The Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History, celebrating its 60th anniversary this year, stands as a cornerstone of the Black Museum movement, housing over 35,000 artifacts that chronicle the journey of African Americans from ancient African civilizations to present day. Founded on March 10, 1965—just two days after the historic Bloody Sunday in Selma, Alabama—the museum was established by Dr. Charles Wright, an obstetrician who delivered over 7,000 babies while simultaneously championing the preservation of Black history.
Estrella “Star” Crawford serves as the Senior Vice President and Local Market Executive for Bank of America in Detroit, where she directs local fiscal and market strategy while overseeing investments that drive community and economic development throughout Michigan. Since joining the bank in 2004, Crawford has worked across multiple roles, demonstrating her commitment to the institution’s purpose of empowering communities.
Crawford, who is fluent in Spanish and holds an MBA from American InterContinental University, brings her perspective as both a Detroit resident and mother of three to her role as executive sponsor for the Michigan Hispanic/Latino Organization for Leadership and Advancement. Her work extends beyond the bank through her service on the Board of Directors for SER Metro-Detroit, an organization focused on removing barriers to education and workforce development.
Cedric Scott brings his expertise as Director of Corporate Partnerships and Member Services to the Wright Museum, where he has successfully increased membership revenue by nearly 40% through strategic partnerships and community engagement initiatives. His background in broadcast media and marketing has proven invaluable in amplifying the museum’s reach.
Prior to joining the Wright Museum, Scott served as Director of Media & Communications at Triumph Church, helping grow its membership from 3,000 to over 35,000, making it the second largest predominantly African American congregation in the United States. His educational background includes a bachelor’s degree in advertising from the University of South Carolina and an MBA in Marketing from the University of Phoenix.
What does this partnership between Bank of America and the Wright Museum mean for the Detroit community?
I am proud to say that Bank of America is that organization that is supporting black media. And yes, you can say that because we support everyone. We support black media, Hispanic media, all the media. So, we are inclusive. And we make sure that everyone has an opportunity. And so, we’re super excited this year to partner with the Wright Museum. We partner with them on a myriad of ways, but this year just a little bit more special. I’m super excited to talk to you more about that.
What does it mean to the museum to have this kind of support that opens doors for children to learn about themselves and their history?
I think it really connects to a lot to the founding of the museum. We are celebrating our 60th anniversary here at the Wright Museum. We were one of the founders of this Black Museum movement years ago, but one of the reasons that Dr. Wright founded the museum was, in respect to the children, the young people. He wanted them to have a home, a place where they can learn about their history, learn about who they are, learn about their ancestors, and all of that, so that they can make that connection back to what they would like to inspire to be so that they could know the cloth and the royalty that they come from.
Before the sixties or so, we never had a repository or that sort of official sort of state. It was really here and there in a lot of different places. A lot of HBCUs had their own sort of collections, fraternities and sororities had some collections and things like that, but for the first time there was a concerted effort made between the people in the community and the local government to say that this is important for us to maintain this history and look out for their future as well. What it means now is it’s really centered on what Dr. Wright thought about when he first founded this museum. He wanted to inspire the children, and we kind of have that same missional focus right now.
Beyond free admission how is Bank of America making arts and culture more accessible to underserved communities?
There’s a couple of different ways. We have free admission. We’re sponsoring free second Sundays for all. This is going to be a sponsorship that will run March through June, but ongoing and for many years we have a program called Museums on Us. Our Museums on Us program is really unique in the fact that we basically have certain museums nationwide where all Bank of America cardholders, whether you’re a Merrill card holder, private bank card holder, general Bank of America cardholder could get into any one of those museums on the first full weekend of the month free. With this year, we’re taking it a step further locally here in Detroit, and we want to support the Wright Museum.
At Bank of America, we believe that when people have access to basic needs, stable income, secure housing, they are better positioned to thrive in their communities. And when you think about the arts and the culture, it’s a profound way of creating empowerment. It’s just a way to foster another holistic, wraparound way of supporting the community and economic opportunity for social change. This is just one of the ways that we show up uniquely and differently than other organizations, making sure that we’re not just talking about budgeting and savings, but we’re talking about the whole person, not just your money.
How do initiatives like this strengthen community connections?
I do want to point out one of the connections that we have with Bank of America and just to echo with Star. Bank of America is not just a flash in the pan sort of connection to the Wright Museum. They’ve been connected to the Wright Museum 20 plus years, and beyond. I even saw some old historical things where Bank of America presented the Hewitt collection right here it’s permanently at the Harvey Gantt Center in Charlotte right now, or whatever. But we had it here earlier, I think, in 2006 or 2005. Years ago, Bank of America has always really dedicated and shared a commitment to that history and culture and making it really accessible for everyone.
What it looks like on a typical second Sunday – we’d love to see Detroiters of all walks of life really coming and taking advantage of this. There are a lot of families that may be priced out for certain reasons, so it’s an opportunity for them. We’d love to see large groups, coworkers and your networks being able to come. And also, we look out for the young people because we’re in a state where a lot of these school districts, where traditionally we might have gone on a lot of these field trips, can no longer afford to take kids on these excursions. So, having a second Sunday, having a Museums on Us program allows us to make sure that those young people have that access.
As we know what’s going on politically and with our Federal government, things may be shifting. Inflation, cost of living is rising, wages remain flat. We never want price to factor into people’s ability to access the culture and the history that we have here. This is very critical for us because of the work that we do. Obviously, we have to fund it, but also, we want to make sure that people consume what we’re doing and connect back to the mission of why we’re here in the first place. That’s why things like these are so important to us, we’re able to spread the love and really open our doors and welcome folks of all walks of life, all cultures to experience what we have here at the Wright.
