A historical collection ranging from NBA player Earl Lloyd to Mayor Bill Euille could be going digital soon.
The Alexandria Black History Museum (902 Wythe Street) is receiving a $99,772 grant to help digitize its extensive collection and make more of its exhibits available online.
This is the second Museum Grant for African American History and Culture the city’s museum has received from the Institute of Museum and Library Services. It will help support a project that started in July and will run until June next year to “further enable visitors to explore the Museum’s valuable collections beyond the confines of the museum walls.”
The first grant, awarded back in 2021, enabled the museum to catalog, digitize and publicly share four archival collections.
According to a release:
Building on this success, the new grant will digitize the museum’s entire object collection, making it available online. This includes materials from William “Bill” Euille, Alexandria’s first African American mayor, 1980s photographs of the Parker-Gray neighborhood, images from local African American church services, rare issues of The Home News newspaper from 1902-1903, artifacts from African American businesses in Alexandria, and memorabilia from Earl Lloyd, the first African American to play in the NBA. Additionally, a celebrated fund-raising cookbook, A Kind Heart and a Light Hand, and other significant items will be digitized to showcase Alexandria’s rich and diverse history.
An additional component of the grant is to make accessible online catalog records of approximately 4,000 volumes from the non-circulating Watson Reading Room library. This will include updating existing records and creating 1,000 new ones, all accessible online.
The release said the initiative is part of an ongoing effort to make local history more accessible.
“The digital content created by this project will support the invaluable work and ongoing mission of Historic Alexandria and the Alexandria Black History Museum to tell stories of the underrepresented and marginalized, highlighting their central role in the American narrative, both locally and nationally,” the release said.
