Teaching history
Jun. 5—HIGH POINT — Effley Howell may love collecting Black history memorabilia, but he doesn't collect it just for the sake of collecting. He sees his many artifacts as relevant teaching tools.
"I've always loved history," the 65-year-old Kernersville man explains. "I got started doing this because I used to teach Black history to my kids using Jet and Ebony magazines. Then teachers started asking me to come to their classes and teach, so I did that. Then former colored or Negro schools — which had been closed down because of integration — started having reunions, and I was asked to come to those, so I did."
Eventually, Howell turned his ever-growing collection of memorabilia into the Thankful Heritage Museum, a nonprofit traveling museum of Black history. This month, a large portion of his collection is on exhibit at the Gallery On Main in downtown High Point.
"It's an opportunity for youth to see many of the things their teachers and parents have told them about, and it's an opportunity for seniors to take a trip down memory lane," Howell says of the exhibit.
The three-room exhibit includes a timeline of African American history, going back to the race's African roots and heritage, and continuing through America's modern civil rights era and beyond.
Emphasis is given to some of the milestones of the civil rights movement, such as the sit-ins — including sit-ins in High Point — the Freedom Riders, the 1963 March on Washington, Rosa Parks, and the Supreme Court's landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision against segregation.
The exhibit also features a number of well-known African Americans, from the likes of Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman and Booker T. Washington to more modern African Americans such as Jackie Robinson, Michael Jackson and Eddie Murphy. There's even a nod to a couple of individuals with strong High Point ties — 2004 "American Idol" winner Fantasia Barrino and noted businessman and philanthropist Bob Brown, who also served as special assistant to President Richard Nixon.
Other highlights include an 1831 slave deed of Howell's great-great-grandfather; dolls of Hattie McDaniel, the first African American to win an Academy Award, and Ruby Bridges, the first Black student to integrate an elementary school in the South; a selection of Aunt Jemima memorabilia; and cardboard cutouts of Barack Obama, Michelle Obama and Kamala Harris, among other items.
Howell has been very intentional about how he collects the memorabilia for his museum. He started out frequenting flea markets and antique malls, as well as estate sales and auctions. He also became a self-described "eBay addict," and began attending the annual National Black Memorabilia, Fine Art & Crafts Show, which is held in Gaithersburg, Maryland.
"I've been going there every year since 1984," Howell says. "I've been very fortunate to be able to travel around to different places to buy these artifacts."
For more information about Howell's traveling museum, visit his website at www.thankfulheritagemuseum.org.
jtomlin@hpenews.com — 336-888-3579
jtomlin@hpenews.com — 336-888-3579
