The African American Museum at Fair Park is ready for visitors after a six-month pandemic break.
"We have social distancing stickers on the floor, masks, hand sanitizer," African American Museum Deputy Director Dr. Marvin Dulaney said. "We take everybody's temperature."
Dulaney said the museum used the time its doors were closed to make some improvements. It also hosted art camps and African American history classes online. Now the museum is open three days a week with limited hours and limited 25% capacity.
"One of our exhibits, the 'Facing the Rising Sun' looks at the Freedman's Cemetery," Dulaney said. "To understand how racism and racist policies have affected African Americans, so much so that they lose a whole cemetery to a highway that was built basically right through it."
Local history that's relevant to what's happening across the country today.
"It helps people understand that George Floyd's murder was not an isolated incident," Dulaney said. "It's part of a historic process of devaluing the lives of African Americans and their community."
The museum would usually be crowded in September with spillover crowds from the State Fair of Texas. Not this year with the fair canceled.
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"So in a way, it's a good time to come," Dulaney said, pointing no crowds make parking and navigating galleries easy.
"If you educate people and they learn what was really happening, it will lead them to promoting and supporting social change," Dulaney said. "That's why we're so important."
The African American Museum is open from noon to 5:00 p.m. on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays.
