ANALYSIS/OPINION:
Sept. 24. Mark the date on your calendar. Tell Siri to remind you. Make travel and hotel plans.
The National Museum of African American History and Culture is set to open its doors on Saturday, Sept. 24, with a week’s worth of events, and there will be more than the same-old, same-old songs, cliches and dances.
One exhibit is a true craftsman’s and history lover’s dream — and a cultural lesson for young people who think all slaves merely sang songs in the cotton, indigo and cane fields. Slaves were highly skilled craftsmen and craftswomen, and so were their children.
This particular inaugural exhibit is a house from Poolesville, Maryland. Built by the Jones family in 1874, it was originally situated in a Montgomery County community named Sugarland, founded in 1871 and so named because its founders — freed black slaves — thought its women were as sweet as sugar.
Sugarland is one of 200-plus black towns and communities that were established during the Reconstruction Era, and most of them were in Oklahoma.
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Here’s another intriguing inaugural exhibit, a special attraction for railroad enthusiasts and curiosity seekers. It’s a 153,900-pound, 44-seat, nine-decades-old railroad passenger car. Donated by the Gulf & Ohio Railways, former Southern Railways No. 1200 was too delicate to be dismantled, so the museum was partially built around it.
Of course, other artifacts in the galleries will include every aspect of America’s history — from art, entertainment and sports, to politics, law and military, to fashion and communications.
In fact, the history of the push to create the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture is an artifact in and of itself. Around the same time Sugarland and other black towns were being established and the Ku Klux Klan and its anti-Catholic, anti-Semitic ilk were reinvigorating their violent ways, black veterans were being slighted during reunions and parades in the nation’s capital and elsewhere.
Enter Republican Herbert Hoover to the White House in 1929, when he appointed renowned educator and humanitarian Mary McLeod Bethune, NAACP co-founder Mary Church Terrell and 10 others to find a building to showcase black achievement. Congress, however, effectively ignored the concept until 2001, when it established a federal study panel and a another Republican president, George W. Bush, signed legislation into law.
So, finally, more than a century after politics and prejudice, black vets are reaping a reward, as is the public at large.
Part of the proof is in the money that’s been coming in, following the $270 million kick-start from the federal government: Actor Denzel Washington and wife Paulette have donated $55 million, including $17 million from a fundraiser held on April 30; Oprah Winfrey, more than $13 million; filmmaker George Lucas and other big names also donated more than $1 million, including actor Samuel L. Jackson.
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One of the largest donations was a $10 million gift from Smithsonian Regent David Rubenstein in January. Co-founder and co-CEO of the Carlyle Group private equity and financial services firm, Mr. Rubenstein has donated more than $44 million to the Smithsonian Institution. He also is loaning two rare and special documents signed by President Abraham Lincoln: the Emancipation Proclamation and the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
Even if you are not African-American, the new National Museum of African American History and Culture is worthy of a look-see.
Come see how your tax dollars are being used. After all, it is occupying the last available space for a museum on your National Mall.
• Deborah Simmons can be reached at dsimmons@washingtontimes.com.
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