y guide for the morning is Angela, an engaging African American woman who takes a quick drink of water and flashes me a broad smile. She has given several tours this morning, but is raring to go. We walk across the lawn to a 100-year-old house. Angela says this will be a treat. I’m not so sure. The house sits beside a concrete parking lot. We walk up the steps and she unlocks the door to the new Denton County African American Museum.
Angela Evans has been a docent since the museum opened in 2008 after four years of renovation. It is just three rooms. Simple and unassuming. “The home really is a charmer and often surprises people,” Angela had said outside, when I was still skeptical. But once inside, I realize she is right. Most African American museums show art and ideas that focus on African American culture, but Denton’s museum is opening a door to the lives of its first black settlers, who arrived in 1875 seeking a better life after the Civil War. They established a black middle-class community in Quakertown, which took its name from Quaker abolitionists. By the 1920s, more than 60 families inhabited the area.
The museum tells the stories of these African American families. In the first room, what really catches my eye is a shadowbox in the wall showing what the settlers used for insulation — pieces of boxes. The residents, it seems, might have experienced difficult times, but they were resourceful. Pictures show how the house evolved. The original white owner sold it in 1919 to a black man, C. Ross Hembry, but he was forced by racist attitudes to relocate the house a few months later. Like other Quakertown residents, he moved his family and home to Solomon Hill, on Denton’s southeast side, in 1922.
In the second room, old black and white and sepia photos of a doctor, educators, farmers and laborers cover the walls. Angela stops and points at one picture of the Clark family. It is her family — a family of laborers. “It is really surreal to see their picture,” Angela says with a laugh. In the picture are her grandfather, great grandfather, great grandmother and an uncle. They came to Denton in 1909. “My mom donated the picture when the museum was being built,” says Angela as she runs her fingers across the picture. “Every time I see this picture, memories flood over me from my childhood and my family.”
In the photos and documents, Quaker-town’s residents come across as self-sufficient merchants, with stores, drugstores and tailors catering to the black population. These are people of means: Men in suits. Women in elegant dress. On a high shelf sits a collection of black “crowns” similar to those worn by women to church and social gatherings. The hats are adorned with bows, flowers and veils. The city’s first black doctor, Edwin Moten, gazes down at visitors from a wall looking distinguished and serious. Glass cases house his personal books, mostly medical, as well as family invitations to weddings and a mesmerizing patient narcotic register showing prescriptions for such medications as opiates. The story of Fred Moore, a black educational advocate, is here too, a sign that schooling was key to the thriving Quakertown community.
While the museum devotes two rooms to the birth of Quakertown and its upwardly mobile black middle class, the third room shows its demise — and Denton’s long road to reconciliation. In a 1920 address to the Rotary Club, the president of what is now Texas Woman’s University asked the city to “rid the college of the menace of the Negro quarters” so close to the all-white school. The city complied, forcing 60 black families to move across town, ostensibly to make room for a city park. In 1921, voters approved the park and Quakertown was moved to Solomon Hill, in effect dismantling the thriving black middle-class community. The move destroyed spirits as well as houses.
The African American Museum is one of the last houses remaining from Quakertown. The Historical Park Foundation of Denton County purchased it in 2004. “It has been a dream of the historical foundation for 10 years to have an African American museum and have it housed in an original Quakertown home,” says Georgia Caraway, executive director of Denton County museums. It is important, she feels, to recognize the dismantling of Quakertown as a shameful time in Denton County history while making the museum a living symbol of the African American community’s revitalized history. “The photos and personal effects featured in the museum are treasured items because they’re from descendants of those early African American families,” she says.
The people of Denton are no longer hesitant to talk about the past. The new African American museum, Quakertown Park, and the African American exhibit at the Courthouse-on-the-Square Museum are just the beginning of an effort to create a memorable experience for visitors. Almost every summer, the African American community also hosts a Juneteenth event to celebrate the freedom of Texas slaves in 1865. The gathering includes a gospel night, pageant, parade, concerts, food, fun and games, all held in Fred Moore Park.
Council member Charlye Heggins practically coos as she points to the craftsmanship of the Quakertown mural now gracing the Denton Civic Center. “Isn’t this just beautiful?” she says, admiring the scene of the bustling African American community. “Truly a sight to see.”
If Denton has its way, there will be more to come.
By Claudia Daniels