Museum uses social media to honor local African-American artists

HAYWOOD COUNTY, Tenn. — A local museum is recognizing rhythm and blues African-American artists of West Tennessee.

For the first time, the West Tennessee Delta Heritage Center organizers are taking to social media to highlight influential musicians for the month of June.

“And that’s when the African-American Appreciation, Musician Appreciation Month were born,” said museum curator Adriana Dunn.

Dunn showed WBBJ 7 Eyewitness News reporter Brittany Kyles some of West Tennessee’s greatest African-American musicians and artists.

“We have Jazzii A. here who was a choreographer, originally from West Tennessee, so that’s one of the first post that we’ve done,” Dunn said.

“So here we have Sleepy John Estes. He is a blues musician, and actually you can hear some of his music on the radio,” she said.

Each week they will highlight a different artist on their Facebook page.

“A few more post here of Anita Ward and Dave Clark you’ll be seeing in the next couple of weeks,” Dunn said.

They’re even recognizing one of Tennessee’s greatest rhythm and blues singers, Tina Turner. She sold around 100 million singles, albums and musical works before retiring from performing in 2009.

“And we just have a little bit of their biography, who they were and just a little bit about them and what they did during their career,” Dunn said.

Organizers say they’ll be recognizing a total of 20 African-American musicians and artist for the rest of the month.