History
The Legacy Project was the name of the organization prior to its acquiring a building for a future museum. It was initially sponsored by the Lynchburg branch of the NAACP.
In 1995 it became incorporated with 501(c) non-profit status. In 1997 the Legacy Project acquired a 100-year-old, dilapidated but once-beautiful house at 403 Monroe Street, Lynchburg. Architect Kelvin Moore was hired to draw up plans to transform the house into a modern museum. A Capital Fundraising Committee was formed to raise $300,000, and a Collections Committee was formed to solicit and archive artifacts for the permanent collection. The Legacy Project became the Legacy Museum of African American History.
Reconstruction of the building began in March 1999. On June 25, 2000 a celebratory dedication and grand opening was held. Dr. Vivian Pinn, Director of the Office of Research on Women's Health at the National Institutes of Health, gave the opening address. The ribbon was cut by civil rights pioneer Drucilla Moultrie and historian Harry Ferguson, both in their 90s, and six-year-old Ashley Lewis.
Since 2006, the museum has worked with the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities and five other central Virginia museums to share ideas about programs and staff development.
Read more about this topic: Legacy Museum Of African American History
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“Humankind has understood history as a series of battles because, to this day, it regards conflict as the central facet of life.”
—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904)
“When the landscape buckles and jerks around, when a dust column of debris rises from the collapse of a block of buildings on bodies that could have been your own, when the staves of history fall awry and the barrel of time bursts apart, some turn to prayer, some to poetry: words in the memory, a stained book carried close to the body, the notebook scribbled by hand—a center of gravity.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)
“History does nothing; it does not possess immense riches, it does not fight battles. It is men, real, living, who do all this.... It is not “history” which uses men as a means of achieving—as if it were an individual person—its own ends. History is nothing but the activity of men in pursuit of their ends.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)