Black History Month: Milwaukee museums collaborate to share history – FOX 6 Milwaukee

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You can explore Black history in an intimate guided tour, part of a collaboration with America’s Black Holocaust Museum and the Milwaukee Public Museum.
MILWAUKEE – From the heart of Milwaukee to the heart of Africa, the suffrage, journey and triumphs of Black people are being shared in a unique way this month. You can explore it all locally with an intimate guided tour, part of a collaboration with America’s Black Holocaust Museum and the Milwaukee Public Museum.
What they’re saying:
The docents referred to as griots – a West African term for storyteller – are sharing the knowledge from both locations to provide a greater context to help visitors really understand the exhibits.
Brad Pruitt, the Executive Director at America’s Black Holocaust Museum, shared more about the experience there at the north side location.
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"America's Black Holocaust Museum was founded by Dr. James Cameron, one of a few known survivors of a lynching in American history. The museum was created then and is now an opportunity to do a more thorough examination of our collective American history. Through that more thorough examination, provide space and context and opportunity for reconciliation and for healing. So it’s a place to learn," Pruitt said. "It’s a place to connect. It’s a place to grow it. It’s a place to heal. His thought process was, we need such a venue to tell the stories of the descendants of Africans in America."
What they’re saying:
"As you make your way through the museum, you start in pre-captive Africa, exploring the extraordinary life, civilization, innovation that was the continent prior to the slave trade," Pruitt said. "Then, working your way through the middle passage and the institutional slavery and to reconstruction and civil rights. As you make your way through the entire museum, you begin to encounter present day, movements, and inspirations and institutions. It’s a comprehensive over 400-year journey of this history. We explore the extraordinary challenges and extraordinary terror. There is also opportunity to explore and examine the things that were triumphant and the things that are inspiring about this history and the present."
It's an emotional journey which is intentional, as griots from ABHM take their knowledge to the Africa exhibits at MPM and provide greater context for those existing galleries.
Pruitt added more about the tour happening at MPM.
Dig deeper:
"This mural is another example of the power a partnership and collaboration. This is all that was done with Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design and partnership with Milwaukee Public Museum where four centuries of history, world history, but it’s also incorporating local history. In the narrative of the role, life experience, the triumph, and the challenges of this group of enslaved Africans, who have survived and been able to thrive through one of the most horrific institutions of slavery that the world has ever known, this is a testament of the challenging history but also some of the amazing and inspiring things that have been born of it," he said. "This is an opportunity for through our griots, our partners here at MPM, to help the visitors and the guests that understand the information they are being provided. There is no America without this portion of our history. This is our collective history. The hope is that we better understand. This is all of our history, and together we can address challenges past, present and future."
Folks from all different backgrounds seemed moved by the dialogue, reading and visuals.
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The tour continues, taking you on a journey ending on the streets of old Milwaukee.
Adriana Vazquez, the Director of Education and Public programs at MPM added, "The tour with ABHM will highlight the history of Africans and African Americans from Africa to Milwaukee. In the Streets of Old Milwaukee we have the exhibit of the Watson house as well as a diorama of Ezekiel Gillespie. The focus is very local to Wisconsin history."
Local perspective:
"I want our programming to inspire that curiosity so they can continue their own learning," Vazquez said. "I would love for people to, and for those that identify with the individuals in the communities that we will be talking about, feel that sense of representation and pride. Black history is American history and it’s local history. All of the conversation is really meaningful and in depth."
What you can do:
The next tour will be Saturday, Feb. 22 then Saturday, March 1. Both the Milwaukee Public Museum and America's Black Holocaust Museum have several programs going on for Black History Month.
The Source: The information in this post was produced by FOX6 News.
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