Colored Girls Museum founder vows to fight to continue living in the home that contains the collection

PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — More than five months after The Colored Girls Museum in Germantown received a variance from the city’s zoning board — allowing it to continue operating at the 140-year-old Victorian home it has occupied for more than eight years — the fight is still not over.

In April of 2023, Vashti DuBois, the museum’s founder and executive director, received notice from the Department of Licenses and Inspections of two code violations. First, the museum could not double as a residence for DuBois. Second, the museum shares a wall with the neighboring house, but cultural institutions in residential neighborhoods must be detached.

With support from the community and testimony before the Zoning Board of Adjustment , the city granted DuBois a variance allowing the museum’s collection to remain in the house — but DuBois herself needed to move out.

At a hearing in November, DuBois immediately agreed to stop using the property at 4613 Newhall Street, where she had lived with her husband before he died nearly a decade ago, as her residence.

“Listen, I don’t have to live in the museum. If that’s a sticking point, I won’t live here,” she told KYW Newsradio at the time.

But she has since changed her mind, and now she vows to fight.

“I feel strongly and philosophically that evicting the colored girl from The Colored Girls Museum is a kind of violence,” she said more recently.

“So, it’s not over. Now we’re working on a certificate of occupancy.”

Dubois says the current exhibition, called “ The Intermission ,” is a protest against her being forced to leave her home. She says it also reflects the pause in operations the museum made during the zoning review process — and it adds a special new feature.

“We have installed community curators as stakeholders since the colored girl can no longer live in her home,” she said.

The exhibit is running online, and by appointment only, through 2026.

KYW Newsradio has contacted the Department of Licenses and Inspections for comment.