Bucks African American Museum looking for a place to settle down

Harvey Spencer Sr. wasn't thinking about strategic plans, boards of directors, or long-term fund-raising when he suggested to a few friends that they start a museum.

Spencer, 88, a retired landscaper from Langhorne, was worried only about who would pick up where Walter Jacobs Jr. had left off.

Jacobs, a historian and collector who devoted decades to chronicling Bucks County's African American heritage, had just died. What, Spencer fretted, would become of his mission?

"I want to let people and their children know what blacks have done," Spencer said. "We are a part of everything. We just don't get the recognition."

Spencer gathered 15 people in a church basement in Langhorne in the hope of persuading them to start a new museum in the neighborhood. He succeeded.

Now three years old, the African American Museum of Bucks County encourages the collection of artifacts, the sharing of information, and the preservation of black history in one of the three original counties founded by William Penn in 1682.

As for its calling as keeper of a culture, the museum is much like other institutions in the region, such as the African American Museum in Philadelphia, the African American Heritage Museum of Southern New Jersey in Newtonville and Atlantic City, and the more modest Camp William Penn Museum in Cheltenham.

The difference is that the Bucks County museum has no home. It is a traveling museum, hitting the road to libraries, schools, and churches in the area.

This month, the museum's exhibits on black inventors have been mounted at libraries in Doylestown and Warminster. On Thursday, there will be a discussion on the role of blacks in the Revolutionary War at a Newtown restaurant that dates to 1772. On Feb. 14, museum board member Linda Salley spoke about the civil rights movement before the congregation at the Second Baptist Church of Doylestown, using a quilt she had made incorporating photographic images and the words of "Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing," known as the "Black National Anthem."

"We're working toward a building," Salley said. "But we're not going to let that stop us from teaching history to everyone."

Since the museum's founding, organizers have named 11 directors - Spencer among them - attained nonprofit status, developed bylaws, and raised $10,000 through small donations, events, and contributions from its 75 members. A capital campaign is forthcoming.

The collection includes history books and some Civil War artifacts, but acquisitions are expected to increase once a building is obtained. Potential benefactors have offered to donate art, African statues, even a piece by the famed Bucks County sculptor Selma Burke. However, organizers have declined any additional works for lack of a place to house them, said Joyce Hadley of Trevose, board president.

The museum is starting out at a time when "a lot" of small, regional, and specialized museums focusing on African American history and culture are opening, said Patricia E. Williams, a consultant and former vice president of the American Alliance of Museums.

"I think the opening of the new Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture [in Washington] has inspired a lot of people who have wanted to do local museums for a long time," she said.

Bucks County's African American history has roots in the region's earliest settlements. Slaves worked for farmers, and a community of free blacks settled in the county, said Cory Amsler, vice president for collections and interpretation at the Mercer Museum in Doylestown.

Underground Railroad sites in such places as Buckingham, Quakertown, and New Hope helped enslaved blacks escape. The abolitionist Frederick Douglass spoke at a theater in Newtown. And a boarding school for orphaned children of black troops who fought in the Civil War operated in Croydon from 1868 to the 1880s.

In 2005, a statue of Harriet Tubman was erected in Bristol by the African American Historical and Cultural Society of Bucks County as a tribute to the rich cultural heritage of black people in the county.

Walter Jacobs Jr. not only spent much of his life working to preserve that history; he was part of it. He was the first Democrat and person of color elected to the Langhorne Borough Council. He served as a trustee of Bethlehem A.M.E. Church in Langhorne, the first black church in the county and one of the first congregations to affiliate with the denomination founded by Richard Allen.

Jacobs, who died in 2009, maintained the historic records of the congregation, founded in 1809.

Spencer, who lived nearby, had watched as Jacobs assembled his collection of photographs, letters, veterans' certificates, and medals. Jacobs interviewed longtime residents. He scoured census records and newspaper articles, creating narratives of family histories written in longhand.

Museum organizers would like to acquire Jacobs' records and artifacts, going back to the early 1800s. His son, however, has a different idea.

Walter Jacobs III said he prefers that his father's collections - the inspiration for the museum - be part of a cultural institution focusing on more than black history.

"We are pleased with [the museum idea] in principle," said the son, also of Langhorne. "We want the work conserved and preserved under a broader ethnic umbrella to shine a bright light on all people who have felt downcast."

Hadley responded that no one will be left out.

"We will be a museum for all the people of Bucks County," Hadley said. "We may center on African American history, but we're telling the story of all Americans."

kholmes@phillynews.com610-313-8211