Going to Aces Museum. SJ Dodgson. MJoTA 2012 v6n1 p0328.
My research takes me far and wide, and close to home.
For 3 years until 2006, I drove my daughter Patience to music lessons in Germantown, corner of Germantown And Price Avenues, in North Philadelphia. I certainly walked by the Aces Museum several times.
I heard about the museum several times during the past year, but things sometimes float around my brain before sinking in. It is a museum honoring Black veterans.
And the curator, the owner of the building who runs her medical practice from offices in the ground floor, is internist Althea Hankins MD. You can see her standing next to a staircase that goes up to the huge hall upstairs that was used for dances for military. When she bought the building the staircase was walled off, and she only discovered the hall after a chance encounter on a airplane: the man sitting next to her pulled a flyer advertising USO functions there out of his briefcase.
The museum right hand woman is Ms Charlene Stubbs. She is the other lady in the pictures. Contact her (1-215-239-8695) if you want access to the museum or Dr Hankins. You can see her in some of these pictures.
That young soldier smiling above, Dr Hankins' late father. They have the same open smile.
The building has a basement which was used by slaves, you can see Dr Hankins in the basement. It has the ground floor, where Dr Hankins has her medical office, a second floor which has been used for museum exhibits and classrooms, and a third floor, which is the ballroom and a sideroom.
Watch the video made about the museum (top video at left) and swing by the museum, which is at 5801 Germantown Avenue, Philadelphia. Leave a donation, as much as you can afford.
