Finishing the Dream

For serving its mission of documenting and educating the region about African-Americans and their impact throughout our communities, the Northeast Louisiana Delta African American Heritage Museum is Bayou Icon for the month of February.

Article by Michael DeVault and Photography by Brad Arender

When retired educator Lorraine Slacks passed away in September, she left behind a family, a community of students she had spent a life educating, and a thriving cultural center that has become one of the region’s premier resources for African-American history. Walking through the Northeast Louisiana Delta African American Heritage Museum, it’s hard to escape the presence of a woman who grew to become one of the top education leaders in the region.

Museum director Ross Slacks is her son, and for him, the museum epitomizes the work his mother devoted much of her life to: demonstrating to young children in her community that there’s more to life than sports.

“Every time you see black people on television, it’s usually in an athletic capacity,” Ross tells BayouLife. “She wanted us to know there was more out there than just sports. She helped us to begin to see life beyond football or basketball.”

The vision Slacks worked to craft in the museum—and the displays there today—present an aspirational look at the history of blacks in the region as well as the impact they have had in the community. The museum’s exhibits are three-fold: connect visitors to the past; shed light on the present; and provide an inspirational view of the future.

To that end, interactive exhibits take visitors hands-on with some of the implements used in farming, housework, and other tasks of rural life as slaves and, later, sharecroppers. At the same time, the museum displays a number of historical and cultural artifacts from Africa, which demonstrate the connections between African-American culture today and their ancestors from centuries ago.

Numerous dioramas and exhibits also feature the work of prominent black citizens in the area from business, industry, and education, underscoring that African-Americans have had a deep and lasting impact on the development of northeast Louisiana’s economy and culture, an impact that goes far beyond their time as slaves.

Throughout the museum, works by prominent African-American artists celebrate black culture and history, remind viewers of the evils perpetrated against slaves, and highlighting how far society has come in just a few brief decades. After all, the Civil War ended barely a century and a half ago—just a few generations. In this reminder of the distance traveled the museum excels, for it presents a vision for future generations. At its heart, the Northeast Louisiana Delta African American Heritage Museum is more about what comes next than what went before, and that’s just how Lorainne Slacks intended it.

“That’s evident in the way she built the museum,” Ross says. He points out significant resources the museum has dedicated to forward-facing community services that individuals from across the community can utilize to advance themselves. “The museum has an art class room, where students can learn about painting and other artforms, a computer lab, and a technology room so you can come and learn to navigate the internet or use a computer.”

These are the kinds of community-building skills that many individuals in the community desperately need to move forward professionally and personally. Yet, there are too few resources at their disposal through libraries, local schools, and community centers. Ross says the museum fills a critical need in helping prepare people for the future—and not just black people.
Dr. Kerry Scott is president of the museum’s board of directors. He points out the museum is for the whole community’s enrichment, whether it’s through the museum’s historical and cultural exhibits or its role as a community development organization bringing vital skills to people who need them.

“Knowledge bridges the gap and brings an understanding of the African-American role in this community,” Scott says. “One thing we’ve always said about this museum: it’s not just an African-American museum for African-Americans. It’s for all people. All people are invited. We want to make sure that people know they are welcome.”

Creating a sense of unity in the community is one of the primary goals of the museum, and Slacks herself was a master at enlisting allies to the cause. After all, she was just one person and building a permanent museum celebrating black history and culture in northeast Louisiana is a big job. She certainly didn’t go it alone.

By 1993, the interest in a facility celebrating African-American heritage in the Delta parishes had reached a tipping point. That’s when Nancy Johnson decided to found the museum. It opened its doors the following March in a small building on Plum Street in the heart of Monroe’s Southside community. Almost immediately, it was clear the building’s 2,098 square feet was insufficient for the museum’s mission.

For more than a decade, Slacks and other members of the community worked to expand the museum’s reach and to secure a more suitable home. During that time, Slacks leveraged a career’s worth of contacts, hard-earned during a career as a teacher, administrator, and ultimately as curriculum coordinator for the Monroe City Schools. She met with community leaders at all levels of government, many of whom were former students. She reached out to business leaders, both former students and the parents of students. And she contacted state legislators who represented her district and the community she hoped to better serve.

By 2007, government officials had begun to take notice of the small museum and the lady who could boast she had met with five decades of mayors and more than a few of the state’s governors. That’s when State Rep. Willie Hunter and State Sen. Charles Jones stepped to the plate. They pushed through some $3.2 million in funding to build a new, state-of-the-art facility more centrally located to the 15-parish delta region the museum serves.

Working with officials at the city of Monroe, the museum board secured 26 acres of land adjacent to Chennault Park off Millhaven Road, which provided ample room for parking, a new facility and, most importantly, room to grow. Here, the board undertook the construction of a modern, 14,480 square-foot facility. The museum’s modern design features swooping arches, soaring spaces, and floor-to-ceiling windows that provide vista views of lush, green trees and an expanse of manicured lawn. Building the museum’s new home was no small feat. This was, after all, a time of tightening budgets and shrinking state coffers.

“It was all paid for,” Ross says. “All we have to do is handle the upkeep.”

