Jacksonville African American History Museum: Jacksonville, IL

06/19/2026

We are so excited for our Juneteenth celebration coming up.

This year Juneteenth weekend is doing a kick off with this fun activity at Key events in Jacksonville Il. And YES it’s a free event come help us celebrate Juneteenth!

06/18/2026

What do your Juneteenth plans look like?

Jacksonville Juneteenth Events:

Tomorrow, the Jacksonville Area Museum is hosting a panel on Juneteenth and Social Media. Our Co-Founder/Chief Curator, Mrs. Ruth Linear, and our Board Member Dr. Brittney Yancy along with scholar friends of the museum will join Museum Manager Tori Ohl and President of the Morgan County Historicak Society Chad Boelhke. Come out on June 19th at 6pm. Details are below.

On Saturday, the Jacksonville, IL NAACP is hosting the Juneteenth Celebration at the Downtown Square. There will be some exciting activities for ALL Ages. Music. Food trucks. Raffle. Museum tours start at 2pm.

On Sunday, visit some of the local African American churches around Jacksonville…Mt. Emory Baptist Church, Bethel AME Church, and House of Worship COGIC.

The Museum will be open Saturday and Sunday, so check out our new website for details: www.jaahm.org.

06/17/2026

📣📣📣The JAAHM IS LIVE!📣📣📣

The Jacksonville African American History Museum is excited to launch our brand-new website!

Our stories matter. Our history matters. And now, there is an even easier way to explore the rich history, culture, and contributions of Jacksonville’s African American community.

Visit our website to:
➡️Learn about our exhibits and collections
📚 Explore local Black history in Jacksonville
🤝 Discover our community programs and events
📍 Plan your next visit or a group tour
💳Support our mission to preserve and share these important stories

This website is more than a link to a webpage, it’s a gateway to the people, places, and legacies that have shaped Jacksonville and continue to inspire future generations.

Shoutout to our Web Designer, DeVan Whitaker!
DeVan is a proud descendant of Jacksonville’s historic Whitaker family. He generously shared his talent and creativity to help bring our museum’s vision to life. Thank you DeVan for the way you continue the Whitaker legacy of excellence, service, and community!

Come explore, learn, and share this journey with us. Together, we honor the past, celebrate the present, and build a stronger Jacksonville future.

Click the 🔗 below!

The Jacksonville African American History Museum is an archived collection of local African American history, stories, and cultural landmarks connected to notable residents, events, and historic sites in and around Jacksonville, Illinois.

06/17/2026

Day 3: JAAHM In Action

The subtheme of this conference is Black Public History in Action—how do we remember and memorialize Black history?

We heard from Dr. Momon and Dr. Learotha Williams of Tennessee State University, who challenged us to tell Black stories of enslavement, freedom-seeking, resistance, institutional building, and memory with truth and care. They reminded us that public history is about reclaiming Black public space and helping institutions tell their full histories.

The day continued with tours of the campus archives and the Save Sewanee Black History Project, where we learned about Black communities, segregated schools and churches, and the ongoing work to restore African American cemeteries. Discovering more than 150 unmarked graves was a powerful reminder of why this work matters.

One of the most inspiring moments came when our Museum Director Alberta Morgan Robinson shared the story of the Jacksonville African American History Museum and its enduring partnership with Illinois College. She spoke passionately about the museum as a place of preservation, education, and community. She also offered a beautiful tribute to the late Art Wilson and Mrs. Ruth Linear, the museum’s chief curator and archivist, whose dedication and vision continue to shape its legacy. As museum director, Mrs. Alberta stood her ground and represented the museum with strength, grace, and conviction. Thank you Alberta for all you do!

Reclamation & Reconciliation: that’s the work.

06/16/2026

Mark your calendars for June 20th: We are just 4 days away from our Juneteenth Celebration and we are so excited. This year we have so many new vendors participating and this is amazing!

Juneteenth is a day to honor freedom, resilience, culture, and the ongoing pursuit of equality and justice. As we celebrate, let us continue to learn, listen, and work toward a future where freedom and opportunity are assessible to all!❤️💛🧡💚🖤

Fun for the whole family: food, music, entertainment, and overall good vibes!

