In 2022, Beverely Elliott found herself trying to answer a simple, yet pivotal, question that her grandson was determined to investigate. Assigned a Black History Month project for his first-grade class, he wanted to learn about someone local, someone integral to African American history and culture from Southern Arizona. Elliott, a retired educator, searched for resources throughout the state to guide him, coming up empty-handed. 

Her seven-year-old grandson, Jody, told her, “You should start a museum,” she recalled. 

Today, the now well-established African American Museum of Southern Arizona – cofounded by executive director Elliott and her husband – has collaborated with the U of A’s Department of History to give first-year college students the very opportunity her grandson sought to explore. 

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Over the 2024 and 2025 fall semesters, museum staff worked closely with the university’s History 102 course, “Tucson Matters: Making History with Community Museums,” taught by history department head Katherine Morrissey. Students in the course conducted hands-on research to uncover and document historically overlooked African American histories and cultural contributions in Southern Arizona.

This research returns to the museum — expanding collections, informing new exhibits and strengthening Southern Arizona’s historical record of African American influence.

The “History Lab” – reconstructing the past in practice

History 102 is designed as an experiential general education course that enables first-year students, many of whom are not history majors, to actively engage with public history through academic research and community outreach. The course uses high-impact practices and civic engagement to immerse students in Tucson’s historical landscape, rather than formal lectures.

“When people think of undergraduate research, they often imagine hands-on work in a science laboratory,” Morrissey said. “In history, we approach research differently: the archives become our history lab, and so does the community, through oral histories and direct engagement with lived experience.”

Early in the semester, students step outside the classroom entirely. They visit museums, archives and community spaces across Tucson, including on-campus libraries and local institutions like the Arizona Historical Society. The class works directly with archivists and librarians at these sites, learning how to handle original documents, interpreting primary sources and navigating manuscript census records, maps and city directories, to practice the art of reconstructing the past.

During fall 2025, College of Social and Behavioral Sciences funds enabled students to travel to the Dunbar Pavilion, a sustained community site and cultural center located in a formerly segregated school for African Americans in Tucson.

“Students had the opportunity to actually walk into that space, be given a tour by someone who had graduated from the segregated school and look through their archives,” Morrissey said. “They had the experience of physically engaging in that history.”

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Both semesters, students formed research groups focused on assigned topics in partnership with the museum aimed at developing under-researched areas of local African American history. The focus areas were informed by community members, who brought these missing pieces of African American history to Elliott’s attention.

The students conducted research on their assigned topics to fill these historical gaps and expand the museum’s knowledge base. Students performed archival research, analyzed photographs and artifacts, and carried out oral histories. They met regularly in the museum, located in the student union, developing their projects with input from museum leadership.

“At the end, students come back to present their research findings to us, the Arizona Historical Society and other town historians,” Elliott said. “Dr. Morrissey has done such a wonderful job with the students in presenting the information they learn back to us. Now, we can use their research and compile it into exhibits or collections to share with the public.”

Reshaping museum records through student research

One major student contribution helped inform a forthcoming exhibit centered on Cathay Williams, a formerly enslaved woman who disguised herself as a man to enlist in the U.S. Army and later served with the Buffalo Soldiers in the late 19th century. Student researchers examined military records and historical accounts to situate Williams’ life within Arizona history and broader narratives of African American military service. 

Music and social life emerged as another research focus through student work on the local Beau Brummel Club, a prominent African American social and entertainment venue. Students traced the club’s role as a cultural and musical hub, situating it within broader networks of African American entertainment, nightlife and community gathering spaces in Tucson. Their research connected local venues to broader trends in African American music and performance, helping the museum contextualize Tucson’s place within larger cultural movements.

Additionally, research on African American barbershops examined how these businesses functioned as economic anchors and informal community centers. Students reconstructed histories of individual barbers and shop locations from the 1880s to present day, using city directories and census data, contributing new insights into African American life in Southern Arizona.

“We even had one student who went out and got his hair cut at one of these barbershops to share in that real experience himself,” Morrissey said.

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Another group focused on Green Book sites, documenting homes, businesses and restaurants that provided safe means of mobility and lodging for African American travelers during segregation. Research mapped Tucson’s participation in national travel networks. Tucson families also opened their homes to traveling African American athletes during this time. An oral history revealed how one local boy, Chester Willis, gave up his bed for visiting team players and even played catch with professional baseball pitcher Satchel Paige.

“This story caught the attention of one of my students, whose interest was in sports,” Morrissey said. “He followed the life of Chester Willis through the archives and learned that he was on Tucson High’s state championship basketball team in the 1960s. The student was able to trace Arizona’s struggle for public accommodation laws through the linked stories of Paige and Willis. His sports passion drew him into a topic he had known nothing about, but he was able to follow that history, link the past to the present and bring it back to the museum.”

Students also researched Mansfield Park, which was renamed to honor Doris J. Thompson, a local civil rights leader and community advocate. By tracing Thompson’s contributions and the public process behind the renaming, students used their historical scholarship to help inform contemporary civic decisions that commemorate Arizona’s past.

“This teaching approach also creates lifelong learners,” said director Nikieia Johnson. “Hands-on experiences resonate with students, and it introduced them to the museum as a space they can actively use and return to. These students intern with us and others continue to stop by in their free time.”

African American History Research as a Foundation for Broader Community Scholarship

As part of the University of Arizona’s role as a public, land-grant institution, History 102 is designed to train students to be historically well-rounded, civic participants. The course will rotate in future semesters to partner with other community museums, including the Mexican American Heritage and History Museum next fall. 

After future museum partnerships, History 102 is expected to return to the African American Museum of Southern Arizona as a primary research partner.

As the museum’s audience grows and student research generates new material for future exhibits, so too does its need for physical space, according to Elliott. She hopes to expand the museum’s presence on campus in the following years to accommodate continued momentum.

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