LaNisha Cassell on front line of history at African American Museum of Iowa

CEDAR RAPIDS — LaNisha Cassell had been married 22 days when she and husband Karl Cassell moved to his hometown of Cedar Rapids. That was 20 years ago.

Karl became executive director at the Jane Boyd Community House and LaNisha started looking for a job in a city where the Washington, D.C., area native knew no one but her husband.

Her cake decorating skills, which she had been icing since age 16, landed her a position at Jules Bakery in Marion. A few months later, she joined the Marion Independent School Foundation and Alumni Association. She stayed there for about 11 years, serving as executive director, focusing on fundraising and networking.

Those efforts in building visibility and awareness transferred easily to her new position in 2016 as deputy director at the African American Museum of Iowa in Cedar Rapids, where she spent a year working with then-Director Tom Moore.

Because she had spent so much time in Marion, she needed to immerse herself in Cedar Rapids before stepping into the executive director role, eventually leading the organization through a recent capital campaign and renovation. The doors reopened to the public in May, after that site was closed for 18 months for work not only inside the museum at 55 12th Ave. SE but also for nearby flood wall construction.

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“The first year, I really just spent going to meetings, going to coffee shops, meeting people, and just building that network, which honestly played such a pivotal role in … the capital campaign and renovation project,” Cassell said. “Most of the contributions we received were from the relationships that were already established. So that was the pivotal year, working together.”

And now she is embarking on a new adventure. Oct. 7 will be her last day at the museum. Cassell, 51, is heading to Kennett Square, Pa., to become executive director of Voices Underground, whose mission is “to promote racial healing by elevating the story of the Underground Railroad through scholarly research, creative experiences, and historical memorialization.”

A search for a new executive director of the museum is underway.

LaNisha, Karl, who has held various community leadership positions, and their son, Solomon, 15, will be moving eastward. Daughter Lydia, 19, will continue studying at the University of Iowa, giving them reasons to come back for a visit.

Not only is the museum a keeper of the past, but it’s also been at the forefront of history in the making. The Gazette asked Cassell about the developments she has witnessed. Some answers have been edited for brevity and clarity.

Q: Aside from the physical structure, how has the museum, its mission and organization changed during your tenure?

A: The mission is the same. I wouldn't say our vision changed, but we kind of solidified it by putting it in writing and making sure we pushed that out there, about bringing people, bringing communities together, and for deeper understanding and appreciation of Iowa's African American heritage and culture.

I think in terms of the changes, it was a visibility thing. My main goal was all involved with the networking and getting to know people and not being known as the Cedar Rapids museum. We and people have still called us that, but I think it’s starting to spread that we are a statewide institution, and that our resources and our content expands the scope of the state. And so the visibility and the awareness of what we do and where we are and why we do what we do, I think has grown over the last eight or nine years.

It was hard to get out of the office a lot in the beginning, in the early years. We’ve always been slightly understaffed. In a great ideal world, we’d have 15 people. And we can do all the things we want to do to be able to expand our access and our reach all over, but during the campaign period in particular, that's when (an employee was promoted to deputy) so that she can take on some responsibility, so that I can get out of the office and be out in the community.

And I did a lot of travel, particularly Central Iowa, because for one, people who hear about us, who aren’t in the state, assume we’re probably in Des Moines. … But honestly, the bulk of our contributions came from local, from Linn County.

But we do have a statewide board, and so having four directors who are in Central Iowa has definitely helped (and) having a board member in Muscatine and Iowa City or North Liberty, and we even have one in Minnesota. We had one who was in New York. We’ve had a lot of broadening of our ambassadors. And then, of course, traveling exhibits have gone a long way to help us to further that goal.

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Q: Central Iowa has a rich Black history.

A: It does. It does. I learn more every day.

I don’t have a museum background — not even a history background. I majored in English. And that’s funny, because when I interviewed, I’m like, ‘Yeah, I don’t know if this is going to work, because they’re looking for somebody, maybe, who has a museum background.’ But honestly, it’s hard to stay in your lane sometimes. If I’d had a curator background or an educator background, maybe I wouldn’t have been able to focus on managing the people and doing the fundraising and building the network, increasing the visibility.

I enjoy those things too, now that I’ve been exposed to it, but my focus has always been to raise the visibility and awareness and bring the dollars in and build that network of support. And so I think it was actually to the advantage of the museum that I didn’t have that background.

I stay in my lane. (The other employees) do what they do. We have fun. It’s great. We have a great team. We’ve had some fantastic conversations. We deep dive into so many things, and this has been a great experience all around.