The Northeast Louisiana Delta African American Heritage Museum is an inspiring, positive space. With the museum completed, though, and the doors opening in August, 2011, the new challenge became funding its operations. That’s where the communities the museum serves come in.

“We rely on contributions, mostly, and some entrance fees for different events,” Ross explains. The museum hosts a number of educational and enrichment activities that bring in visitors, but the majority of the funding is in the form of donations. Ross hopes to change that. “We’re working right now to establish other avenues, particularly grant funding and direct support from other municipalities in the 15-parish area.”

Museum board member, Dr. Leonard Clark sees the facility as a unifying force that can bring together people from all races and walks of life across the region. Whether its through heritage and history exploring the legacy of slavery and efforts to free the slaves, or through its ambitions as a community development engine, the museum’s message is clear: there is one community, and we’re all part of it. Clark explains this is not a recent development and, instead, has long been the case.

“It wasn’t just black people struggling,” Clark says. “There were also other people from other cultures helping them along the way.”

Black slaves leaned on white sympathizers to flee bondage along the Underground Railroad. Along the way, white people hid blacks seeking freedom in the northern states, a tremendous risk as being caught harboring fugitive slaves was a crime. Today, that unity takes a new form, particularly in the more impoverished areas of the Delta parishes, where the region’s poor continue to struggle to advance. Ross sees it every day on the faces of the thousands of students who visit the museum each year.

“White students are receptive to our message because they can see the struggle people went through and what it could take,” he says. “Many of them come from poor backgrounds themselves, so they understand how poor whites and poor blacks were both fighting to better the world in the 1960s. That continues today, in social media, but that struggle? It’s still there.”

One of the central displays in the museum is a modern sculpture, forged in iron, and at the center, a father stands. The mother and their children cling to him, underscoring the importance of family in escaping bondage. From the father’s hands hang broken shackles and chains. The piece is by world-renowned artist Don Cincone, and it’s one of many of Cincone’s works hanging in the museum. Many of his painting hang alongside Daryl Triplett and Bernard Menyweather, two other prominent black painters.

Their paintings each depict different aspects of the African-American experience, from slave life to sharecropping to Hurricane Katrina. Each painting tells a story, draws viewers into the world of black culture, and helps create a picture of the transformation African-American culture has undergone over the past 150 years. At the same time, the paintings also frame a different narrative, and it is in this alternative narrative that the future begins to unfold.

Most of Menyweather’s paintings feature daily life for blacks in America over the ages. In each of the paintings, Ross points out that the people depicted are well-dressed, with erect posture, and a sense of pride of self. That’s a message that itself is vital to demonstrate to future generations, one that strikes at the heart of his mother’s goal of positioning future generations for continued advancement.

One painting in particular stands out. It’s a small landscape, and the branches of a towering oak frame a distant valley. Far off, a white house gleams from beneath a red roof. Rolling hills are alive with verdant trees and grass, only just beginning to yellow in the cool Fall. As the viewer approaches, they notice something that, perhaps, they didn’t see at first: a young woman, reclining in the roots of the tree. Open on her lap is a book, and she’s reading. The painting is called “Autumn Serenity.” Ross explains its importance.

“She’s up there, alone by herself, in the place she goes to calm down and get away from the world, a favorite spot no one else knows about. She can still see the world around her, away from it all but keeping an eye out as she reads her book,” he says. “She just happens to be black.”

It’s not an unimportant point that the girl “just happens” to be black. It’s a detail that a casual observer might overlook on first viewing. And therein lies the painting’s magic, as Menyweather’s painting says to the viewer that we are all looking for that same bit of serenity, regardless of the color of our skin.

Outside the gallery stands another inspirational display, this one featuring another young African-American woman. A sign beside the woman reads “Henri Ana’s Beauty Shoppe and School,” and Ross explains the story of Henri Ana, the daughter of businessman Henry Carroll. In the 1960s, her beauty shop was a place where women could go and learn how to be in business for themselves and to develop professional skills that would help them advance in the community.

Nearby, a painting of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. shines over the museum. The painting features more than two dozen prominent African-Americans, such as Sojourner Truth, Frederick Douglass, and Harriet Tubman. It’s called “Standing on Shoulders,” and it highlights how each generation helps prepare the next to move forward.

King himself predicted that, one day in the “not too distant future,” black political influence would become sufficient enough to elect an African-American president. Barely more than 40 years after his prediction—just a single generation later—Barack Obama was sworn in as the nation’s 44th president. For Ross and the people who make the North Louisiana Delta African American Heritage Museum a reality every day, that’s not a lost message. They’re looking at the next 40 years. And they’re hopeful.

“Forty years from now, the world will look like it is for kids today, only those kids will be adults who have the same attitude, because most kids today don’t see color,” Ross says, predicting a society that’s become more color-blind to divisions of race. “They see each other as friends who they like to work with and play with.”

Ross says that’s exactly the legacy Lorraine Slacks left behind, the future she and Johnson helped to manifest, and the vision that propels everything the museum does. And, he adds, it’s a legacy she proudly fulfilled.

“What God put her here to do, she finished her job, and then put us here to carry out the dreams she had for the future,” Ross says of his mother. “This isn’t the end of the road. It’s the beginning of the journey.”