What’s New
The Only One
January 14 – December 15, 2012
Have you ever felt different from everyone else? Like you were the “only one”?
Many Iowans can tell you first hand what it is like to be the only minority on a sports team, the only female in a factory, the youngest employee in an office, and more. The African American Museum of Iowa and Johnson County Historical Society present this two-part exhibit, which explores the experience of being the only one through pictures, oral histories, and artifacts.
Have we sparked your interest? In the exhibit, you’ll learn about these stories and more:
- Alexander Clark integrated Iowa schools in 1868 when his daughter Susan enrolled in Muscatine Grammar School #2.
- Today, the victor of the University of Iowa and University of Minnesota football game wins the “Floyd of Rosedale” trophy because of a 1935 attempt to diffuse racial tensions between the two teams.
- After experiencing game changing discrimination from referees in her 1953 State Basketball Tournament, Delores Brown was the first African American in the Iowa High School Girls Basketball of Fame.
- The nation’s first African American Eagle Scout was from Waterloo. Edgar V. Cunnungham achieved Boy Scouting’s highest rank in 1925.
- Despite being denied access to the Fort Madison Country Club, local resident Louis Dade won the Iowa Amateur Golf title in 1939.
- Lulu Johnson, a 1941 University of Iowa graduate, was the first African American woman in the United States to receive a PhD in American History.