Q: The world has changed a lot in the past nine years. What were the top-of-mind issues nine years ago?

A: I think in the beginning, when I first got here, we were really focused on the preserving history part. And I think we kind of evolved into the fact that history isn’t necessarily just history from a long time ago, that it could be history that happened yesterday, or that ‘real time history’ is what I like to call it. …

I think when I began to allow a lot more freedom and creativity and a little edgy stuff, and the curator wanted to do some things that hadn’t been done before, or topics that might have been considered hard for people to deal with. And so you think about migration and immigration, the culture of Black hair and beauty standards and conformity. We did, of course, redlining, and we’ve done the school-to-prison pipeline. And these are all in the last five or six years.

There’s always a topic that’s important.

I would say that probably the biggest one right now, when you think about what’s happened over the last few years, 2020, in particular, after the murder of George Floyd. We were in the process of putting our protest exhibit together. Who would have thought that would have happened? We ended up halting that production just so we could include some of the things are happening in real time, like some of the peaceful protests that were happening around the state. …

It just reinforced the point that we don’t have to wait for 30 years for something to have passed (to be) included in our in our educational resources. We can do it now.

Redlining was interesting too, because a lot of people think of redlining — if they even know about it — think that’s something that happened 50, 60, 70, years ago, when really it’s happening still. It may be called a different name, but it’s also the impact of what happened in terms of zoning and what happened with mortgage lenders and (real estate) that’s impacting us now. If you know about redlining, you can drive around our community and see what was redlined without seeing a map. You can go through communities and see it. I thought that was important to bring that up, not only because it was historical, but also because it has a present-day impact.

Q: How do you feel the museum has been received in an area that is predominantly white?

A: The bulk of our audience is white, which is not surprising. … We’re in a white state — why wouldn’t that be the bulk of our audience? Although we target the entire state, we want everybody to come in our doors. I think the reception has been pretty good. … I think, relatively speaking, people are open. I think people see me as approachable, which, for good or bad, people can say what things they might not say to somebody else.

I remember I was at one of my son’s games, and somebody came up and said, ‘Hey, I know the museum’s opening back up soon. I hope the exhibits are not divisive.’ I knew about the one that's coming soon (“Racist Things: Hateful Imagery in the American Home,” which opened Friday and continues through Aug. 16, 2025), and I didn’t say that, though. I just said, ‘Oh no, we just tell the truth, do fact-based information.’ … I’m thinking to myself, we have to tell the truth.

And I don’t get me wrong. I don’t mind being edgy and pushing the envelope. Even our title of this exhibit, to me, it tells you what you’re going to get before you get in here. Let’s not sugarcoat it. This is what you’re going to see. This is what you’re going to get. And we want people to come in with an open mind, but it’s acknowledgment to me.

I think acknowledgment goes a long way. It’s a lot of that ‘get over it’ type of mentality, because people don’t understand the impact of what has happened, how it’s impacted us today. And I think acknowledgment is not an apology. I don’t think anybody needs an apology, because oftentimes the people who need to apologize aren’t here anymore. The people who need to be apologized to aren’t here anymore.

But the impact, and acknowledging that it has had an impact, and it continues to have an impact, is huge to me.

Q: What are some of the key events or programming of which you’re especially proud?

A: There’s so many things I love. I think the two that stand out, of course, our big ones, our History Makers Gala — I just love that. It’s an opportunity for us to be able to recognize Black leaders and community leaders around the state. A lot of people don’t get their flowers in real time, and it’s really nice to be able to make those connections. And I like that it’s statewide, because it’s not just Cedar Rapids. We’re looking at people in different communities. I’m excited about this year’s event, too. I’m glad that my last public thing (will be) the gala.

And then Juneteenth, probably in particular, because suddenly it’s become a thing that people know about and want to talk about, but we’ve been honoring Juneteenth since June 19th, 1865. It’s become a fundraiser event for us, but it’s still a community event. During the pandemic, a lot of places stopped doing their annual commemoration activities, and so they started to reach out to us, to ask us about sponsoring. And so then it became that, but we try to maintain the integrity of the commemorative spirit of it, where we have educational pieces and celebratory pieces, as well.

Q: What memories of Cedar Rapids will you take with you?

A: The warm embrace. One of the things we focused on was a servant leadership. We’ve both been really involved in the community and had the space to be able to do, too. We served on a lot of boards and commissions. We volunteer at church. I volunteered at my kids’ school. I don’t know if I was somewhere else that I would have had the time to be able to do all the things. I feel very embraced.

Comments: (319) 368-8508; diana.nollen@thegazette.com