ELIZABETH CITY, N.C. — Protests in Elizabeth City following the death of Andrew Brown Jr. will one day be a part of city history.
Curator Wanda Lassiter at the Museum of the Albemarle in Elizabeth City said her staff would be recording and collecting artifacts from these protests.
"We cover the 13 northeastern counties of North Carolina, so that's the artifacts that we collect. Items that pertain to northeastern North Carolina and the people that live here in this region," Lassiter said.
Since protests are currently going on, the museum director said they would not be collecting now but may start in the coming weeks and months.
Lassiter said with COVID-19 the museum's collecting process has been different.
"A lot of times we would go out to people's homes and help look at their items, write down all the documentation that they tell us. We would research the item," Lassiter said. "[Now items] have to be isolated for a certain time period as well before we can even touch them...right now what we're doing, if people call us, is asking 'can you send me photographs?'"
Lassiter says it's often better to record what's going on present day so people can share their own stories, along with the artifact, for context.
"A lot of people don't think museums collect things that happen now," Lassiter said. "They think, 'oh OK, it's not old enough to go into a museum, we're not going to collect them.' So, we're also trying to help people realize that we do collect items from the present and not just the past."