Civil Rights Museum

GA Civil Rights Museum seeks new identity

SAVANNAH, Ga. (AP) - For much of its 12 years of existence, the Ralph Mark Gilbert Civil Rights Museum has struggled to identify itself in Savannah.

Dr. Billy Jamerson, museum board vice chairman, and his fellow board members want that to change.

Through a collaboration with Savannah State University, Jamerson is marketing the museum as a community asset.

“It has not been perceived as a community resource,” Jamerson said. “It does not belong to any one person, and we need to brand it for that it is.”

He said the board has not assigned a dollar sum to the campaign, but said the museum needs about $250,000.

He also wants to add to the museum's approximately 470 members, including 120 founding supporters who early on bought into the museum.

Jamerson's father, Dr. J.W. Jamerson Jr., was a Savannah dentist who for 25 years was vice president of the Savannah Branch, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

The younger Jamerson worked with W.W. Law for a decade on the Beach Institute African American Cultural Center and later the King-Tisdell Cottage project.

Law was NAACP president for 25 years, including the most heated years of the civil rights struggle.

“Law was the captain of the ship,” Jamerson said. “It was actually a vacuum created when W.W. passed away.”

Law died July 29, 2002, leaving the civil rights museum as part of his legacy.

Jamerson went to Savannah State University for help with the museum.

Antoinette Scaringi, a visiting professor in the school of business, and a handful of her students have completed a professional marketing packet that has been distributed to more than 400 businesses, community leaders, churches, colleges and others.

It describes the museum as “Georgia's best new history museum (that) chronicles the civil rights struggle of Georgia's oldest African American community from slavery to the present.”

The brochure features Gilbert as the father of Savannah's modern-day civil rights movement and W.W. Law for his vision that became the museum.

Jamerson said Scaringi's enthusiasm was key to the campaign, calling the Savannah State team “the main players in this.”

When he approached SSU, he was asking for support to devise a strategic marketing plan to try to make the museum operationally sound and increase membership.

He was, in effect, looking for a blueprint of things that could be done down the road.

Scaringi wanted more.

“She said, 'We can do this now,' “ Jamerson said.

“I volunteered not knowing precisely what the project was about,” Scaringi said.

She recalled visiting the site at 460 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. about six years ago.

Scaringi describes the university's effort as the type of “business-community integration” that's being championed by SSU President Earl Yarbrough and Mostafa Sarhan, dean of the college of business administration

She called the effort a challenge and a great opportunity for her students.

She enlisted junior and senior business students for six weeks this summer, an effort she conceded was a little difficult given summer vacation.

Her mantra: “If you can't commit, you must quit.”

Six students saw the project through, gaining valuable experience and a leg up on fellow students.

“This project is an eye-opener to the real world,” Scaringi said. “Students learn that a college degree does not guarantee a job.

“Employers are looking at students with experience.”

Students were able to take the textbook theory and plot them in a real-world situation, she said, and they will be able to put on their resumes the fact they had the experience.

“It's not just theory,” she said. “It's about performance.”