Fostering community connections at The Newberry Museum

At its inception, the mission of The Newberry Museum was defined as follows: to protect, preserve, present, and promote the ongoing history and heritage of Newberry County and College.

Since opening our doors in December of 2019, this mission has been fulfilled in a lot of different ways. We’ve engaged folk s with programming, both in-person and virtual, produced make-and-take activity bags for kids to engage with mid-pandemic, we’ve led virtual exhibit tours and hosted opening receptions, and have facilitated daily operations to meet these goals.

However, I think at its core, the mission of our museum is person-centric. If you boil down our mission to its most essential form, it’s all about the people. Residents of Newberry County who care to continue on with their own personal legacies by learning about their pasts, visitors from elsewhere who want to connect with our special town, and members of community groups who are doing their own work to help the county grow each day.

Lately, as operations begin to edge back towards a sense of normalcy, our fulfillment of this mission has been via shining spotlights on individual persons, and utilizing their lives and accomplishments to shed light on a larger Newberry significance.

This has happened for us in a few ways. We hosted Mr. Perry James at the museum, a member of the Ebony Doughboys historical reenactment group, wherein he dressed as a Harlem Hellfighter and gave a presentation to museum visitors, City Council members, and American Legion attendees, highlighting the musical and military accomplishments of the 369th.

He did so by providing information about both Newberry’s own Private Tarrance Moon, as well as James’s own grandfather, who served as part of the 371st regiment. By focusing in one these key individuals, James helped to form community connections with folks who were inspired by Moon, and even folks who were related to him, like Ms. Vina Moon Abrams of Newberry.

Another clear example of focusing on person-centric programming to cultivate unity presents itself in our upcoming exhibit on the life and legacy of Israel Brooks Jr. Serving as the first Black state trooper for the Highway Patrol in South Carolina, and a federal Marshal under the Clinton administration, Brooks was a noted Newberrian who loved his church, his family, and his community.

It is our hope that with this exhibit, opening June 29, we can help utilize Brooks as a positive example of community stewardship, servant-mindedness, and an unflinching commitment to justice and aid that all visitors can relate to and learn from.

Finally, this person-centric approach is abundantly clear when one takes a look at our volunteers, and the way they foster direct community connections through one-on-one interactions with our visitors.

An example of this can be found in an interaction that took place at the museum a few weeks ago. A museum-goer, who had to make a last-minute trip for work, decided to stop in to the museum in an effort to investigate Newberry’s connection as the home of her ancestors on her maternal grandfather’s side. They immigrated here from Germany in the 1700s.

Upon arrival, she was greeted by our front desk volunteer, Susan Harrison, who helped the visitor find Cromer Crossroads, and even helped connect the dots that helped our visitor realize she was distantly related to Susan! The visitor was able to find the site of her family’s farm, as well as one of their graveyards.

By providing this assistance, Susan was able to connect with our visitor on an individual level, helping to further nurture those place-based unifiers that help us further our mission.

These examples of honing in on the personal level to succeed in our goals of protection, preservation, presentation, and promotion, just prove how special Newberry County is to so many, and how even though our methods will continue to change, as the world does, the mission of The Newberry Museum will always be to connect with the people who make the place so great.

The Newberry Museum is open from Tuesday-Saturday, 10 a.m.-4 p.m. To inquire about the museum, donate an artifact, or express interest in volunteering, contact Executive Director Sheridan K. Murray at (803) 597-5215 or [email protected].