Obama, Laura Bush break ground for African American museum
President Obama and former first lady Laura Bush joined Wednesday in celebrating the start of construction for the National Museum of African American History and Culture with groundbreaking ceremonies on the National Mall.
The $500 million museum, created by an act of Congress in 2003, will have the task of chronicling more than 200 years of black life in the United States.
It was first proposed by black Civil War veterans almost 100 years ago and took five special commissions and two acts of Congress later to make it a reality. Obama, the nation's first black president, was joined by first lady Michelle Obama and other dignitaries.
"This day has been a long time coming," the president said. "The time will come when few people will remember drinking from a colored water fountain or boarding a segregated bus … it will be a monument for all time, it will do more than simply keep those memories alive."
Obama said that "moments like this" made him think about his daughters, Sasha and Malia, "and what I want for them to take away."
"I want them to see how ordinary Americans can do extraordinary things … how men and women just like them have the courage to right a wrong," he said. "I want them to appreciate this museum not just as a record of tragedy but as a celebration of life."
Bush, who is a member of the advisory council for the new museum, said it "will pay tribute to the many lives known and unknown that so immeasurably enriched our nation.".
The new museum will include seven levels over more than 323,000 square feet and provide a sweeping history that confronts racial oppression and highlights the achievements of the famous and the everyday life of ordinary people. Its bronze and glass facade, known as the Corona, represents traditional African architecture.
For nine years, the museum's staff has worked to build the new Smithsonian museum from scratch, finding financial donors, scouring the nation for historical artifacts and planning the museum's exhibits.
"This building will remind us that there are few things as powerful as a people, as a nation steeped in its history and there is nothing nobler than honoring all of our ancestors by remembering the full, rich and diverse history of America," museum director Lonnie Bunch said Wednesday.
Bunch stressed the goal is to "humanize these big stories: slavery, migration, the civil rights movement."
The museum will focus on three areas — history, culture and community — through the stories of individual people and families.
It will display medals and photos of black World War I troops donated by relatives to tell a story of patriotism, heroics and racism.
One of its prized items is an airplane used to train the famed Tuskegee Airmen, black fighter pilots who fought in World War II. The plane was donated last year by an active-duty Air Force captain who had bought the plane as a wreck, restored it and later learned of its history.
Given the complexities of race in the United States, the museum has the weight of history on its back, say those who worked to bring the museum to fruition.
"It's important for the museum to get it right," says Rep. John Lewis, a Georgia Democrat who in 2003 introduced the legislation that created the museum. "The museum must tell the full story, the complete story. The ugly, the good, the bad and the beauty."
When it is completed in 2015, the museum will do just that, Bunch says. As a national institution, he says, the museum will not be a black museum for black people.
Civil Rights Movement
It will tell America's story through a black lens, he says, starting with blacks who worked as servants or slaves in colonial times straight through to the election of the country's first black president.
The museum's groundbreaking arrives at a time when the nation has made strides in race relations and African Americans are engaged in every part of civic life.
"Because of the racial history of this country, the mere existence of this museum is a significant development," says Ekwueme Michael Thelwell, professor emeritus and founder of the Department of Afro-American Studies at the University of Massachusetts- Amherst. "It says a great deal about the cultural evolution of the country."
For too long, Thelwell says, the black presence and its contribution have been "deleted from the national record."
"It seriously distorted the nation's history and the nation's sense of self," he says, adding that the creation of the museum goes a long way toward correcting that historical record.
A treasure hunt
To tell the story of America's progress through the eyes of African Americans, museum workers have gone on a treasure hunt across the nation.
They already have collected 20,000 items and are searching for at least 15,000 more, Bunch says. The museum has acquired a dress that curators believe belonged to a female slave in the 19th century, but slave garments remain an elusive artifact.
The historical trove includes a slave cabin, shackles worn by slaves brought from Africa and personal items belonging to abolitionist Harriet Tubman. The museum will house the early version of dog tags owned by a black Civil War soldier and shards of glass from a 1963 church bombing that killed four girls in Alabama. The bombing was a turning point in the civil rights movement that helped lead to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Bunch likes to say that collecting artifacts and trying to build the museum's exhibits without a permanent home for them is like "going through a cruise in uncharted waters at the same time that you are building the ship."
The museum has bought items from collectors, received donations from families and found objects through their version of Antiques Road Show. Curators travel the country, putting out the word before they arrive that they're looking for artifacts. Instead of putting a price tag on antiques as the popular TV show does, the curators examine heirlooms for their historical value.
