A traveling museum spotlighting Black history across generations is headed to Charleston for an exhibition this month.
A traveling museum that spotlights African American history across generations is making a pit stop in Charleston next week for a two-day exhibition hosted by West Virginia State University (WVSU).
On March 9 and 10, the WVSU Center in Charleston will be filled with artifacts, informational displays and live presentations from the Sankofa African-American Museum on Wheels.
Since 1995, the mobile museum has traveled the United States to share glimpses into Black history in the United States, from the antebellum era to the Civil Rights Movement to the contemporary moment.
The free-to-attend exhibition is cosponsored by WVSU, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of West Virginia, the Black Voter Impact Initiative (BVII) and the West Virginia-based Black By God newsroom.
Shanequa Smith is an organizer for the BVII, a West Virginia community organization that aims to “embrace, educate and empower Black people to vote,” according to its Facebook page. Smith said she was inspired to invite the museum to Charleston after seeing its exhibition in Charleston several years ago.
“It was just more than a museum. It was an experience,” she said.
Smith said she began contacting community partners about the possibility of bringing the exhibit to Charleston. Her organization often hosts community events and youth programming, but a museum exhibition was relatively new territory for them, she said.
“It’s important for us to learn our history and how we got here,” she said. “Many times when we hear history, we hear it from the media, which maybe only tells our history from one perspective. But I think the museum brings a joy to our history, which a lot of times is not told.”
Now in its thirtieth year, the Sankofa African-American Museum on Wheels will visit Charleston for a free exhibit March 9 and 10.
Photo Credit: Sphinx Media
The exhibition also coincides with West Virginia’s fourth annual Black Policy Day, an annual lobbying event that aims to highlight issues impacting Black West Virginians and urge lawmakers to address them. The campaign is led by the BVII.
“In the past, they have brought hundreds of community members and students into the Capitol to talk about a whole variety of issues, particularly issues that impact Black communities here in West Virginia,” said Eli Baumwell, executive director of the ACLU of West Virginia.
Baumwell said the ACLU has helped sponsor museum exhibitions in the past, and saw hosting the Sankofa Museum as urgent for the current political climate.
“We wanted to do this particularly right now, when there’s this backlash and this attempt to censor American history, particularly Black history,” Baumwell said. “To treat it as somehow divisive, rather than an important part of understanding where we are and how we got here.”
Sergio Rodriguez is director of the WVSU Center, a university event space in downtown Charleston. He said the center was created roughly one year ago, and sees exhibitions like the Sankofa Museum as an opportunity to open the space — and the university’s educational programming — to the wider West Virginia community.
West Virginia State has “all these kinds of activities at the center so we can partner with the community, we can engage with the community,” Rodriguez said. “The center is working hard to get all these projects coming to the center.”
The March exhibition marks the museum’s first visit to Charleston, and Rodriguez said West Virginia State is eager to bring it to new audiences.
“We are excited because this museum is going to be 30 years old this year, and has been in 40 states,” Rodriguez said. “We want to highlight African American history… and I think this is a good way to promote history.”
The exhibition is open to the public and free to attend. It can be accessed at the WVSU Center in Charleston at 107 Capitol St. on Sunday, March 9 from 1 to 6 p.m., and on Monday, March 10 from 1 to 7 p.m.
Activists in West Virginia’s Eastern Panhandle are promoting local history. They hope it will encourage residents to support the preservation of a village they consider threatened by corporate development.
Updated on Tuesday, February 11 at 11:20 a.m.
Since 1851, the red spires of Grace Episcopal Church have peeked above the skyline of Middleway. For residents of the historic, eighteenth-century village, it is a space that remains full of life — made clear by a community advocacy gathering held on the evening of Jan. 31.
Shedding their rainwear, dozens of residents settled into the church’s squat wooden pews to hear about a water bottling plant proposed just a short walk from Middleway’s tiny village center.
The Jefferson County community has been embroiled in a months-long dispute over the proposed construction of Mountain Pure Water Bottling Facility, a one-million-square-foot plant that would extract and package local groundwater. For months, residents have raised concerns about the project’s environmental, safety and historic preservation impacts.
