“Because of its honesty, this museum will spark dialogue, not just about our past but, about our present”, said Skorton, of the Smithsonian Institution.
Advertisement
Ground was broken for the new museum in 2012, on a five-acre tract near the Washington Monument after a decades-long push for an African American museum on the National Mall.
“There were some who said it couldn’t happen, who said ‘you can’t do it, ‘ but we did it”, Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), a driving force behind the museum’s inception, said during Saturday’s opening. “Black and white and Latino and Native American and Asian American – see how our stories are bound together”, he said standing on a stage outside the bronze-colored, latticed museum.
Today, 24 September, during a speech at the opening of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, the president reminded that LGBT history is part of the larger USA past.
“It helps us better understand the lives, yes, of a president, but also the slave. And by knowing this other story, we better understand ourselves and each other”. “African American history is a central part of our glorious American history”. It will return to the church for its 240th anniversary later this year.
Elected in a wave of optimism in 2008, Obama pledged to unify, often repeating that he is not the president of black Americans but of all Americans.
Mamie Till’s decision to show her son’s grotesquely battered and shot body in an open casket that was photographed and shared nationally has always been said to be one important turning point in the mid-century civil rights fight.
Clinton and GOP nominee Donald Trump will participate in their first presidential debate next week.
The highlight of the weekend will be the museum opening Saturday with thousands in attendance in a star-studded ceremony in the morning, including remarks from Obama.
Obama said the $540m (£415m) museum represented a “common journey towards freedom”. “The single thing we chose to remember as history was the unmemorable speech of two powerful men”, said the President.
“We’re not a burden on America or a stain on America or an object of shame and pity for America”. He says no telling of American history will be complete or accurate without acknowledging that. Every session of Congress for 15 years, I introduced a bill to create this national museum.
The president emphasised that a museum alone can not solve the ills of a country still struggling to overcome a dark legacy of slavery and racial prejudice, but said it “provides context for the debate of our times”.
The president visibly shed several tears as he told about his rides on Marine One over the National Mall watching the museum get built and thinking that one day he would visit it with his grandchildren during which he’d “hold a little hand” and “tell them the stories that are enshrined here”.
The Georgia Democrat pushed for years for such a museum.
The same will likely be said for the new Smithsonian, which will tell the story of slavery in a ground-level, personal way, officials said, instead of through numbers, dates and a bird’s-eye view of the past.
The Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture officially opens to the public on Saturday.
In 2003, Bush signed the law that allowed construction of the museum to move forward.
Desiree Boykin, who works for the United Negro College Fund, brought her mom to the opening ceremony.
He relishes the opportunity for the museum to be a “convener” and to facilitate conversation about everything from the historic civil rights movement to Black Lives Matter.
The new museum is located only steps away from the White House and the Washington Monument, which was dedicated to a slaveholder president, George Washington.
Advertisement
“My hope is that this complicated, difficult, sometimes harrowing but I believe ultimately triumphant story will help us talk to each other”.
