The following teasor is from an excellent article written by Marisol Bello and published in the February 21, 2012 edition of USA Today.
It was first proposed by black Civil War veterans almost 100 years ago.
Now, five special commissions and two acts of Congress later, shovels and backhoes are set to break ground today (February 22, 2012) on the National Mall in Washington for the National Museum of African American History and Culture. President Obama, the nation’s first black president, will take part.
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.
Its seven levels over more than 323,000 square feet are planned to 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.
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“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.
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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.
