I’ll be honest, I am not a very patriotic person.
I will not agree nor disagree with anyone who calls the United States of America the “greatest country in the world.”
The only Star Bangled Banner I’ll probably ever recite again is that of Whitney Houston’s rendition in 199, in reverence of her perfomrnsce more than anything
If I was gifted an American Flag, I would probably find the most respectable place possible to fold it up and store it away.
However, I understand there are great things about this country. I’m thankful for those who risk their lives and livelihoods for it. And, truth be told, I don’t have much interest in even visiting another country, much less living somewhere else.
But, one thing about this place that I can’t shake a fascination of, is the country’s need to remember its history in arrogantly elaborate ways.
I’ve always had an interest in the rhetoric of public places, so much so that I’m taking a college course of the very same name. America’s skyscrapers, statues, monuments, stadiums, and what they all mean historically and rhetorically never cease to catch my attention. To this day, I can’t travel to my family’s origin state of South Carolina without reverently admiring the skyline of Charlotte, North Carolina as I travel Interstate-85.
Hence, spells my love for visiting Washington, DC. Since I first visited on a fifth grade field trip, the nation’s capital has an unparalleled lineup of breathtaking sites that are as riddled with history as they are mesmerizing.
When I visited for a second time, during a trip in my senior year of high school, I was able to read the sites a bit differently.
In the near decade that separated my first and second visits, I acquired a deeper knowledge of what and who these buildings were erected for, an understanding of the names behind the stone faces and the chiseled speech excerpts – and a clearer identity of who I was as a Black man and how these sites and the people they deified related to that.
To stand in the shadow of Abraham Lincoln’s grand temple, looking up a ridiculously steep staircase to where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. etched his dream in eternal lore in August 1963, to strain my neck and visually scale George Washington’s gigantic obelisk, noticing the break in complexion of its bricks from a Civil War-induced intermission during its construction, how do I reconcile my history to all of this?
Off to the side of the Washington Monument sits the National Museum of African American History and Culture.
I was in my first year of high school when I learned that this place was being built, and when it opened in 2016, sandwiched between a near decade of unearthed racial unrest that would culminate in the country-wide pseudo-reckoning that was the summer of 2020, it was of the hottest tickets around. It was a nice thing to know existed but unless you were a high school class, a church youth group, or old enough to remember a lot of the stuff in there, it wasn’t an imminent task to make that treacherous drive into DC, where you are liable to spend more time in traffic than in the museum itself.
Nonetheless, the museum, and it's convenient yet peculiar place on the edge of the National Mall, never left my Black Landmark To-Do list (you know, along with Rucker Park in New York, Magic City in Atlanta, and O-Block in Chicago).
So when I found that the usually sold out tickets were available and free for a random Tuesday, I secured as many as I could.
As much as I thought there was to know about the African American experience and the historical context that accompanies it, nothing could prepare me for the sheer volume of knowledge and research it took to put this entire place together.
It only took me walking through the first level, which is underneath the floor that you enter into, for about three minutes to realize that this place is an ode not only to the history of a nation, but to a specific culture, that spans mediums, religions, languages, and centuries.
The first level, largely dealing with the painfully deep history of life in Africa, Euorpean colonization, and the institution of slavery in America, is by far the museum’s most expansive. In dark walkways, true stories of Black royalty are mercifully juxtaposed with nightmares of the Middle Passage. European countries are credited with unthinkable numbers of Africans they transported in the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries, like banners hanging in a sports arena’s rafters. Portugal, surprisingly, took the cake for the highest number, a figure I thank God I can’t remember.
Also, lesser known revolutionaries and visionaries like Toussaint Louverture and Benjamin Banneker have statues of their Black bodies donning beautiful and distinguished long jackets and collared shirts that many may only reserve for memories of Alexander Hamilton and Benjamin Franklin. . This level masterfully brings the crippling plight of my ancestors' physical bodies and mental psyches face to face with the intestinal power and enduring intellectual perseverance that propelled our people to where I stood at that moment, surrounded and uplifted by their all-too-well-earned triumphs.
