SACRAMENTO, Calif. — The future of the Sojourner Truth African Heritage Museum, also called the SoJo Museum, is uncertain due to a lack of grant funding.
The museum, which is located inside the Florin Square Shopping Center in South Sacramento, has been serving the community for years and people are working to save it.
Shonna McDaniels founded the museum in 1996. The mission is "to open minds and change lives through the exploration and celebration of African American history, experiences and culture through art education and outreach."
The museum has several exhibits that share Black stories and experiences. One of the most popular exhibits is the Dunlap's Dining Room. Black entrepreneur George T. Dunlap owned and operated the restaurant out of his home in Sacramento's Oak Park neighborhood from 1930 to 1968. The home is still standing in Oak Park. In 1992, it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
The SoJo museum also has several programs designed to uplift the community, like the Youth Docent Program. The museum started the program in 2021. The purpose is to pour more into the youth by encouraging entrepreneurship and the basic skills needed to succeed in business. The museum has seven paid youth, ranging from middle school to second-year college. Those in the program spend their time at the museum researching, discussing, and engaging visitors in all of the exhibits.
Since the SoJo Museum is a nonprofit organization, it relies heavily on grants to stay open and operate all services.
William McDaniels is the board president at the museum. He said the museum did not get any grant funding last year from the government, companies, organizations or other groups. And now, the museum is at a "very high risk of closing."
"80% of our funding came from grants," McDaniels said. "And we're really trying to shift from that and not so much rely on grants because we have not been getting any. We've been shifting to fundraising. One of our fundraisers that we really rely on is the Banana Festival in August."
The museum already made tough decisions, like cutting some jobs and employee hours, in order to stay afloat and keep the doors open at this time. The museum is also making other changes, like transitioning the museum to a mobile experience. The museum plans on taking some of the exhibits on the road and visiting schools throughout the Greater Sacramento region.
"A lot of people do not know about the museum and that's the sad part," McDaniels said. "What's so important about saving the museum, for one, is the fact that it's in Northern California and Sacramento, the state capital. Just having an African American museum in Northern California is important. There's so much history that we bring to the youth, adults, and people who visit our museum. And in some of the traditional history books, it leaves out a lot of the African culture. So, this museum is important."
If the museum ends up closing, Sacramento will no longer have a museum strictly dedicated to Black history or, a museum owned and operated by a Black woman in the region. According to McDaniels, it costs about $20,000 a month to operate the museum, considering rent, payroll and other expenses.
The museum started a fundraiser by creating a GoFundMe page last month. The goal is to raise at least $100,000 in funds. So far, the museum has raised a little over $2,000 in donations.
"We're trying to get the word out to the people," McDaniels said. "You have this wonderful museum sitting in the heart of South Sacramento and, people just got to get out there, visit the museum, and really understand the importance of learning our history."
Watch more on ABC10 | Honoring Black history at the Sojourner Truth African Heritage Museum in Sacramento
