Our Founder

Louise M Calloway

Dec 5, 1929 ~ Feb 8, 2023

Louise M. Calloway, visionary founder of the Underground Railroad Museum of Burlington County, transformed a deeply personal calling into a lasting public legacy, illuminating the hidden stories of Black history with clarity, dignity, and purpose.  Her enduring vision centered on responsibility: to preserve, to educate, and to ensure that future generations would not only remember the past, but understand its power. As she often affirmed, “The mission of the museum is to tell, really, the history of our people,” reminding all who walked thru the museum's doors, that “for future generations to see and realize what their ancestors have been through, that’s really important,” and that the path she followed to build this legacy was, in her own words, “divinity.”

Louise M Calloway

‘Keeper of the Culture’

 

Louise M Calloway, known as the ‘Keeper of the Culture’ was born on December 5, 1929 in Vauxhall, NJ. Louise M Calloway grew up in a “village-like” community that encouraged education and fostered a sense of responsibility to find ways to support and uplift one another whenever possible. It is from this seemingly destined foundation that Louise’s vision of educating and empowering her people would take root, and her lifelong body of work would eventually usher in the incredible legacy she left behind. 

An avid reader since early childhood, Louise loved history; and though she admits she was a somewhat lazy scholar during her formative years, she would soon find a curiosity of Black America’s tie to Africa and a world outside her own ignited while attending Morgan State. Earning a Bachelor of Arts from the HBCU (1953) and a Master of Social Work from Atlanta University (1959), Louise would marry shortly after, have children and open up the first Montessori school in Quebec, Canada before continuing her role as an educator in Cameroon, Central Africa.

 Returning to the states after almost 10 years abroad, Louise’s passion for her people was only further fueled by her journey, and a desire to recreate the kind of cultural congregation spaces she had discovered along the way began to take hold. In 2005, at the ripe age of 76, Ms Calloway became the founder, curator and executive director of the Underground Railroad Café & Education Center in Burlington, NJ. For the next 7 years, she offered the community she served a safe place to congregate, attend a range of culturally centered programs, and connect present to past before closing its doors. Ever on the mission to educate and empower, an unexpected offering for a new home at the Historic Smithville Park in Eastampton, NJ came knocking, and with help from the Burlington County Board of Chosen Freeholders, The Underground Railroad Museum of Burlington County (UGRRMBC) opened its doors in 2015. 

Though Louise has received numerous honors over her 60+ years including but not limited to the ‘ Oliver Cromwell Lifetime Achievement Award for Historical Education’, ‘NAACP Distinguished Educator’s Award’, and the ‘N.J. State Federation of Colored Women's Club Award’, no accomplishment would satisfy her self-less mission more in Life’s continuum than to see the URMBCNJ  become a vanguard institution in the ‘cultural revolution’ that is happening today. In her humble yet determined role as a ‘keeper of the culture’, this accomplishment is the result of a desire to tell the African American story as much as she knew, out of a love for her people, their resilience, and their magnificence. To this end, the museum was never work for her, but rather a labor of love. 

“ My life’s journey has been wonder-filled. From low dangerous ravines to lofty mountain tops. Always the ‘Divinity’ with me…leading me…protecting me.” ~Louise Calloway

FEATURED EDITORIAL CONTENT