Louise Calloway, 93, the curator and executive director of the Underground Railroad Museum of Burlington County, died after a brief illness on Feb. 8, during Black History Month.
On Sunday, the Willingboro N.J. resident, who also once lived in Canada and in Cameroon, will be remembered at a Celebration of Life memorial service at Soul Anchor of Burlington, during Women’s History Month.
In what some might see as a closing of the circle, Soul Anchor is located at 322 High St. in Burlington City, the same street where Calloway opened the Underground Railroad Coffee Housein 2005.
The coffee house was an informal museum, with art exhibits, jazz, and poetry readings. It was located next to the old Wheatley Pharmacy, a stop on the Underground Railroad’s network of “safe houses” for people seeking freedom from enslavement.
After the coffee shop closed in 2013, Calloway found a new home for her collection of historical artifacts in 2015, at the Historic Smithville Park in Eastampton, near Mount Holly.
The collection then became known as the Underground Railroad Museum of Burlington County.
Deborah Price, president of the board of the museum, said Calloway had a deep passion for history — learning it and sharing it.
“She was so full with knowledge that it would just pour out of her,” Price said. “I was her student. I was being molded. I knew [about history] already, when really I didn’t know as much as I thought I did.”
Price, who works in the finance industry, was a volunteer at the museum for several years and watched and learned as Calloway gave tours.
“I was able to sit in Louise’s garden, and she just planted seeds in me.”
Louise Mable Calloway was born Dec. 5, 1929. She grew up in Vauxhall, in Union Township, N.J. not far from Newark. She earned a bachelor’s degree at Morgan State University and a master’s degree in social work at Atlanta University.
For 50 years, she was a social worker and a teacher.
In interviews, she said her love of history began as a child, when at about age 9, she often visited the local library and found pamphlets and books about Africa. She was particularly intrigued to learn that newly freed Black Americans began to migrate to Liberia in West Africa, starting around 1820.
It was almost a year ago, last April, when more than 100 people went to the Burlington County Library to honor Calloway for her work as a “keeper of history.”
There were testimonials about her passion for history and her mission to share the knowledge she had accumulated. The Essence of Harmony Choral Society sang classical African American music.
The program was called “Honoring the Remarkable Louise Calloway” and was an afternoon of music, poetry, dance, and tributes.
“She knew she was going to be queen for the day, and I think she knew she deserved it,” said Jacquelin Agostini, a retired psychologist who teaches women’s history at Rowan College at Burlington County.
“She was a humble person, and she saw it as not celebrating her, but celebrating her mission.”
Agostini said she and Calloway bonded over their shared interests in history about 11 years ago when Agostini stumbled into the Underground Railroad Museum after attending another event on the sprawling Historic Smithfield Park grounds.
She said Calloway accompanied her and a group of women from her women’s history class to Seneca Falls, Auburn, and Rochester, N.Y. where they went to sites of the women’s rights movement.
While on that trip, they not only visited Susan B. Anthony’s home in Rochester, but they also visited Harriet Tubman’s home in Auburn.
Agostini said the woman from the Tubman House was so impressed with Calloway “that she gave her brick from the walkway to put in her museum.”
Rowan College at Burlington also filmed an eight-part documentary on Calloway’s work with the museum.
Al Corbett, a systems and mechanical engineer at Lakehurst Naval Base, is a former board member and volunteer at the museum. He said of Calloway:
“She enlightened me to the hidden history that we had not been taught in school. It was profound to me the things she had in the museum.
“She was not trying to offend anyone, that was not her way. Her attitude was, ‘This was our history, Black, white, or indifferent. This is how things happened.’ "
Corbett said there was one time he was troubled by a request. Calloway wanted him to tie several knots in a rope to represent the nooses used to lynch Black people.
“That was one thing that bothered me,” he said. “Every time I looped it, I kept thinking about what it meant to the people who got that noose.”
As much as she learned about the Atlantic slave trade and other brutal conditions that faced enslaved people, Agostini said Calloway always spoke with a soft voice.
“She was never angry,” she said. “I think that getting angry doesn’t help. What helps is helping people learn the stories that were left out of history.”
Calloway is survived by a son, Michael Calloway, a daughter, Tina Calloway, and one grandchild.
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If you go: The memorial service for Louise Calloway is scheduled for 2 to 6 p.m. Sunday, March 12, at Soul Anchor of Burlington, 322 High St., Burlington, NJ 08016. Free, but RSVP by emailing: info@hugrrmbc.org.
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