Black Museum Fund-Raiser Nears Midway Point

The Idaho Black History Museum board is getting closer to its goal of putting a museum in Julia Davis Park.

More than $50,000 has been raised toward the $120,000 goal to move the former St. Paul Baptist Church to the city park by March.

Donations from large corporations have given the project its latest boost. And the museum hopes Black History Month, which begins today, will attract other donors.

“It doesn’t have value only to blacks in Idaho, but to all people,” said Cherie Buckner-Webb, museum board president.

The white, clapboard church now sits on moving blocks near its old location. Built in 1921, it is one of the first structures erected by blacks in Idaho and earned a place on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982.

The museum will chronicle the history of blacks in Idaho, which dates to York, the slave companion of Meriwether Lewis on the Lewis-Clark expedition that crossed the state in 1805.

It will serve as a repository of black cultural information and offer educational programs on Idaho’s black heritage.