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Exhibit will remain open through February

When Coffee County Historical Society Museum volunteer coordinator Bonnie Gamble and volunteer Sandra Mcmullin Bennett began working together last year, the pair realized there was a significant lack of documentation of Black History in the Coffee County and Manchester Community. They set about to change that.

Officially opened with an open house Saturday, Feb. 10, the exhibit works to tell the story of the men and women of color that called this community home documenting everything from Civil War era history and slavery to education and military service.

“One of the things we were really concerned about was the fact that nothing had really been captured with regard to Black history in Coffee County,” McMullin Bennett said. “It wasn’t easy to find, but then as we went along we got little hints to go look here and go look there.”

The majority of the photographs in the exhibit come from the collection of former Manchester Times editor Hugh Doak, whose collection of some 10,000 negatives resides at the Historical Society.

“All the photographs you see that are framed, we found those about two weeks ago,” she said.

Education is a significant focus of the exhibit, which documents significant Black educators from the community like John B. Malone and Beatrice Riche.

Malone served as principal of the community’s Rosenwald School between 1939 and 1943 after being principal and most likely the sole teacher of the segregated schoolhouse in Hurricane.

Riche taught primary school age children for 43 years in Coffee County School system, which operated the community’s Black schools at that time.

“She started in 1922 and I think she ended in 1965 thereabouts,” Gamble said.

Following her death in 1982, Alderman Alonzo Walker made an effort to have Emerson Street renamed to Riche Street but his efforts did not pass.

“She gave a lot,” Gamble said. “When she retired she did Red Cross Drives, Jaycees Library drives, she was in Democratic politics, she served as an election officer for the (John Jay) Hooker campaign, so she did a lot of things.”

The exhibit also features a display on Manchester’s late Mayor Lonnie Norman. Norman served multiple terms as mayor, first during the 1980s and again from 2012 until his death in 2020.

Bennett said a lot of the items from display came from Norman’s daughter Priscilla. They include copies of letters the family received from President Barack Obama and Vice President Al Gore following Norman’s death.

The exhibit also documents the eight lynchings of Black Americans that occurred in Coffee County. The most recent of which occurred in 1934.

“It was more recent than people think it is,” Bennett said. “They always think it was back in the 1800s.”

Bennett said she is happy to be able to help bring this exhibit to the public for Black History Month and proud of the amount of detailed history that has been uncovered on local families and education.

Gamble said researching for the exhibit gave her a real feel for the vibrancy and connectedness of Coffee County’s Black community,

“They had their own Black PTA, they had their own Coffee County Black Teachers Association, they had their better health group that was trying to make sure kids got immunized,” she said. “They were together, they were supportive of each other and of course the churches were very important at that time.”

The Coffee County Historical Society Black History exhibit will be open during the Historical Society’s regular hours Tuesday through Saturday.