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Cover Story

Cover Story - Spanish Version

Mini-Lesson

Comprehension Quiz

Teacher's Guide and Worksheets

Holding on to History

Spanish Translation

Avery Clayton is in a race against timeoand mold, and bugs that like to eat paper. He is working to save priceless pieces of African-American history. "Unless there's an organized effort to gather this material, it will be gone in 50 years," Clayton told TFK.

Clayton's mother, Mayme Agnew Clayton, spent much of her adult life collecting the work of artists, leaders and great thinkers of the black community. She hunted down out-of-print books by black authors and first-person stories written by slaves. She found old movie posters. She even bought the personal letters of black leaders.

Mrs. Clayton died in 2006, at age 83. By that time, her collection had long outgrown her home in Los Angeles, California. It is one of the largest privately held collections of African-American history and culture in the United States. Historians say that without people like Mrs. Clayton, large parts of black history would be lost forever.

The Making of a Museum

Now, Avery Clayton is creating a grand home for his mother's treasures. He has started to move the books and artifacts into an unused courthouse in Culver City, California. He hopes to open the Mayme A. Clayton Library & Museum there in 2009. "I'm so glad I'm doing this," he says.

The former art teacher can't wait to share these rare bits of African-American history with the world. He is especially excited about sharing the collection with kids. He says the museum will give schools free teaching tools. "So much of what we've been told about our history is painful," Clayton says, "but it's really a story of triumph."

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