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02/14/2024 08:30 AMAs the founder and executive director of Connecticut’s first and only African American history museum, Jeffrey Fletcher is regularly in demand as a guest speaker, especially in the weeks surrounding February’s Black History Month. However, this is history that needs to be recognized every day, Jeffrey emphasizes.
“The first thing I try to get folks to understand is that Black History is not just during the month of February, but it is actually every day of the year,” he says. “We have metrics at the museum, and it seems like we get an onslaught of people trying to come there to celebrate Black History Month. We’re happy that they do, but we also express to them that their visits don’t have to focus around Black History Month. We want them to know that they can come there every day.”
Jeffrey, a Branford resident, recently spoke in town about the museum and its message during, “A Conversation about Black History,” hosted by the Branford Historical Society at the Blackstone Library on Jan. 10. On Thursday, Feb. 22 at 7 p.m., Jeffrey brings his discussion to the Guilford Free Public Library. His talk will be the first in a four-part speaker series hosted by the Guilford-based initiative, “Witness to History: Slavery in Guilford.” Further details can be found at guilfordfreelibrary.org.
Jeffrey officially opened the doors to the Ruby and Calvin Fletcher African American History Museum in Stratford in 2021. Named in honor of Jeffrey’s late parents, the museum is currently located in an historic home belonging to the City of Stratford.
“We’ve opened up a museum that is telling the narrative of African American history through my eyes, as well as the eyes of my family. And the motivation behind the museum was to afford families who have economic hardship—not just Black families, but all families—the opportunity to visit something that is of African American history and culture, aside from the expense involved in traveling to the national museum in Washington,” says Jeffrey.
Jeffrey adds that he does not want his museum to emulate or replicate what can be found in the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C. or any other museum.
Exhibits are created to educate and foster understanding and communication with transparency and honesty, he says. For example, the museum’s unvarnished display of the enslavement imposed on Africans in America is one among many exhibits there to tell the story of African Americans and their contributions to history. Other exhibits include narratives about segregation’s “Jim Crow” era, the story of the Tuskegee Airmen, the Civil Rights era, and the history of Black music in America.
“We also want to talk about culture, and we talk about stereotypes. We want to talk about the honest statements and the history with transparency and honesty,” says Jeffery.
Jeffery’s first encounters with maligned images associated with Black history were brought into his family’s home by his mother. Ruby Fletcher grew up in South Carolina and North Carolina at time when state and local segregation laws, otherwise known as Jim Crow laws, persisted.
“My mom was a collector of artifacts growing up as a child in South Carolina and just continued that practice as she migrated from the South at an early age of 16,” says Jeffrey.
Ruby moved north to Colchester, Connecticut.
“Her collection stemmed around Jim Crow. She grew up in the 1930s in Camden, South Carolina, where Jim Crow was a very active law put in place by segregationists and people who believed in that law,” Jeffery explains. “I believe she wanted to show that this is the exploitation, as well as the law of the South, when it came to people of color.”
Jeffrey says that his mother continued collecting Jim Crow ephemera as a young adult, when she met and married Calvin Fletcher, her husband of 55 years. She also continued collecting while raising her family right up until her passing in 2006. She amassed more than 450 items, including signs, posters, small statues, and other objects.
Jeffrey remembers many of the objects coming into his home as a child. He says his mother’s explanation to queries about her interest in collecting was to often say, “...this eases my mind,” and, “...this is my therapy.”
“I heard that at the time, never thinking that the words that she was saying were cathartic for her; not thinking that, as a young person growing up and doing this, it had some sort of emotional catharsis for her,” Jeffrey says. “She witnessed a lot of things in the South that we only can read in history books or view in movies. This, I believe, was a way to be able to make herself not have any hatred toward people who did not look like her. She was a spiritual person who believed everyone was created equal, and she did not harbor any animus or bigotry toward others for what she had seen in her childhood.”
As noted on the museum’s website, “...the exhibit embraces the teachings of tolerance, diversity, unity and educating people that there was a time when imagery played a significant role in how African Americans were perceived. The artifacts and memorabilia may seem to be difficult to view but they are a part of African American history that needs to be told just as much as the triumphs which were made by African American pioneers and trailblazers.”
Among the museum’s exhibits, the slavery narrative is especially important to share, while also difficult to view. It includes images and artifacts such as horrific neck, wrist, and other irons, among elements bearing witness to the history of enslavement.
“The objects and the items that are in there, you can’t sugarcoat or blanket them,” says Jeffrey.
The museum added a Ku Klux Klan robe to the exhibit about two weeks ago.
“I felt that you can’t talk about African American history unless you invoke the Klan,” Jeffrey says. “If I can’t be transparent, and I’m not honest, then there’s no sense in trying to tell the narrative of African American history.”
To date, Jeffrey has expanded the museum’s overall collection to 10,000 to 12,000 pieces, creating a broad display that focuses on a global version of African American history.
“There are good parts, and there are bad parts,” says Jeffrey of the collection. “But the bad parts don’t overshadow the good that African Americans have contributed to this history. But we’ve got to talk about the bad parts before we can talk about the good.”
He’s also working on the next steps to further develop the message of the museum.
“I’m finding that African American history doesn’t just touch people who are of African descent, like myself and other African Americans,” says Jeffrey. “It also touches the cores of Caribbean Hispanic culture. So, I’m working on ways to include, invite, and integrate the Hispanic culture into the museum because African history and the Hispanic culture are so closely aligned in terms of spirituality, music, food, folklore, and dance.”
Jeffrey will build a coalition of Hispanic scholars, educators, and others who can help to bring the Hispanic narrative to the museum.
At present, Jeffrey is also hoping to soon cross the finish line on his next goal: raising the funds needed to move the museum into a 9,000 square-foot historic Colonial home belonging to the City of Stratford that the city has designated for the museum’s use. The home was once occupied by John W. Sterling, the namesake of Yale University’s Sterling Library and Sterling Law Building.
New Haven-based Sterling Firm has provided seed money for the museum’s current fundraising campaign, but further donations for sufficient funding to repurpose the home and support the museum’s growth are needed. Donations can be made online at africanamericanmuseumct.org. The transition into the museum’s new home is hoped to take place later this year.
The Ruby and Calvin Fletcher African American History Museum is located at 952 East Broadway in Stratford. For hours, directions, events, and more information, or to make a donation, visit africanamericanmuseumct.org or call or text 457-476-1808.