Dr. Gaila Sims has been laying the groundwork for the Fredericksburg Space Museum’s Residing Legacies exhibit since arriving in Fredericksburg three years in the past. The exhibit opens Friday from 5-9 p.m. (submitted photograph)
In 2021, when Fredericksburg’s Metropolis Council entered into an MOU to “inform a extra full story” of the town’s historical past, the document known as for a brand new rent on the Fredericksburg Space Museum to assist set up an exhibit centered on the slave public sale block that had lengthy stood beside the 400 block of William Avenue.
Upon arrival, nevertheless, Gaila Sims shortly realized that the public sale block’s historic legacy wasn’t the one heavy matter. The block itself weighed greater than 1,200 kilos, which means that its sheer mass precluded a show on the museum’s second (most important) or third flooring.
However Sims, whose authentic title with FAM was Curator of African American History and Special Projects, wished the area’s Black historical past displayed entrance and heart. The museum’s Residing Legacies exhibit, which opens Friday from 5-9 p.m., will likely be laborious to overlook.
“It’s essential to me that this exhibition is on the second flooring,” Sims stated. “It’s the very first thing you’ll see once you come within the entrance door, and it’ll be up for 3 years.”
For Sims, the long-planned exhibit symbolizes a achievement of the town’s efforts to inform that story.
“In my head, that is form of the final piece of that MOU to be accomplished,” Sims stated.
Fredericksburg doesn’t have a devoted Black historical past museum, and FAM takes its position in telling that story significantly, stated CEO and President Sam McKelvey.
“What’s actually tough about a company like ours is that, you already know, we’re telling a narrative of thousands and thousands of years of historical past, proper?” McKelvey stated. “And so once you’re doing one thing as massive and vital as African-American historical past, the historical past of African-Individuals in Fredericksburg, it’s a must to form of suppose by means of it.”
For her half, Sims began by breaking down occasions into 4 chronological “zones”: enslavement, Civil Warfare and Reconstruction, segregation and the Civil Rights motion to immediately.
“I figured that out earlier than I even obtained right here,” she stated. “And that’s useful as a result of that’s how I may order the tales. So after I obtained right here and I began speaking to folks and, you already know, my primary factor that I do is I simply attempt to hear.”
She heard from members of the Walker-Grant Excessive College Class of 1950, who staged a historic protest on their commencement day; she heard from elders just like the Rev. Hashmel Turner, who has labored to honor the U.S. twenty third Coloured Troops, the primary Black unit to face Robert E. Lee’s Military of Northern Virginia in battle.
And she or he integrated efforts that have been already underway, just like the Fredericksburg Civil Rights Path that was unveiled final yr below the management of Chris Williams and Victoria Matthews. In February 2024, the town’s 21-stop path was added to the U.S. Civil Rights Trail.
“What I used to be making an attempt to do with this exhibition is seize all of the work that everybody else is doing in addition to the work we’ve finished on the museum, as a result of these efforts should not identical to me displaying up and doing this,” Sims stated.
However Sims undoubtedly “led the way in which,” stated McKelvey, and her mark on the exhibit is unmistakable. The historian lives on the grounds of the previous Chatham Manor in southern Stafford County, and the very first thing museum goers will see upon coming into are the names of 5 Black males — Abram, Cupid, James, Phil and Robin — who staged an rebellion towards their overseer there in 1805.
“I do know some folks know that story, however I don’t know if everyone does,” she stated. “And so having it right here is essential to me.”
By nature, museum openings are usually intimate, restrained affairs.
If that’s your factor, keep away from Fredericksburg’s Market Sq. from 5-9 p.m. on Friday. As a result of when FAM introduces Residing Legacies, it’s going to be a celebration.
Sims stated she drew from her experiences on the Oakland Museum of California and different establishments that supplied a way of “pleasure and communal consolation” throughout openings.
Upon coming into the exhibit, museum-goers will likely be issued two free drink tickets for a money bar on the third flooring. Festivities within the sq. will function a stay efficiency from native jazz legend Harry Henderson, a poetry studying and formal remarks from museum workers. Juno Todd will introduce his mom, Gaye Adegbalola, an area musician and activist to whom the exhibit is devoted.
“However,” stated Sims, “it’s not simply the exhibit that we’re celebrating. It’s the final three years of labor that we’ve finished.”
