A former Ohio History Connection director is concerned about the future of the National Afro-American Museum and Cultural Center in Wilberforce after she, along with the museum’s other managers, were among 30 employees laid off in October, along with three other employees who had their hours cut.
Jerolyn Barbee, who worked for 17 years for the private, non-profit history center and had been assistant director of the Afro-American Museum since 2015, said she is worried about the state of programming at the museum, which is located at Central State University.
“I know that the budget situation is tenuous, but I also believe that OHC’s dedication to Black history obviously has waned because you don't really have anybody running the ship,” Barbee said. “Basically, you’re left with a whole bunch of people who basically were, I've called them the worker bees, the people who did the work, but without any management, they didn't really know what to do, and there really was no plan. And it was very devastating to the rest of the staff, as you go from 10 people to five people.”
Barbee said among those in management let go from the museum were herself, the executive director, the manager of collections and the curatorial department manager. One more non-management employee was also let go.
“We had already started to increase the museum's visitation as well as school group business,” Barbee said. “We were having a robust exhibit program and programming, so we were working toward goals, and all of a sudden everything is yanked out from under us.”
Currently, the Ohio History Connection employs about 200 people around the state, down from around 235 people in fiscal year 2025, said Neil Thompson, Marketing Department Manager for the center.
The restructuring affected all departments equally, Thompson said, and operating hours at the Ohio History Center and the other sites have not been affected.
Megan Wood, executive director and CEO of the Ohio History Connection, said the workforce reduction was because costs were outpacing revenues. For fiscal years 2026 and 2027, the organization had asked for more than $30 million from the state to support its historic sites operation. But the organization received a total of about $17 million for those two fiscal years. About 60-70% of the organization’s funding comes from the state.
“What our trend had been in the past is just to keep on going,” Wood said. “But we were sort of at a breaking point. We couldn't just keep going.”
The Ohio History Connection began restructuring the organization at its June board meeting, but presented the plan for layoffs at the August board meeting, Wood said. Staff were told of the reductions in late September.
Barbee said while she was not expecting sprawling layoffs, she and the management team at the Afro-American Museum sensed a change was coming when the museum had its status reduced from a division to a site in September of last year.
Since the museum opened its doors in 1988, it has operated as a division, Barbee said. Division managers have a place on the Ohio History Connection executive team and have a larger input in decision making than a site manager would, she said.
“We didn't really know what was going on, and all of a sudden it was like, we're going to restructure, no longer be a division,” Barbee said. “And that was a gut punch.”
Wood said the change in designation just means the Afro-American Museum is “a site like all [the OHC’s] other sites,” and a site superintendent will be hired.
“We're going to be continuing to look at how we treat African-American history and the organization writ large, because we have other sites, like Poindexter Village is coming on board,” Wood said, referring to the former public housing site in Columbus. “We have the Paul Lawrence Dunbar site [in Dayton], but also African-American history is in every single site that we have. So that is an ongoing journey for the organization. Sort of the internal designation between division and site doesn't really make that much of a difference, in services.”
Barbee said what hurt her and other staff members the most was what she described as a lack of transparency about the restructuring.
“They're not really willing to explain, not only not to the staff, but to our donors, our supporters, what has gone on, and nobody really knows, and it's been, I feel like, kind of irresponsible,” Barbee said.
Additionally, Barbee and her team were disappointed by a lack of a transition plan, she said.
Wood said she doesn’t know if there's a way that people would feel better about being laid off even if a transition plan was in place.
“I would say that we were focused on months of trying to make really difficult decisions on what we were gonna do as an organization,” Wood said. “And I don't know of a place that has ever had a transition into layoffs that employees have reported being happy about. Do I wish that we could have done it and everyone would feel great? Yeah, sure, absolutely. But, I think that we had an urgency around some financial issues that we have to address. And we just kept trying to move through it with the best that we could in tough circumstances.”
After not receiving the funds that would allow the Ohio History Connection to operate its nearly 60 historic sites and museums as it had been doing, Wood and the organization's board made a decision — reorganize and reduce staffing.
“It was painful,” Wood said. “It was not something anybody wants to do. But it is where we are right now. And then as we look into the future, we're not necessarily saying, ‘oh, we believe that the next state budget will have more money.’ We can't really project that as our future. So we had to be realistic in making decisions for the present.”
Wood is not alone. In just the past few weeks, the Center of Science and Industry and the Museum of Fine Arts Boston announced layoffs due to precarious financial circumstances. The Ohio History Connection’s layoffs preceded both COSI and Boston MFA’s.
Besides these October layoffs, the Ohio History Connection in May laid off 12 historic preservation employees after already-appropriated federal funds were withheld by the Trump administration. Wood said those funds have since been released and the organization was able to bring back some of the lost positions.
To fight funding constraints and continue keeping the organization afloat, Wood said the Ohio History Connection is looking toward fundraising, revenues and grants.
“But we're not alone in that,” Wood said. “Every other cultural institution is doing the same thing. And right now, social service organizations are in a tight spot. So many of our partners that fund philanthropy are also prioritizing, which they should be, social service organizations. So, we are also trying to be as efficient as possible, but we haven't reduced any hours. We're just looking at doing things differently.”