COVER

CELEBRATING BLACK HISTORY

February tours at the Tennessee State Museum center Black experiences

BY AMANDA HAGGARD

The Tennessee State Museum is hosting two different tours focused on the Black experience in February.

A Black History Tour will guide visitors through black history in the state, offering stories about local moments in the civil rights movement as well as the Civil War. And the museum’s Black Craftspeople Tour focuses more specifically on folk artists like carpenter Lewis C. Buckner and the more well-known William Edmonson, a Black sculptor who was the son of enslaved people.

The tours were programmed by Joyska Nunez-Medina, who creates and presents programs like the tours and Lunch and Learn series for the Tennessee State Museum. In the past, Nunez-Medina has done internships at the National Park Service, National Forest Service and the Smithsonian National Museum of American History and she has an M.A. from George Washington University in museum studies and came to work for the Tennessee State Museum in 2018 when it reopened in its new space.

“I have a passion for learning about and teaching the histories and stories of the people and communities missing from the commonly taught historical narrative,” Nunez-Medina says.

While the Black Craftspeople Tour is new this year, Nunez-Medina says the Black History Tour has been going since 2019. When she and others present the Black History Tour, they often see many Black families taking the tour together.

“Once, my coworker had a whole family reunion join her on her tour,” Nunez-Medina says. “It made the work done feel truly special.”

In the Black History Tour, Medina says one of her favorite parts of the tour talks about contraband camps during the Civil War.

“These were refugee camps that were established nearby Union troops during the war,” Nunez-Medina says. “Enslaved people could be taken in by

the troops as ‘contraband’ because of their status as property. But what is amazing is that many enslaved people saw this as an opportunity to self-liberate and flee from their enslavers.”

Contraband camps existed throughout the South, she says, but in Nashville, there were three major ones, which included one by the Capitol that was used as a fort after it was captured in 1862.

“After the war, many of these camps stayed put and would create some of the first historically Black communities in cities, like Edgehill in Nashville,” she says.

In a 45-minute tour, it can be tough to decide what you include and what you don’t, particularly since the audience is different with each tour and guides are never sure what knowledge visitors may have.

“You don’t know how much they know about a certain topic,” Nunez-Medina says. “You don’t want to include too much or too little information. When talking about someone like William Edmondson, we want to remember that not everyone knows who he is, so we introduce the basics.”

The Tennessee State Museum has four Edmonson sculptures on display. “Lion” in Change and Challenge and three more in Art After 1900, that allow guides to tell his stories.

The challenge in programming is keeping the scope squarely on Tennessee state history while also utilizing what is on display to tell stories about the state.

“This can be difficult, depending on the story we want to tell,” she says.

“Some stories need to be told, even if there is only a panel on the subject. Sometimes, that means telling the story by that panel. As we have worked with the exhibits in the past three years, the educators came up with different ways to share various stories.”

In the Black Craftspeople Tour, guides will also provide some context of the time frame during which someone like Edmondson was working to get a sense of the artist's world, she says. The tour also features artists like furniture maker Lewis C. Buckner.

“Ultimately, we try to include notable information or a story that is memorable or important to the person,” Nunez-Medina says. “If too much time is spent on a timeline of events, it’s hard to focus. Stories are what connect people to their past.”

Black History Month Film Screenings at Nashville Public Library

The Bordeaux Branch of the Nashville Public Library is hosting two film screenings in the second half of February in honor of Black History Month: One is a showing at 5:30 p.m. on Feb. 17, of A Child Shall Lead Them: The Desegregation of Nashville Public Schools. The documentary film outlines how first-grade students walked into schools in Nashville, becoming a few of the first in the South to attend desegregated schools. On Feb. 19 at 10: 30 a.m, the branch will show By Design: The Shaping of Nashville’s Public Schools, looks back at the city's schools from the 1800s and on, and includes firsthand accounts from the first graders who integrated schools. This longer documentary looks at how policies and priorities continue to shape education in the city. Discussions will follow both films.