A press release from the Slavery Museum in my home town.
When the Slavery Museum was pitched to the city, it was supposedly going to bring people from the other side of the planet. Oh, it was going to be SO popular.
They have downsized the staff twice, and several times come to the taxpayer to get more money. The majority of the people visiting are schoolkids who are BROUGHT to the museum to be "educated", not people who are going for fun.
My city council has spent decades bickering like spoiled children about our Riverfront, which was going to be "really something." What did we get? We gave tax money to the Bengals (who, honest to God, play TEN WHOLE GAMES in our stadium EVERY YEAR!) We helped the rich fat cats who own the Reds with our tax dollars. And we continue to throw money at this. Kentucky has a fabulously successful riverfront, filled with fun things people want to do...movies, shops, restaurants. We have two partially filled sports venues, and the Slavery Museum.
In fact, pursuing "the Banks Project" or our side of the river, the city had planned out shops and malls on our side. Last year it developed that a piece of land GIVEN to the museum for a dollar as a location for "future expansion" was better spent on a million dollar restaurant, the museum tried to sell it back to the city...for a million dollars. When talk radio made them look like a bunch of ungrateful children, they finally relented and returned it to the city.
Shortly after that, the Museum's new reason for their financial crisis was that the million dollar entranceway into their subsidized museum was facing the wrong way...and the thing that would REALLY make them popular was if the city would give them a million dollars to move it to the other side of the building.
We have a fabulously successful Children's Museum linked with a valuable Natural History Museum where I live, and even though thousands upon thousands of people intentionally bring there kids there for fun, we still subsidize part of it with taxes. If these popular attractions require funding, how did we ever get sold on the idea that this museum, with it's limited White Guilt appeal was going to stand on it's own?
This is what the museum is all about. Wouldn't you rather be told that "being able to climb into a box like the one he used allows visitors to share his expectations of a new life"? Why in the world would I chose to go to "the desperation museum"?
Since it was still being escavated, the area was surrounded by glass. Very cool.
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Thanks nickcarraway. |
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Just curious if that was mentioned.
My husbands family, Quakers on the Pennsylvania/Maryland border, were part of the underground railroad that risked their lives to save the lives of slaves.