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“We Do Everything”: Barbara Earl Thomas and the Northwest African American Museum by Eileen Nicol Photo by Ingrid Pape-Sheldon

As Barbara Earl Thomas phrases it, she likes “to make, just make.” So it comes as no surprise to find her studio art represented by Frances Seder Gallery, or her public art installed around town, most recently at The Evergreen State College. But after a long career as an artist and an arts administrator, it is her talent for making connections that serves her so well as executive director of the Northwest African American Museum, which opened its doors in March 2008.

Thomas came on board the project in 2005, working with Carver Gayton, the original director. “They said, well, we’ve got to get the museum off the ground, and we’re at the end of our rope in terms of what we know about museums,” she recalls. “Well, I said, I may not know very much more, but I know a lot of people.”

Housed in half of the historic Colman School building near the I-90 lid, NAAM welcomes visitors with views of Mt. Rainier from an open, park-like setting. Inside, a beautiful woman in a sun-orange dress who is busy folding napkins lays a radiant smile on me as I cross through the café. My stomach rumbles at the delicious smells wafting from the kitchen, where food is being prepared for a private event being held that night. I vow to return when the café is open to the public. My first impression of Thomas herself is of someone who is relaxed, generous and comfortable in her own skin. This museum showcases the “making” skills of many people, and Thomas is eager to credit them. During our interview, she lauds at least ten different people by name, from Brian Carter, a former intern and now the official resident museologist, to Norm Rice and Mimi Gardner Gates, who serve on the Board. We start with the current exhibit entitled “Stories That Cover Us,” a stunning and rich array of quilts made by African Americans in the Pacific Northwest. Then Thomas walks me through the permanent exhibits, which are arranged on both sides of a long hallway aptly named the Journey Gallery. “We start with the present and work to the past,” she says. “It’s not a finite story; you’re not going to just find out about things that have already happened, but things that are still happening. So we talk about the kinds of things that African Americans do and have done.” We pause in front of a photo of Harold Mills, the first African American hydroplane racer. “It’s so funny,” says Thomas. “I’ve lived here my whole life, and I never knew there was one black person in one of those hydroplanes out there. I cracked up! I said, ‘We do everything!’”

Through artifacts, photos, video and vibrant displays, the Journey Gallery of NAAM highlights people and places significant to African Americans in the region spanning Washington, Oregon, Idaho and British Columbia. From humble Nathaniel Sargent, who came to Kitsap County in the late 1800s to farm, to Grammy award-winner Quincy Jones, all kinds of stories resound in this former school corridor. Because part of NAAM’s mission is to serve children, there are doors to open, pages to turn and items to lift out of trunks. School groups visit often, guided by experienced volunteer educators, and the museum provides study packets to augment their experience.

“This is the original window and door from the Mount Zion Baptist Church from the 1920s,” says Thomas. “It was in someone’s basement.” They worked with many local heritage societies to gather items for display, but they had to be selective as they don’t currently have the capacity to be a collecting museum. Churches and music venues are well represented as gathering places for African Americans who, even in the Pacific Northwest, historically felt constrained by racism. “If you look at the record you’ll see that there was actual redlining. Black people couldn’t really live north of the Ship Canal,” says Thomas. “It wasn’t as in your face as say a southern town, but there really was that kind of thing here.”

A model plane on loan from the History of Flight juts out from the display featuring Boeing and other local employers who hired African Americans after WWII. Thomas’s own grandfather was among the wartime influx to the Northwest, arriving in 1941 from Shreveport, La. Later, he sent for his daughters. It was a big change for many of these newcomers from the South.

“They heard that you could have a job here, you could own property, own a home,” Thomas explains. “I had relatives that came here who never saw money — actual money — before, because they lived on sharecropping farms and they got paid in scrip.” Her folks made things because it was cheaper and because they could. “With my mother we were always embroidering,” Thomas says. “My dad would buy me (airplane) models and I would put them together. But I would always want to paint them my way. I like to make, just make.”

Even so, she didn’t think of herself as an artist. When she first enrolled at the University of Washington, she told everyone she wanted to be a physical therapist. “I didn’t know what it was,” she quips, “but people were very impressed.” Then one day she “wandered” into art school and discovered “there was actually subject matter” to tackle. She began as a fabric artist but switched to painting in her junior year. She’s been making ever since, while holding various administrative positions with organizations like Bumbershoot and the Seattle Arts Commission.

