Making the Best of a Bad Situation

Revolutionary War heroes, Kate and Jack Heard, are enigmas. While slaves in Georgia, they chose to save their white owner from a British hangman’s noose during the American Revolution. For me, the puzzle is why would these slaves save their owner’s life? 1) Stephen Heard was captured. Why didn’t Kate and Jack walk away from him and seek their own personal freedom? 2) The British promised freedom to any slave who helped them to crush the rebels. Why didn’t Kate and Jack help the British? 3) Kate and Jack risked their lives to save Stephen Heard's life. Why would they do that? The brainteaser for some, however, is not why Kate and Jack saved Stephen Heard, but rather, how they were able to bamboozle the British and carry out one of the greatest escapes of all times. The local legend is that Kate concealed Stephen Heard in a clothes basket and then simply walked out of the prison camp with him hidden in the basket, while Jack waited nearby in the forest with horses to continue their escape. Of course, for others, the most pressing question is not why or how, but whether Kate really had the strength to lift Stephen Heard and then carry him to safety in a clothes basket. Truth or legend? You decide.

Decision Time

The Jim-Ree African American Museum will feature both permanent and rotating exhibits. A visitor to the Jim-Ree African American Museum can always expect to see a display featuring the following local heroes from Elbert County, Georgia: Kate and Jack Heard and William Henry Heard. Kate and Jack Heard, slaves, were American Revolutionary War heroes who saved their owner, Stephen Heard, from a Tory's hangman's noose. Stephen Heard later became a governor of Georgia. Nearly a century later, another slave, William Henry Heard, when freed after the Civil War became a Bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church and an author of two books: From Slavery to the Bishopric in the AME Church and The Bright Side of African Life. In the book, From Slavery to the Bishopric in the AME Church, William Henry Heard talked about his experiences, in Elbert County, Georgia, both as a slave and as a free man.

The rotating exhibits will be changed three times per year. One such display will feature a doll collection donated by Mrs. Mary Craft of Decatur, Georgia in honor of her sister Mrs. Sara Jo Willingham. Mrs. Sara Jo Willingham was a retired educator from the Elbert County, Georgia School System and a dedicated member of the Jim-Ree Black History Month Committee. The doll collection is a sample of dolls representing famous African Americans. Mrs. Mary Craft is pictured with a James Brown doll from the collection.

More on Rotating Exhibits

There are two African American Museums that are less than 100 miles from the Jim-Ree African American Museum in Elbert County: the Lucy Craft Laney Museum of Black History in Augusta, Georgia and the Morgan County African American Museum in Madison, Georgia.

The Lucy Craft Laney Museum of Black History celebrates the life of Lucy Craft Laney, a renowned educator, through art and history. The museum is located in the former home of Ms. Laney and is across the street from the Lucy Craft Laney High School. The museum houses both permanent and rotating galleries. The permanent exhibits are the Lucy Craft Laney Collection, the Pilgrim Health and Life Collection, and art works of Dr. Charles Smith and Alice Davis. The rotating exhibit is the Ebony Legacy Collection that highlights African Americans from Augusta, Georgia.

The Morgan County African American Museum is a house museum as well. It has four permanent exhibits:  African and African American artifacts and works of art of African Americans from Morgan County and from other locations. Like the Lucy Craft Laney Museum, the Morgan County African American Museum is housed in an historic structure that is linked to local African American history. John Wesley Moore (1862-1908) was an African American farmer. The Morgan County African American Museum is housed in Moore's former home.

Should Jim-Ree Museum be like the Lucy Craft Laney Museum of Black History and have both permanent and rotating galleries or should all the galleries at the Jim-Ree Museum be permanent like they are at the Morgan County African American Museum? Of course, there is another choice: all the exhibits could rotate.

The Focus of the Museum

While the building is being readied for our use, we have a huge decision to make: what will be displayed at the museum? As a museum with itinerant displays for the last seventeen years, our exhibits varied from one year to the next. We displayed both local and national African American History. Do we want to continue along this vein of routinely changing all of the displays or do we want to have a mixture of both permanent and temporary exhibits?

Christine Miller-Betts, the museum director at the Lucy Craft Laney Museum of Black History in Augusta, Georgia, said that she thought some changes at a museum were necessary to keep patrons coming back. If there were no changes, the patron would possibly visit a museum that one time and never return. ‘The been there, done that’ philosophy would prevail.

 

With a limited budget for renovations at our museum site, our immediate exhibit area has become smaller. Our grand notions about what will be displayed, has been checked. 

  

 

We met with the architect, Courtney Swann, Wednesday, June 27 at the museum to look at the layout that he had come up with. Of course, this ended up being a bitter sweet session. All the possibilities were defined by three factors: money, the layout of the current building, and federal codes for public buildings. What this means is that the vision we had for the layout of the museum is out. The good news is that before the end of 2012, we will be in the building and open for business.

The next step in this endless process is to start taking bids. Hurray!

The Beginning...