- Around 5,000 artifacts need to be digitized before the museum moves to a new building next year.
- Only 500–600 items were digitized during COVID, leaving more than 4,400 pieces still only available in person.
- Watch the video below to see how Volunteers from Leadership Thomas Class 42 are planning to finish the project.
BROADCAST TRANSCRIPT:
More than 5,000 pieces of Thomasville's Black history are sitting on shelves, and if something happens to them, that history could be gone forever.
I'm checking on how Leadership Thomas is racing to digitize every item before the museum moves to a new building.
The Jack Hadley Black History Museum holds stories you can't find anywhere else... thousands of photos, documents, and artifacts dating back generations.
And that's why it needs to be accessible to everyone… not just here in Thomasville, but to anyone who wants to learn about this history.
One way to do that is by digitizing the entire collection.
"There's a lot of stuff in there that I hadn't even seen that I didn't know existed until we went and visited the Black History Museum ourselves," said Dollar.
Chandler Dollar is one of about 21 neighbors taking part in Leadership Thomas: a year-long chamber program that picks one major project to improve the community.
This year, their class chose to digitize all 5,000 pieces as their capstone project.
"Mr. Hadley, he turns 90 years old next year, and so he's definitely old school, but he knows the importance of getting things scanned in and digitized and more accessible online. He was just blown away by the amount of help and the willingness that the Leadership Thomas group has," said Pittman.
Daniel Pittman is the museum's executive director, and he says this project is huge for protecting the collection and sharing it far beyond Thomasville.
Digitizing everything means more access, more preservation, and making sure Mr. Hadley's work lives on.
"Another reason why it's so timely for us to get a lot of this material digitized is that we're in the process of raising funds for a brand new museum building. It's a perfect time for us to try to get as much digitized prior to the move before everything starts getting into boxes and then gets mixed up, and we have to re-put everything back on the walls," said Pittman.
During COVID, the museum digitized around 500 to 600 items, but that still leaves roughly 4,400 artifacts that only exist in physical form.
The group plans to scan about 30 items per volunteer every two-hour session over the next few months… hoping to get everything online before the move.
"I think it's outstanding that they've chosen this. I can tell you that it has been said that there are classrooms in California that have reached out to the Jack Hadley Black History Museum and have been able to see some of their artifacts through the digitization that they're doing right now," said Suzannah Heald, Operations Director at Chamber of Commerce.
Leadership Thomas hopes to finish scanning the entire 5,000-piece collection by May of next year.
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