new recruits was my uncle Elmo Younger.  A knee injury would sideline Uncle Elmo after the first year. However, a few years later, his first cousin Paul “Tank” Younger would join the team. Cousin Paul would go on to propel the name Grambling into the history books when in 1949 he became the first player from a black college to play in the National Football League and later the first black front office executive in the NFL.
 
Thus began the storied legend of Coach Eddie G. Robinson. For 57 seasons, he fielded competitive football teams to earn an unprecedented career 408 college football victories to set a NCAA record for Division I wins. He has sent more than 200 players into the NFL. In 1995, he became the first coach to break the 400-win threshold, an elusive goal for most coaches. On October 5, 1985, at the Cotton Bowl in Dallas, Robinson was the first college football coach to surpass University of Alabama Bear Bryant's 323 wins. 
 
These and other achievements will be memorialized in a museum bearing his name on the campus of Grambling State University. For those traveling with me on this leg of the North Louisiana African American Heritage Trail, The Eddie G. Robinson Museum is one of the two main attractions in Grambling. The other is the home of the founder of Grambling State University, Charles P. Adams.
 
The Eddie G. Robinson Museum
When I joined the Dow Jones Newspaper Fund board of directors in 1995, one of the first actions we voted on was a motion to hold the spring board meeting at Grambling State University, where I was employed at the time. The Fund is a foundation promoting journalism education and internships.
 
I felt honored that they wanted to meet at my school, in my hometown. But the real reason they wanted to come to Grambling became apparent when then board president, former CNN commentator Al Hunt, asked, “Reg, do you think you can get Coach Robinson to speak to our group?”
 
“Of course,” I replied. I will never forget being in his office the next week to make the request. On one table was a videotape player and stacks of game tapes piled up next to it. On the floor leaning up against his desk piled high with papers and books was his signature tattered brown leather briefcase. Trophies and other awards were everywhere – in display cases, on the wall, on the floor, on tables and on window sills. As I eyed this lifetime of achievement, I quickly realized why the Dow Jones board members – former “Wall Street Journal” editors, journalism educators, and retired and working journalists from major media – were in awe of this man. This scene, his office, will be recreated in one of seven display areas when the Eddie G. Robinson Museum is projected to by year’s end. Renovation is under way on the former Women’s Memorial Gymnasium which will house this 8,000 sq. ft., $3.3 million museum (where Robinson also coached basketball in his career).
 
The Dow Jones Newspaper Fund board came, but Coach Eddie G. Robinson conquered their hearts again as he told story after story about his career, his team members, General Patton, Coach Vince Lombardi and Coach Bear Bryant. You know some things about people and then you forget them. I knew Coach Rob was also a legendary storyteller and he reminded me of it again that day. He told one story about Gen. Patton speaking to a national meeting of football coaches where he gave a lot of credit to football coaches and the men they coach. Many of his soldiers were football players who were instrumental in helping to win wars. The short of the story is that Patton’s speech brought these tough men like Bryant to tears. The funny part of Robinson’s story is when he described how they tried to hide it. The group was literally brought to their knees laughing.
 
Videos of functions such as this will be a part of the new state-of-the-art museum where visitors can experience the sights and sounds of his career through interactive exhibits. The completed facility will also contain a community meeting room, an archive, a research area and a retail museum store. Until this facility opens, the museum committee has a temporary display at the GSU Athletic Support Facility adjacent to the Eddie G. Robinson Stadium. It is open from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday.
 
GSU Founder’s Home and GSU Hall of Fame
Charles Phillip Adams and his wife Martha raised many of their six children in this house, built in the 1930s.
 
The house was built following his retirement in 1936. His daughter, Fidelia Johnson, told me in a 1989 interview that it was located in the middle of some 100 acres of what was then farmland owned by owned by her father. She was 84 at the time. Everybody called her Mama Fi.
 
Mama Fi talked about how “Papa” (Adams) wanted to build a town. He sold lots to incoming faculty and others. Some of his land served as the nucleus for one of the original communities in this rural area that would become the town of Grambling.
 
For several years after his death in 1961, the house was a private dormitory for women students. The Adams family donated the house to a university foundation in 1979 for historical preservation. Listed on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places, the house has been restored to its 1930s charm, when it served as the Adams’ retirement residence. Hazel Johnson Jones, a retired GSU librarian who directed the restoration said that much of the home’s original character, including furniture, wallpaper and other appointments has been preserved. She said during the restoration, they were fortunate to find the original architectural plans and swatches of the original wallpaper tucked away in a stairway storage area. The modified ante bellum home was designed by Adam’s nephew, Lewis Warren Driver
 
Located in two of the four rooms upstairs is the Grambling State University Hall of Fame, which recognizes alumni who have made significant contributions to society and the university.
 
The house is open only to pre-arranged group tours. To arrange a tour, call Shirley Clay three days in advance at (318) 274-6404 in Institutional Advancement at GSU.
 
Off the path: other African American cultural attractions in Grambling
Department of Art Gallery
Dunbar Hall
Grambling State University
 
The Art Department at GSU operates an art gallery where student and professional artists exhibit their work. Call (318) 274-2274 for their latest exhibit.
 
Colored Chautauqua – Marker
Immediately outside Grambling city limits near railroad tracks directly across from Ruston Development Center on W. Martin Luther King Avenue (2776 Highway 150).
 
The Chautauqua was a movement that promoted popular education at the turn of the last century and was strong in this area. Ruston was the state headquarters. This movement brought nationally recognized lecturers and also summer school to the general public--- and by extension to those who could not normally afford it.
 
Original Allen Greene School Site, Birthplace of Grambling State University – Marker
On the grounds of the Liberty Hill Baptist Association, 118 Bennett Rd. at W. Martin Luther King Ave.
 
