Establishing Roots: African American Women and the Early Museum

                 Establishing Roots: African American Women and the Early Museum

Understanding the origin and early establishments of these African American community museums stands as the main discussion in Andrea Burn’s book, From Storefront to Monument: Tracing the Public History of the Black Museum Movement. Her argument is well planned, her writing is concise and her historiography denoting the changes of the African American museum is linear. One argument I would raise would be the minimal representation of the contributions of African American women in the creation of the early museum.

This is not to say that Burns never mentions the contributions of African American women. Burns discusses Margaret Burroughs’ contribution to the founding of the DuSable Museum of African American History, and she discusses the fundamental work of the women who volunteered their time and knowledge in their community museums. She even mentions these early problems with the sparse representation of the innovations of African American women to the Afro-American culture diaspora in the first few paragraphs of chapter 3.

However, the prevalence of the masculine dominant focus of the early museums – for example, IAM (I AM A MAN), “…correct(ing) false and distorted history of the Black Man, and to give him a symbol of his own identity and worth… (Burns, Andrea, From Storefront to Monument: Tracing the Public History of the Black Museum Movement, pg. 31) – warrants more discussion. It would have been interesting to have a full chapter dedicated to the works and actions of African American women in establishing community museums and in the communities.

Margaret Burroughs Reading, What shall I Tell My Children Who Are Black?