Protecting Denver’s African American History: History Students Create Emergency Response Plan at Denver’s Black American West Museum
This past spring, Professor Bill Wagner’s Museum Collections Management Class partnered with the Black American West Museum and Heritage Center (BAWMHC) to gain hands-on experience while making impactful changes for the future success of the Museum. Founded by Paul W. Stewart in 1971, the BAWMHC works to preserve and bring life to the complex and intriguing history of African Americans in the Western United States.
Working with the BAWMHC’s Collections Manager, Jeff Phegley, the five undergraduate and seven graduate students in the class cataloged a collection that went largely untouched for the past thirty years. The collection includes materials from a black mutual aid society called the Supreme Camp of American Woodmen. Founded in Denver in 1901, the American Woodmen established chapters across the country throughout the twentieth century, providing life insurance and other benefits to thousands of African Americans. In 1995, a former American Woodmen executive donated several boxes of company photographs and ephemera to the BAWMHC. Besides a basic inventory completed in the early 2000s, the collection remained largely unprocessed until Professor Wagner’s class commenced their cataloging work. After resolving a large number of problematic accession numbers in the collection, Professor Wagner’s students created catalog entries for 342 items. Each entry included photographs and a detailed description of the item, as well as other necessary details.
In addition to this work, the class completed a major emergency response planning project for the Museum. For several decades, the BAWMHC had been operating without a comprehensive plan for dealing with potential disasters, such as fires, flooding, theft, vandalism, and active shooter situations. To help the Museum keep its collections, staff, and patrons safe, students spent several months drafting a comprehensive emergency response plan, which, once approved by the Board of Directors, will be maintained permanently in a red binder in the Museum’s main office. Students dove even deeper by also completing several smaller projects related to disaster planning, including: a disaster pocket plan, an emergency response bin, forms for documentation, and a staff training program in emergency procedures.
The History Department offers its congratulations to these students for their hard work that will certainly leave a lasting legacy at the BAWMHC.
The students in Professor Wagner’s Collection Class have also made a significant contribution to the protection and
preservation of Denver and Colorado African American history!
- Submitted by Presley Arnold