Celebrating our All-Woman Owned Business and Where It All Began

Patience LeBlanc and Shannon Rosenfeld at the Juanita Craft Civil Rights House

It was on the steps of the Juanita Craft Civil Rights House that Museum Mavens was born. 

Today was field trip day and I had organized a visit to the Dallas Museum of Art and the Juanita Craft Civil Rights House for the African American Studies students taking that course at several of our high schools. Exploring African American art and culture and then diving back into time by visiting a local civil rights activist and leader’s home, was just what the students needed. Of course, when building the lesson and project to help guide the students, I took an inquiry approach and connected it to state standards. I had asked two of our amazing Ethnic Studies teachers to build an inquiry project around art to help the students explore the Dallas Museum of Art. I got to work on building an inquiry for the Juanita Craft Civil Rights House. My question…What is a Changemaker? 

That was exactly how I would describe Mrs. Juanita Jewel Shanks Craft, a Changemaker! I was first introduced to the life of Mrs. Craft when I attended the Candy Brown Holocaust and Human Rights Educator Series and I met Mrs. Patricia Perez, docent to the Juanita Craft House and an original Craft Kids. She amazed me with her stories of Mrs. Craft and how she had met her when she was just 12 years old. 

Mrs. Patricia Perez at the Juanita Craft Civil Rights House

Juanita J. Craft was born in 1902, in Round Rock, Texas, she went to college for dressmaking, she lived in Galveston for a while, and then finally moved to Dallas, Texas. She became a civil rights leader, was appointed to the Dallas NAACP membership chairman in 1942 and 1946, and according to the Texas State Historical Association, 

“Following the Smith v. Allwright U.S. Supreme Court ruling, in 1944 she became the first Black woman in Dallas County to vote in the Democratic Party primary. In 1946 she was the first Black woman deputized in the state to collect the poll tax.” 

But to 12 year old Patricia, she was the kind and larger than life NAACP Youth Council leader that opened the doors of her home to the neighborhood kids and taught them how to organize, fight for what they believed in, and as Mrs. Perez would put it in her article to DMagazine and how to “can berries.” Craft loved children and wanted them to have pride in their community. She encouraged them to clean up the neighborhood and take pride in their accomplishments. According to Mrs. Perez, “She made us feel powerful during an era in this country where people conspired to make us feel powerless.”  

In her lifetime, Juanita Craft led others to work to desegregate many institutes in the Dallas area, including the State Fair of Texas and at North Texas State (today, North Texas State University). She rubbed elbows with civil rights leaders, such as Louis Armstrong and Thurdgood Marshall and U.S Presidential hopefuls. She welcomed them into her home; a 1300 square foot one-story house at 2618 Warren Avenue. Wow, if those walls could talk!  She was also welcomed to the White House by Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, and Carter. Mrs. Craft served two terms on the Dallas City Council and received numerous awards, including “the Linz Awards, Dallas’s highest civic award (1969), the NAACP Golden Heritage Life Membership Award (1978), and the Eleanor Roosevelt Humanitarian Award for public services (1984).”

This was a woman that I wanted my students to know…A local hero that had shown amazing resilience in a tumultuous time. I wanted to know her, and honor her. So, with materials provided by Ms. Kendall Talbert Ferguson, Community Engagement Coordinator for the Juanita Craft House, and a deep dive into audio tapes of Juanita Craft from the Dallas Public Library,  I built an Inquiry Project for my students and set up a field trip for them to, like historians, gather information and ask questions about this local leader. My overarching guiding question: What is a Changemaker? With supporting questions: What can we learn from the personal stories and perspectives of those who lived through the Civil Rights Movement, like Juanita Craft? How did Juanita Craft affect change? How do we celebrate agents of change? 

The last being my personal favorite because the day we took the students on the field trip it just so happened to be her birthday! She would have been 123 years old that day and for that part of the assignment, students were asked to write a birthday message or note that would be left at the museum. I decided to make it even more special that day and purchased yellow roses (which I found out was her favorite color and reminded me of the Yellow Rose of Texas Story - great for the next Blog).  So with birthday cards and notes in hand, and each of them carrying a single long stemmed yellow rose, they piled out of the school bus one by one, honoring her, her accomplishment, her resilience, and her story! 

Shannon Rosenfeld, one of our Ethnic Studies teacher and friend, was so taken by the Inquiry Project that I had written, she came over to congratulate me. I was so thrilled to tell her that I had built the project not only for our students, but would be giving the lesson plan to the museum so that other schools could enjoy the assignment. At that point, Shannon said to me, you have such a passion for telling stories and supporting local museums, you should really start a business. At that point, I told her I would as long as she would do it with me. We welcomed Melissa Johnson, a local college professor and Museum Mavens was born… on the steps of the Juanita Craft House!  We launched our all woman owned business in March in honor of Women's History Month and our mission has been to partner with local history museums to create engaging, interactive, and standards-aligned educational experiences that ignite curiosity and foster meaningful learning. We want to help museums tell their story! Stories of amazing, powerful people, like Juanita Craft!