The Upcountry History Museum is tucked away in downtown Greenville’s Heritage Green area, which comprises a group of museums & other cultural attractions. Its mission is to present the history of the Upcountry of South Carolina, and it does that expertly in a series of small but very attractive galleries enhanced by period-representative architectural & daily life scenes with concise signage. They have free parking on a dedicated side lot (look for the sign along Atwood Street near Buncombe), the front desk staff is friendly & engaging, the layout of the two-story museum is easy to navigate (with stairway & elevator options between floors), and they have a small gift shop to browse for a variety of gift items. My wife & I visited to see the special exhibit of Civil War-themed quilts, but we equally enjoyed perusing a couple of other traveling exhibits with more modern history themes & the Museum's permanent collection. You can easily cover the Museum space's exhibits in an hour, and we'd recommend you & your family visit.

Are there any persons of color on the curatorial staff? The early section about the indigenous Cherokee population felt tacked on and that it was only working towards the goal of the colonial settler's experience. And then you have the Black experience. There was no mention of slavery (aside from a brief mention by an actor in a video) until the pre-Civil War section and then it was hidden in a corner to the point where I almost missed it. Even that written description made it seem like the enslaved experience wasn't that bad (hey, the conditions were hard, but at least your owner was working beside you!). Things were a little better once you got upstairs, with the Reconstruction, Jim Crow, and Civil Rights-era displays. It is strange though that Jesse Jackson doesn't have a stand-alone feature, everyone who had one of those seemed to be white and male. Even the millworker experience felt white-washed. The conditions were horrible, but at least there were sports teams! I did think that the presentation of the museum itself was excellent, with the reconstructed building fronts. It just needs to fresh curatorial approach to presenting difficult topics. While the museum was exceptionally clean and well-maintained, it did feel due for a refresh, so hopefully that will come soon and with a multi-cultural curatorial team at the helm.