EXCERPTS FROM THE STUDENT INTERN PROJECT REPORT

After school ended this year we participated in an internship project at the Black World History Museum. We did not know in the beginning what the project would be like, but we soon learned that we would be very busy and Ms. Conley told us that she hoped we would enjoy learning about our history and about how the museum works. This booklet is the documentation of the things we did.

We learned all about the museum — how it got started, its purpose, how it gets money…

Before we knew it, Ms. Conley had us actually working in the museum. We learned how to greet visitors and get them started on their museum tour by giving them an orientation. … We had to learn the stories of the people who were in the museum exhibits so that we could tell visitors about them when there was a docent-guided tour or whenever people had questions. Ms. Conley told us this would help us develop our public speaking skills. …

Each day we had classes about all kinds of museum things. Sometimes Ms. Conley was our teacher; sometimes it was someone else like Mr. Vincent or Mr. Whitfield. There was so much to learn, like meanings of words like curator, heritage preservation, documentation, census, genealogy, [and] tourism. We also had to keep a diary that Ms. Conley had to keep reminding us to write in. … We had to answer phones, file, and clean up the building. …

Our first project was to help out with a bus tour to celebrate Juneteenth. Buses would pick people up at the Old Court House, Scott Joplin [House], the Eugene Field House, or the Black World History Museum and drop them off at each site for a tour. We had a special treat for visitors to the Museum. The Tandy Guard set up a Civil War camp site and did historical reenactments. …

We visited the Greenwood Cemetery because Mr. Vincent said that a lot of our heritage can be found in cemeteries. Greenwood is in St. Louis county. It is an old cemetery that was used to bury only Black people all the way back in the 1800's. … We visited the cemetery several times, learned the meaning of symbols used, [and] interviewed the pastor of the church. … We learned that some famous people were buried there, including one very infamous person named Lee Shelton. Rev. Johnson, the pastor of the church, told us that the church didn't know much about the real Lee Shelton, so wouldn't you know, Mr. Vincent and Ms. Conley said we would do some research to see what could be learned. So, Mr. Vincent took us to the public library, many times, to learn about "Stagger Lee."…

While we were at the museum two new permanent exhibits were mounted. … Ashley and [Willanda] had a chance to go with Ms. Conley while she looked for items for the Josephine Baker exhibit. We saw a lot of items at antique stores that we had not seen before. This is the time when Ms. Conley told us what a curator was and how important it was to save certain family items. Ms. Conley and Mr. Bill worked on the exhibit. … In about a week the exhibit was all done, and Ms. Conley let Ashley and me help pick out some of the memorabilia for it. … One night we spent the night at the museum putting on the finishing touches [to the Baker exhibit].

On July 15, Ms. Conley took us to the Missouri Historical Society for a workshop on ACTION. … [W]hile we were waiting for the program to start we met Ms. Margaret Bush Wilson. … The workshop was part of the ACTION reunion for members and supporters. That weekend we attended the awards dinner.

Ms. Conley had two really old ACTION [tee]-shirts that were given to the museum by a man who made them for the group in the 60's. One of the shirts is so old it almost falls apart when you touch it. She told us that we might try to have someone come to talk to us about how to conserve the shirt before we put it on display. A man named Mr. Charles Murphy took a picture of the shirt and put it on the computer. He also took pictures of other artifacts and of us one Saturday at the cemetery. He put these on the computer and showed us how to use the computer to view the items from different angles. … Mr. Murphy set the computer up at the Black Expo to demonstrate the use of computers and distance learning. …

We went to Greater Mount Caramel Church to conduct an oral interview with Rev. Earl Nance, Jr. because an exhibit of his father was going to be installed in the museum later in the year. We interviewed Rev. Nance, Jr. since his father had died in April. Preparing for the interview was interesting. … Ms. Conley had been teaching us about interviewing techniques… [W]e … followed Ms. Conley's instructions-all of our equipment worked, we arrived on time, [and] we had our questions written out…

We also met a lady named Loyce Houston. She came to teach us about her family history. Mrs. Houston used to sing gospel music in the 1940's. Now she is a teacher at Vashon High School. … Mrs. Houston gave us information on [finding] out about your ancestors. She told us to use the census, archives, and libraries. …

[Another] person we met was John Whitfield. He is the director of the African-American Historical Society. Mr. Whitfield helped us understand the connection between genealogical research and our family tree project. He gave us examples of how to find out information. … Mr. Whitfield's information was very helpful for the research we are doing on our family trees.

Myron and Kenneth dropped out of the program before it ended, but the three of us, William, Ashley, and Willanda are still [here]. We still come to the museum on Saturdays (and even some evenings) since school started back. I think we like coming here even though it's like being in school. But this is better than school because we get more attention and we get to do interesting things. … In all we really like this intern project. We have been telling our friends at school about it and they want to know if they can come.