Russellville has many stories to tell: tales of enslavement and emancipation, wealth and privilege, grit and determination. Russellville, in southwestern Kentucky, is the seat of Logan County and home to about 7,000 residents. It also is home to the SEEK Museum, six historic buildings in two neighborhoods that collectively tell a history that belongs to the town, the state and the nation. The SEEK Museum offers an unusual and inspiring story of community.
A Revolutionary War leader, a groundbreaking journalist, slaves and slaveholders—all have histories in Russellville. SEEK Museum’s mission is twofold: to preserve archived materials of the African-American history of Logan County and to teach about the contributions of African Americans. According to the museum’s director, Michael Morrow, both goals are necessary, and one cannot be achieved without the other.
Once known as the West Kentucky African American Heritage Center, the museum was renamed and rebranded in 2019. SEEK is an acronym that stands for Struggles for Emancipation and Equality in Kentucky. Gran Clark, chairman of Historic Russellville Inc., explained that SEEK is an action verb that describes the museum’s primary undertaking. According to Clark, the museum provides “an incredible opportunity and responsibility to teach and evaluate the past and its effect on today.” Clark has been part of the development of the SEEK Museum from its inception and is excited about how the institution encourages dialogue about Kentucky’s racial history. “When we started this, a conversation about race was a very rare circumstance,” but now, he said, “race is on the table.”
One part of the museum tells the story of Revolutionary War leader Maj. Richard Bibb, who arrived in Russellville in 1817 and had a beautiful home built on Eighth Street. Bibb was a wealthy man with many possessions: land, farm animals and equipment, and close to 100 enslaved men, women and children.
In the Bibb House, once an urban plantation, visitors can view Bibb’s bookkeeping to see the names of the slaves he owned as well as advertisements selling children. In 1829, Bibb freed 31 of his slaves by providing their passage to Liberia. A decade later, upon his death, he emancipated the remaining 65.
While the Bibb House offers insight into what life as a slave might have been like, the other part of the museum two miles away provides a further complex and inspiring history. SEEK’s four buildings in “The Bottom,” which is on the National Register of Historic Places, impart stories that cover more than a century of amazing successes and heartbreaking injustices.
A display in one of the buildings, the Cooksey House, recounts many incidents of mob violence in Logan County, including a lynching of four men that took place in Russellville in 1908. The exhibit tells the disturbing story with photographs, newspaper articles and an emotionally moving piece of three-dimensional art by Willie Rascoe.
When visitors enter the Cooksey House, they first see four rope nooses hanging from bare branches. This powerful artwork depicts a history that many might prefer to forget, but as Morrow explained, “These are things we ought to talk about as a nation.”
The Bibb House and the historic houses at The Bottom offer many lessons, but visitors will learn even more if they meet Morrow, who regales tourists with details from the region’s past. A genealogist from an early age, Morrow became mesmerized by family lines as a child at a relative’s funeral. He watched the epic mini-series Roots and became enthralled with studying ancestry. Morrow has spent more than 30 years researching the history that SEEK teaches. He was the first African American on the Historic Russellville board of directors and has volunteered countless hours to the museum and the community. Clark described Morrow as “smart, sincere, a man with a great brain, but he also has a great heart … He wants this history to be told and understood.”
The director of SEEK is passionate about getting Russellville’s stories right. “If you are going to educate, you’ve got to tell them the truth,” Morrow said. SEEK provides visitors the opportunity to learn history that has not always been taught in school. Morrow explained, “The purpose of SEEK Museum is to educate, not indoctrinate.” The artifacts, photographs, artwork and archived materials in the museum tell “the whole story,” not just one side. “These facts don’t lie.”
The museum is not solely about the past, however. It also focuses on the present and how to make the town stronger. Morrow, along with Dr. Nancy Dawson, implemented a program of service learning, recruiting youth to help renovate the SEEK buildings while teaching them history. Morrow has even had newly released prisoners work on restorations. The idea is to foster a sense of purpose and belonging.
Perhaps nothing demonstrates the SEEK Museum’s commitment to telling stories of the past and inspiring the community than the life-size bronze statue of pioneering journalist Alice Allison Dunnigan that stands in The Bottom, a stone’s throw away from the SEEK buildings. In 1947, Dunnigan, a Russellville native, became the first Black woman credentialed to cover the White House. A 2019 inductee into the Kentucky Writers Hall of Fame (see the February 2019 edition of Kentucky Monthly, page 16) Dunnigan was awarded multiple honors and worked in presidential administrations. The museum garnered donations to memorialize the trailblazing reporter and civil rights activist, then chose Amanda Matthews from Prometheus Art in Lexington to create the sculpture.
Matthews recalled her first experience in the venture: “We had an initial meeting in Russellville that I thought was for a few stakeholders in the project, but people just continued to flood in. At one point, I thought the whole town was coming.” She was moved. “I was struck by the nature of this very diverse group of people who had a shared goal of honoring Ms. Dunnigan.”
SEEK visitors can learn about the statue’s “Whistle Stop Tour,” celebrating how Dunnigan had covered President Harry Truman’s campaign in 1948. The sculpture was first unveiled at the Newseum in Washington, D.C., then traveled to the University of Kentucky, the Truman Presidential Library and Museum, and Kentucky State University, Dunnigan’s alma mater. It now stands on 6th Street in Russellville. “The site is significant because it is located in The Bottom and because it can be accessed by all people, but especially those whose families have occupied that area for more than 150 years,” Matthews said. “It is a sorely needed icon celebrating diversity, hope, perseverance and inclusion.”
Clark agreed. “The statue needed to be there to inspire the people of the community,” he said.
Morrow celebrates the visibility of the statue. Dunnigan is outside, “overlooking the community. She sees the good and the bad; she sees if we are doing our job.”
The unveiling of the bronze sculpture in Russellville coincided with an event that is the subject of a documentary slated for release late this year or in early 2021. The statue was presented on Aug. 2, 2019. The next day, the SEEK Museum hosted an unusual reunion that literally was years in the making. Descendants of Bibb and descendants of his slaves were invited to a gathering at the newly restored Bibb House for a dialogue. Attendees came from many parts of the United States. Traci D. Ellis, an attorney and speaker from Illinois, moderated the discussion about race relations and history. Ellis herself is a descendant of Bibb slaves.
“It was an amazing piece of luck that they found [Ellis]. She brought so much to the day,” said Jonathan Knight, a filmmaker who is producing the documentary about the reunion. Knight has a special connection to the story: He is a descendant of Richard Bibb. Meeting descendants of the Bibb slaves offered Knight new realizations about his ancestry. “Our families were not only linked by slavery, but by blood,” he said. “It made me think of all the generations of my White family who had forgotten this community in Logan County that they owed so much to.”
Knight and Le Datta Grimes, a journalist and Ph.D. candidate at UK, are in the final stages of producing INVENTED Before You Were Born.
Grimes said the film project explores the “human struggle between good and evil” and is “very much an American story, as is slavery, as is freedom.” She believes that SEEK is necessary: “They could have done so many things with that space. They chose to go above and beyond the typical, to right the wrongs.” SEEK, Grimes said, is “so worth the visit.”
“It’s very rare that this type of history is available and brings new light on the lives of Black people over the last two centuries,” Knight said. “And it would be lost without Michael Morrow’s hard work.”
SEEK Museum is open for tours by appointment only. It especially encourages school tours.