After more than a decade of being closed and months of renovations, the Plano African American Museum will reopen its doors Saturday to celebrate the legacy of Black people in North Texas.
The museum’s official reopening coincides with Juneteenth weekend and other activities taking place across North Texas.
For too long, the history of African Americans in the South has centered only around their enslavement, said Dollie Thomas, a member of the museum’s board of directors who helped bring it back to life.
With the reopening of PAAM, Thomas hopes younger generations especially are able to embrace Black heritage and not shy away from it. She noted that the first Africans who came to Texas were not enslaved, which she says is a neglected part of Black history.
“It’s our history — and by our, I mean it’s everybody’s history. It’s nothing that we are ashamed of because we were that,” she said, pointing at a picture of enslaved people in Texas. “But look at us now.”
Thomas is the daughter of the museum’s founder, Ben Thomas, who opened Collin County’s sole Black history museum in 2004. But PAAM was shuttered in 2011 after its primary funding fell through.
“We’ve been working so hard to get it back open and running,” Thomas said, adding that it’s taken almost a year since the idea to reopen came up. “Juneteenth is the perfect time to reopen.”
‘Huge piece of history’
In February 2021, the museum found a home online thanks to Plano resident Zara Jones, who made reviving it part of her Girl Scouts Gold Award project. The site features a virtual tour of the museum and dozens of exhibits.
“I feel like creating my project online has brought so much awareness and the community together to be able to create the museum and reopen it,” said Jones, who was 18 when she built the site.
She looks forward to seeing the physical museum, which she used to drive past without realizing its significance.
“It’s an historical house, and it’s a huge piece of history,” she said. “Everything in there is a huge piece of history in Plano as well.”
The museum, inside the historical Thornton House, sits on the corner of two residential streets in the Douglass Community, a historically Black neighborhood. It is decorated to resemble a home from the early 1900s, with bright floral wallpaper from the 1920s in one of the rooms.
The neighborhood, home to many community churches, is one of the few places where Black people were allowed to purchase land in the early 1900s, Thomas explained. The community got its name after Frederick Douglass Elementary School opened nearby and is now home to mostly Black and Hispanic families.
“Even though we didn’t have much of nothing, we still had community,” Thomas said. “We had a life, and it was a good life for the most part.”
Changing the narrative
On opening day, the museum will have an exhibit about the community, “This is Douglass: Faith, Family, Forever,” that will feature old photos of families who have lived in the neighborhood.
Growing up, Thomas said she saw only photos of Black people in chains in her history textbooks. She wants PAAM to change this narrative by showcasing artwork, displaying family history and selling jewelry from Black-owned businesses in the house’s kitchen — something akin to her own childhood, when she bought snacks from her neighbors’ kitchens.
Thomas said she is excited to display a 100-year-old quilt made by a great-aunt that has been passed down for generations in her family.
“I love who I am,” she said. “We want our children to love who they are.”
The museum plans to hold lecture series, financial literacy classes and digital literacy workshops in the future. Thomas hopes its funding and support will continue to grow so it can become the biggest African American museum in North Texas.
“This ain’t nothing new. We’ve been celebrating Juneteenth down here forever,” Thomas said. “This is just the first year that we’ve opened it up, and we want to have everybody to come out and celebrate with us.”
The museum, 900 13th St., will hold its official reopening from 2 to 7 p.m. Saturday. Admission is free.
