Lacey Wilson has been named the new site manager at the Charlotte Hawkins Brown Museum in Gibsonville, one of 29 state historic sites of the N.C. Department of Natural and Cultural Resources. Wilson previously was a historic interpreter at the Owens-Thomas House and Slave Quarters in Savannah, Ga., where she designed and conducted tours with a focus on the role and lives of the enslaved inhabitants of the house.
Wilson holds a master’s degree in museum studies and a bachelor’s in American history and public history and has created programming in women’s history and African American history. She has worked at the Levine Museum of the New South in Charlotte and in Special Collections of the Archives at UNC-Greensboro where she earned a master’s degree.
She is well-positioned to transition from interpreting the lives of oppressed enslaved families to that of a civil rights, women’s rights and education advocate in the person of Charlotte Hawkins Brown and her school, Palmer Memorial Institute.
“The position appealed to me because it was an opportunity to return to North Carolina and tell really interesting stories about black women moving education and politics forward in the state,” Wilson observes.
The Charlotte Hawkins Brown Museum campus is comprised of Brown’s residence, boy’s dormitory, girl’s dormitory, dining hall, and tea house on 40 acres. Here students received a classical education as well as practical skills by working on the campus farm or in the dining hall. They learned etiquette and how to move with confidence through the world under the tutelage of the forceful and determined Brown.
Wilson was born in Washington, D.C., and raised in Maryland. She was a source for information on how plantation houses interpret slavery for National Public Radio, the New York Times and others. She expects to expand educational opportunities and the reach of the Charlotte Hawkins Brown Museum. She began working in May and will come to the site in June.
Charlotte Hawkins Brown Museum currently is not open because of the coronavirus pandemic. It is located at 6136 Burlington Rd., Gibsonville, N.C. 27249, and part of the N.C. Division of State Historic Sites of the N.C. Department of Natural and Cultural Resources