Old State House Museum employee quits over racist comments about slavery

A 15-year employee at the Old State House Museum has quit her job, saying new leaders at the museum allowed insensitive remarks about slavery to be made during staff meetings, leaving her no choice.

Marie Brown-Bealer, administrative coordinator, tendered a four-page resignation letter on Sept. 22, addressing it to Laura McClellan, interim museum director. Brown-Bealer said she had served the museum proudly since 2011 but that things changed since former director Daniel Cockrell left.

“Over the past six months, the changes in leadership and management have made coming to work increasingly difficult,” she wrote in the letter, which was obtained through a Freedom of Information request from the Arkansas Times. “The dismissal of my direct supervisor, Daniel Cockrell, was a particularly painful turning point. When Daniel left, something else seemed to leave with him.”

Brown-Bealer, who is Black, said in one meeting, she was offended when the subject of slavery was given short shrift.

“During a staff meeting with employees,” she wrote, “I heard the words, ‘I am tired of talking about slavery. It’s more to history than slavery,’ followed by ‘Let’s be honest, Arkansas is a WHITE STATE.’”

Brown-Bealer, who did not identify the person who made the remarks, agreed in her resignation letter that there is more to history than the subject of slavery. “But acknowledging that does not require us to minimize slavery or treat the discussion of it as something we should be tired of having,” she wrote. “There is a difference between saying, ‘There is more to the story,’ and making people feel as though one part of the story has become too inconvenient to tell.”

Brown-Bealer copied her letter to Marty Ryall, Arkansas Heritage director, among others.

She went on to say that all of history is relevant.

“We should tell more history, not less,” she wrote. “We should tell the whole story. The beautiful parts! The painful parts! The uncomfortable parts! The parts that make us proud. And the parts that force us to look honestly at where we have been so we can better understand where we are going. Slavery is history. But history does not become less important because we are uncomfortable discussing it.”

Cockrell was fired in mid-April over his performance and insubordination, according to information gained through an FOI request from the Department of Parks, Heritage and Tourism, which oversees the museum. The information also showed that Cockrell had not had a negative write-up before being fired. 

In an interview with the Arkansas Times after he was terminated, Cockrell said he was forced by superiors to fire one of his employees, Georganne Sisco. State officials refused to release information relating to her termination. 

A replacement for Cockrell has not been named.

Brown-Bealer’s resignation is not the first time the museum’s treatment of racial division and slavery has been questioned.

In honor of the country’s 250th birthday, the museum created a hodgepodge of historic elements that traced the state’s past. Conspicuously missing from it was any discussion of slavery. 

Sanders also has threatened “woke” teachers who dare teach critical race theory or otherwise indoctrinate students with lessons about the state’s ugly racial past, and her education department temporarily downgraded the credit weight for an Advanced Placement class on African American studies.

Brown-Bealer said she could go into more detail about why she was leaving but chose not to because she wanted to leave with her dignity intact. Still, she added that she did not want to leave without confronting the issues that made her – and other women of color who work at the museum – uncomfortable.

“My resignation is not written out of hatred,” she wrote. “It is written out of heartbreak. There is a difference. I am heartbroken that after giving this agency so many years of my life, I have reached a point where leaving feels necessary. I am heartbroken that the environment I once loved has changed in ways I can no longer ignore. I am heartbroken because I know that sometimes people do not realize how deeply their words can affect the people sitting across from them.”

She offered some advice to the future leaders of the museum, telling them they should listen before they respond.

“Because sometimes leadership is not about having the last word,” she said. “Sometimes leadership is having the humility to hear the words that are difficult to hear.”

She closed by saying the work of the museum is important.

“History matters. People matter. Truth matters,” she wrote. “And the voices of women of color matter. My time at the Old State House Museum is ending. But this is not the end of my story.”

An attempt to get a comment from someone at the Department of Parks, Heritage and Tourism was unsuccessful.