Earlier this month, we installed a display in our rotunda featuring images of 20 people whose legacies helped shape McLean County. Their stories span a wide range of experiences – from a Bloomington-born performer who toured internationally to the son of formerly enslaved people who became a successful local businessman.
Click here to explore the featured people’s stories.
These incredible stories were collected and are now preserved in large part due to the efforts of the Bloomington-Normal Black History Project (BNBHP), an entirely volunteer-run affiliate group of the Museum.
The project began in 1969, when community members gathered at the Bloomington Public Library to document the history of Black residents in McLean County, starting with the first known arrivals in 1835. Early participants included Caribel Washington and Ruth Waddell, both of whom are featured in the display. The project was formally organized in 1982 under the leadership of sociologist Dr. Mildred Pratt, who is also featured in the display.
Since then, the BNBHP has conducted over 100 oral history interviews, collected hundreds of artifacts, created two exhibits, presented at professional conferences nationwide, and led three archaeological digs.
One of the many artifacts collected by the BNBHP is the quilt, which appears behind each photo in this installation. Made of hand-cut and hand-sewn fabric pieces dating to about 1910, it came from the Simone Malone home on Kingsley St. in Normal.
Simon Malone was the first Black man to own his home in McLean County. Although the house is no longer there, it is memorialized with a historic marker where it once stood.
The quilt is fragile but safely preserved in one of our climate-controlled storage areas and isn’t physically accessible to the public. It is, however, accessible via our Online Object Database.
Twenty-nine objects from our Bloomington-Normal Black History Project collection are available via the database. Many more are on display in our exhibits — including Mr. Merlin Kennedy’s Santa suit, which can be seen in our A Community in Conflict exhibit gallery, and items from the Duff family, which are featured in our Making A Home exhibit gallery.
BNBHP collected and preserved these stories thanks to the dedication of its volunteers. We are grateful for their historic contributions and look forward to discovering, preserving, and sharing more stories for years to come.
Please visit mchistory.org/research/black-history-project to learn more.
