HOME

TheInfoList



Click Here for Items Related To - Alexandria Black History Museum
OR:
Alexandria Black History Museum on:   [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Amazon]

The Alexandria Black History Museum, located at 902 Wythe St.,
Alexandria, Virginia Alexandria is an independent city (United States), independent city in the northern region of the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Virginia, United States. It lies on the western bank of the Potomac River approximately south of Downto ...
, is operated by the City of Alexandria. The building was formerly the Robert Robinson Library, originally constructed in 1940 as the first "
separate but equal Separate but equal was a legal doctrine in United States constitutional law, according to which racial segregation did not necessarily violate the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which nominally guaranteed "equal protecti ...
" library for African Americans in the segregated city.


History

In 1794, Alexandria Library opened as a private lending library, calling itself the Alexandria Library Company. In 1937, Dr. Robert South Barrett donated funds to build Alexandria's Public Library. The Library Company cooperated in this effort, contracting with the Alexandria City Council to turn over its collections to City of Alexandria as the City agreed to include the public library's operating expenses in its budget. Since the library's budget was collected from the taxes paid by every American Citizen regardless their race, the lawyer
Samuel Wilbert Tucker Samuel Wilbert Tucker (June 18, 1913 – October 19, 1990) was an American lawyer and a cooperating attorney with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). His civil rights career began as he organized a 1939 sit-in ...
organized in 1939 a pacific sit-in at the new and "whites only" Alexandria, Virginia public library (Kate Waller Barret branch) that lead to their arrest by Virginia's police. The 1939 event is commonly cited as the first non-violent protest by African Americans against
racial segregation Racial segregation is the systematic separation of people into race (human classification), racial or other Ethnicity, ethnic groups in daily life. Racial segregation can amount to the international crime of apartheid and a crimes against hum ...
. The museum has changing exhibitions on local and national topics related to African Americans.


Museum

The museum also operates the Alexandria African American Heritage Park, a park at 500 Holland Lane, which contains a nineteenth-century African-American cemetery that was buried under a city
landfill A landfill site, also known as a tip, dump, rubbish dump, garbage dump, or dumping ground, is a site for the disposal of waste materials. Landfill is the oldest and most common form of waste disposal, although the systematic burial of the waste ...
in the 1960s.


See also

*
Contrabands and Freedmen Cemetery The Contrabands and Freedmen Cemetery at 1001 S. Washington St. in Alexandria, Virginia was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on August 15, 2012. It was established in February 1864 by the Union military commander of the Alexand ...
*
Franklin and Armfield Office The Franklin and Armfield Office, which houses the Freedom House Museum, is a historic commercial building in Alexandria, Virginia ( until 1846, the District of Columbia). Built c. 1810–20, it was first used as a private residence before bein ...
*
Frederick Douglass National Historic Site The Frederick Douglass National Historic Site, administered by the National Park Service, is located at 1411 W Street, SE, in Anacostia, a neighborhood east of the Anacostia River in Southeast Washington, D.C. United States. Established in 1988 ...
*
National Museum of African American History and Culture The National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) is a Smithsonian Institution museum located on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., in the United States. It was established in December 2003 and opened its permanent home in ...
*
National Museum of African Art The National Museum of African Art is the Smithsonian Institution's African art museum, located on the National Mall of the United States capital. Its collections include 9,000 works of traditional and contemporary African art from both Sub-S ...
*
Anacostia Community Museum The Anacostia Community Museum (known colloquially as the ACM) is a community museum in the Anacostia neighborhood of Washington, D.C., in the United States. It is one of twenty museums under the umbrella of the Smithsonian Institution and was th ...
* Founders Library *
Alexandria Library (Virginia) Alexandria Library is the public library in Alexandria, Virginia in the United States. History In 1794, Alexandria Library opened as a private lending library, calling itself the Alexandria Library Company. In 1937, Dr. Robert South Barrett ...
*
Jim Crow laws The Jim Crow laws were state and local laws enforcing racial segregation in the Southern United States. Other areas of the United States were affected by formal and informal policies of segregation as well, but many states outside the Sout ...
*
List of museums focused on African Americans This is a list of museums in the United States whose primary focus is on African American culture and history. Such museums are commonly known as African American museums. According to scholar Raymond Doswell, an African American museum is "an i ...


Further reading

*


External links


Official Web site of the Alexandria Black History Museum


References

{{coord, 38.81206, -77.04803, format=dms, type:landmark_region:U-VA, display=title Museums in Alexandria, Virginia African-American history of Virginia Buildings and structures in Alexandria, Virginia Cemeteries in Alexandria, Virginia Tourist attractions in Alexandria, Virginia African-American museums in Virginia Parks in Alexandria, Virginia