Historic five-and-dime with ties to civil rights to become cultural center

SAN ANTONIO – The San Antonio African American Community Archive and Museum (SAAACAM) is getting ready to start on the first phase of its $100 million project after purchasing the Kress-Grant Building in the heart of downtown on East Houston Street.

“To fully open to the public, we are raising $35 million,” said Deborah Omowale Jarmon, CEO of SAAACAM.

Jarmon said if the Alamo could raise $600 million and counting, and the Witte raised $100 million, “$35 million is small, but we need everyone to come together to make this happen.”

However, she said a total of $50 million would help cover everything else SAAACAM is planning.

“There will be four exhibition galleries, a research library, an auditorium, special events, space for classrooms, and more,” Jarmon said.

To help raise additional revenue, Jarmon said the fifth floor will be for a small boutique hotel, plus there will be rental space on the ground floor.

She said SAAACAM hopes the exhibition spaces will open before the rest of the building in June 2026.

Jarmon said SAAACAM plans to honor the seniors who lived under Jim Crow when they were much younger.

“There was a time when they couldn’t even come in here,” Jarmon said.

But on opening day, “they will be the first to walk in this space and to enjoy what they couldn’t get away as a child,” Jarmon said.

She said Kress was the first department store in San Antonio to desegregate its lunch counter in March 1960.

Jarmon said it happened peacefully after the NAACP and church and community leaders decided they didn’t “want to look like other cities in the South. Let’s come together and figure out how we can open in a way that will honor San Antonio. And that’s what happened.”

A historical representation of the lunch counter, which had been in the basement, will be at the entrance, where visitors can order food prepared by Black chefs.

Jarmon said SAAACAM had outgrown its current space in La Villita but will now have more than 100,000 square feet of room.

“There isn’t an African American museum in Texas this large,” Jarmon said.

She said SAAACAM is researching whether it also could be one of the largest in the South.

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