Kevin Riordan: A local trove of African American history

At the Benson Multi-Cultural History Museum in Lawnside, history is like family. It embraces you.

"Welcome," tour guide Gloria Crews-Pitchford says. "These walls have stories to tell."

And not only the walls. "Everywhere your eye drops," the Rev. James A. Benson observes, "there's an educational experience."

The museum is a floor-to-ceiling showcase for an eclectic collection of artifacts, photographs, books, and other materials, focused primarily but not exclusively on the black experience.

"It's about all of us," Benson, 78, says. "It's for all of us."

A born-and-raised borough resident, longtime pastor, and former jazz bass player, Benson never intended to become a curator, too. The museum grew out of the children's education program at his nondenominational Valley Bible Church on Pine Street in 1985.

After Benson covered classroom walls with newspaper clippings and photographs related to black history, "people started calling it a museum," he recalls. When a local resident donated a vintage Singer sewing machine, "we started putting other things together."

The museum, still in the church, now includes hundreds of objects and thousands of books in its labyrinth of rooms, where photocopied newspaper clippings arranged by subject (including Lawnside history, churches, sports) are affixed to nearly every available surface.

Largely unknown by or ignored by outsiders, the life of an entire community - and an era - was faithfully reported on by publications such as the long-defunct Lawnside Chronicle, whose words are among those finding new readers at the Benson museum.

Faces of the famous and the not-so-famous, of family, friends, and people who otherwise would be forgotten, wait behind clear plastic sleeves to catch a visitor's eye. Headlines speak of matters ordinary and extraordinary, of scholarships awarded, businesses opened, and, more recently, a first-in-history presidency won.

A lectern used by the original Carl Miller Funeral Home - a community institution dating to the 1860s - stands in one room. "Treasures from Ghana," including intricately printed fabrics and other items donated by the late Nana-Kow Bondzie, a Ghanaian who had relatives in Lawnside, fill another.

A glass display case holds a collection of tools, next to an assortment of musical instruments. Nearby, yet more treasure: glossy photographs of Joe Louis, Ella Fitzgerald, Duke Ellington, and other celebrities taken by Henry I. Phillips, a photographer for the Baltimore Afro-American, in the 1940s and '50s.

These wonderful shots were discovered in a family basement by Martin Phillips, the photographer's son and the husband of Benson's daughter, Pamela.

You see, this museum is very much a family affair. "Many nights it would be 11 and 12 o'clock and I'd call and say, 'It's time to come home,' and he'd be up on a ladder," says Ellen Benson, 76, who's been married to James Benson for 56 years and who served as Lawnside's postmaster for more than three decades. "He did this all himself," she adds.

Although some local residents remain unaware of the museum, it attracts school groups and visitors from throughout the region. Among its best-known recent guests: antiabortion activist Aveda King, niece of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

"The collection is wonderful," King says by phone from Atlanta. "I'm impressed by the magnitude of it. I would encourage people to visit and support it."

The needs are many: A leaky roof damaged walls and floors, and space is at a premium. "I pray that my children and my wife will be able to keep on with it," Benson says.

The private, nonprofit museum does not charge admission, relying instead on donations. "We've been encouraging them to get grants," says Joe Barton, senior project manager for PSE&G, which operates a substation next to the church.

"I was flabbergasted the first time I went in there," Barton says, adding that the collection "needs to be preserved."

The museum board is looking for ways to do that, says Benson's daughter, Bethany Benson King.

"I just want to see that all of the hard work my father has put into this, and the hard work of my mother and others, has not been in vain," says Bethany King, of Cherry Hill.

"I would like to see more children come out and see what's here. I would like them to see who's here."