Roanoke's Harrison Museum of African American Culture will formally reopen this weekend after a year of moving its collections to its new home in Melrose Plaza.
The museum first launched in 1985 at the historic Harrison School, which operated as a segregated school for Black students until after integration in 1971. The museum moved to Center in the Square from 2012 to 2025, and then to its current location in Melrose Plaza.
"The overall vibe is that this is the people's museum," says E.B. Smith, the Harrison Museum's executive director. "It's a community resource. I don't want people to feel like this is exclusive in some way. I think it's really important people feel welcome, and know that our doors are open."
The museum showcases Roanoke's Black history in its richness and complexity.
"Our mission is to illuminate the legacies of the African diaspora to inspire a brighter future," Smith says. "Really what that means is understanding what's happened here in Roanoke and beyond. All of the incredible stories and cultural resources that we have here, and then leveraging those to tell the story of where we want to be in the future."
Smith says the Harrison Museum's mission aligns with the African Sankofa bird, which is a focal point of Melrose Plaza.
"I see this museum as sort of the embodiment of Sankofa, which is something that's been guiding the development of Melrose Plaza all along," Smith says. "Sankofa is a concept that says you have to look back to carry forward the knowledge of the past in order to build your future. And so that's what we're doing here."
The museum's first exhibit in its new space is "Healing Hands: The Legacy of Black Medicine," about Roanoke's Black doctors and medical community. Genealogist and public historian Brittney Flowers says the exhibit spotlights an important part of Black life — and it's been difficult to condense everything down.
"It's like alright, keep it to 100 words or less, it's like aaagh, there's so much to tell. So I wanted to make it a point tell the stories of the wives, which we're doing now. A lot of their wives were also very accomplished, and we never talk about that. They were teachers, they had degrees of their own, or sometimes they were a dressmaker. But we should talk about that, b/c of all of that was behind the scenes, pushing this forward."
The museum formally reopens Sunday with a ribbon cutting and open house.
