Tallahassee Historical Society January 11 Meeting

Tallahassee Historical Society
January 11 Meeting

Ain’t Technology Great? Join Us on January 11 to
Tour the Virtual Civil Rights Museum
(Note: this article was shamelessly stolen and slightly adapted from the
Tallahassee Democrat.)

Last February, two of the members of the Tallahassee Historical Society made history by launching Florida’s first Civil Rights Museum, the nation’s first digital civil rights museum, at www.floridacivilrightsmuseum.org. Members of the historical society will get a tour of the museum at our January 11 meeting at Mission San Luis. The reception will begin at 5:30 pm with the program to begin at 6:00 pm.

While Delaitre Hollinger is the main founder of the museum and has been working on the initiative since 2013, Jacqueline Yvonne Perkins takes on the role of being the museum’s co-executive director. A coalition of historians and community leaders also helped to establish the museum, which held a fundraiser at Goodwood in September.

“Our focus is to provide information and illuminate the life stories and legacies of individuals whose courageous actions and contributions resulted in transformational change for everyone, and that's regardless of race, color or creed,” said Perkins, 66, a retired Florida A&M University internship director who graduated from the university in 1979. “This is not a Black history museum, and it's not an African American museum.” Perkins is also the president and CEO of the Robert and Trudie Perkins Foundation, which honors the two Tallahassee civil rights activists, and she is the only surviving child of the acclaimed couple.

“So many people don't know the history, and that's what our goal is — to make sure that people know some of the salient accomplishments of individuals they've never heard of before,” Perkins said. “We stand on the shoulders of people who were courageous enough to take a lot of hits.”

The idea of having a Florida Civil Rights Museum originated during a time when Tallahassee’s Firestone building — which was the former Leon County Jail and of significance to the civil rights movement — was first slated for demolition around 2013, according to Hollinger.

Hollinger and other community members as well as some state and federal officials fought to save the structure, which led Hollinger to think of the need for a museum that could highlight the state’s civil rights history.

But the building was demolished in March 2018 to make way for the Cascades development.

“Throughout that entire period, my request of everyone who joined in the effort was that we have a statewide-focused civil rights museum in Tallahassee,” said Hollinger, 30, who is the president and founder of the national Association for the Preservation of African American History and Culture. He graduated from Tallahassee Community College in 2014 and went on to study religion at Liberty University.

“I knew it would be a major tourist attraction that would draw people from all over the state and also all over the country,” he added.

The civil rights museum, which is being supported by a $60,000 reimbursement-based funding allocation from the county commission each year for the next two years, is starting off on a virtual platform since more fundraising efforts are taking place to work toward having a brick-and-mortar space in the future.