On a stone where day after day, for years, men and women were torn from their spouse or their child, shackled, and bound, and bought, and sold, and bid like cattle, on a stone worn down by the tragedy of over 1,000 bare feet.
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He told the audience of dignitaries, celebrities and the general public that the exhibitions would “tell a story of America that hasn’t always taken a front seat” and “help to tell a richer and fuller story of who we are”.
In many ways, Saturday marked the end of a journey that stretched more than a century.
“I was just overwhelmed”, Pastor Tyler Millner said.
Museum officials say the new Smithsonian facility will chronicle the complex relationship between the USA and a people it once enslaved, and tell the story of those who worked to make the necessary changes to bring the country to where it is today.
Obama opens new African American Museum amid national racial strife was posted in World of TheNews International – https://www.thenews.com.pk on September 25, 2016 and was last updated on September 25, 2016.
“African Americans have given so much to our nation and sacrificed so much for this nation”, said Trump. And most importantly, see each other. “I think that’s why it’s so many killings”.
It’s a project that took a long time to become reality. And they were even cheerful enough to take the flawless selfie. The idea came up several times over the next 90 years, with no real progress made.
Former president George W. Bush, who spoke at the event, signed the law authorising the construction in 2003. Obama hoped the museum might “help a white visitor understand the pain and anger of demonstrators in places like Ferguson and Charlotte”.
“The story that is told here doesn’t just belong to black Americans, it belongs to all Americans”, President Obama said from the covered doorway. “By understanding this story, it binds us together and reaffirms we are all Americans”.
Bunch added, “If we’ve done our job right, I trust the museum will be [a] place for all Americans to ponder, reflect, learn, rejoice, collaborate and, ultimately, draw sustenance and inspiration from the lessons of history to make America better”.
“A great nation does not hide its history”, Bush said. “It faces its flaws and corrects them”.
The 400,000-square-foot museum is situated on five acres on Constitution Avenue adjacent to the Washington Monument.
Highlights include the dress Rosa Parks was sewing before she was arrested for refusing to give up her seat on a segregated bus, abolitionist Harriet Tubman’s hymn book, a $600 bill of sale for a teenage girl called Polly, and the coffin of Emmett Till, a teenager whose brutal murder in MS in 1955 mobilised the Civil Rights Movement.
Henry County resident Thomas Brookshaw came to the ceremony with his cousin David.
Millions of donors, both known and unknown, helped fund the museum. “And the sound of this bell will be echoed by others in houses of worship and town squares all across this country – an echo of the ringing bells that signaled Emancipation more than a century and a half ago; the sound, and the anthem, of American freedom”.
“People fight what they don’t know. When you’re scared, you make bad decisions”.
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The latest race protests have engulfed two U.S. cities, leading the governor of the state of North Carolina to declare a state of emergency in the city of Charlotte.