Sidewinder Enterprises, the company behind the project, set forth an initial plan in November, but the Jefferson County Planning Commission ruled it incomplete, delaying it from advancing. After months of anticipation, the commission will review a revised concept plan for the project March 11.
Members of the Jefferson County community who oppose the plan have spent months voicing their dissent through community forums and letter-writing campaigns to local elected officials. As the day for the commission’s decision nears, events like the late January advocacy gathering have provided the community an opportunity to use art and local history to show why Middleway warrants protection.
Jessie Norris, president of the Middleway Conservancy Association, braves the rain to lead a tour of Middleway historic sites.
Photo Credit: Jack Walker/West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Protesting Through Song
Molly Sutter is a graduate student in Appalachian studies at Shepherd University. She wrote a song entitled “Mountain Pure” to express her worries about the project, and performed it during the gathering alongside fellow Jefferson County resident and postal clerk Jen Fisher.
“Mountain Pure, Mountain Pure. Make a problem, sell a cure,” they sang. “Leave the water for the people, and we’ll keep our mountains pure.”
“When I was looking at the Mountain Pure project, some of the things that they say are that they’re producing clean water and that they’re creating clean water,” Sutter explained. “Those are just such funny words to use for extracting water and taking it from farmers and from our community. So, a song kind of snowballed from there.”
Sutter said channeling public frustration into song feels natural in a state where music and culture has long informed activism.
“The state has a long history of protest and engagement, especially through music. I am a songwriter and singer, and I see that intersecting with my studies,” she said. “I’ll listen to a lecture about coal mining, and then I’ll go and write a song about it, because it just fires me up and I like to plug into that legacy.”
Fisher lives on the Opequon Creek, a tributary stream that feeds into Middleway’s waterways. She said in an email to West Virginia Public Broadcasting that her participation in the gathering stemmed from concerns over water access for the local community.
“I see water as a basic need; as life. I don’t see this as a political issue or a revolutionary idea. It’s a self-evident truth,” Fisher wrote. “Since when did having water for your farm or your family become optional? These people have real worries, and as their neighbor, I worry with them.”
Music is not the only way residents are channeling West Virginia history into their opposition to the Mountain Pure project.
The Middleway Conservancy Association is a local nonprofit aimed at protecting the history and environmental health of the village.
Before the gathering, Conservancy President Jessie Norris offered a tour of the community’s nineteenth-century architecture — part of Jefferson County’s history she says is at risk.
“The pipeline that’s actually going to be coming in from the proposed bottling plant is going to come down this road right here, Old Middleway Road,” she said on the tour, gesturing at a street that passes through the historic village center. “It’s going to cut through here on East Street.”
The Mountain Pure facility would require pipelines to travel beneath the village’s centuries-old streets, connecting local waterways to an abandoned manufacturing site formerly operated by 3M.
Former industrial use at the site left behind a plume of toxic chemicals, and many residents have expressed concern that resumed industrial activity could produce toxic runoff for Middleway. Project representatives have repeatedly denied the possibility of chemical contaminants spreading.
After the gathering, residents were invited into Middleway’s Union Church. Local historians showed off Civil War-era artifacts collected around town, and maps of battle sites just a walking distance away.
Stacy Chapman is a nurse and Middleway resident. She’s also a lead organizer with Protect Middleway. The local activist group formed to push back against plans for the Mountain Pure project, and helped lead the advocacy gathering.
“It’s about the community and the community coming together,” Chapman said. “We feel like, with the strength of the community, that we will have a voice together, that the planning commission will hear us and listen to our concerns and deny the bottling plant’s concept plan.”
Molly Sutter is a graduate student in Appalachian studies at Shepherd University.
Photo Credit: Jack Walker/West Virginia Public Broadcasting
DJ Kessinger performed the banjo at the advocacy gathering in Middleway on Jan. 31.
Photo Credit: Jack Walker/West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Chapman said Protect Middleway has received support from regional organizations that share that mission including Appalachian Mountain Advocates, a clean-water public interest law group, and the Preservation Alliance of West Virginia, which advocates for the protection of historic buildings.
