“Because the Lord has given me this”: The sacred reckoning of Black museum geographies

Abstract

From the National Civil Rights Museum to cramped one-room museums that emerged as havens in historically Black neighborhoods, there are nearly 200 African American History and Culture Museums dedicated to affirming that African American people have not only a history in America, but a history at the center of America. While scholars have studied a wide array of sites of memory, heritage, and tourism, Black museums remain understudied and under-theorized despite engaging in valuable, local knowledge production and, often, scaffolding a deeper understanding of national- and global-scale historical and geographic narratives.This paper seeks to understand the intersection of Black places and memory through research with Black museums. Building on site visits and semi-structured interviews with museum management, this paper will focus on two neighborhoods, Germantown and West Philadelphia in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the location of several Black history museums including the Paul Robeson House, ACES, Black Writers Museum, Lest We Forget Black Holocaust Museum, and the Colored Girls Museum. This paper will highlight the range of place-making work, community engagement, and current challenges facing these museums and their neighborhoods.