Curious Iowa: How did the African American Museum of Iowa get started in Cedar Rapids?

CEDAR RAPIDS — The African American Museum of Iowa sits on the bank of the Cedar River and 12th Avenue SE in Cedar Rapids. Since 2003, the museum building has housed carefully curated exhibits and community-sourced artifacts and hosted programming.

“Our work fills in the blanks … we get to tell a whole and complete story,” Jacqueline Hunter, museum educator for the African American Museum of Iowa, told The Gazette. “We get to provide a space that sometimes can’t always happen in the normal, traditional classroom.”

“Iowa is a predominantly white state, and so we still get people coming through that say ‘Oh, I had no idea there were even Black people in Iowa or that there is such a long history of Black people in Iowa,’” Brianna Kim, the museum’s deputy director, said.

How did Cedar Rapids become home to the African American Museum of Iowa? And how did the museum get started? That’s what one reader of The Gazette asked Curious Iowa, a series that answers questions about our state, its people and the culture.

The museum’s story starts at Mt. Zion Missionary Baptist Church, long before the building at 55 12th Ave. SE was constructed.

Why is the African American Museum of Iowa in Cedar Rapids?

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The idea for an African American museum blossomed from Mount Zion Missionary Baptist Church in 1993. The six founders — Johnny Brown, James Clark, BeBe Davis, Thomas Levi Sr., Thomas Moore and Marvin Steward — were concerned that Iowa’s Black history wasn’t being taught and as a result, was becoming lost.

“These kids, our kids, they need to know about their past,” Dedric Doolin, who helped form the African American Heritage Museum Foundation, told The Gazette in 1995. “There’s more to African Americans than just basketball and music.”

“The idea at the beginning wasn’t even necessarily for a museum.” Kim said. “It kind of grew and morphed over time. I’ve heard a couple of the founders say that they never really could have envisioned in those early meetings that this would have been the product of that idea.”

The founders didn’t have museum experience, but they consulted with museum leaders in Cedar Rapids for advice and feedback.

“It really is just as simple as this is where the people who were doing the work lived, so it’s where we ended up,” Kim said of the museum being located in Cedar Rapids.

Fundraising for a museum started in 1996. Originally, it was going to open at a building owned by the church at 809 Eighth Ave. SE. In 1997, the board of directors announced they were opting to build instead of remodel the building.

A vacant building at 801 Eighth Ave. SE was razed for the museum in 1998, but the museum changed its plans again, deciding to find a larger site with more parking.

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A year later, the current site of the museum was identified. At the time, it was home to two city-owned buildings that were used by the Parks Department. The buildings were demolished in 2002.

In 2000, a temporary location for the museum opened at Westdale Mall while the museum raised funds for its brand-new facility. The first exhibit included a photographic timeline of African Americans in Iowa since the 1830s, artifacts from the southeast Iowa mining town of Buxton, a slave tag, and civil rights items.

Finally, on Sept. 19, 2003, the $3.1 million facility opened. The museum collection was built almost entirely from donations.

Hunter said it takes about a year to plan an exhibit. Temporary exhibits are typically displayed for about 11 months. The museum’s permanent exhibit, Endless Possibilities, takes patrons from the beginning of Africa through former President Barack Obama’s inauguration.

The museum’s Iowa focus helps bring history home to visitors.

“It becomes a little bit more personal for them when you can think about this person or this event happening in a place that you are familiar with,” Kim said, “and so I think being able to bring those stories to light that traditionally have not always been shared and preserved is wonderful.”

How did the 2008 flood impact the museum?

The 2008 flood sent five and a half feet of water into the museum, destroying exhibits and the museum’s library. Items were sent off for preservation and conservation efforts as needed.

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“We were able to salvage over 90 percent of our collection of our artifacts … we still have some items that show, and probably will always show, permanent damage from the flood,” Kim said. “That’s now part of those artifacts’ story.”

The museum was able to reopen its doors in 2009, seven months after the flood.

