Preserve
Organize and care for records, objects, images, family materials, and oral histories connected to Chester.
A planned home for the city’s memory
Chester’s history should live in Chester.
The YES Center envisions a museum, library, research center, and Black repository within the restored building—a place where residents can encounter, study, preserve, and add to their own history.
Chester history exhibit · YES Center photo gallery
From a traveling collection to a permanent home
Keep the records.
Ignite the stories.
Twyla’s Traveling Black History Museum offers a foundation for the planned Heritage Place Library, Museum, Research Center & Black Repository. The vision is not simply to store material, but to make Chester history visible, usable, and open to contribution.
The documentary gives that future a human scale: one resident describes several trunks of Chester material collected by his father that he hopes Twyla can catalog for the future.
History carried by families and neighborhoods
A museum built from what Chester has kept.
The collection vision includes photographs, newspapers, funeral programs, family records, historic objects, artworks, oral histories, and material connected to people and places across the city.
Future collection policies, cataloging standards, conservation needs, loan agreements, donor permissions, privacy review, and public access rules must be developed before launch.
Contribute a story or recordPreserve · interpret · invite
Make public memory a community practice.
The museum is envisioned as a living part of the center: a place for research and reflection, but also for making, teaching, listening, and adding new knowledge.
Collection care
Catalog
Create reliable descriptions and context so people can find, understand, and connect materials across collections.
Interpret
Build rotating exhibitions, specialty displays, public programs, and stories shaped with the community.
Teach
Welcome students, educators, families, and lifelong learners into Chester’s history through visits and workshops.
Invite contribution
Give residents and the Chester diaspora a respectful path to share knowledge, documents, photographs, and memories.
What people may encounter
Not one history.
Many points of entry.
The museum can bring personal archives into conversation with the city’s public life. The final mix will depend on what the YES Center owns, borrows, receives permission to use, and is equipped to care for.
People
Educators, artists, veterans, organizers, families, faith leaders, workers, and community builders.
Places
Neighborhoods, institutions, businesses, gathering spaces, sacred sites, and landmarks.
Movements
Civil rights, access, education, service, mutual aid, cultural work, and local advocacy.
Everyday life
Clubs, celebrations, photographs, programs, clothing, music, crafts, correspondence, and family memory.
Place changes meaning
The building, the collection, and the community belong together.
Inside the restored YES Center, Chester history can sit within an institution that is itself part of the city’s story. The museum becomes both destination and doorway: a reason to enter, remember, research, gather, and contribute.
See the restoration visionThe archive grows through trust
What does your family remember?
Tell the YES Center about a photograph, document, object, place, or story connected to Chester. Initial contact does not transfer ownership or grant publication rights.
Start a conversation