African American History: New museum set to open this week in Houma

Convicted felon arrested on multiple warrants
January 31, 2017
No local impact in travel ban … yet
January 31, 2017
Convicted felon arrested on multiple warrants
January 31, 2017
No local impact in travel ban … yet
January 31, 2017

The past came crashing down on Martha Taylor Turner as soon as she entered the building on Roussell Street in downtown Houma.

Long-avoided and hushed topics had nowhere to hide in this hallway. Turner was finally face-to-face with years of ups and downs, sorrows and victories, glimmers of hope followed by unforgiving smacks of reality.

This was not a case of a woman confronting a troubled personal past that could no longer lie dormant in her psyche, though. Instead, Turner was becoming familiar with pieces of black history in the Bayou Region she never new existed. She said she was stunned to learn of Joseph Dupart, a black mayor of Houma during Reconstruction.


“I had no idea, and I’m 80 years old. I was just shocked and amazed because I couldn’t imagine being taught history, and the little bit of history that they were teaching in schools, they eliminate so much of it,” Turner said.

Turner’s shock is Alvin Tillman’s gain. Tillman, a former Terrebonne Parish Council member, has been working with local historian Margie Scoby on creating the Finding Our Roots African American Museum. Tillman said his goal is for people to walk in and have “history hit you right in the face.” The museum’s grand opening is set for Saturday, starting at 9 a.m. before guided tours begin at 10:30 a.m. The museum will start its regular hours of 10 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Monday through Saturday the following week.

While the physical work on the museum begun recently, the grand opening will be a culmination of a vision Tillman’s had for decades. He said he sought to get such a museum during his time on council from 2000-12, but he’d had the aspiration long before getting a seat at Government Tower. Tillman said he found in Scoby someone who could turn his dream into a reality, and the two started making a more concerted effort to get a museum.


Scoby and Tillman achieved a major breakthrough last year when the Fifth District Association, a branch of the Louisiana Southern Baptist Association, handed over the keys to the property at 918 Roussell Street, a historic landmark known as The Academy. The Academy used to be a public school for black children in the 1930s and 1940s; Turner recalled her kindergarten and first grade education in the same building she now learned about the likes of Dupart. Today the property serves as a training center for Baptist pastors, ministers and lay workers. The FDA will continue to use it for training purposes while sharing the space with the museum, according to Tillman.

Since getting the keys in late January last year, Scoby, Tillman and others have been busy renovating the space to get it ready for public viewing. According to Scoby, they did not even begin putting in actual pieces for exhibits until a month ago. Before that, they had been spending each day getting the actual space up to snuff, including taking out carpet to cover the entire building in tile flooring. Tillman said the opening will be a pay off for the long hours he, Scoby and others have put in.

“It’s exciting now to see all the sacrifice that’s been made come to fruition. People finally get to see fruits of the labor. I’m looking forward to that,” Tillman said.


Those long hours were not always fun, though. Tillman described the ups and downs that come with any long-term project, noting the days where he became frustrated things were not moving as fast as he hoped. Local businesses and community members stepped up to buoy Tillman and Scoby’s efforts in those trying times. Scoby said the many companies, both white- and black-owned, answered the call when they reached out looking for donations and support. On top of that, local plantations have helped provide photos and history on slave life in Antebellum Terrebonne Parish, according to Scoby. Tillman said involved community members like Turner would stop by and supply him with the morale boost he needed on those down days.

“You got people that’s affiliated with the organization, they’re constantly around and realize sometimes that we’re feeling down. They could see you’re feeling down, you know? They just come here, sit down, start telling you stories about this and that, man, to get you just rejuvenated and ready to go again,” Tillman said.

The museum covers the different periods of black life in Terrebonne, Lafourche, St. Mary and other nearby parishes. There is a section describing life during slavery, including the different roles slaves had and the harsh punishment they would face from masters. Reconstruction is covered, as is the Civil Rights Movement’s struggle to end the lie that was “separate but equal.” The museum continues into the present day, highlighting national figures as well as local politicians, doctors, businesspeople and other black people who helped shape the community.


Scoby said her own love for history was born without her choice when great-grandmother chose her as a griot, a traditional West African storyteller who maintains oral histories of families and communities. She hopes the museum can nurture that love of local history in Houma’s next generation as students, many coming with Black History Month assignments, choose to write on Dupart or other local figures rather than the normal heroes of Martin Luther King Jr. or Rosa Parks.

“We want them to come in and learn who they are. My thing is I think if you know who you are and from where you came, you know where you’re going,” Scoby said.

One of those local heroes recognized is Genevieve Taylor Smith, Turner’s sister. Smith was active in the local desegregation efforts, which finally succeeded when the state began integrating schools in 1969. Turner saw numerous kinds of benevolent disobedience in the face of the state’s strict racial caste system. She said when there was no library for black children, her fairer-skinned classmates who would pass as white got cards for the white-only library and acquired books for themselves and others.


According to Turner, that strength to resist discrimination did not stop in her family tree with her sister, either. She recalled riding the bus in New Orleans, where the furthest seat back occupied by a white person had a sign designating the section from then on forward as for white people only. As more white people came on, the sign would move further back, thus limiting the space for black people on the transportation meant for all. Turner said her children made a habit of bringing some souvenirs back to Houma when they could come back from the Crescent City.

“When my kids were in school and would go to New Orleans and everything, when they would get off the bus, they would take the sign with them. So I got two or three of them somewhere,” Turner said.

Tillman recalls his own discovery of black history at Terrebonne High School in the 1970s, shortly after integration. Tillman said he learned about King and Frederick Douglass and others, but asked his teachers if there were any others who contributed to the country. It was then that an enterprising teacher named Betty Willis began teaching black literature in her class, which Tillman described as “opening up another world for me.” Tillman said he wants the new museum to carry on the mantle of bringing light to overlooked pieces of history so everyone can get a fuller appreciation of their community.


“We have Black History Month. I look forward to the day where we just have history. That people can come around and just enjoy their history,” Tillman said. “Not black history, not Native American history, not white history, not this history, but history. It’s an important thing, those missing pieces, we’re hoping as an organization we can begin to fill that gap.” •

African American MuseumKARL GOMMEL | THE TIMES