06/16/2026

06/16/2026

Day 2: We made it to Sewanee, TN, and the campus of Sewanee: University of the South! Today, we ventured out to Chattanooga where we toured some historic sites like the Bessie Smith Cultural Center, street art down MLK Blvd, the Blue Goose Hollow (Bessie Smith and the historic Black district-that's now a riverwalk😕), and the Ed Johnson Memorial, the 1906 lynching of Ed Johnson has been beautifully memorialized at the site of his lynching, Walnut Street Bridge.

Back in Sewanee, this evening, we kicked off the conference by meeting other project teams and with a powerful keynote on public history, narrative change, and the university by Dr. Tiffany Momon, Asst. Director, Roberson Project, and Associate Professor of History, Sewanee: The University of the South. Her keynote was timely as we move across this 250th Anniversary. Where do freedom-seeking and enslavement fit into this 250th celebration?

Her keynote showed how to reclaim and restore a Black community destroyed by the bujled of this university, how many of its founders and funders were slave owners. How do you reclaim this history of his neighborhood—through community engagement! Through our Freedom-Seeking Jacksonville project, we will be reclaiming the history of Little Africa and will be engaging the Jacksonville community to reclaim, restore, and preserve this forgotten history.

06/15/2026

COMING UP THIS WEEK!

The process, excitement and challenges of making stories like the Underground Railroad come alive during the Social Media Age will be the focus of a panel discussion to be held on Juneteenth, Friday, June 19 at 6 p.m. hosted next door to the museum at Centenary United Methodist Church at 331 E. State Street in Jacksonville.

The event, which is free and open to the public, is being held in conjunction with the Journey to Freedom: Illinois’ Underground Railroad exhibit currently on display at the Jacksonville Area Museum at 301 E. State Street.

Panel discussion participants include:

Dr. Brian Mitchell, a well-known African American historian, former Director of Research and Interpretation at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, and currently the Center for Lincoln Studies Public Humanities Fellow at the University of Illinois Springfield.

Dr. Brittany Yancy, Illinois College professor of 20th-century U.S. History with a focus on social movements, urban radicalism, critical race theory, women's activism, and black women's political and intellectual history.

Kathryn Harris, former director at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and a first-person interpreter of historic African American women.
Ruth Linear, local historian and director of the Jacksonville African American History Museum.

The panel discussion will be moderated by Jacksonville Area Museum Manager Tori Ohl and museum board member and historian Chad Boehlke. A tour of the Underground Railroad exhibit at the Jacksonville Area Museum will be offered following the June 19 program.

Journey to Freedom: Illinois’ Underground Railroad highlights the courageous stories of freedom seekers and the multi-racial conductors who assisted them on the Underground Railroad in Illinois. The exhibit is open to the public at the Jacksonville Area Museum through August 1, 2026 during the museum’s normal hours of operation: 10 am to 4 pm Wednesdays and Saturdays and 1 to 4 pm on Sundays.

Journey to Freedom: Illinois’ Underground Railroad is proudly presented by The Abraham Lincoln National Heritage Area, also known as Looking for Lincoln.

06/15/2026

The JAAHM is on the road!!!!!

The museum is the official community partner of Illinois College CIC Legacies of American Slavery Initiative and partner on the Freedom-Seeking Jacksonville project.

The Freedom-Seeking Jacksonville crew is headed to Tennessee for the CIC Legacies of American Slavery: Reckoning with the Past Conference!

Our Museum Director Alberta Morgan Robinson, our Board Member/IC Professor Brittney Yancy, and IC Archivist Elizabeth Ray are representing the project team at the conference. We are proud to be one of 26 CIC grantees across the country exploring the intertwined histories of enslavement, freedom-seeking, and their enduring legacies.

Our first stop, we made a detour to Cairo, Illinois, where we toured the Cairo African American Heritage Trail with the amazing historian Don Patton. Thank you, Don, for sharing the rich history of Cairo and for your tireless commitment to preserving it.

Don took us to the many sites around the city, from National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom site of the Cairo Contraband camp, the infamous Ward AME Church, and Fort Defiance State Park, former Union military base during the Civil War, and the site of the Confluence— the southernmost and lowest point in Illinois. Standing at the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, we were reminded that rivers carried freedom stories. For many freedom seekers, these rivers became pathways to freedom. There is record of at least 200,000 freedom seekers who crossed these waters. Thank you Don!

As we continue south, we’re carrying those stories with us.

Onward to continue the work of commemorative justice by reckoning and reimagining these legacies!

Next stop: Sewanee, Tennessee