A little more than a week into Black History Month, the Cayce Historical Museum is unveiling a new permanent exhibit spotlighting the history of its African-American community.

In a bid to bolster the representation of Black stories in the city-owned museum, the institution is transforming the social media campaign it has run in recent years during February spotlighting the lives of interesting and impactful Black residents into the “African American Legends of Cayce.” The new display tells the stories of new and previously spotlighted “Legends” from the 20th century with help from artifacts and video interviews.

“We had an important segment of our population that were not represented,” Museum Curator Andy Thomas said, acknowledging criticism that the museum has received, especially in recent years, that it didn’t include the city’s Black history nearly as much as it should.

He explained that this a crucial problem for the museum as it strives to tell the story of Cayce, noting his philosophy that history is “not just one thing, it’s composed of a whole bunch of things, because you’re never going to get the truth by just looking at one side of something.”

The installation of the new exhibit, which takes up a corner in one of the museum’s two main floor rooms, represents a milestone in the city’s efforts to rectify this representation issue.

At Thomas’ urging, the museum started an African American Committee to advise its efforts as it looked to add more Black history. In addition to the social media campaign and the newly minted “Legends” exhibit, the push will continue to include representation of Black history wherever appropriate in other exhibits, such as the inclusion of the stories of African-American drivers when the museum recently put together an exhibit on the Historic Columbia Speedway.

And the representation absolutely does matter, according to Yvonne Smith, a member of the museum’s African American Committee who was the spark for the “Legends” social media campaign and exhibit.

The impact of recognizing the area’s Black community has shown through, she said, in the escalating attendance for the “Legends” reception the museum has held in conjunction with the social media campaign the last two years. The first year, the event was held in the museum’s basement and was standing-room-only. The next year, it moved to the Lexington 2 Innovation Center with more than 100 in attendance.

“It's priceless,” she said of what it means to see this push for representation manifest into a full-on exhibit. “There are no words. It’s absolutely wonderful. It’s wonderful that the city finally decided to recognize this.”

The moves to bolster the museum’s representation follow largely in the wake of a 2021 controversy. During that year’s local election, a member of the city’s Historical Museum Commission was accused of going out into the community and making racist statements to get a candidate he backed elected to council. He later resigned.

Cayce Mayor Elise Partin emphasized that the push to increase representation at the museum started before this scandal, saying that it played no part in motivating the city to improve the way it presents its history.

“It's important that all of our citizens are involved in everything we do in our city,” she said. “One thing we had to do was to start with increasing the diversity of the Museum Commission itself. And I championed that and helped to move that forward so that we had people who were in those positions to be making decisions ... to make sure everybody is included.”

Within and around its two display cases, the exhibit features many items highlighting Cayce’s Black history — including what was for years the museum’s only piece dedicated to that history, a plaque recognizing Andrew Bernette, the first Black person elected to City Council. There’s a photo of a party from back in the day in Cayce where James Brown was a surprise visitor, and a restored gas pump from a historic Black-owned service station.

Smith spotlighted a straw broom that came by way of a resident's grandmother as an example of how the everyday nature of many of the items reinforces the point of the exhibit — that all of Cayce’s citizens have a role in creating its history. 

“The thing I like about what we call our ‘Legends’ is they're not people who have national prominence or anything like that,” she said. “It’s the everyday people, places and things that we all grew up with in the past.”