'Museum makers acquire Templars’ building deed'
The Little Rock Board of Directors has voted to transfer the deed for the Mosaic Templars’ building, which housed the influential black business organization started after the Civil War, to the Department of Arkansas Heritage.
   State officials hope that, depending on legislative appropriations this session, the building will become Arkansas’ fourth state-operated museum, celebrating black culture and business enterprise circa 1900.
   "The building symbolizes the spirit of the people who brought economic development to Ninth Street after the Civil War," said John Cain, who founded a preservation group for the building more than a decade ago.
   Inside it’s dusty and musty, reminders of the building’s age. Floorboards show splits, and on the third floor, rafters hang delicately over a once-grand ballroom floor.
   For the past month, construction crews have been cleaning up the building and redoing its inner walls and supports. They hope to complete the first phase by June at an estimated cost of about $500,000. Department of Arkansas Heritage officials hope to have more legislative appropriations by then to help fund the beginnings of the museum.
   The final product will cost about $3 million.
   The museum aspires to tell the story of the black entrepreneurs as the 19th century gave way to the 20th in Arkansas, focusing on characteristics critical to successful entrepreneurs: thrift, commitment, innovation, wisdom, sacrifice and preparation. The accompanying center hopes to research economic development in urban areas in modern times, Cain said.
   "This center will be commemorating that whole era," said state Sen. Irma Hunter Brown, D-Little Rock. "And looking at its location, between the Governor’s Mansion and the River Market, it could conceivably be part of the tourist attractions in the city."
   Brown, along with Sen. Tracy Steele, D-North Little Rock, and Rep. John Lewellen, D-Little Rock, have helped lobby for state funding to restore the building. Gov. Mike Huckabee recently placed the building on his short list of high-priority historical buildings in need of restoration.
   "This was really black Main Street in Little Rock back then," said Bobbie Heffington, deputy director for museums for the Heritage Department. "Right at the turn of the century, the Mosaic Templars were very progressive for the black community."
   The importance of the organization for Arkansas black history is irrefutable, historians say.
   Mosaic Templars began in the 1880s as an organization that provided burial insurance to blacks, but it soon expanded and ran a savings and loan association, a newspaper, a hospital and a nurse-training school. At its peak in 1918, Mosaic Templars claimed more than 80,000 members internationally.
   "It was just good old business enterprise, but it was business enterprise that wasn’t dependent on the white power structure," said Bill Worthen, director of the Historical Arkansas Museum. "The leadership in Mosaic Templars could take stances against lynching and other things without worrying what the white power structure could do to them."
   The building was also a cultural center, with concerts and graduation ceremonies for black high schools held in the upstairs ballroom.
   The Heritage Department operates three other museums: the Historical Arkansas Museum and the Old State House Museum, both in downtown Little Rock, and the Delta Cultural Center in Helena.
   The Heritage Department is asking the Legislature for $350,000 now to start the museum, Heffington said, much of which would fund a research staff to begin work on future exhibits.
   "These are tight economic times, but we’ll lose the building if we don’t begin to do something soon," Heffington said. "There are still people around who remember the building and the things happening there before the Depression. But these people won’t be with us for a long time."