ENTERTAINMENT

Sneak peek of new museum shows rich black history

National Museum of African American History and Culture will take visitors through slavery to Obama’s election, the arts, music and sports

Jesse J. Holland
Associated Press
This 1965 Detroit News photo of Berry Gordy Jr. standing outside of Hitsville USA on West Grand Boulevard in Detroit will be in a permanent exhibit in the new Smithsonian National Museum of African American of History and Culture.
  • Slavery exhibits are in rooms with small cramped walls to simulate slave ships
  • 1965 Detroit News photo of Berry Gordy Jr. at Motown headquarters will be in a permanent exhibit
  • 90-year-old, 44-seat Southern Railway car will help explain Jim Crow laws in the South
  • Museum’s bronze exterior is latticework based on historic ironwork created by slaves and freedmen

Washington – Lonnie Bunch leans forward to peer inside a slave cabin from Edisto Island, South Carolina. The dark and cramped interior defies his attempts to showcase the small living space its occupants subsisted on.

Bunch flips on the flashlight on a borrowed smartphone, illuminating for his guests the craftsmanship, the hard work and the love that the cabin’s former occupants put into what little they had.

The unification of the old and the new, and the use of modern techniques to explain the historical past — that’s what the National Museum of African American History and Culture and Bunch, its founding director, are striving for when the newest Smithsonian museum opens on the National Mall this month. President Barack Obama will help dedicate the museum on Sept. 24.

Proud of the striking, dark brown angular museum, Bunch sees its goal as helping all Americans understand and appreciate the rich cultural history of African Americans, and to shine a light on the contributions and achievements of blacks to what the United States has become.

“This is an opportunity to take an amazing culture, and understand what it means to be an American through this lens,” said Bunch, as he toured observers around a special sneak peek inside the building.

Museum Director Lonnie Bunch stands in-front of one of the engraved walls of the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, during a media preview tour. The museum's grand opening will be on Sept. 24.

The museum is designed to take visitors through African-American history in the United States from slavery, on the lower level, to a reproduction of Oprah Winfrey’s television set upstairs and artifacts from Obama’s first presidential campaign. The slavery exhibits are in rooms with small cramped walls to simulate slave ships. Also, there are pieces of an actual slave ship, the São José-Paquete de Africa, which wrecked off the coast of South Africa while carrying more than 400 enslaved people from Mozambique.

The slave cabin, from the Point of Pines Plantation on Edisto Island, is one of the largest exhibits and was dismantled and reconstructed piece by piece inside the new museum. While the names of the slaves who lived inside the cabin are unknown, Bunch said the exhibit is a good way to help humanize the people who lived through slavery and to help explore the meaning of their lives.

“What’s important about this is that while slavery was a system that controlled people, it was also a system where people built homes and families and tried to sort of craft a life as best they could,” he said.

Interior construction is nearly done, Bunch said, as he led a group of journalists around wires and exhibits still under construction: Parliament Funkadelic’s Mothership is completely covered, although its distinctive shape is instantly recognizable; a Maya Angelou quote placard “I am the dream and the hope of the slave” sits on a table waiting to be affixed to a wall along with quotes from Obama, Nikki Giovanni and Black Lives Matter founder Alicia Garza; and the playbill announcing Ira Aldridge as the first black man to play Shakespeare’s Othello in 1857 in England is hidden behind brown paper on the wall to keep it safe.

Construction on the distinctive looking building is done, Bunch said, and about 40 percent of the exhibits are already inside.

Some of the artifacts are so big the museum had to be built around them: a 90-year-old, 44-seat Southern Railway car that will help explain Jim Crow laws in the South, and 20-foot-plus guard tower from the Louisiana State Penitentiary prison called “Angola” after the plantation that once stood in its stead, to explore the use of policing and laws down South to help keep newly freed blacks in bondage.

Members of the media tour the Smithsonians National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington.. The museum is scheduled to open on Seot. 24,

But history can be seen even from the shape of the museum, Bunch said. The bronze exterior of the building is actually a latticework based on historic ironwork created by African-American slaves and freedmen in the South, which fits into their goal of emphasizing the hidden history of African Americans, Bunch said.

Our “goal was to craft a building that would help us remember the rich history of the African-American, so if you look at the building it has wonderful angles that are shaped both by West African material and women whose hands were at prayer at exactly that angle,” Bunch said.

But history won’t be static inside the museum, Bunch said.

For example, in the comedy exhibit right alongside quotes from famous black comedians such as Richard Pryor and Redd Foxx is a joke by Bill Cosby, the first African American to star in a dramatic show on network television. Cosby faces allegations that he drugged and molested dozens of women over five decades, and the 78-year-old comedian has been spending millions in an aggressive bid to stay out of prison, salvage his reputation and avoid legal judgments that could threaten his fortune.

When questioned about the appropriateness of including Cosby, Bunch said the museum will “tell the story of what Bill Cosby was, what his impact was and ... the fact that his legacy is now being questioned. That’s it.”

The museum will not stop collecting and curating items, Bunch said. Included in the museum will be a 1965 Detroit News photo of Berry Gordy Jr. standing outside of Motown headquarters on West Grand Boulevard in Detroit. The picture will be included in a permanent exhibit.

The Oprah Winfrey Theater inside the building will host conferences on race and other issues, Bunch said.

Michael Jordan has given a $5 million gift to the museum, which will now name its historical sports “Game Changers” section the Michael Jordan Hall.

An exhibit depicting the presidency and the life of President Barack Obama and his family is seen during a media preview tour at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington.

“African-American history did not stop with President Barack Obama’s election, and so we won’t stop there either,” Bunch said. “There will be plenty for us to talk about in the future, and we’re looking forward to helping Americans understand the contributions of African-Americans to the rich tapestry of our culture.”