Black History Month 2011

At the Farragut Folklife Museum

February is Black History Month and the Farragut Folklife Museum is preparing for its annual Black History Celebration, which will be held from 2:30 to 5:30 p.m., Sunday, Feb. 27, at Town Hall.

FFM Committee member Loretta Bradley is in charge of the celebration again this year and she said her committee has been hard at work preparing for this year’s event.

“The theme this year is ‘Celebrating the Unity in our Heritage,’” Bradley said.

“The main program will begin at 3 p.m., but people can begin coming in at 2:30. We will have refreshments and two churches will be recognized for their contributions to the community. Our speaker will be attorney George Underwood, and Debra Henry will do some special music,” she added.

The churches being recognized are Concord AME Zion Church and Concord Church of God.

“These are two of the oldest African-American institutions in Concord and they are both located on Loop Road. There really were not any African-American institutions in Farragut when they organized, and Concord had no other institutions either, other than the schools, and they are closed,” Bradley said.

“The churches are going to be recognized for their outstanding contributions to the community. They have strived to maintain and continue their cultural legacy while at the same time promoting the development and advancement of the community,” she added.

Some of the plans for the celebration are still undecided but Bradley and the rest of the committee – which includes Pauline and Limon Bacon, Huey and Christine Moulden, Dorothy Stone Porter, Lee and Vivian Varner and Christine Duncan – will meet with FFM director Julia Jones-Barham to hammer out the rest of the details in February.

“We are hoping that the mayor of Farragut, [Ralph McGill] and the chair of the Farragut Folklife Museum, Barbara Beeler, will be participants in the program,” Bradley said.

Bradley is putting together an exhibit of local Black History for the event.

“I want to include things that are making history in our community,” Bradley said.

“Like Mayor [Daniel] Brown, who is the first black interim mayor of Knoxville. And also coach [Tony] Jones, at The University of Tennessee [basketball team] who works under coach Bruce Pearl, is a first. We have never had a black [assistant] head coach. I think these things are important,” she added.

Brown, 6th District city councilman, was selected this month as interim mayor following former Mayor Bill Haslam’s resignation and inauguration as governor.

Brown, a Vietnam veteran, will hold the office until the official election this fall.

Farragut has been holding annual Black History Celebrations since the early 1990s when FFM was under the direction of Doris Woods Owens.

“Black History Month began around 1926 and was originally known as ‘Negro History Week’ and then later on as ‘Black History Month’,” Bradley said.

“Later on in the 20th century we owe the celebration of Black History month, and more importantly, the study of black history, to Dr. Carter G. Woodson.

“His parents were slaves and he spent his childhood working in the coal mines of Kentucky and later enrolled in high school at age 20. Then he went on to get his PhD from Howard University and started writing about black Americans in the history of our country,” Bradley added.

For more information on FFM or the Black History Month Celebration, visit www.townoffarragut.org or call 865-966-7057.