Retiring professor named interim executive director at Springfield museum

The Springfield and Central Illinois African American History Museum on Monument Avenue has found an interim executive director to lead the museum until 2025.

Kamau Kemayo was unanimously chosen by the museum's board of directors to fill the position after previous executive director Nalo Mitchell stepped down in April.

Kemayo previously served on the museum's board of directors for several years and said he will hold the position of interim until the end of the year.

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“The three things that we need are donor support, volunteer support and the community support,” Kemayo said.

The position covers enhancing programs, creating public statements, developing already accessible programs and the furthering of current and new exhibits. Kemayo will continue on all the duties left by Mitchell, while building on his own history with the museum.

“We needed to find someone with a history background—an African American history background,” board president Aaron Peal-Cropp said. “I met Dr. Kemayo years ago at the University of Illinois-Springfield when I was doing my undergraduate then postgraduate work. I figured he would be the ideal person that could come in and take this museum to where it needs to be at.”

To the University of Illinois Springfield professor, a resounding phrase "African American history is American history" is part of his rhetoric and that Black history should be featured everywhere, but also specialized in museums.

“I believe that African American history and African American scholars should be mainstream,” Kemayo said. “It should exist just about wherever scholarly presentations exist. At the same time, I understand that when you get a university and scholarly endeavors… they are focused.”The doctor of American Studies has been a professor at UIS and has taught college level courses for over 40 years.

His run as a professor is coming to an end, however, as he is retiring at the end of the year.

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Kemayo said one of the reasons he filled the open position so close to his retirement is his deep connection with the museum and its relevance to Springfield

“We’re currently in the process of expanding this museum,” Pearl-Cropp said. “We want to get all of our ducks in a row and make sure that we had someone that was history-savvy knowing about African American history and could take us to the very next level.”

The museum created the executive director position in 2023 thanks to $189,000 in grants from the Federal Institute of Museum and Library Services, which cover the salary of the position for three years total. Mitchell served one year of the allotted three years, meaning roughly $126,000 of the grant spending remains.

The first order of business for Kemayo? Bring in the community, find more funding to bring the museum technology-forward and create a reading space near the back of the current building.

“We are trying to digitize many of our exhibits and have many more digital exhibits,” Kemayo said. “There is a rich history of things that have been here in Springfield and in the museum.”

Claire Grant writes about business, growth and development and other news topics for the State Journal-Register. She can be reached at CLGrant@gannett.com; and on X (Formerly known as Twitter): @Claire_Granted

This article originally appeared on State Journal-Register: Springfield's African American History Museum names interim director