African American Museum Grand Opening
An area community is preserving history with the Grand Opening of an African American Museum June 15th. Organizers put together exhibits featuring W.E.B DeBouis, who was one of the founders of NAACP and the first African American to earn a PhD at Harvard in 1896.
It will also feature Rosa Parks. She played a big role in the civil rights movement for refusing to give up her bus seat. Their stories, along with local black heroes will be preserved in the Mounds, Illinois Museum.
The museum building is a symbol of local black history. “The original building there was owned by Gwendolyn Chambliss. She was a prominent black educator and entrepreneur in Mounds, and thats the only building thats left in our area that black people owned,” said the Co-Founder for the African American Museum in Mounds, Josie Eason.
You can visit the Mound Illinois African American Museum on Saturday and Sunday from 2:00pm to 5:00pm. You can find it at 216 North Front Street.
