27 January 2010
Museum Seeks to Document the African-American Experience
National Museum of African American History and Culture starts new program
Washington — In historian Lonnie Bunch’s eyes, a seemingly mundane family keepsake tucked away in an attic or basement may be a cultural treasure that helps tell the story of the African-American experience.
Bunch, the founding director of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC), is tasked with building a world-class collection of artifacts in time for the museum’s opening in 2015. He wants the museum to tell the story of ordinary people as well as the giants of history. Historical items passed down through families might be suitable for the museum’s collection, he says, but even if they remain at home, the artifacts deserve special care that will safeguard them for future generations.
“Every day, items — family photographs, military uniforms, farm tools, decorative items and wedding dresses — are deteriorating and at risk of being lost,” he said.
In 2008, the NMAAHC launched the “Save Our African American Treasures” program, which travels to U.S. cities and invites people to bring in their heirlooms for evaluation by a team of experts and conservators. Some items end up being donated to the museum, but the program also teaches proper preservation techniques for family mementos so they can be enjoyed by future generations.
“If we don’t act now,” Bunch said, “the tangible evidence of a critical component of American history will be lost.”
More than 150 individuals brought items such as quilts, irons, Bibles and dolls to the first “Treasures” event in Chicago in 2008. One was a rare white Pullman Company porter’s hat, part of the uniform worn by African-American train attendants from the late 1800s to the 1960s. Its white color meant that its wearer had tended to prominent travelers (perhaps even presidents) on a private train car. The hat’s owner donated it to the NMAAHC, along with another rare find: a pin bearing the image of Madam C.J. Walker (1867–1919), the first African-American female self-made millionaire.
“Treasures” events have also been held in Los Angeles, in Washington and in the South Carolina cities of Charleston and St. Helena Island. On February 6, in connection with Black History Month — which is celebrated every February — Bunch and other NMAAHC experts will invite residents of Atlanta to bring their heirlooms to the Auburn Avenue Research Library on African-American Culture and History.
BUILDING A MUSEUM
The NMAAHC, authorized by Congress in 2003, currently has an online presence but is still awaiting its permanent home on the National Mall in Washington. Ghanaian architect Freelon Adjaye and his firm have been chosen to design the building, and Bunch said he hopes President Obama will be present when the museum breaks ground at the building site in 2012. The museum is on track to meet its projected opening deadline of 2015, according to the NMAAHC.
The museum’s inaugural exhibition in 2007, Let Your Motto Be Resistance: African American Portraits, included 100 striking black-and-white photographs tracing U.S. history from the vantage point of people who have suffered discrimination, oppression and injustice. A traveling version is currently in Atlanta.
Speaking on National Public Radio recently, Bunch admitted that creating a museum “is clearly not for the faint of heart.”
The biggest challenge is amassing enough artifacts “to tell a comprehensive story,” he said. “One of the things that’s important for me is to craft a museum that, on the one hand, is a place that helps you remember the African-American experience, remember the names you think you know — the Martin Luther Kings, the Sojourner Truths — but [also tells] those stories that you don’t know: to really understand what it was like to be an enslaved woman or to really understand what it was like for a family to leave Mississippi [and migrate] to the South Side of Chicago in 1917.”
One item the museum has acquired is an old railroad car from the “Jim Crow” era of racial segregation, Bunch said. “And it looks like an old standard 1940s railroad car, until you walk in. And the first half of the car was for white passengers. Beautiful seats, amazing bathrooms for 1940 — and then you walk toward the back and there was a little swinging door that said ‘Colored.’ And when you walked through that door, the back part was much smaller and just had benches.”
Walking through that railroad car can help people — especially younger people — “understand what segregation means,” he said.
Another important object in the museum’s collection is the original casket in which Emmett Till was buried. Till, a 14-year-old African-American boy, was brutally murdered by white men in Mississippi in 1955 after he allegedly whistled at a white woman. Till's mother insisted on an open casket to show the world the brutality of the killing, and the tragedy became a catalyst for the U.S. civil rights movement. Till’s casket was donated by family members to the NMAAHC. (His body had been exhumed in 2004 for an autopsy and was reburied in a new casket.)
Race is “still one of the most difficult dialogues we have” in the United States, Bunch told the Voice of America. While the election of Barack Obama as the nation’s 44th president represents “a profound change, it doesn’t mean the issues of race that divided us are now gone.” People want the museum to “tell the truth” about the history of slavery and discrimination, he said, and they urge him to “have faith that Americans can handle their difficult history.”
Oppression and tragedy cannot be overlooked or minimized, but not everything will have a somber cast. The NMAAHC will explore the many contributions by African Americans to popular culture. It has acquired a trumpet once owned by jazz legend Louis Armstrong, a cape and jumpsuit that belonged to the late soul singer James Brown, and garments from the Black Fashion Museum. Starting in April, the museum will feature a multimedia exhibition on the 75th anniversary of Harlem’s Apollo Theater.
See NMAAHC’s Web site for more information about the museum and its Save Our African American Treasures program, including tips on preserving books, photos and other cultural artifacts.
The museum is also collaborating with the Corporation for Public Broadcasting on StoryCorps Griot, an initiative to preserve the oral histories of African-American families. In addition, it has an online Memory Book where people can share photos and stories.
Also see “Growing Number of Museums Preserving Black History, Culture.”
Photo Gallery: Black Economic Empowerment in America