By Ruth Ann Ruiz
The Post Newspaper Features Editor
A team of people seeking to have a Juneteenth Museum on the empty lot near Courville Stadium in Galveston presented their plans/goals at Tuesday’s meeting of the Galveston ISD Facilities Committee.
The team included Dr. Greg Luhan, who is Department Head of Architecture at Texas A&M College Station, and Professor William Baston of Prairie View A&M.
Texas A&M University led the Juneteenth Design Project through their Texas Target Communities program and their students, under staff leadership, were responsible for generating designs for a Juneteenth Museum. The program expanded to include both College Station and Prairie View.
Luhan’s thoughts about the site, while not definitive, do express the sentiments of others.
“There’s a lot of synergy on this site,” Luhan said. The site is very connected with the community.”
Jarvis Hawkins, the architectural student at Prairie View A&M whose building design was voted by the public as the winning design for possible consideration, spoke to the committee.
A surprise twist in the presentation happened when Jarvis was awarded a $1,000 scholarship by the Nia Cultural Center for his winning design.
There was tension in the room as opposing opinions were shared by school board trustees and questions and concerns were raised.
The meeting was one step in the process to secure a long-term lease and no decision was intended to be made nor was it made at Tuesday’s meeting.
School Board Vice President, Johnny Smecca shared with The Post the next steps that will be happening in regard to the request to lease school district property for a Juneteenth Museum.
“1. We will need to see if there is an interest in getting rid of the parking as it is today. There were two to three voices that didn’t sound very supportive at this time.
2. We will need to get some guidance from our attorneys on how we would go about figuring the value of the public’s property. We haven’t set another meeting date at this time until we really get some guidance on these two.
Our president, Mr. Brown, will decide the next steps in the coming days. I believe it’s early in the process, and something like this will take some time. I do believe if its a ‘no,’ then it will happen sooner than later,” Smecca said.
