The Friends of Arrow Rock celebrates the opening of its Black History Museum on Saturday, June 2, 2012. The exhibition, “Reflections of African-American Arrow Rock: 1865-1960,” is housed in the Brown Lodge No. 22 Ancient Free and Accepted Masons building, restored by the Friends of Arrow Rock in 2001, and is based on oral histories, photographs, documentary research and archaeology. The exhibition will be open from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.
The all-day program, free and open to the public, begins at 10 a.m. at the Arrow Rock State Historic Site Visitor Center. Speakers include Dr. Timothy E. Baumann, director of the Glenn A. Black Laboratory of Archaeology at Indiana University who will present Arrow Rock’s African-American Community: An Archaeological Perspective of the Jim Crow Era; Dr. Gary R. Kremer, director of the State Historical Society of Missouri, who will present ‘The Black People Did the Work’: African-American Life in Arrow Rock, Missouri, 1850-1950; and Teresa Van Buren Habernal, who will present Memories of Growing Up in Arrow Rock. A reception will follow the presentations.
On Sunday, June 3, the Friends of Arrow Rock will hold its 53rd Annual Meeting beginning with a lunch at the J. Huston Tavern where the organization was founded in 1959. Reservations for the 12 noon lunch may be made through the Friends of Arrow Rock office at 660-837-3231. A free 2 p.m. program will be held at the Arrow Rock State Historic Site Visitor Center featuring a photographic presentation by author Sandy Selby from her newly-published book Arrow Rock: Images of America. The photographs document 100 years of historic preservation in Arrow Rock. Copies of the book will be for sale.
Anna Mae Hodge and the late Dr. Robert H. Hodge will be honored with the Distinguished Service Award and Arrow Rock Chapter Daughters of the American Revolution Regent Barbara Thieman will present the DAR National Historic Preservation Recognition Award to the Friends of Arrow Rock.
