MILWAUKEE — The Wisconsin Black Historical Society and Museum is seeking the community’s help after its building was vandalized on Thursday morning.
On Friday, Clayborn Benson rewatched the surveillance video of a woman using a rock to break the doors and a window of the building located on Center Street, near West Fond du Lac Avenue.
“I wondered why someone would do that,” said Benson, the executive director of the organization. “I had never seen this person before and didn’t have any idea who she was, and then she broke our window. For what reason?”
Benson said until the damage is fixed he is closing the museum for safety reasons.
“We’ve called the police, but our goal is to get our doors and windows repaired so we can continue operating,” he said.
Steed Miles, who works for The Glass Company, stopped by the Wisconsin Black Historical Society Friday morning to help find a way to fix the damage.
He said they would need thermal panes to repair the windows and door, and that it would take at least two weeks for those panes to arrive, once they are ordered.
“The Glass Company is an African American company, as well as a woman-owned company, so we are invested in our community and when I saw the reports on the news, I thought it would be in everyone’s best interest for us to come down and extend an olive branch to see what we could do to help the Wisconsin Black Historical Society out,” said Miles.
Benson said he expects the repairs to cost several thousand dollars. It’s an expense the organization wasn’t anticipating during an already challenging time.
After the repairs are made, Benson said he hopes the Wisconsin Black Historical Society can continue to be a space where the community can learn about the city’s Black history and serve as a space for people to meet.
“The most important mission and goal is to preserve the history of this city and the state and so in that process we gather history,” he said. “We interpret that history and have a staff that does that and we’re important. Every community should have their own institution in the responsibility to preserve their history. That is what we do.”
The Wisconsin Black Historical Society has also created a GoFundMe to help fund the repairs.