…As if we weren’t already clued into Guilford County Commissioner Skip Alston’s International Civil Rights Center & Museum.
In yet another cost-cutting move, the center has let go chief fundraiser Amelia Parker and her $100,000 salary. Parker had previously been executive director before she was replaced by curator and program director Bamidele Demerson.
Alston tells the N&R that at Monday’s board meeting Demerson revealed the worst-kept secret in Greensboro:
The (operating) structure was set up by the board and none of us had any experience,” Alston said. “Bamidele is the only person in our midst who has ever run a museum and he’s saying that the structure, compared to other museums, is not working.”
In order to make it work, Demerson has laid out a plan to include “more of a focus on the ‘center’ part of the museum’s name, “proposing a heavy schedule of interactive programs on racism, how to work together, gays and lesbians and their civil rights……”
Related: The thorny path to a national black museum.