Danielle Parker is the Preservation Alliance’s executive director. She said protecting Middleway’s historic integrity is a benefit to West Virginia and beyond.
“Middleway is a very rare historic treasure, not only for the state but the entire nation,” Parker said. “It has survived almost three centuries of growth and decline, and we feel that the water bottling facility, if it’s constructed as proposed, is threatening the longevity [and] the continued preservation of the village.”
In late January, the Preservation Alliance added the Middleway Historic District to its West Virginia Endangered Properties List. The list aims to highlight historic sites that are in danger of being destroyed.
Parker said it is rare to see so many community members rally around a preservation effort.
“I am overwhelmed, honestly, with the turnout. I am surprised that the whole church was filled, even up in the higher pews,” she said after the gathering. “There have been very few places [where] we’ve seen such a groundswell of citizen support to save a historic site like we’re seeing here in Middleway.”
“That is very encouraging, because, as I have said, we feel that public opinion can sway the future of a situation,” she added.
The Road Ahead
Sidewinder Enterprisesdenies that the project would have a detrimental impact on historic preservation and traffic.
Sean Masterson is a partner for Mountain Pure. In an email to West Virginia Public Broadcasting he provided through a media representative, Masterson pointed to the past usage of the manufacturing site by other companies as proof. He also said the project has received approval from state highway officials.
Community members at Grace Episcopal Church await the start of an advocacy gathering held to oppose the proposed construction of a water bottling plant in Middleway.
Photo Credit: Jack Walker/West Virginia Public Broadcasting
“Since the 1960s, 3M and Kodak operated successfully with employee and distribution traffic traveling directly through Middleway daily,” Masterson said. “Additionally, West Virginia owns the nearby roads. A traffic study was done by a third party and the West Virginia Department of Highways approved the study.”
But folks like Chapman maintain that environmental risks, an increase in traffic and the toll of the pipeline’s construction put historic Middleway at risk.
“Middleway needs protection from Sidewinder’s Mountain Pure bottling plant,” she said. “It’s going to affect our water supply. We’re worried about some toxins that could come into our drinking water. We’re worried about how the traffic will affect historic Middleway. We’re concerned about the protection for the wetland that could be impacted by the large water extraction.”
These differing perspectives will come to a head on Tuesday, when the Jefferson County Planning Commission will review revised plans for the Mountain Pure bottling site.
The path for the project so far has been rocky. Project representatives shared an initial concept plan for the plant with the commission in November. But the commission unanimously agreed it was incomplete, because it omitted details about the parcels of land water would be extracted from.
Project representatives quickly resubmitted a revised version of the plan, and hoped to discuss it on Dec. 17. However, the review process was postponed by a circuit court judge, who said the project team and the planning commission had not given residents enough time to review the plan.
Next month, the commission could vote to advance the concept plan as is, require changes to comply with county and state code, or reject it outright. If they reject it, they would need to explain how the project violates state and county policies, and could face legal intervention.
The planning commission is scheduled to review the concept plan for Mountain Pure Water Bottling Plant on March 11. Residents will have the opportunity to provide comments at the meeting.
**Editor’s note: The Jefferson County Planning Commission was initially scheduled to review the revised concept plan for Mountain Pure Water Bottling Facility on Feb. 11. However, due to winter weather, the hearing was postponed to March 11. This story was updated to reflect the meeting’s postponement.
A private collection that features over 650 items focusing on African American history and culture including photographs, records and news clippings was on display in WVU’s student union building Tuesday. It highlighted the role of African Americans in the nation’s armed forces from the post-Civil War Buffalo Soldiers to today.
Students and visitors to West Virginia University’s Morgantown campus Tuesday had an opportunity to reflect on Black history with a unique exhibit.
The Homage Exhibit is a private collection that features over 650 items focusing on African American history and culture including photographs, records and news clippings. The display in WVU’s student union building highlighted the role of African Americans in the nation’s armed forces from the post-Civil War Buffalo Soldiers to today.
