In guilt and glory
Long consigned to the margins when not erased outright, the sweep of experience and achievement of black America has finally found a rightful home in the heart of Washington, D.C. That the National Museum of African American History and Culture, opening Saturday, stands at the threshold of the towering monument honoring first President and slaveholder George Washington embodies the wounds at the heart of our nation’s history whose legacies persist to this day.
The black President in the White House who will ring the opening bell embodies all the possibilities of progress realized and yet to be.
The idea of a national African-American museum itself was originally a dream of black Civil War veterans. As collected and curated by the Smithsonian Institution, its holdings weave so many fibers of the vast fabric that makes up the black American legacy.
That legacy, of course, is part of the broader national story. But in many ways, over many generations, it has been kept apart.
On display is “The Crisis,” the magazine edited by anti-racism activist W.E.B. DuBois. A communion cup from the A.M.E. church in a blackfounded Indiana farming settlement.
A printed dress worn by one of the teens integrating Little Rock Central High School in 1957. A Woolworth’s lunch counter brought in from Greensboro, N.C.
Michael Jackson’s fedora. The fictional Louise Jefferson’s TV dress.
Emmett Till’s glass-topped funeral casket, chosen to allow the world to see his mangled body. Shards of stained glass from the 16th St. Baptist church, bombed in Birmingham.
Enough jerseys and Olympic medals to fill a sports hall of fame.
To be sure, the horrifying tools and artifacts of slavery are now museum pieces, too — the shackles and the ledgers and all the rest of the apparatus that made it possible for man to render other men and women and children property.
It all took time, effort and money, from the ordinary benefactors who took from their bank accounts a few hundred dollars each to Oprah Winfrey, who gave large sums and her talk show set.
In Congress, Georgia Democratic Rep. John Lewis introduced bills year after year. Eventually colleagues came to join him, and in 2003 President George W. Bush signed the bill authorizing the museum.
President Obama Friday saw in the new museum enlightening power to help visitors make sense of televised horrors like those in Tulsa and Charlotte, by reminding them powerfully of possibilities to alter the course of events and prompting fresh reflection: “I understand. I sympathize. I empathize. I can see why folks might feel angry and I want to be part of the solution, as opposed to resisting change.”
The horrors and inspirations of African American history can anchor the present, and chart a better course for the future.