Posted on 12/04/2002 11:08:43 AM PST by ServesURight
Plan for U.S. Black Museum Gains Speed
By Christina Ling
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Almost a century after an African-American memorial was first proposed for the U.S. capital, a grand vision for a museum encompassing black life in the United States is moving toward realization.
Backed by $2 million in federal funds, a special commission appointed by Congress and President Bush (news - web sites) started work this summer on a feasibility study for a national museum of African-American history and culture.
"I think it goes without saying that African-Americans have been the major backbone in building and developing America into the country that it is today," said Robert Wright, the chairman of the commission.
"Unfortunately ... African-American history, like African-American life in America, was very suppressed. That needs to be told. I think that time has come."
The commission is just the latest in a long line of panels over the past century to study the same issue, with so far no museum to show for their efforts.
Wright, who jokes he has had to go part-time at his job as head of a Virginia-based information technology firm to chair the museum commission, is quick to note that there is still much work to be done before the current deal is sealed.
But the commission's mere existence signals a momentum that advocates say is new to the project.
"It's not a done deal, but I think the sentiment is there to move forward if we can address the issues that have been laid out for us," said Wright.
LONG HISTORY
The museum project, which grew from a 1915 proposal by a group of black Civil War veterans for a national "Negro Memorial" in the capital, came closest to becoming a reality when President Calvin Coolidge in 1929 signed a bill into law authorizing construction.
But according to current commission member Robert Wilkins, a Washington attorney and longtime proponent of such a museum, the Great Depression derailed fund-raising efforts and institutional memory of the legislation was lost. Wilkins said the project surfaced again after the assassination of civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1968, but disagreements over where to put a museum, as well as a lack of funding, eventually scuttled plans.
The Smithsonian has a museum in Washington away from the Mall devoted to African-American history and culture, but a spokeswoman said it is not on the scale of a national museum.
Nevertheless, Georgia Democrat Rep. John Lewis and other lawmakers from both parties and chambers of Congress kept pushing the plan with colleagues, and in 2001 their efforts paid off when lawmakers voted the new commission into being.
SYMBOLIC MALL SITE
Thorniest among the issues that Congress has directed the panel to examine is where to put the museum.
Lawmakers told the commission to research sites on or adjacent to the National Mall, a historic and highly symbolic pedestrian boulevard lined with landmarks such as the Capitol, the Smithsonian museums and the Washington Monument.
A new National Museum of the American Indian is being built on the Mall and is due to open in 2004.
Supporters of the African-American museum have watched the more rapid progress of that museum, which was authorized by Congress in 1989, as well as the opening of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in 1993 with both hope and impatience for their own century-old dream.
As the number of monuments on the Mall has grown over the years, however, concern about overcrowding has grown too, prompting federal and city planning agencies to ban any new projects on the Mall.
But that has not stopped lawmakers from overriding such edicts, and sometimes their own laws, to promote other pet projects such as a World War II memorial and a monument to former Republican President Ronald Reagan (news - web sites) on the Mall.
So far the museum commission has narrowed down the list of possible sites to one off-Mall location and four on the Mall -- all of which officials say were carefully chosen with historic plans for the city in mind and in consultation with planners.
"This is an important philosophical and ideological point," said Wilkins, adding that a museum away from the symbolic heart of the capital would create ugly echoes of the social segregation that still haunts the country.
He said the Mall's no-build zone was created without any consideration of the fact that since 1915 the Mall had been considered the most fitting place for such a museum.
"That history can't be forgotten and is a part of the discussion that needs to take place instead of just discussing whether the Mall is full. We can't discuss that in a vacuum," Wilkins said.
COLLECTIONS STILL UNTAPPED
The museum's content will be perhaps less controversial to determine -- covering the sweep of African-American history from the early days of slavery to emancipation, Jim Crow laws and the Civil Rights movement.
Along the way, the museum will feature the contributions of black Americans to every sphere of public life, including science, music, literature, the arts, sports, architecture, the military and politics.
Far from detracting from the importance or fund-raising ability of major regional African-American museums and university collections, organizers say, the museum could instead become an important resource for them.
Although data on potential collections available for purchase or donation will not be available until the end of the year, the signs are already good that a national museum would prompt donations from previously untapped quarters.
"There are a lot of collections out there that people just haven't given up yet because for one reason or another they don't feel there's been a place that will adequately reflect what that collection would mean," said Wright.
"I think we'll have a lot of people coming out of the woodwork with items and ... stories they want to tell."
Commission member Claudine Brown, who formerly headed a Smithsonian initiative to create a national African-American Museum, said the museum could also follow the example of the city's acclaimed Holocaust Museum, using film, video and other electronic media to tell the story of African-American life.
"We would really be able to teach about African-American history and culture in a very broad way," she said.
THE major backbone? I think not. Perhaps A major backbone. Mostly at the manual labor level. If Wright's statement were true, then America might have developed on a par with say, Africa.
Sorry folks, in spite of what Revrunt Al says, America was NOT built on the backs of slaves.
Sadly, I suspect that the "Whitey Owes Me Wing" will be much more popular and the "Black Conservatives in American History Wing" will NEVER be built.
The African AMerican Museum in downtown Detroit is going broke...less than ten years after it was built.
Oh, well, I guess they're not part of the Grievance Elite...
Needs a little of that "kingy-pingy-thingy."
An African American history museum is wholly justified. The conditiion of blacks in our society is how we measure our progress in terms of living up to our constitutional creed. African American history and the interplay of that history with European immigrants is the key to understanding who we are.
"We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal"....
a.) U.S. Black Museum,
b.) an African-American memorial,
c.) Negro Memorial, and
d.) African-American Museum.
I would suggest that they not chisel the name above the entrance. Who knows what they'll call it 10 years from now?
And when is the NAACP going to change their name?
If you want on (or off) of my black conservative ping list, please let me know via FREEPmail. (And no, you don't have to be black to be on the list!)
Extra warning: this is a high-volume ping list.
Perhaps you need to re-read what I said. I have no problem with the idea of an African American museum. I took issue with the statement that THE major backbone in building and developing America into the country that it is today.
The conditiion of blacks in our society is how we measure our progress in terms of living up to our constitutional creed. African American history and the interplay of that history with European immigrants is the key to understanding who we are
How so? I think you are just bloviating here. I've never heard anybody make those sort of statements before and I don't agree with them. I don't need to know about "African American history and the interplay of that history with European immigrants" to know who I am.
Sorry, the history of blacks in America carries just about as much importance to me or to history as the stories of any immigrant group. They were part of the picture, but far from the central reason that America is the country it has become.
If the statement had been "African-Americans have been A MAJOR INFLUENCE in building and developing America into the country that it is today" I wouldn't have taken issue with it.
"I think it goes without saying that African-Americans have been the major backbone in building and developing America into the country that it is today," said Robert Wright, the chairman of the commission.
Say what? This man is seriously delusional.
By the way, when will ground be broken on the U.S. White Museum?
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In the interest of a smooth process, shouldn't this whole idea be developed in Africa?
It would fit right in with the "University of Timbuktu", flying machines and other "lost" African achievments.
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