Fort Des Moines Museum and Education Center (Fort Des Moines Museum)

The Fort Des Moines Museum and Education Center interprets the history of the first Officer Candidate School to include African Americans, the first Medical and Dental Officer Training Camps to include African Americans, and the first Officer School to include African American women. Working with five colleges and universities in the Des Moines area, the museum will hire six research interns to research and write biographies about the officers, doctors, and women who trained at Fort Des Moines. The goal is to add at least 50 biographies to an online database of African Americans trained at Fort Des Moines. In addition, the museum will recruit two curatorial interns who will use the information from this research to create new exhibit panels for the museum. The project also provides training in collections management to expand the curator's knowledge of collections care and preservation practices.