I just want to chime in this one thing about the Wright for me. I’m not originally from Detroit. I’m originally from New York, and I did attend an HBCU in Atlanta, and it wasn’t until I attended Morris Brown College that I learned the true history about African American history, and I give many shout outs to my Professor Scales. He created his book on his own, and I’ll never forget. College books are like $300 a book. He created this and all this information, and he only charges 10 bucks just the cost of what it was to print the book. And in that is when I learned about the slave trade, and in that is when I learned about how we came to be and what really happened. Aside from Christopher Columbus coming, I found out the truth, and had I not gone to that school, I would never have known what really happened to our people, and have an appreciation even more for the opportunities that I have today because of what our people went through, and so when I got a chance to move to Detroit and see the Wright Museum right before the Smithsonian. When I got a chance to walk through the real life. What I saw on paper and experience it and hear it and feel it. It inspired me to work harder, it inspired me to make sure that I bring my kids at least once a year to remind them to never forget what our people went through for us to have the privileges and the opportunities that we have today, and to not squander that, and that for me is so important, and other people, even at Bank of America, when we do our black history month events and we have our ERGs come together, we bring all of our teammates together. For our ERGs, you don’t have to be black to be part of the black professional group. You don’t have to be Hispanic to be part of the Hispanic group, you just have to want to learn about the culture. And that’s what it’s about. It’s teaching people the culture so that we can all understand each other and move forward and getting along. And so, all of our teammates came for our event, and they all went through the Still I Rise exhibit, and so many of them were like, I had no idea. It just helps people to understand. You don’t have to be black to go to the African American Museum and appreciate it. All of us can take something away from that history. And maybe you understand culturally, the struggle, maybe why some people are a little more passionate than others about certain things. The most important piece is that everyone needs that opportunity, and we’re taking away the excuse of cost for you to be able to go and experience that and understand better the culture.
What can visitors anticipate seeing during the Second Sunday programs?
We always say, we want people to be able to engage throughout the year. Exhibitions might change every 3 to 4 months or so. If you’re only coming once a year, you might miss out on some of the things that are happening. One of the things that we’re really proud of is an exhibition called “Gems of the Wright Museum.” In this exhibition, we’re highlighting some of the artifacts that we have. We’re kind of highlighting some of the artifacts that we have, and we still have, although we’re not the world’s largest institution, because they built the Smithsonian in 2017. It dropped us down a little bit on that list. But we still hold the world’s largest artifact collection of 35,000 artifacts in there. And one of the things that we do is showcase that in through our Gems of the Wright Museum Exhibition, so that’s an opportunity to see that collection and some of what we have on deck. Also, we have other sort of exhibitions that are there for people to partake.
We have a brand-new exhibition called “I, Charles Wright.” It’s one of the first times we’ve presented an exhibition on our founder, Dr. Wright. A lot of folks don’t know that he wasn’t a doctor of history or a doctor of education. He was an OBGYN, a gynecologist. He delivered 7,000 babies. Dr. Wright, though not his subject matter, held history of black people very close to his heart. We don’t want to leave all of the history in the hands of just our educators or historians to tell those stories. We want us all to be involved.
it’s an opportunity for us to be able to engage in that and learn a little bit more about Dr. Wright, his mission, and also through the words of his daughters and those closest to him that we’ll have. I want to mention that this second Sunday is particularly special, because it’s March. March is the founding of our institution. We were founded on March 10th, 1965, just 2 days after Bloody Sunday. Dr. Wright was down in Selma, Alabama, helping out with Bloody Sunday, and two days after he returned back to Detroit, and with 32 individuals he founded the Wright Museum. He was always connected back to his history and his culture, not just focusing on his profession.
Only he had other instances out there. So we’re focusing on that and kind of telling some of that story, so people can be a little bit more acquainted with Dr. Wright, and what he brought not only to Detroit, but to the world as the Black Museum movement kind of originated through Dr. Wright and Miss Spurros and the Desabo Museum. So we have a chance to kind of experience all that. And Still We Rise is one of our core exhibitions that we have. So you can go through that and kind of get a journey through ancient Africa civilization all the way up until present day. We have a community day in celebration of our anniversary, so that Community day will have kind of free gallery tours, food trucks outside history lessons. We’re going to have a black love performance with some storytelling and spoken word and singing and things like that. So it’s going to be really celebratory weekend all the weekend. So that Saturday obviously, is that community day that’ll be free, and then we’re also presenting the free day the next day for second Sunday as well. So the whole weekend coming up is going to be free for people.
What other community partnerships does Bank of America have in Detroit?
Aside from our Museums on Us partners. I’ll just mention a few of our Museums on Us partners. We have the Motown Museum, the Henry Ford Museum, Michigan Science Center, Arab American Museum. Museums on Us. But Bank of America overall for our efforts to impact economic mobility. We focus on basic needs, stable housing, income creation and of course, empowering communities. What does that look like that looks like us supporting food and security with Garden Harvest and Food Gatherers that looks like in the income creation space. We’re supporting Detroit Means Business, Detroit Economic Growth Corporation, Connect Detroit, Grow Detroit Young Talent, looking at SER Metro Detroit, even looking at NPOWER. That’s just in our income creation space. And then, when you look at stable housing. We’re supporting, Develop Detroit. We’re supporting National Faith Homebuyers Organization. There’s a myriad of organizations. And just even in the space of empowering communities. Because that’s the other space. But there are things that help make this community strong. The foundation of the work, the systemic policies that need support that it’s kind of like when you’re building your house. No one sees what’s behind the walls or the concrete that holds up the house. Those are things that we need to support, too. So you look at organizations like Detroit Future City. Those are just a few of the organizations that we’re supporting in that space. But we think that when you do the work, when you support organizations that are out there empowering people making this place a better place that we all thrive. We all thrive, and that’s what we’re hoping to do in 2025.