Morris McAdoo, one of the curators of the collection, says the exhibit’s primary sources and photographs help visitors who may not have prior exposure to form their own perspective and viewpoint on Black history.
“Many of the students that I’ve spoken with here, they’re from smaller towns. It is so beneficial that institutions are allowing this,” he said. “To be in places where some of the students don’t have access to actually see the articles that come directly from that period and frame their own position or understanding of what happened in that area, seeing the actual pictures and seeing the servicemen and the different billboards and advertisement when they came to try to recruit African Americans, it’s important to actually see it up front.”
One of McAdoo’s personal favorite pieces in the display is a grouping of portraits and a biography of Benjamin O. Davis, Sr. the Army’s first African American general officer.
“It shares just a little bit of light and glory that, yeah, this is a time where these young African American males were not treated equal. They didn’t have rights. There was nothing from a legislature that would support them to have equal rights,” he said. “But you do see beacons of hope, such as General Davis, where he rose to the point of representing, you know, his country, and representing at such a large field, and be the first to do it.”
According to McAdoo, the Homage Exhibit started from the personal collections of his and his wife Nia’s relatives in the 50s, 60s and 70s. He said older and more contemporary pieces are often contributed by the public after having viewed the collection on one of its stops.
“A lot of the things that you see here, we either obtain them privately or we have them on loan from other museums who maybe have too much of an inventory, so they become donations, or become loans,” McAdoo said.
McAdoo said one of the most important parts of the exhibit as it travels across the country is to make connections to local history and tradition. That includes Earl Muse of Princeton, West Virginia who in 1974 made history as the first Black State Commander of the Veterans of Foreign Wars in the country.
“What we’ve tried to do is recognize that this is not just Black history, but this is your regional history, and so that’s why it’s important,” he said.
Images of servicemen and women from the 1970s as part of the Homage Exhibit at WVU Feb. 4, 2025. In the bopttom left is a portrait of Earl Muse of Princeton, West Virginia who in 1974 made history as the first Black State Commander of the Veterans of Foreign Wars in the country.
Five derelict buildings in Harpers Ferry are being torn down beginning this month. A new battlefield landscape will take their place.
Five dilapidated structures in Harpers Ferry will be demolished to make way for a new, historically accurate battlefield landscape.
The National Park Service (NPS) announced plans to tear down the buildings at Harpers Ferry National Historical Park in a Wednesday press release.
The structures were built in the early twentieth century by resident Jacob Henkle and operated as part of a farm, according to an August 2023 demolition assessment report that NPS conducted for the site.
In 1920, the property was purchased by the Standard Lime and Stone Company and continued to serve as a farming and dairy production site.
But the houses, dairy barn, silo and shed on the property gradually fell into disuse, and Harpers Ferry National Historical Park Superintendent Tanya Gossett says they pose a risk to visitors and staff alike.
Once the structures are torn down, NPS plans to use the site for a historically accurate recreation of an 1862 Battle of Harpers Ferry battlefield landscape, she said in the press release.
“We appreciate all the public input we received about this project and look forward to an even better visitor experience on the battlefield,” she said.
The demolition will begin Jan. 21, and take approximately one month to complete, according to the press release.
Each December, the bell of the USS West Virginia rings out in remembrance of those who died 83 years ago during the attack on Pearl Harbor. Archival material also shows how the Navy made the holiday special for those on board.
Christmas can be particularly difficult for those deployed away from home while serving in the military. Archival material shows how the Navy made the holiday special during the Great Depression — with a West Virginia connection.
Each December, the bell of the battleship, the USS West Virginia, rings out in remembrance of those who died 83 years ago during the attack on Pearl Harbor.
The bell, along with the ship’s mast, are now fixtures of WVU’s downtown campus and the focal point of the annual ceremony which includes a 21 gun salute, (report) wreath layings from the Daughters of the American Revolution, and comments from local veterans.
Retired Maj. George Davis gave this year’s keynote speech. He said the ship serves as a symbol of perseverance.
“USS West Virginia, although heavily damaged at Pearl Harbor and missing much of the war, nevertheless gained five battle stars,” Davis said.
