Podcast appearances and mentions of John G Riley

Althemese Pemberton Barnes founded the John G. Riley Museum in 1996, serving as the executive director; in 1997 she established the Florida African American Heritage Preservation Network, a statewide professional museum association. She had a career of 30 years with Florida's Departments of Education and Labor, retiring in 1995. Her works include: several oral history and cultural development projects, historical publications, heritage trail maps, guides, and documentaries. She is a member of the American Alliance of Museums, the Florida Association of Museums, the National Association of African American Museums, and the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Ms. Barnes received a B.S. and an M.S. from Florida A&M University. In 2013, Ms. Barnes oversaw the construction of a $300,000 Visitors Center addition to the Riley Museum property. She left a $900,000 Endowment Fund invested for the upkeep of both the Center and Riley House for the future upon her retirement as Executive Director in October 2014. Continuing her work in historic preservation, Althemese worked with the City of Tallahassee and Leon County Governments, and co-chaired a Smokey Hollow Commemoration Group. In September 2015, Althemese received the Greater Chamber of Commerce Lifetime Leadership Award, the highest annual award of this organization.

The Grove Museum inside the historic Call/Collins House is one of Tallahassee’s newest museums, and it’s changing how the city interprets its own history. Instead of focusing on the mansion house’s famous owners, including Florida Governor LeRoy Collins, Executive Director John Grandage oriented the museum around civil rights. Cleverly tracing how Collins’s thinking on race relations evolved, the museum uses the house and the land it sits on to tell the story of the forced removal of indigenous people from the area, the enslaved craftspeople who built the house, and the Tallahassee Bus Boycott. Grandage says the museum’s interpretive plan and focus on civil rights wouldn't have been possible without the work of Black Tallahassee institutions like John G. Riley House Museum created by Althemese Barnes or the Southeastern Regional Black Archives built from FAMU Professor James Eaton’s collection. In this episode recorded at the museum, Grandage describes how historic preservation has always been about what the dominant culture finds worth persevering, the museum’s genealogical role, and the white backlash to Collins’s moderate positions on civil rights. Topics and Notes 00:00 Intro 00:15 Ian at the 1992 Springtime Tallahassee Parade 00:55 White Supremacy in Tallahassee (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Tallahassee,_Florida#Black_history) 01:20 Smokey Hollow (https://www.museumarchipelago.com/85) 01:40 John Grandage 02:35 The Grove Museum (https://thegrovemuseum.com) 03:05 Developing the Interpretive Plan with a Focus on Slavery and Civil Rights 03:30 Governorship of LeRoy Collins (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LeRoy_Collins) 04:36 Tallahassee Bus Boycott (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tallahassee_bus_boycott) 06:08 Presenting the Narrative through Collins 06:50 White Backlash to Collins’s Moderate Position on Civil Rights 08:15 The Construction of the House by Enslaved Craftspeople (https://thegrovemuseum.com/learn/history/) 09:45 The Genealogical Role of the Museum 10:50 Forced Removal of Indigenous People in Tallahassee 12:25 How Tallahassee Interprets Its History 13:00 The John G. Riley House (https://www.museumarchipelago.com/85) 13:10 The Meek-Eaton Black Archives (https://www.museumarchipelago.com/86) 14:08 Outro | Join Club Archipelago

There's a national campaign underway to make Juneteenth (June 19th) the day commemorating the first public reading of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1865, freeing the enslaved peoples who lived in the now-defeated Confederate States of America. But Florida's first public reading of the Proclamation took place almost a month earlier, on May 20th. To make the case for why the Sunshine State should adopt that date as its own Emancipation Day are: Althemese Barnes, director emeritus of the John G. Riley House and Museum; Tallahassee Mayor Pro Tem Dianne Williams-Cox; Dr. Sandra Thompson, founder and CEO of the Legacy Communities of North Florida; Sgt. Major Jarvis Rosier with the Second Infantry Regiment U.S. Colored Troops; Bob Holladay, president of the Tallahassee Historical Society; and Clifton Lewis, curator of the L.B. Brown Museum in Bartow, Florida.

SEGMENTS | 1. JOHN G. RILEY HOUSE MUSEUM IN TALLAHASSEE | 2. TWO LETTERS FROM SEMINOLE CHIEFS TO PANTON LESLIE CO | 3. THE CITRUS TOWER IN CLEREMONT (CHIP FORD)