Today, we're headed to the historic Baptist Town neighborhood in Evansville to take a look at the Evansville African American Museum and find out what makes this place so important to our community.

I'm Brody Atchley, and this is WNIN Field Trip!

WNIN Field Trip is brought to you by Explore Evansville!

Highlighting what's happening across Vanderburgh County.

From local events and attractions to places to stay.

Details at exploreevansville.com When I first stepped foot into the Evansville African-American Museum, I honestly didn't know what to expect.

How does this place represent our local community?

It represents a history of what Evansville, the community of Baptist Town contributed to the city of Evansville, and it's a depository of African American history.

Going all the way back from the 1820s to now.

People contributed to the development of Evansville and the good and the bad.

Because first of all, why are these black people in this area?

It was a redlining situation.

This housing project or development was built in 1938.

There were 16 buildings, and each one of these buildings had like eight apartments.

So there were like 191 apartments and over 500 residents.

Sandra Matthews was one of the residents.

Long, long term residents here.

She grew up here as a child.

In 1997, she had gone to Africa and this was during the time of apartheid, and found that a lot of discriminatory practices were going on and people were losing their history.

And then she came back home and found out that Lincoln Gardens was going to be raised because it had fallen into some disrepair.

And so she went to the housing authority and asked if we could preserve some of the history here.

And they allowed her to do that.

So they were able to give us this one building.

Six, seven years later, the museum opened in 2007.

So this is the Lincoln Clark Douglas Room.

There are a number of yearbooks here.

This gentleman, this name is Frank Albert Cox.

He is the first African-American in the country to receive a PhD in mathematics.

Another person who achieved some significance was the first African-American fire chief in Evansville.

His name is George Flowers.

You know, when it was built in 1928, it was built as a vocational school.

There again, this was a red lined area.

They did not have a cafeteria or a library.

And so the first librarian at Lincoln, whose name was Alberta Stevenson, she went door to door to collect donations and books to create a library at Lincoln.

And see, that was the thing about Lincoln.

They, the instructors and the teachers that taught there were very dedicated and passionate and very bright.

The other thing they did was built a planetarium over there, which most schools don't have.

The cool thing is everyone except for me is a descendant community member of this community.

So it's really great.

I get to work with living history.

I get to work with the people whose families these are.

I get to work with the people whose artifacts are their story.

And so that's that's what makes me feel joy.

Really, the only permanent exhibits in the museum are the two quilts and the apartment.

Here's one of the bedrooms.

You can see.

It's quite cozy, and it's absolutely lovely in the sense of a lot of these artifacts come from Diane Grimes.

She is the relative of one of the descendant community members that was the founder of this museum, Lana Burton.

And so she was the last tenant to live in here.

So what's cool is you are going to see a mix of artifacts from the early 1900s to 1997, when it closed.

More so when you come out here.

What's really lovely about this living room is you'll see your coal furnace in here.

You'll see your tube television.

So it's pretty cool just to see some of the artifacts and some of the furniture that was in this apartment and its historical context.

And what's really cool, too, is the civil refrigerator back here.

This is one of the first gas operated refrigerators.

What's really beautiful about this space is this gives you an idea of what it was like to live in here.

You have your hair tools.

You have your nice little stove The apartment will at some point get refreshment.

And there are sometimes artifacts we take out, clean, put back out or put other artifacts in their place too.

So it doesn't change a whole lot because the integrity of that space is what's the most important.

The mission of the Evansville African-American Museum is to continually develop a resource and cultural center to collect, preserve, and educate the public on the history and traditions of African American families, communities, and organizations.

Thank you Explore Evansville for sponsoring WNIN Field Trip!