Davis said the ceremony should serve as a reminder not just of the sacrifice made by the USS West Virginia’s crew, but by all service members down the years.
Other parts of the ship and her history, including an extensive collection of service and personal papers, are preserved for posterity in the university’s library.
Commissioned by the U.S. Navy in 1923, the USS West Virginia saw two decades of service before that fateful day in 1941.
Catherine Rakowski is the research and exhibition specialist for the West Virginia and Regional History Center (WVRHC) at West Virginia University in Morgantown. She said during a visit to campus several years ago, Lt. James Downing – who served as the ship’s postmaster – told her the people of West Virginia had a relationship with their namesake battleship unlike any other.
“Every ship, obviously named battleship, was named after a state, and (Downing) said only the state of West Virginia adopted their ship, the USS West Virginia,” Rakowski said. “He said you didn’t see that with the rest of them. He said the people from the state would send the crew birthday presents, cards. This is family. So I think that’s what you know that’s about, is passing it on to others.”
A simple program created for a Fourth of July celebration aboard the battleship USS West Virginia in 1939. The program is part of the West Virginia and Regional History Center’s USS West Virginia collection. Chris Schulz/West Virginia Public Broadcasting
The cover of a multi-page program created for Christmas 1936 celebrations aboard the battleship USS West Virginia. Chris Schulz/West Virginia Public Broadcasting
The collection at WVU includes programs from several years of holidays, Thanksgivings, Easters and Christmases that were celebrated by the crews of the USS West Virginia. Most programs were a half sheet or memo sized at most, primarily consisting of a short schedule and menu.
But the multi-page, color-printed Christmas programs that include poems and personal messages from the ship’s commanding officer stand out from the black and white of military bureaucratic paperwork. The programsmake it clear that Christmas was a special occasion aboard the USS West Virginia.
“What they would do is go into ports and holidays over in the Pacific, the South Pacific, wherever they were, and they would have a huge meal for the people who were living there, siblings living there, some on ship, especially the children, have a big meal for them,” Rakowski said. “And this is the menu, and sort of like the program, and they’d have presents for the children. It was quite a big feast. And so they would do all of this on the ship.”
In a time before digital image editing software and laser printing, the Christmas programs stand out for their intricacy, so much so that the history center reproduced a program page as one of their own Christmas cards a few years ago.
Each page is decorated with small block prints of holiday iconography: a snowy, forested town above the day’s schedule, or a tiny Santa Clause bent under the weight of his sack of toys, delineating the border between the names of the Christmas committee and the Division Representatives.
It’s clear they were handmade, and copied in vibrant greens and reds for distribution across the ship.
Details inside of a Christmas program created for the crew of the USS West Virginia in the 1930s show the attention to detail, including color printing and small but detailed holiday imagery. Chris Schulz/West Virginia Public Broadcasting
The interior of the cover of a Christmas program created aboard the USS West Virginia in the 1930s, now part of a collection of the ship’s papers at the West Virginia and Regional History Center. Chris Schulz/West Virginia Public Broadcasting
“This was to keep up morale,” Rakowski said. “They knew what was coming, and you had families worrying, but you could send this home and say, you know, “We had this. Don’t worry, I’m good.” You got mom back home saying, wringing her hands, “Well, what are they going to feed them? What are they going to eat? How about the gifts? Did you get the gifts we sent you?”
There are other examples of morale activities in WVUs’ collection: schedules and descriptions of film screenings offered almost nightly on board, as well as betting sheets for sports games broadcast over radio. There’s even an entire book, an official publication of the U.S. Navy, recounting the West Virginia’s observation of the line-crossing ceremony, an initiation rite still observed by sailors – both civilian and military – commemorating a person’s first crossing of the Equator.
But Christmas clearly held a special place above the rest.
“If you ask somebody, ‘What’s your favorite memory?’ a lot of people go right to Christmas,” Rakowski said. “So I think drawing on the good memories that they had. and this was during the Depression, but they still, you know, enjoyed, and I’m sure had very good memories.”