Philadelphia collector and historian Charles Blockson, 78, donated 39 items that belonged to Tubman, including her hymn book and a lace shawl given to her by England's Queen Victoria in about 1897. They were left to him when a relative of Tubman died.
"I kept the items under my bed for a short time, and then it came to me that the items were perfect for the new museum," Blockson says. "This museum is special. It represents the struggles of our ancestors … The items had to go to the museum. There was nowhere else they could go."
A century-long struggle
A museum to showcase the role of black people in American history was a long time in coming.
The call for a national museum for blacks in the nation's capital came in 1915 from a group of black Civil War veterans and prominent business and religious leaders.
From 1916 to 1929, black leaders, including pioneering educator Mary McLeod Bethune, worked to get bills introduced in Congress to authorize the construction of memorial building, says federal district Judge Robert Wilkins, 48, an advocate for the museum.
They faced white Southern legislators who argued that blacks had contributed nothing to the USA to deserve a memorial, says Wilkins, who has written a study of the museum's history.
Despite the objections, legislation passed the House and Senate in 1929 authorizing a memorial building that would serve as a tribute to black achievement in the USA. However, the government did not fund it, and by the time the country was fighting in World War II, the authorization was forgotten.
The civil rights movement of the 1960s brought more federal efforts to establish a national museum, including a commission and more legislation. At the time, leaders of the Smithsonian Institution did not want to oversee a separate museum for African American history, preferring instead to incorporate it into their existing museums.
There was no progress in the 1970s. In 1988, Lewis and fellow congressman Mickey Leland, a Democrat from Texas, introduced bills that simply died. Every year after that, Lewis introduced a bill to establish the museum.
His legislation went nowhere until 2003, when a bipartisan effort passed both chambers to become law. The change came when more Republicans, including President George W. Bush, threw their weight behind it.
"This is very moving for me," says Lewis, who was beaten by angry mobs and arrested by police when he demonstrated against segregation in the South.
"This is a significant step on a very long road," he says. "The museum says something about where we are and how far we've come."
The 2003 law stipulated that Congress will pay half the $500 million cost of building the museum. Museum officials asked for $125 million of that this year, but Congress approved $75 million.
Rep. Bob Brady, a Democrat from Pennsylvania, wants Congress to provide more funding this year and every year until it is built.
"We're still short," Brady says. "We made a promise. They've waited long enough."
So far, the museum has raised $100 million in cash and commitments from corporations, foundations and individuals.
"We have 22,000 members in every state in the U.S., and we don't even have a building," says Delphia York Duckens, the museum's associate director for external affairs. The average member donation is $66. She says donors are excited by what the museum represents.
'The maintenance of history'
Mark and Brenda Moore, of suburban Washington, D.C., donated $1 million after hearing Bunch and his staff talk about the museum as a repository for black history.
"We were enamored by the stories," says Brenda Moore, 51, a retired nurse. "Knowing that we are involved from the beginning is so exciting."
"It's about the maintenance of history," says Mark Moore, 50, the chief financial officer of a tech company.
The museum has even found support among toddlers. Tracey Mina, 46, the owner of a preschool in Brooklyn, got her young charges involved by encouraging them to collect change from their families. The 2-, 3- and 4-year-olds raised $650.
The museum will help teach children who they are and where they come from, Mina says.
"It tells them, 'You have value,' " she says.
At 99, Mae Reeves, of Philadelphia, said she believes in the importance of sharing history with younger generations. Hers will be one of the stories told by the museum.
Reeves made hats, and in 1940 she became one of the city's first black business women when she opened Mae's Millinery Shop.
She built a diverse clientele that included women from some of the city's wealthiest and most well-known families.
Her shop in West Philadelphia had remained untouched since she retired in 2003 and moved to St. Francis Country House, a nursing home in suburban Philadelphia.
The museum learned of Reeves' hat shop when her daughter, Donna Limerick, mentioned it to a friend who works for the museum. The family donated the items in the shop, down to the red settee and fitting table where the women tried on their hats, so the museum could recreate the shop as an exhibit.
Reeves' collection highlights black artistry, says Paul Gardullo, one of the museum's curators. Her experience tells the story of black business women. The exhibit will be part of a larger one that will look at the diversity of black life in various cities, Gardullo says.
"It is important for the United States of America to have a museum like this … to let the world know who we are, what we did and where we are going," Reeves says.
Some have even higher hopes for the museum and see it as one of the many stepping stones on this nation's long path to racial healing.
"This museum can have a cleansing effect on the psyche of Americans," Lewis says. "There's still a lot of pain in America, and this will lead to reconciliation."
Contributing: Lindsay Powers in Washington, D.C.