Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, April 19, 1993 TAG: 9304190117
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BONNIE V. WINSTON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: DANVILLE LENGTH: Medium
The capsule, a 3-inch-deep tin box, was nestled in a granite block in what had been a downtown department store. It contained an array of coins, biblical tracts, newspapers and personal artifacts, including an 1868 lapel pin that reads "U.S. Grant for President."
The treasures were buried in September 1870 by the Society of True Friends of Charity, a long-forgotten postwar benevolent society. They've been turned over to the Danville Museum of Fine Arts and History, a converted mansion that has long been a symbol in Danville's black community of segregation and the Old South.
The mansion served as the last Capitol of the Confederacy. Jefferson Davis and the Confederate Cabinet had their final meetings there just days before Gen. Robert E. Lee's surrender at Appomattox in April 1865.
And in the 1960s, as a whites-only public library, the mansion became a landmark in the local struggle for civil rights and integration.
The irony in the time capsule's placement there has not been lost on local residents, black or white. But city leaders suggest that the True Friends of Charity exhibit, which opened for public view in January, could convert the old mansion from a source of racial alienation to a center of understanding.
"We wanted to open the doors literally and figuratively to all people in the community," said Samuel A. Kushner, 47, an attorney and former mayor who was instrumental, as president of the museum's board, in getting the time capsule's contents placed in the mansion.
"If you look at our permanent collection of artifacts and photographs, there is nothing that is relevant directly to African-Americans," Kushner said.
The museum, once the home of one of the city's leading and wealthiest residents, Maj. William T. Sutherlin, contains many items associated with the Civil War - uniforms, rifles, swords and other items. The bedroom where Davis slept during the Confederacy's final week has been restored and is part of the tour.
Sutherlin, Danville's mayor in the 1850s and 1860s, was the wartime quartermaster for the city. He was among the signers of Virginia's Ordinance of Secession. A large, framed copy of it is on display.
Amid the tall oaks, sweeping magnolias and cyprus trees that grace the front of the Italian villa-style mansion is a flagpole that until January waved the Confederate Stars and Bars.
The flag, a longtime irritant to race relations in the community, so much so that someone pulled it down during a Martin Luther King Jr. birthday march in 1992, was lowered after a December luncheon between Kushner and about a dozen black leaders.
Joyce Glaise, 42, a Danville city councilwoman who attended the meeting that was called to discuss the time capsule exhibit, said she was offended by the flag. "The greatest stigma is flying a Confederate flag over any public building," she said.
During the discussion that day, Kushner said: "I told them we are very proud of our historic mansion, and we are aware that we cannot escape its history as the last Capitol of the Confederacy and its role in the civil rights struggle as a library.
"We don't want to change history. Those things are part of the saga of the community, just like the story of the True Friends of Charity. But I asked them to look beyond the facade - that what's inside is more important than what happened 30 years ago or 130 years ago."
The result impressed even the most skeptical. On the cold, rainy Sunday afternoon in January when the exhibit opened, up to 500 people - more than half of whom were black - were in line to see the time capsule's contents.
"This added a new flavor to the museum. It's really a shot in the arm for the community," said the Rev. Doyle J. Thomas, 77, a city councilman and president of the local branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. The NAACP raised more than $2,000 for restoration of the artifacts.
Thomas said the exhibit has opened the eyes of many in Danville about the life and times of blacks in the city during Reconstruction.
"We were never included in the [history] books," Thomas said. "This was an opportunity to see. It will perhaps prompt others to come forward with their bits of history, and create pride among African-Americans about our heritage."
Glaise, Kushner and others have been heartened. While the opening drew the biggest crowd in recent museum history, only a dozen or so blacks have become members of the museum.
"It's not going to happen overnight," Glaise said. "They can't reach out their hands for the first time and expect people to come running. But it showed that there has been a rethinking of historic values and that these people are genuine."
by CNB