The collection, including the beautiful Christmas programs, will be the focus of a comprehensive exhibit to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the end of the war at the West Virginia and Regional History Center starting on West Virginia Day 2025.
Presidential elections tend to garner the most attention across the United States. That added excitement provides a unique opportunity to engage students in the classroom with real-world events.
Civics – along with economics, geography and history – are the pillars of West Virginia’s social studies curriculum for all K-12 courses.
Despite it being an election year, students at Preston High School like junior Carley Casteel say elections are just a small part of her social studies class.
“We’ve gone into past elections a little bit, but not anything current,” she said. “Just how different presidents have become president like Woodrow Wilson and Teddy Roosevelt.”
Casteel is taking contemporary studies, which does have a component focused on “the duties of citizens that are necessary to preserve global democracy.” On a personal level, she said it’s hard to engage with something she can’t participate in directly.
“I don’t really have much of a strong opinion solely because I’m only 16, and so I do have a while before I can vote,” Casteel said. “And I feel like giving such a strong opinion on something that I can’t really change just yet would not really have a use.”
Andy Shamblin is a Republican state delegate for Kanawha County. He’s also a 12th grade civics teacher at Nitro High School. Twelfth grade is when most students in the state take a civics-focused social studies course, a graduation requirement.
Shamblin said the political system is taught across the state’s K-12 curriculum, but it’s logical to focus on elections when students are closest to voting age.
“Twelfth grade is sort of the ideal place for it, because it’s, in essence, a capstone course that sort of ties together all the lower level history components that obviously do have a component with government, politics,” he said.
As an elected state representative, Shamblin said he would like to see more attention given to local elections. In his own classroom, he integrates the state legislature’s annual session into his course and teaches how to follow bills as they become law.
“But the national issues seem to captivate the most attention, and they’re the most dramatic, and students are most interested in those,” Shamblin said.
Per the state standards for the civics course, students are expected to debate their classmates on certain topics. Shamblin said an election year can elevate emotions in the classroom, but expectations of civility are established early.
“The key is to recognize that just because you may not agree with someone’s perspective, you can still understand it,” he said. “And I always emphasize too, that the greatest achievements legislatively in American history were founded on compromise: civil rights legislation, the constitutional convention itself. Had it not been for both sides compromising, we wouldn’t have a nation today.”
Danielle Barker is an 11th and 12th grade social studies teacher at Preston High School. She said like many other teachers, she switches up her teaching order to take advantage of the energy the election provides.
“So if we had the primary elections in the spring, I would change the way I teach, and I would talk about elections in the spring,” Barker said. “So this year, I talk about elections now”
She said something else that gets moved up in her plans is discussions about how the media influences public opinion and ideas. Like Shamblin, Barker said one of the bigger things she tries to foster in her classroom is civil discussion.
“We practice even with little questions like, ‘What are the most important American values to you?’” she said. “We practice with these little questions that aren’t so controversial. So that way, when we get to the controversial questions, we can go back. ‘Okay, well, we remember when we talked about this, like we didn’t scream at each other, we didn’t yell at each other.’ And I always try to have them backing in fact.”
Colson Manco is a senior at Preston High School. He said that classroom discussions help students identify what political values with which they most align.
“Politically especially, you know, being able to discuss and be able to agree to disagree,” he said. “She always encourages us to know, to, you know, say why we feel this way. But she wants us to be able to find the evidence to prove that we can stand behind this.”
Teachers also emphasize that for the civically minded, voting is just one action they can take. For example, Shamblin said he would like to see the state implement a community service requirement for graduation. Barker said she encourages students to take action other than voting on any issue they care about.
But not all students need to be pushed to engage with local government. Manco previously served as one of the student members of the county’s board of education. He said getting an education on the issues before voting is crucial for students, even if they won’t be voting next month.
“The fact is, we are the next generation of voters,” Manco said. “Whatever decision does happen in November, we are going to have the outcomes that come from this election in our first election that we’ll vote in. We’re educating the future of voters.”
Whatever the outcomes are after Nov. 5, rest assured students will be discussing them in civics classes across West Virginia.
