By MATT PIKE
A $10,000 grant awarded to the St. Joseph Museums, in partnership with the Black Archives Museum, will help develop a new project designed to explore the black history in St. Joseph.
The grant from Freedom’s Frontier National Heritage Area will help support the development of Midtown Corridor Signs: Exploring Black History in St. Joseph. The project, titled “Midtown Corridor Signs: Exploring Black History in St. Joseph,” will create twelve interpretive signs along a new Midtown history corridor stretching from the historic Wyeth-Tootle Mansion to the Bartlett Center, a formerly segregated school that operated from the 1880s until 1954.
The signage will highlight significant people, events, and themes within St. Joseph’s Black community, including slavery, segregation, civil rights, and local leaders whose stories shaped the neighborhood. Through this effort, St. Joseph Museums aims to expand educational access, strengthen heritage tourism, and deepen community engagement with St. Joseph’s Black history.
“This project allows us to honor and uplift the voices, experiences, and resilience of the Black community in Midtown while creating a meaningful, accessible pathway for residents and visitors to learn about this history,” Executive Director of St. Joseph Museums Sara Wilson says in a news release, . “FFNHA’s support ensures that these stories—many long overlooked—are preserved and shared with future generations.”
Freedom’s Frontier is a congressionally designated national heritage area that spans eastern Kansas and western Missouri, working with partners to preserve and share the stories of the region’s role in shaping the nation’s history. FFNHA provides grant funding to support projects promoting heritage tourism, historic preservation, and public interpretation.
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