The Idaho Black History Museum is a museum of

African American African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of ens ...

history and culture located at 508 Julia Davis Drive in Boise,

Idaho Idaho ( ) is a state in the Pacific Northwest region of the Western United States. To the north, it shares a small portion of the Canada–United States border with the province of British Columbia. It borders the states of Montana and Wyom ...

, in the United States. It is the oldest African American museum in the

Pacific Northwest The Pacific Northwest (sometimes Cascadia, or simply abbreviated as PNW) is a geographic region in western North America bounded by its coastal waters of the Pacific Ocean to the west and, loosely, by the Rocky Mountains to the east. Though ...

About the building

St. Paul Baptist Church was constructed in 1921 Warm Springs and E. Broadway Avenues. The congregation, founded in 1909 by Rev. William Riley Hardy, worshipped in homes and rented structures until the permanent church building was finished. Small, wood-frame chapel was included on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...

in 1982. It was the first African American church in Idaho, and for almost all its history was the largest Black congregation in Idaho. Having outgrown the building, the congregation resolved in 1994 to sell it to the city for use as a Black history museum. The congregation worshipped in the structure until 1995.

About the museum

Preserving St. Paul Baptist Church was a major goal of Mary Hardy Buckner, a long-time member of the congregation. She encouraged her daughter, Cherie Buckner-Webb, to find a way to avoid its demolition. Buckner-Webb established a foundation in 1996 to take ownership of the church building, but this required moving it from the land on which it sat. The group raised $120,000 to move the structure and establish a museum in it once it reached its new location. The city of Boise agreed to allow the building to be moved to a spot on the outskirts of

Julia Davis Park Julia Davis Park is a municipal park in the downtown region of Boise, Idaho. Created in 1907 with a land donation from Thomas Jefferson Davis, it is the first park in the "String of Pearls", the group of parks operated by the Boise Parks and Recr ...

. The building was relocated in 1998. Local artist Cherie Lindley conserved the building's original eight stained glass windows prior to the museum's opening. The museum dates its founding to 1995, making it the oldest African American history museum in the Pacific Northwest, but did not open its doors until 1999. The Idaho Black History Museum focuses on African Americans in Idaho from the early 1800s to the present. The museum's permanent display, "The Invisible Idahoan: 200 Years of Blacks in Idaho", was created with the assistance of Dr. Mamie Oliver, the first African American professor at

Boise State University Boise State University (BSU) is a public research university in Boise, Idaho. Founded in 1932 by the Episcopal Church, it became an independent junior college in 1934 and has been awarding baccalaureate and master's degrees It became a publ ...

. Other exhibits contain artifacts and displays on Aurelius Buckner, the first Black athlete at Boise State University; Dorothy Buckner, African American activist who succeeded in pushing the Idaho legislation to adopt a civil rights bill in 1961; Cherie Buckner-Webb, the first Black legislator in the state of Idaho, and the history of the Ku Klux Klan's attempts to intimidate African Americans in the state. The museum's collection also included a sizeable number of works of African American art. The museum's programming includes films, lectures, films, performances, and workshops. The museum's currect executive director is Phillip Thompson, Mary Hardy Buckner's great-grandson. The museum suffered a significant financial crisis in 2007 that required it to lay off staff and reduce its hours In 2016, the museum was vandalized when someone wrote a racial slur in the snow on the roof of the museum's storage facility.

References

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External links

Idaho Black History Museum
Museums in Boise, Idaho African-American museums in Idaho History museums in Idaho African Americans in Idaho