Latest on Cumberland County/Fayetteville Black Voice and History Museum

Plans for a museum to tell the story of Cumberland County and Fayetteville’s Black community are moving forward after a contract was approved by Cumberland County Commissioners this month.

Commissioners and the Fayetteville City Council approved splitting the $900,000 cost for the first phase of the Black Voice and History Museum project in 2022, with each entity agreeing to appropriate $450,000.

The commissioners’ contract approved Jan. 10, is for the Community Development Foundation to oversee the project, which would include a study, community engagement and preliminary design for the museum, county documents state.

The Community Development Foundation is a nonprofit through the Fayetteville Cumberland County Economic Development Corp. that oversees projects like the proposed museum, EDC President and CEO Robert Van Geons said Friday.

“It’s the vehicle for this initial phase of community engagement, conversation and data gathering to see if this is ultimately a viable project,” Van Geons said.

The project, he said, started several years ago with members of the community discussing the area’s history “of striving for racial and economic justice.”

The Fleishman family from Fayetteville has been part of the discussion and wanted to provide land, at 122 Person St., for the project, Van Geons said.

The family has owned businesses in Fayetteville, like Tiny Town or a former clothing store on Hay Street.

An early plan for the project suggested that the land would be known as Chesnutt Plaza, named after Fayetteville Black author Charles Chesnutt, and connect to areas between the museum, Fayetteville Market house, historical markers and educational facilities.

Van Geons said that while things are moving forward, nothing has been decided because organizers want community input to drive the process.

“This is how we start. This is the beginning to something,” he said. “In the near term, as we start talking to people, we’ll be learning more about who needs to be part of this.”

William Cassell, who has ties to the Fleishman family, is the project coordinator.

During an interview Monday, Cassell said that planning is still in the early stages.

He said it would be premature to suggest where the project will go.

“That will be organically determined from the community, how the community responds to the project and what their interest is in the project,” he said. “What are we going to learn about the stories that are going to drive the project? What other partners are we going to bring in?”

What the museum could include

During presentations to Cumberland County commissioners in April 2022 and the Fayetteville City Council in May 2022,  Van Geons, Cassell and project director Dauv Evans discussed general ideas for what the museum could include.

“The magnitude of this project is going to be such that it needs to garner national attention. This particular project ... is the type of project that needs to be a must-see stop on the Civil Rights tour,” Evans said at the April 18 commissioners’ meeting.

Evans said the museum would “pull the stories from the community” to put into the museum.

“It will, again, be something that tells the story, the intimate story, of Black Americans in Fayetteville at the very center of that story,” Evans said.

The Fayetteville Market House, a former marketplace where enslaved Black people were sold among other commodities in the mid-1800s, is envisioned as being part of the project, he said.

“The Market House, I know, has been a source of contention for quite some time, and what we want to do is we contextualize and reconceptualize the Market House transforming from a point of division into a point of unity,” Evans told commissioners.

Evans said structures around Fayetteville and Cumberland County and downtown Fayetteville would “work in concert” with and tie into the museum. The museum, he said, will have several different departments, starting with history from author Charles Chesnutt to rapper J. Cole.

Evans said other components of the museum would be voice, authors, theater, music and spoken word to make it interactive.

It’s also a goal for the museum to have yearlong programming for children and the community, he said.

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Evans said community engagement is important to moving the project forward, from collecting stories, to hearing what residents want incorporated in the museum.

“The story of Fayetteville’s Black community will be told through reverence. ... It’s not really anything without the community of Fayetteville to be on board and to actually contribute to this particular process ... Why not Fayetteville? Why not Cumberland County?"

Cassell has said the total cost of the project is unknown until the community engagement process starts to determine the level of interest.

Staff writer Rachael Riley can be reached at rriley@fayobserver.com or 910-486-3528.

This article originally appeared on The Fayetteville Observer: Cumberland County/Fayetteville to get a Black history museum