Kim said her favorite artifact in the collection is Viola Gibson’s piano. Gibson was instrumental in reactivating the Cedar Rapids NAACP in 1942 after her nephew was denied entrance to Ellis Pool because of his race.

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“That piano went through the flood and it was recovered, but it has a kind of diagonal line on the side of it that shows where the floodwaters stopped,” Kim said. “which I think is just really interesting. It’s kind of a new part of that piece’s history since it came to the museum.”

What programming does the museum offer?

The museum offers $1 admission on the first Saturday of the month along with Coffee Conversations, an informal conversation with other patrons about the museum’s exhibits.

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“Sometimes, when you’re going into the museum you’re walking right back out, and this is an opportunity for people to really discuss what they’ve seen, get how it’s impacted their lives,” Hunter said. “It’s always interesting, depending on the demographic coming in.”

The museum also offers “The Life of an American Girl,” a program that focuses on the stories of the dolls Addy, Claudie and Melody. Current programming centers around Claudie and the Harlem Renaissance.

“Many of the people who are coming to the American Girl programming have never come into the museum before, and what has happened with that is those who are coming to American Girl are now coming to other programs, which, to me, makes what we're doing even more important,” Hunter said.

Hunter developed the museum’s new “Not a Monolith” series, which is geared at exploring the diverse interests and contributions of Black individuals. January focused on anime and cosplay. On Feb. 15 at 4 p.m., the museum will explore AfroFuturism with Basi Affia, author and founder of Sensiil Studios, the Midwest’s premier Black comic book publisher.

“We’re tapping into some of those other interests with the idea that it is going to possibly bring in members of our community who maybe haven’t traditionally walked through these doors and found that the museum can be a home for them as well,” Hunter said.

She said she’s looking forward to the panel discussion, “History, Hope, and Healing in Iowa’s Beloved Community,” Feb. 27 at 5:15 p.m.

“We are inviting the entire Iowa community out and we want to discuss current events … What does this mean to our community?” Hunter said. “But we’re going to do that through the lens of Dr. King and his philosophies for the beloved community, and what does that mean for us here in Iowa?”

For a full list of the museum’s upcoming events, visit blackiowa.org or the museum’s Facebook or Instagram pages.

Why did the museum recently undergo renovations?

The museum reopened last year after a $5 million renovation, made necessary when a floodgate, installed along 12th Avenue SE, blocked the museum’s former entrance.

“About five, six years ago now, we started having meetings with representatives from the city about what [the flood wall] was really going to look like … it became clear that it was going to cut pretty close to our building on the back side, but also through what had been our parking lot and very close to where our front entrance used to be located,” Kim said.

“While we were in this process, we were discussing if we’re going to have to be closed and do this major renovation to our lobby in our first floor area, why don’t we do a bunch of these other things that we’ve been talking about as well?”

The museum was closed for 18 months while it underwent renovations, including adding a genealogy lab, improving exhibit space, updating its HVAC system, reinforcing the roof, and moving the “Trumpet”, a sculpture outside of the museum.

The Gazette previously reported that the museum received $1.07 million from the city of Cedar Rapids and more than $750,000 from the Iowa Economic Development Authority’s Destination Iowa and the Hall-Perrine Foundation.

Kim said the museum is at a pivotal point in its history.

“We just reopened last May … and so we’re kind of still re-evaluating some of what that looks like for us and what our audience looks like,” she said.

Additionally, a new chapter in the museum’s leadership will soon begin. On Friday, the museum announced that Hunter will replace former Executive Director LaNisha Cassell, who left the museum in October to become executive director at Voices Underground in Kennett Square, Pa.

In a news release, Hunter said her mission is to build upon the museum’s foundation of the preservation, exhibition and teaching of African American heritage in Iowa.

“I am committed to ensuring that our Museum remains a vibrant space where the stories of African American resilience, innovation and triumph are honored and shared with all.”

Hunter will start as the museum’s Executive Director March 3.

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Comments: bailey.cichon@thegazette.com