In my 23rd week at the Mayme A. Clayton Library
and Museum, I helped Cara with her exhibit, assisted with our first week of
Black History Month programming, and met an impressive young woman.
There are four exhibits debuting at the museum on Saturday, February
16th and all of them requiring our staff to jump into overdrive in
order to be ready on time. Cara is the lead on the “Remembering WSBREC” display
in the museum. The concept is to showcase Mayme’s collection as it was when she
ran her business out of the garage. We have several images of how the space
looked, which we are having reproduced in vinyl to adhere to the wall, and we
are pulling the books, pictures and memorabilia from the collection that used
to populate the space. Cara was asked to make a text panel and pull some Mayme
quotes to accent the exhibit. I took her first draft back to my “Mayme Papers
processing room” and helped her fill in the gaps. Although WSBREC (Western
States Black Research Center) was the most general organization that Mayme
founded, it was not the first. Third World Ethnic Books was established in 1972
as a legitimate mail order ethnically diverse book supplier to libraries and
universities. The idea to create a non-profit, research organization came a few
years leader when she realized that she had too many precious African American
materials which she did not want to sell. There were other dates and details
that I was able to recommend to Cara. It was nice to see the processed portion
of the collection, serving a purpose. For example, anything that we would want
to know about Mayme’s scholarship program or celebrity golf tournament can be
found with ease, it will be especially useful as we continue to tell Mayme’s story.
The museum has a full slate of programming scheduled for Black
History Month. This week we had a jazz concert and a teacher workshop. The jazz
concert was on Thursday night and featured, Eric Reed and Charles McPherson. It
was amazing to see a grand piano rolled into our large courtroom, glitter and
laser lights adorning the walls, and people spread out in the space to enjoy
the music. Our volunteers came through like they always do, to greet people and
check them in. I only had to pick up the catering for the musicians and print
the ticket list. We have three more jazz duets lined up for the month of
February, and I think that the turnout is going to continue to grow. On
Saturday morning, we welcomed teachers to the museum for a workshop on using
primary source documents to teach about abolitionists in their classrooms. We
had two professors; one from University of California at Los Angeles and the
other from Georgia State University, as well as Larry gave presentations. Our
two UCLA interns from the history department did everything that we asked to
keep the sessions moving along nicely. This week involved several late nights
at the museum, but it was definitely the calm before the storm, as I have twice
as many outreach activities planned for the upcoming week.
On Friday, a young lawyer, Shannon Humphrey, came into the
museum to ask if she could take “author shots” in our facility. When I asked
for clarification, she explained that she had written a book needed to take
photos for the author’s portion of the book jacket. As soon as she told me what her
book was about, I knew that she was in the right place for her pictures. Ms.
Humphrey has written a pre-teen/teenage novel about a super smart, teenaged
black female superhero. She told me how the book incorporates a lot of science
fiction but it also includes messages about self-esteem, bullying, and striving
towards ones’ dreams. I never met Mayme Clayton but I think that she would have
a wide grin on her face to see how her collection had cross paths with a
concept that was so much aligned with her goals. Dr. Clayton once said that she
wanted black children to know that black people had done great things, what is
greater than being a superhero? To top it off, I gave Shannon a tour of the
museum and she was amazed by the scope and scale of the collection. She gave a
small donation and plans to come back for more programs in the future. I will
talk to Larry about scheduling her photo shoot, but it was really nice to meet
her. You can see more about her forthcoming novel on her website: http://www.shannonhumphrey.com/
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