This marker notes that the Allen Greene Normal and Industrial Bible Institute operated here from 1896 to 1901. Charles P. Adams operated a school at this site before moving it 1.5 miles east to the present site of Grambling State University.
 
Shreveport
We go now to the twin cities of Shreveport and Bossier City, separated by the Red River. They trace their history back more than 170 years when “Shreve Town” was the stopping point for steamboats that would later transport cotton and timber up and down the Red River. This area was the hub of what was called the Red River cotton parishes. It is in this corner of northwest Louisiana where the rolling timber hills meet the Red River bottoms – 30 miles from Arkansas to the north and 10 miles from Texas to the west.
 
In its 1830’s origins, Shreveport was also the western-most U.S. outpost bordering what was then either Mexico or the Republic of Texas. (Texas won independence from Mexico in 1836 and became a state in 1845.)
 
In the formative years, either east or west, in these so-called river bottom areas that were fueled by slavery, cotton was the economic king. Later, it was oil. As was often the case in the early years of North Louisiana’s rural areas, African captives (and a few free blacks) outnumbered whites in this area’s.
 
Their influence is still strong asevidenced by institutions and culture. I will visit two places in Shreveport – the Southern University Museum of Art and the Multicultural Center of the South, located within two blocks of each other on Texas Street, downtown. Both of these institutions often conduct school and group tours. I will also look at some other areas where African Americans have made contributions – from business to education and music among other areas.
 
Southern University Museum of Art in Shreveport (SUMAS)
When you walk into the foyer of 610 Texas St., you get a feeling of an urban college environment – teachers and students in classrooms and students with backpacks are milling around. Which, in fact, is the case. You have just entered the downtown campus of the Southern University-Shreveport, a branch of Southern University’s main campus in Baton Rouge.
 
Straight ahead is the museum. Hard wood floors, wrought iron railings and stained glass windows make this museum experience unique. It is a bi-level facility. The first level gives the impression of an interior court yard; the exhibits on the second level are displayed in a balcony-like setting. The lower level has original art and crafts by African Americans. It is a combination of permanent and temporary exhibits. The upper level houses some 300 pieces of art and artifacts from Africa. Many of the pieces come from the personal collections of Dr. Leon R. Tarver II, Shreveport native and former president of the Southern University System and Dr. William Bertrand, former vice president of research at Tulane University. The purpose of the museum, the nucleus of which comes from Tarver’s 17 years of travel to Africa, is to educate the community about the history of African and African Americans through art, crafts and artifacts.
 
The African collection include ceremonial masks, statues, fabric, furniture and a variety of artifacts from Mali, Nigeria, the Ivory Coast of West African, Cameroon and the Congo. There is a pair of shackles worn by African slaves. The African American art is from the permanent collection of the Southern University Museum of Art in Baton Rouge. It features the works such renowned artists as Howard Smith, Phoebe Beasley and John Biggers. The museum also exhibits the art of local and other artists periodically. Ethiopian artist Tesfaye Negusse’s paintings were the featured display on this trip. 
 
Some artifacts, artwork and other items can be purchased in the museum store.
 
Multicultural Center of the South
When you think of Shreveport, you probably don’t think of cultural diversity beyond the usual English European and African presence. But at this museum, think also in terms of Asian, Cajun, Creole (which also include French, African and Spanish), East Indian, German, Greek, Hispanic, Irish, Jewish, Middle Eastern, Scottish and Slavic among others. There are 26 cultures represented. These cultural groups represent people from the many parts of the world living in Shreveport today.
 
This four-story structure houses over 2,000 artifacts displayed in 19 cultural exhibits. Some of the displays change to reflect programming priorities and cultural events. In cooperation with the Louisiana State Museum in Baton Rouge, for example, the center features traveling exhibits covering such topics as civil rights, music and literature. The 54, 275 ft. facility includes a library, cultural activity center, training space, dance studio and art gallery. Special exhibit rooms showcase different artists and themes.
 
Two permanent exhibits are of interest to African Americans – a room with African artifacts and clothing and the recreation of the inside of a Creole House.
 
When I was there, the museum staff was preparing a display on African American women. Another permanent display on African American history from slavery to the present will be finished later this year.
 
There are permanent exhibits for most groups and temporary ones which focus on specific and periodic topics of various groups. For example, the annual “Unity Tree” lighting ceremony is held in December where children from various cultures dressed in native attire place ornaments on the tree.
 
Overall, there is a good representation of art, history and other displays relating to African Americans. It is worth the visit.
 
Off the Trail: other African American cultural attractions in Shreveport
Antioch Baptist Church
Founded in 1866, this is the oldest black Baptist church in Shreveport. This Romanesque Revival-style is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It was designed by noted African American architect Nathaniel Skyes Allen. Open to public for group appointments only.
 
Huddie “Leadbelly” Ledbetter statue
The work of Shreveport artist Jesse Pitts, this bronze life-size statue of the legendary blues singer stands pointing toward Ledbetter Heights, a neighborhood named after him.
 

Little Union Baptist Church
This church was the frequent meeting place for civil rights workers during the 1960. Dr. Martin Luther King spoke here several times. Open to public by appointment only.
 
Municipal Auditorium
A venue for local and touring artists; this is where Elvis Presley got his start on the Louisiana Hayride. Noted African American singers who have performed here include: James Brown, Aretha Franklin, Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett, Smokey Robinson, B.B. King and others. Open to the public Wednesday to Sunday, 11 a.m. to 4:30 P.M. Group rate $2.
 
Old Central Colored High School
This two-story structure was built in 1917. For blacks, it was Caddo Parish’s first high school and the first brick school for black students. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.