Based on the Master Plan, the primary exhibition center for the museum will be located at the Donaldsonville site. This site is located on the west bank of the Mississippi River in the downtown historic district of Donaldsonville, Louisiana, at Williams and Lessard Streets adjacent to the historic True Friends Benevolent Society hall. The design will feature two donated buildings -- The Central Agricultural School building and Africa Plantation House.
The River Road African American Museum exhibits include Free People of Color; African Influences on Louisiana Cuisine; Rural Roots of Jazz; Black Doctors of the River Road; Louisiana Black Inventors; Folk Artists; Louisiana Underground Railroad; Reconstruction Period; History of Education in Plantation Country and Slave Inventories
Visit the River Road African American Museum and learn about the past in order to understand the future.
Learn about the story of the River Road African American Museum from its beginning to our future plans. Here also you find is our vision/mission statements and a letter from the founder/director of the museum, Kathe Hambrick.
THE VISION FOR THE FUTURE

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The plan will be executed in three phases.

Central Agricultural School Building donated byt the St. James Parish School Board.Phase I – The restoration/renovation of the Central Agricultural Schoolhouse. This is the first phase of the museum's expansion site at Lessard and William Streets. An exhibit on the history of black education in "plantation country" will open in 2005.

This Rosenwald funded school was built in 1931 on the east bank of the Mississippi River in the community referred to as Convent, Central, and Romeville. The parents from the community raised matching funds for the construction. There were nearly 400 Rosenwald funded schools in Louisiana. This is the only one left from a river road community.

The St. James Parish School board donated the historic Central Agricultural School building to the museum. The building was formerly used as the cornerstone for education of African American children in St. James Parish from the 1930's to the l960's. It was often referred to as the Romeville School.

The first exhibit in the schoolhouse will be about education of African American children in the rural South.

Tezcuco PlantationPhase II - Like other benevolent societies, True Friends Hall, (1920-1960) was started as a mutual aid society at the end of enslavement, when African-Americans had no health insurance, health care, or burial insurance. - True Friends Hall is the oldest extant Benevolent Society building in the state.

The second phase of the RRAAM complex will be the restoration of Benevolent Society Hall.

The Plan
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The hall was the center of business operations and a meeting place for members and quickly turned into Donaldsonville's African American cultural "Mecca," where concerts, plays, carnival balls, dances and other social events were held. The building was donated by Lymann White a River Road African American Museum board member.

This facility will be used by the community for meetings and social events just as it was for nearly 100 years before closing in the 1980’s.

Tezcuco PlantationPhase III - The Africa Plantation House, located in Modeste, Louisiana was the home of Dr. John Lowery, the first African American doctor in Donaldsonville. Later it became the home of Leonard Julien, who invented the sugar cane planting machine in 1964.

The third phase includes the nine mile relocation of the Africa Plantation from Modest to the new museum site, adjacent to the Central Agricultural School and across the street from True Friends Hall.

The house will be restored and used as a “house museum” exhibiting artifacts and documents from benevolent societies, Leonard Julien, and Dr. John H. Lowery.




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