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HMAAC Receives Confederate Monument from the City of Houston

The Houston Museum of African American Culture (HMAAC) is to be the recipient of one of Houston’s most prominent Confederate monuments, The Spirit of The Confederacy. The statue, which is to be moved from public property at Sam Houston Park, was erected in 1908 by the Robert E. Lee Chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy. Transfer of the statue to the museum’s control takes place on June 19, the state holiday known as Juneteenth, marking the day in 1865 that slaves in Texas first learned they had been freed under the Emancipation Proclamation two years earlier. The debate over whether to remove Confederate statues and monuments, many of which were built by white supremacists as a response to black civil rights efforts in the early and mid-1900s, has intensified as a result of the nationwide protests of the George Floyd killing in Minneapolis. The approach to the monuments in Houston has been deliberate, and started long before the current debate. Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner established a task force in August 2017 that recommended in a March, 2018 report that the statues be removed from city property. In line with the task force recommendations, the city, according to the Mayor, “began working on a plan with partner organizations and funders to identify new locations to place the statues.” Among the partner organizations Mayor Turner reached out to were HMAAC, known for its “multicultural conversation on race geared toward a common future,” and the Houston Endowment, which funds projects that “address critical issues in the region.” Last year the parties came to an agreement on the transfer. Pursuant to that agreement, the museum hosted a one day symposium “Lest We Forget: A National Conversation with the Confederacy” that included Bernard Kinsey, Los Angeles philanthropist, entrepreneur and co-founder of the renowned Kinsey Collection; Rice University professor James Sidbury, Prairie View A&M University professor Melanye Price, Texas Southern professor Carla Brailey, Sam Houston State professor Brian Matthew Jordan, Maryland Institute College of Art Dean Emeritus and member of the Baltimore Monuments Commission Leslie King Hammond and Lowery Stokes Sims, Curator Emerita at New York City’s Museum of Arts and Design and former Chair of New York’s Cultural Institutions Group. The results of that symposium are documented in an upcoming museum publication, “Houston Joins the National Confederate Monuments Discussion.” Funding from the Houston Endowment for the monument transfer also funded HMAAC’s Lest We Forget programming of exhibits by Vicki Meek and Aminah Robinson and the upcoming Juneteenth opening of The Souls of Black Folk as well as lectures from prominent historians and thought leaders, including Johns Hopkins professor Martha Jones, the Smithsonian’s Mary Elliott and author and cultural historian John Whittington Franklin and our HMAAC Fellow, writer Willow Curry., who is at work now on her first “conversation” with the monument. Confronting difficult topics is not new to the museum, which has hosted forums on “He Grabbed Them By The Vote: Why Did 53% of White Women Vote for Donald Trump” and a debate on “Did The Barack Obama Presidency Improve The Lives of African Americans,” and the Ford Foundation sponsored Texas Arts for Justice forum on art and prisons. It has presented exhibits on Sandra Bland, Indifference, The Abolitionists, is a part of Ava Duvernay’s ARRAY film distribution and resource collective, and has been recognized by the Alliance of American Museums and MuseumNext. According to CEO Emeritus John Guess, Jr., who negotiated the transfer, “Unpacking controversial or difficult topics runs deep in our organizational DNA. In the case of The Spirit, we think healing comes from taking control of negatively impactful symbols and turning them into teaching opportunities to help ensure they never have power again.” Gina Carroll, HMAAC Board president when the transfer was negotiated indicated,”We are an institution pushing for change, but also we must be a place where our community can come to heal. I think our supporters respect our receiving the statue and the programming that has preceded it and that will come.” Current HMAAC Board president Cindy Miles has similar feelings, “The overwhelming majority of people who have reached out to us or we have reached out to, especially those familiar with our history, trust that our ability to take power from this symbol will help our community heal.” According to City officials the statue will be placed in temporary storage until the museum is ready to receive it. ### ABOUT THE HOUSTON MUSEUM OF AFRICAN AMERICAN CULTURE The mission of HMAAC is to collect, conserve, explore, interpret, and exhibit the material and intellectual culture of Africans and African Americans in Houston, the state of Texas, the southwest and the African Diaspora for current and future generations. In fulfilling its mission, HMAAC seeks to invite and engage visitors of every race and background and to inspire children of all ages through discovery-driven learning. HMAAC is to be a museum for all people. While our focus is the African American experience, our story informs and includes not only people of color, but people of all colors. As a result, the stories and exhibitions that HMAAC will bring to Texas are about the indisputable fact that while our experience is a unique one, it has been impacted by and has impacted numerous races, genders and ethnicities. The museum continues to be a space where a multicultural conversation on race geared toward a common future takes place.

Statement from the Houston Museum of African American Culture on Receiving Confederate Monument

Why would an African American museum take a Confederate statue? Its a question so many people are asking us. Clearly the Houston Museum of African American Culture (HMAAC) taking a Confederate monument comes with controversy from multiple voices; about the monument, about racism in general, about police brutality, about diversity and inclusion, about inequality and more. We receive this monument at a time when our community is hurting, as America comes face to face with the racism and police brutality we have endured since our “freedom” after the Civil War. The pain is palpable for those of us of color who know that for every victim we see, “there but the grace of God go I.” The absolute fear of interacting with the police that ALL African Americans feel, white Americans can never know. That pain requires healing. And for our museum, we believe healing, in part, comes from truth telling. And HMAAC has ALWAYS been about truth telling. Over the past ten years, this museum has been courageously hosting the difficult multicultural conversations about race with the goal of a common future, inside our building and in the community. While we have been subject to the same funding disparities from Houston philanthropy that of color cultural assets have had to endure (less than 1%), we have nevertheless always spoken the truth as we see it, no matter how difficult that truth telling conversation has been. HMAAC is the venue that hosted the community program on “Why Did 53% of White Women Vote for Donald Trump,” the debate on “Did the Barack Obama Presidency Improve the Lives of African Americans,” our Sandra Bland, Indifference, Democracy, The Abolitionists exhibitions and more. Now we get attention for doing what we have been doing for the past ten years. We suppose it comes at this time because people who were previously indifferent to black realties and the HMAAC message are now curious about it, and when destroying symbols of the Confederacy is at the forefront of what many feel they can do right now to make a difference. Which is why it is valid to ask why the Houston Museum of African American Culture should take a Confederate monument when so many are being destroyed. The museum agrees on the need to remove these monuments from public property. Their presence picks at the scabs of our racist history, and encourages contemporary racists to act out. But a sad irony is not lost on us. Despite the hope of the current times, we haven’t defeated racism. We doubt that we ever will. But while destroying the monuments will not erase racism, using them in a different context to teach about our ugly racist history could, over time, spotlight the truth about them and help us heal. WE think the point of changing context is to break the spell of white supremacy and keep all of us WOKE. As a museum, we have been messaging "Lest We Forget" historical racism, it will be challenging to get to a common future and one story. Our racial history is a part of our ONE story. Years from now, when conspiracy mongers suggest that slavery was made up and that there were no white supremacists advocating for it, like the ones who claim there was no Holocaust, a museum in Houston, Texas will have the empirical evidence. When you find yourself at a crime scene, you don’t destroy the evidence. You preserve it for the prosecution. That might not seem important now, but it will in the future for our country and for African Americans who will be combating those white supremacy conspirators. Racism will not go away because of this moment, and destroying physical evidence of it won't make it go away. We, at HMAAC, understand the importance of telling our own story, advancing our own narrative. The challenge is how we place this evidence in a narrative context that educates and heals. This museum has and will continue to be up to that challenge.