“It’s good,” she says. “There are friends of mine who have been lucky enough to support themselves completely with their artwork. But that’s not without struggle. I think everyone struggles with balance. You need health insurance. It’s a trade-off.” She sees the museum as a place to serve the community as well as collaborate creatively. “I’ve always been a studio artist, but in these last ten, twelve years or so I’ve been doing work that is larger, where I have to work with blacksmiths, engineers, to get the work done. So this was a little bit like that. To see from the inception the deals you have to cut.” Thomas now laughs about the blur of details entailed in getting the physical space right in the nearly century-old building, from electrical outlets to water fountains.

“For a long period I thought being director of the Bumbershoot festival was my hardest job; then I had to change my mind when I came here,” says Thomas. Bumbershoot was “already made — everybody knew what it was.” But starting out with the museum, the new staff had to contend with the dreams of an entire community, some of whom had been dreaming about an African American museum for 20 years. And as an artist, she knew that being up against a dream can be difficult. “When you’re in the dream stage, it’s everything. It’s the Taj Mahal, its the gleaming hills of Zanzibar — it’s everything! As soon as you put that first line on the piece of paper, it’s no longer just a dream — you’re starting to make the border. You’re starting to create both limitations and possibilities — you’re saying all those other ideas of what it could be are gone. And I think that was probably a really hard thing for many people.” That’s putting it mildly, as the son of one of the early museum activists was arrested for his protests at the opening of NAAM.

Now, a year and a half later, former executive director Carver Gayton and Thomas have switched positions, and the museum staff is learning to be in “everyday maintenance mode.” Thomas is comfortable with their financial status. “Fine shape to me would be having a year’s worth of reserve and being able to start on our endowment. That would be pretty fine shape. But we’re moving toward that.” She says she will probably always be a fundraiser for the museum, even when she is no longer the director. “I feel a little like a shark right now,” she jokes. “You know, stop moving and you die!” In the meantime she can walk to work, and she continues to make her own art and publish nonfiction as well. To relax, she reads and spends time in her yard to “see if the things you put in the ground grow.” On her nightstand at interview time was Muriel Barbery’s The Elegance of the Hedgehog, and among her recent reads she especially recommends Abraham Verghese’s historical novel Cutting for Stone. The author, a “wonderful writer and a great doctor,” reminds her that “it’s possible to do two things well.”

Images of animals, fish and birds abound in Thomas’s art and writing. In the public art she created for Sound Transit’s electrical switching station, crows and ravens are depicted creating the world with lightning. Asked about this affinity for animals she replies, “What can I say about animals, I am one. Animals go about their business with or without us.” Unfortunately she has “more allergies than any one person should have,” and is also not home enough to keep a pet. But she strives to surround herself with homo sapiens she loves, both at work and at play. “You know, I think of my whole life as sort of my entertainment,” she laughs.

And yet this entertaining life involves a deep ethic of service which she says she shares with everyone at the museum, staff and volunteers alike. “Because no one’s going to go on a world cruise on the money you make here. So you need to be here for another reason. I think everybody here is. For wanting to do their mitzvah for their community.” What does she mean by mitzvah? “It means a gift,” she explains. “It’s not exactly charity — it’s part of the human cycle. It’s something that you’re doing that’s not directly about your getting recompense other than in the doing. I think that’s what this whole place is built on.”

The culture is changed for the better when people can find themselves in the narrative of history, and NAAM provides a place for both casual visitors and dedicated volunteers to do that. It’s a place, says Thomas, that changes the community by “living our philosophy and not just talking about it.” In a large sense, NAAM celebrates making: the making of music, of community, of airplanes, of food, and it demonstrates to all races what we have in common as well as what is unique to African American culture. For Barbara Earl Thomas, it’s another dream realized, another thing made — with a lot of help, as she is quick to point out. “It’s something that’s actually here,” she says with an evident sense of satisfaction, “and people are in love with it.”

Eileen Nichol is a frequent contributor to Seattle Woman.

©2009 Caliope Publishing Company