New Hope Baptist Church Reverend Robert Fletcher leads one of the oldest African-American churches in Central Texas.
Last week, he and several members of his congregation were among the first to see part of their history on display at Baylor University’s Mayborn Museum.
“When I look at the exhibit, it takes you back and makes you thankful and grateful for what God is always doing in our lives,” Fletcher said.
The Mayborn’s Cultural Crossroads exhibit opened May 1. The exhibit features histories and artifacts from Tejanos, the Wichita, Comanche and African-Americans, groups of people who helped define Central Texas from the 1700s to the 20th Century. Leaders of those groups were part of a private reception last week, and said they were pleased with how the exhibit turned out.
The exhibit, three years in the making, is the first of several planned phases to expand and renovate the museum.
The museum worked with various communities to bring the experiences to life in the exhibit, including the Waco Hispanic Museum and the Wichita and Comanche tribes.
“Sometimes people think of museums as old and dusty, and that’s not what our job is,” said Trey Crumpton, Mayborn Museum manager of visitor experiences. “That’s not what we do, and it’s not what we should do.”
The exhibit worked with the Wichita tribe to build a new grass house with traditional materials, including grass grown near Lexington. It replaced a replica made of commercial materials used for museum exhibits.
For Amber Silverhorn-Wolfe, Wichita and affiliated tribes president, the effort the museum and community members put into highlighting various tribe’s histories is important. Multiple members of the Wichita came to the reception to see the exhibit.
“When I look at it, that’s where we come from,” Silverhorn-Wolfe said. “My husband’s Comanche, my children are Comanche. So I think that’s a beautiful thought that goes into it.”
In another exhibit, attendees can expect to see life in the 1800s. Mayborn Museum exhibit services assistants Sam Rieta and Jake Risinger helped move and rebuild a frontier log cabin.
The nearly 200-year-old frontier log cabin was previously in a different part of the museum. Rieta and Risinger were part of a team that disassembled, vacuum-sealed the logs, and put them all back together for the exhibit. To reconstruct the log cabin, volunteers used over 500 pounds of clay.
“It’s pretty cool to be a part of Texas history like that,” Risinger said.
The log cabin had to have beams adjusted to widen the door. To preserve its authenticity, the inside of the cabin has a plexiglass wall. However, visitors can still walk inside the cabin.
The church replica was modeled after freedom colony churches. In the past, slave owners or masters controlled what was being preached or worshiped. These churches were places African-Americans could worship without having the message be controlled, said Jamal-Dominique Hopkins, Baylor University associate professor of Christian scriptures and advisor on the Culture Crossroads exhibit.
“That’s not just the heritage, history, but it’s personal family, personal history, personal heritage, and it’s part of the story of Central Texas, which I think gives agency and gives a sense of ownership, even to younger generations that aren’t connected,” Hopkins said.
New Hope’s legacy is preserved through music and documents, including a record from the New Hope gospel and a church ledger from 1875.
“When we go back, and you look at these things like this, you have to actually be grateful and sit back and wonder, could I have made it if it were not for God?” Fletcher said. “This is a wonderful and beautiful thing.”
