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Alexandria Black History Museum
Alexandria, VA

The mission of the Alexandria Black History Museum is to enrich the lives of Alexandria's residents and visitors, to foster tolerance and understanding among all cultures and to stimulate appreciation for the diversity of the African American experience.

The Alexandria Black History Museum is a complex of three sites: a museum, a library, and a heritage park. The Museum, devoted to exhibiting local and regional history, is housed in the Robert H. Robinson Library, originally constructed in 1940 following a sit-in at the segregated Alexandria Library. The Robinson Library was the first public library to serve the African American population of Alexandria. With desegregation in the 1960s, the building was converted to use for community oriented programs.

In 1983, the Alumni Assoication of Parker-Gray School and the Alexandria Society for the Preservation of Black Heritage, inc. reopended the building as the Alexandria black History Resource Center. In 2004, the facility's name was changed to the Alexandria Black History Museum. The Museum complex also includes the Watson Reading Room and the Alexandria African American Heritage Park. The Reading Room, established in 1995, provides an environment for learning about the diversity of African American cultural traditions. A nine-acre green space and wetland, the Park offers a place for celebration, commemoration and quiet reflection.

Your donations help:
Your Shopping Donation will benefit the operating cost, phased installations of a permanet exhibition, supplies for children's programs, and for special programs not funded through the museum general operating funds. Those unfunded annual programs include: a Teddy Bear Tea (a program to teach children ettiquette lessons in a formal tea setting); a Martin Luther King, Jr. Poster Contest with cash prizes awarded to 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place winners; and a Veterans Days Memorial program.

https://oha.alexandriava.gov/bhrc/

There are many ways you can get involved.

Click here to learn more:

https://oha.alexandriava.gov/bhrc/bh-aspbh.html