Arkansas to open black history museum Sept. 20

Associated Press

- A new state museum opens this fall in Arkansas to honor African-American heritage.
The Mosaic Templars Cultural Center opens Sept. 20 on the site of the Mosaic Templars of America, a fraternal organization founded by two former slaves, John Edward Bush and Chester W. Keatts, to offer insurance to blacks to cover sickness, death and burial.

The organization’s headquarters, in the heart of what was then the black business district on Little Rock’s Ninth Street, became much more than an insurance office. It provided other black-owned businesses retail space, opened a nursing school, and had a ballroom.

Although the Mosaic Templars is dedicated to African-American history, “it’s everyone’s history. It’s everyone’s center,” said director Constance Sarto at a news conference to express appreciation to center donors.

The public opening will be preceded by a gala Sept. 19, including a ticketed reception and dinner. Organizers are hoping to book the Count Basie Orchestra. On opening day, the public can tour the four-story building after a formal ribbon-cutting ceremony and enjoy live music while viewing the exhibits. Admission is free year-round.

The center will include exhibits on the history of blacks in Arkansas, the Arkansas Black Hall of Fame, the Mosaic Templars, the life of sculptor Isaac Scott Hathaway, and Paul Laurence Dunbar High School in Little Rock.

When the headquarters was built in 1913, Booker T. Washington delivered the dedication speech to an audience of 2,100 black and white people, according to the Encyclopedia of Arkansas.

At its peak in the 1920s, the Mosaic Templars had more than 100,000 members and had chapters in twenty-six states, the Caribbean, and South and Central America. Before its decline in the 1930s, it also had a building and loan association, a publishing company, a business college, and a hospital.