As the Owen Sound area gets set to celebrate its rich black history with the Emancipation Festival this weekend — a local black history museum is on the move.
The family who runs the Sheffield Park Black Cultural Museum plans to move the facility from Collingwood to Clarksburg in the Blue Mountains.
Curator Carolyn Wilson says the original museum was started by her uncle in the 80’s and when he died..they decided it might be time for a change.
Wilson says they were a little off the beaten track — away from Highway 26 — and now they’ll be located on Clark Street in Blue Mountains.
She says the facility will soon be home to the more than two thousand artifacts marking the black pioneers of this region who came through the Underground Railroad to escape slavery in the southern U-S.
The site was a former Nazarene church campground and should be ready to open its doors sometime next year.
Wilson says they’re in the process of clearing the land, cleaning the out buildings and moving the artifacts.
The Sheffield Park Black Cultural Museum is a family run, non profit operation with no government funding and relies on donations.
Wilson says they’ve been able to trace part of their family lineage all the way back to Sierra Leon, Africa.