Voices of a City Exhibition Inclusion Project Beyond O. Henry: Gray Johnson, McAdoo, Faulkner, & Ragsdale

FAIN: TA-296629-24

Greensboro Historical Museum (Greensboro, NC 27401-3004)
Carol Ghiorsi Hart (Project Director: June 2023 to February 2024)
Robert Harris (Project Director: February 2024 to present)

Planning and implementation of an exhibition about historically significant residents from communities underrepresented in the historical narrative of Greensboro, NC.

The Greensboro History Museum requests $25,000 to expand the content of its permanent 2010 "Voices of a City" core-history exhibition to include local African Americans and women who called Greensboro home and had national impact in the history of the arts. There is a small gallery in the pre-WWII area of "Voices" that focuses on the local short story writer William Sydney Porter, known as O. Henry. We are proposing to redesign the space so that we can add some highly significant creative voices who are missing from their city's museum: African American Harlem Renaissance-era artist Malvin Gray Johnson; formerly enslaved Orpheus McAdoo who brought Black American music to South Africa in the late 1800s; musician Margaret Mitchell Faulkner who founded NC A&T's music department; and mathematician Virginia Ragsdale, known for her 1906 Ragsdale Conjecture. Grant funds would help pay for a new installation and associated interpretation to be added within the "Voices" exhibition.