Appleton To Unveil Museum Exhibit Devoted To Region’s Black History

The city of Appleton is celebrating Juneteenth with a “pop up” museum exhibit that tells the history of the area’s black community.

The exhibit, which features pictures and written history, is called “Stone of Hope,” and will spend the next two years going around to schools, town halls, and churches in the Fox Cities.

It’s named after a 1967 speech given by Martin Luther King Jr. when he stopped in Appleton. The phrase, which is also engraved on the national MLK memorial in Washington, D.C., refers to a metaphor the Civil Rights leader frequently used: “A mountain of despair, a stone of hope.”

The exhibit includes the story of Horace Artis, who was a former slave and a union army veteran of the civil war.

“He was very likely at Appomattox Courthouse with the 31st U.S. Colored Troops and witnessed Robert E. Lee’s surrender,” said Nick Hoffman, the chief curator of the History Museum at the Castle.

Artis later moved to Outagamie County – “probably on farm contract labor,” said Hoffman – before moving to Appleton.

“We’ve really been able to tell his story, as well as what was a growing African-American community in Appleton just before the early 1900s,” said Hoffman.

Despite a thriving social and economic black community in the 1800s, Hoffman says by 1930 there were no permanent black residents in Appleton.

The Stone of Hope pop up museum will be unveiled June 22 in the City Park and will spend the next month at City Hall.