Local veterans recount five-week ‘Black History USA Rail Tour’ at Lacey Museum

Felicia Rova Cameron, associate curator for the Lacey Museum, opened the program Thursday evening with a land acknowledgement and a brief museum update, noting that “The Lacey Museum is on the ancestral land of the tribal people of the Treaty of Medicine Creek.”

Jarvis Harris, a Lacey resident and retired U.S. Army veteran and former Pierce County corrections officer, and Joe Foss, a Tacoma resident, Navy veteran and retired business owner, then described a five-week trip the pair took to visit Black historical sites and museums around the United States. “We titled our journey the Black History USA Rail Tour because we primarily used Amtrak as our primary transportation means,” Harris said as he described the group’s travel plan and daily approach to visiting sites.

The nut of the program was practical and experiential: Harris and Foss urged attendees to visit major museums and local heritage sites, and to share what they learn. “If you only go to one Black History Museum, that’s the one,” Foss said of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C., praising its curation, visitor services and a quiet reflection space he described as “a spiritual cleansing.”

The presen…