The Fort Smith Museum of History is celebrating Women's History Month this weekend with "History Alive: Her Story." The annual living history program will bring some of the River Valley's most influential women to life for guests through volunteer reenactments.
Caroline Speir is the museum's executive director, and she says the event will feature 10 women from Fort Smith's past.
"This really dates back to about 1820. So one of the very first women who would have had a lot of influence in the town, we will visit and meet and talk about her. And then we have as late as World War II. And actually, we have one woman, Mrs. Dorothy Johnson, who will be there as herself — she's still living — and she has lived a remarkable life. So she will be there in person. This covers different eras, different decades: women in business, women who were active in social circles, who were active in civic engagements. But all of those things came together to create something that we still have in Fort Smith or that they impacted in some way. So it's really a great collection of women."
Included in this year's program is Mame Stewart Josenberger, who lived in Fort Smith from the late 1880s until her death in 1964. Josenberger was active during the Jim Crow era. Speir says she stepped into her purpose as a local businesswoman and uplifted others at every opportunity.
Mame was a landowner and activist. Born in Owego, New York, she moves to Fort Smith about two decades later, where she assumes a teaching position at Howard School, the second-oldest school in the city. She also teaches at the predominantly African-American Lincoln High School. In 1892, she marries undertaker William Ernest Josenberger, but he dies 17 years later.
After her husband's death, Josenberger takes over the family undertaking business. She also joins Fort Smith’s St. Augustine’s Episcopal Church the same year. As an African-American business owner, she’s also a member of the National Negro Business League (NNBL), which promotes the commercial and financial development of Black Americans.
Josenberger thoroughly embraces the NNBL’s message of African-American financial uplift and continues to acquire property while running the family undertaking business. She owns and operates Josenberger Hall, an entertainment venue on Ninth Street in Fort Smith, and a hardware and retail store next door. Josenberger Hall becomes a welcoming spot for Black entertainers and performers like Christine Chatman and Her Orchestra or King Kolax and His NBC Band until the early 1960s.
Her community begins to consider her “one of the most capable and efficient business propositions” and the “wealthiest as well as one of the most successful colored persons” in Fort Smith. Her “palatial residence” on North 11th Street stood testament to that opinion. Not only is Josenberger a life member of the NNBL and the Fort Smith Negro Business League, but she is also a close friend of Booker T. Washington.
In addition to being an African-American woman club leader, she is among the founders of Fort Smith’s Phillis Wheatley Federated Club.
Josenberger stays involved with the National Association of Colored Women, the Arkansas Association of Colored Women, the International Council of Women of the Darker Races, the NNBL, and the NAACP, all while managing her businesses in Fort Smith, until her death in September 1964.
You can visit the Fort Smith Museum of History this Saturday at 1 pm and meet Mame Josenberger plus other women played by local living history actors. Museum director Spier says this event isn’t geared toward any specific age and hopes that multiple generations will get to interact with the program.
"When we talk about history, it often seems like it's about things that happened and people are no longer here, or it feels like it was a long time ago. And that's one of the ways that when you see these people in person, it's more than a story. And especially with Miss Johnson, who will be there in person — she has lived her life and so can directly relate."
Visit fortsmithmuseum.org for more.
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