Currently Showing
The featured exhibit for the month of April will be the complete collection of Gloucester County Daffodil posters. Also on display are memorabilia that depict the history of the Daffodil Festival and the daffodil industry in the County. The exhibit will continue through April 30th.
The Museum will also continue to
feature
"THE IRENE MORGAN STORY".
In July 1944, Mrs. Morgan as
a young mother, boarded the Greyhound bus for
Baltimore at the Old Hayes Store Post Office in Gloucester. A short time
after boarding, and with additional passengers joining them, the driver
ordered Mrs. Morgan and another black passenger seated next to her to give
up their seats so that whites could be seated. Mrs. Morgan refused. After
warning that he would have her arrested, the driver called on the sheriff of
Saluda (Middlesex County). The sheriff boarded the bus with a warrant, but
Mrs. Morgan threw the warrant out the window and kicked him. She was
eventually arrested by a deputy and jailed. The case reached the Supreme
Court and a ruling was made in her favor in June 1946. Her lawyers, Thurgood
Marshall and William Hastie argued that it was a burden to interstate
commerce for each state to have its own rules for seating passengers on
interstate buses. Mrs. Morgan's stand for equal treatment paved the way for
Rosa Parks to take a similar stand on a Montgomery, Alabama city bus eleven
years later.
Recent permanent exhibits on
display include the original manuscript of The Honey-Pod Tree. The Gremer Doll House Exhibit (located on the 2nd floor) and the World Wars I and II Exhibit will also remain in place.
Museum Exhibit on the Second Floor
The second floor of the Gloucester Museum of History is now open to the general public. The theme of the eight station exhibit is "Echoes From The Past, Six Periods of Gloucester History," tracing Gloucester's rich history and varied contributions from 5 million years ago when the area was covered by a warm tropical sea, to the Civil War, when it gave both a General to the Confederate Army and was home to James D. Gardiner, who rose from oysterman to become the only recipient of a Congressional Medal of Honor from the area while serving in the Union Army. Other displays in the new exhibit area include Native Americans, Bacon's Rebellion, archaeological findings from "Paradise" (home of the Lees), archaeological findings from the Fairfield Plantation, and Gloucester's participation in the Revolutionary War, War of 1812 and Civil War.
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Last update by E. Wirt, May 09, 2008