2024 Charlotteans of the Year: Terri White

The Charlotte Museum of History’s president and CEO refreshes an overlooked institution

One night in May 2022, Terri White logged onto the Charlotte Museum of History’s website to look for activities to fill her Memorial Day weekend. At the top of the screen was a memo that said the museum was seeking a new president and CEO. She was working for American Tire Distributors, but she’d recently found herself nostalgic for jobs she’d held at museums.

It was late, and she thought she was too groggy to trust what she was seeing on her screen. She refreshed her browser eight times, but the job posting was still there. She applied that night. This past July 4, she celebrated two years at the museum.

“We’ve spent the last two years rebuilding our place in the community, because we’re the second-oldest museum in Charlotte and yet probably the least known,” White says. (It was founded in 1969 but operated informally beginning in 1929; the Mint opened in 1936.) “Before that, we just kind of existed, hoping that, you know, a savior would come along and rescue us. But that’s just not my MO. You’re gonna know I’m here!”

Since White, 41, has been in charge, the museum’s attendance, membership, donations, grant revenue, staff, volunteers, and partnerships with businesses and nonprofits have all risen. White inherited 20 years of debt, but she says the museum is on pace to pay it off by the end of 2025. She’s also worked hard to diversify the museum’s income streams, the groups and time periods it covers, the partnerships it forms, and the variety of exhibitions and events it hosts. “We’re working on being a great museum,” White says, “and also a real economic driver and part of the community.” 

Before White, the museum, on Shamrock Drive in East Charlotte, essentially operated as a showcase for colonial history. It was known almost exclusively for the on-site house of Hezekiah Alexander, a framer of North Carolina’s first Bill of Rights. “But we would be remiss as the Charlotte Museum of History—not the Museum of Colonial History, not the Museum of Hezekiah Alexander—to not cover more than just his perspective,” White says. With the approaching 250th anniversary of the house, the oldest in Mecklenburg County, White wants to look beyond Hezekiah: What was life like for Alexander’s wife, daughters, and the 17 people he enslaved? How did settlements like theirs affect the Catawba and other indigenous tribes? What were the other uses of the house after the Alexanders? (White says the museum staff recently learned that the house was once used as a bootleggers’ hideout.) She believes everyone in Charlotte should be able to find their history in the museum.

So far, programming for 2025-26 includes a MecDec 250th-anniversary exhibition; an expanded and exclusive Carolinas-focused version of a popular immersive Revolutionary War exhibit; a quinceañera exhibit; an exhibit about baseball in the Carolinas; African American and Hispanic heritage festivals; and Queen Charlotte’s Ball and Banquet, dedicated to our namesake queen, with Bridgerton author Julia Quinn as a special guest. White’s also working to build partnerships with local and national organizations that range from Opera Carolina and local chambers of commerce to the Smithsonian. 

Over the summer, the nonprofit museum received an unusual allocation in city funds—$100,000 in the 2025 budget, drawn from accrued interest on federal COVID relief money. White says she requested $650,000, and she’s asked City Council members to add the museum to the list of other arts and cultural institutions, like the Mint and Bechtler museums and Gantt Center, that the city helps fund. The museum’s operating funds, about $1.4 million in the 2024 fiscal year, came mainly from grants, contributions, and membership fees.

White can’t take chances, though, so she’s also working on a capital campaign—the first for the museum since 1999—which she plans to soft-launch in 2026. “We’re going to be a world-class, nationally classed history museum. … I want people to get involved with the museum, not to see us as an ivory tower they’re afraid to touch,” White says, then adds with a grin: “As long as they don’t touch the artifacts.”