On Juneteenth, one woman reflects on housing one of America’s largest Black history collections in North Memphis – localmemphis.com

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MEMPHIS, Tenn. — As communities across the country paused to celebrate Juneteenth, one woman in North Memphis is working year-round to ensure Black history is preserved, taught and honored.
Juneteenth marks June 19, 1865 — the day enslaved African Americans in Galveston, Texas, finally learned they were free, more than two years after the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation. The day was recognized as a federal holiday in 2021, and in Memphis, it continues to inspire both celebration and reflection.
That spirit lives on inside a modest building in the New Chicago neighborhood, where one of the nation’s largest collections of African American artifacts is quietly housed.
Dr. Carnita Atwater, the executive director and founder of the Kukutana African American History and Culture Museum, has spent decades preserving that history.
“We are one of the few museums in the Mid-South that has the largest collection of artifacts,” Atwater said.
About 150,000 artifacts, actually.
And that doesn’t compare to what Dr. Atwater has in storage — a collection she’s built to preserve stories, traditions, and truth, all in an effort to educate her community.
“We have to be very vigilant. We have to be determined and steadfast to teach our history by any means necessary. And when children come into the facility, we let them hold the artifacts, because it’s important that they hold the artifacts and get a connection to the ancestors,” Atwater said.,
In Swahili, kukutana means “to meet one another.”
Through each room, the artifacts felt like introductions between generations — each relic speaking across time.
“The filament go in the light bulb, bottle capper, straightening comb,” she said. “So we invented almost 5000 instruments.”
Atwater continued, “People used to refer to African American people as Sambo, pick-a-ninny, mammies, coons, Negro. This bank here is a Sambo bank, and you put the penny in his hand, and then you make him swallow the penny.”
Atwater and her team are now looking for a larger space to house the full collection. But she says her mission isn’t just about learning the past — it’s about understanding how it still relates to the present.
“Juneteenth is a holiday of reflection, and it’s a holiday that we don’t have to be embarrassed about our rich history,” she said. “And it’s important today, and I’m glad I did that 40 years ago, because they’re trying to erase African American history as we speak today.”
Her catalog is so rich and carefully curated that other museums often turn to her as a trusted resource.
“I worked closely with the National African American Museum in Washington, D.C., and then the Disciple Museum in Chicago. I donated artifacts to the New York Arts Museum,” Atwater said.
All of this, she says, was built to be a foundation for Memphis — and a light to shine on every era of Black history.
So that days like Juneteenth never go unnoticed — or uncelebrated.
“We at the fight of our life when it comes to African American people, but it’s going to take all our sisters and brothers, yellow, Black, brown, white, we must come together because we do not come together, united we going to stand under that we going to fall.”

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