The Museum Name Change: T.T. Wentworth and the KKK
Near Pensacola, Florida
The large Spanish Revival building on Jefferson Street that houses the Pensacola Museum of History was named, until twenty twenty-one, after T.T. Wentworth Junior, a Pensacola collector who spent decades accumulating local artifacts and donating them to the city. The building itself was the old city hall, constructed in nineteen oh seven. Wentworth opened his first museum as a roadside operation in nineteen fifty-seven and eventually offered his entire collection to the city if it would provide a permanent downtown home. The museum opened in nineteen eighty-eight.
In twenty twenty, newly released documents revealed that Wentworth had been a leader of the local Ku Klux Klan chapter during the mid-twentieth century. The University of West Florida Historic Trust, which operates the museum, opened a public discussion about the name.
The conversation that followed played out on a national stage that had been shifted by the events of twenty twenty, a year of widespread reckoning with the public honors bestowed on figures whose full records had been suppressed or ignored. Communities across the country were reviewing monuments, building names, and institutional legacies. Pensacola joined that process.
The UWF Historic Trust board voted in December of twenty twenty to recommend changing the name. The University of West Florida Board of Trustees voted in March of twenty twenty-one, five to four, to make the change official. The building is now the Pensacola Museum of History.
The vote was close, and the public debate was not mild. Defenders of the original name argued that Wentworth's collecting legacy should outweigh his organizational affiliations. Critics argued that naming a public institution after a Klan leader sent a specific and damaging message to the Black community the institution was supposed to serve.
The museum kept the collection. The name changed. The building on Jefferson Street is still there, still full of Pensacola history, waiting for you to walk in.
