USA TODAY International Edition
BLACK HISTORY MUSEUM
Smithsonian museum aims to link African-American past and present
In the underbelly of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture looms an ominous, 21- foot- tall guard tower erected in the 1940s to surveil the yard at Angola Prison, also known as the Louisiana State Penitentiary. A gift from one of the most notorious maximum- security prisons in the nation, the tower is a haunting reminder of a post- Civil War campaign to incarcerate African- Americans on spurious charges.
“One of the most important stories we wanted to tell was the impact of the criminal justice system on America,” director Lonnie G. Bunch III said during Monday’s media preview of the Smithsonian’s newest museum.
“Angola began as a slave plantation and evolved into a penal system. This ( exhibit) centers on the creation of the convict lease system where, after slavery, in order to control African- Americans, they were arrested on bogus charges. They were then leased out to companies, to the state, to do work. So, even though they were free, it was still like slavery.”
Bunch said aspects of the present criminal justice system reference that history. His task is to make the connection clear when the museum opens to the public on Sept. 24. President Obama will keynote the grand opening ceremonies, 13 years after President George W. Bush signed legislation establishing the museum, which tells the history of the United States through the eyes of African Americans.
“By weaving in contemporary issues, our goal is to help the public realize that this is not a place about yesterday,” Bunch said. “It’s about yesterday, today and tomorrow.”
The contemporary 400,000square- foot structure, just across the street from the Washington Monument, features a bronzepainted aluminum lattice exteri- or that harks back to ironwork made by slaves in New Orleans and Charleston, S. C.
To further close the loop between past and present, Bunch said, the museum will juxtapose traditional exhibitions with 134 media pieces that include everything from slave narratives to accounts from Black Lives Matter activists who protested policeinvolved shootings in Ferguson, Mo., and Baltimore.
According to Kinshasha Holman Conwill, the museum’s deputy director, those media pieces are part of a collection of roughly 40,000 objects, 4,000 of which will live in the museum. As of Monday, about 40% of the objects were installed.
Highlights include a 80-pluston segregation- era Southern Railway car, so massive that the museum had to be built around it. A Tuskegee Airmen trainer plane, still protected in plastic, dangles over a ramp. Secret treasures such as Marian Anderson’s 1939 Lincoln Memorial concert outfit and August Wilson’s piano from Fences lurk in surprise nooks.
Throughout the building, there are “lenses,” windows from which visitors can see the White House, the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial, the Lincoln Memorial, the National Archives building, the Capitol, the Thomas Jefferson Memorial, and the National Mall, a place Bunch says “is sacred to African Americans.”
Securing the space was a major win but Conwill says they haven’t declared victory yet, at least not financially. The $ 540 million construction cost was covered by Congress and donors, but “our goal now is to build an endowment and build in major programming costs.”
That fund will help ready features such as the museum’s Oprah Winfrey Theater, intended to be used for conferences, concerts, film festivals, and social justice programs.
“We’re not giving simple answers to complex questions. Our goal is to raise issues,” Bunch said. “We expect there will be difficult moments. We expect there will be controversy. But what we also expect more than anything else is learning and understanding and maybe a little reconciliation.”
“This is not a place about yesterday. It’s about yesterday, today and tomorrow.” Lonnie Bunch III, museum director