The African American Museum of Iowa is a statewide museum dedicated to preserving, exhibiting, and teaching Iowa’s African American history. As Iowa’s leading educational resource on the topic, we educate more than 30,000 people each year through museum tours, traveling exhibits, research services, youth and adult education programs, and community and fundraising events.
This fall, we will open a temporary exhibit, Suspended: Systemic Oppression in our Schools at the Cedar Rapids Public Library (450 5th Ave SE). This exhibit examines the role public schools play in funneling students into the prison system. Through objects, stories, and hands-on activities, visitors will discover how the policies and procedures of the criminal justice system have entered public schools, how the use of zero tolerance policies and policing of students disproportionately affects children of color, and look at the alternative ways to dismantle current school systems that feed the prison pipeline. Because the Museum will be closed for on-going work, this exhibit will open at the Cedar Rapids Public Library on October 13, 2022 and will remain there through summer 2023. A traveling version of the exhibit will later make its way to other locations around the state.