The second level, covering the century and a half after the Civil War and Emancipation, brought me to a more well-learned history that I didn’t need an epiphany to recognize. The Tuskegee Airmen, the Black Panther Party, and the Civil Rights movement were all cleverly presented with the music, television shows, and cultural initiatives that underpinned them. In this brighter-lit level, James Brown’s “Say It Loud (I’m Black and I’m Proud)” soundly fragranted the fittingly orange walls and doors as the stories of the latter half-century of the 1900’s took Black people from the nation’s foot stool to the legs that moved the American experience forward.
One stanchion, highlighting the great Black sitcoms from the 70’s, kept me for a while. Black and white photos of the casts of Sanford and Son and The Jeffersons were topped with a wonderful, fully-colored display of the fictional James Evans (John Amos) embracing his wife, Florida (Esther Rolle) on the set of Good Times, a show that’s theme song is involuntarily burned into my subconscious from watching it so much with my family at dinner time.
While leaving this level, a vast canvas, about half the size of a movie theater screen bids you adew as you travel up a large ramp; a photo taken from the Capitol Building at Barack Obama’s Inauguration in 2009 shows the countless attendees that witnessed the history in person that I even remember watching on TV as a seven year old. I took a moment or two before I continued on.
The third level highlighted the contributions of Black people in the military as well as Black organizations like the Prince Hall Masons, a fraternal group that my father has been a part of for as long as I can remember: rooted in brotherhood, community service, and Black advancement. One thing that the museum succeeded in doing was telling the story of African Americans in the United States without demonizing and separating us from the country that we’ve done a lot for and continue to do a lot for. Including tributes to the Black military members who were given Medals of Honor and the stories of some of the many who lost their lives in the Service.
On the same level, tributes to the collosal influence of Black people on American sports are of the most elaborate and detailed in the building. This section and the part concerning community efforts are connected by the enduring legacy of Muhammad Ali. In probably the single most personal exhibit for one individual in the museum, Ali’s athletic, political, and religious histories are all thoroughly presented. The decades of Black excellence in the sports world were documented in several short films including remarks from sports journalists that I've seen on ESPN for years. Statues for the Williams sisters, Jackie Robinson and the 200-meter victor’s podium at the 1968 Olympics featuring Tommie Smith and John Carlos’s silent protests guard the opening to the sports exhibit underneath a video board depicting countless Black sports legends.
Three quick observations:
Derek Jeter is indeed Black.
No sign of Colin Kaepernick.
Lebron James is highlighted markedly more than Michael Jordan through this exhibit as well as the entirety of the Museum (He donated a lot of money to the place, but still, interesting).
In the highest and last level, devoted to the bottomless effect and creation of American arts and culture on behalf of Black people, the National Museum of African American History and Culture screams the praises of the most famous and lesser-known freaks and savants that color the illustrious past of Black music, theatre, film, dance, literature, art and even language. One of my favorite social media personalities, comedian Kevin Fredericks, was even included in an exhibit video explaining the intricacies of AAVE (African American Vernacular English), specifically the colloquial abbreviation of the warning “better not’.
A lot is made of the humor behind the lifestyles of Black Americans and how similar our upbringings are regardless of region, social class, or skin complexion. I remember memes years ago about the pot of grease left on the back eye of the stove, Black mothers threatening children who enter and exit the house too frequently, and mini sausage dogs in between pieces of white bread on a napkin on the way to Sunday service. These commonalities, though not rooted in some exclusively African American historical context (and likely occurring in other cultures as well), distinctly thread our experience together as a people and were intricately integrated throughout this building beautifully sitting in the shadow of the Washington Monument.
I was able to invite two non-black friends with me to experience this place. Unsurprisingly, there were a few things that required further, less-academic explanation, but widely the museum speaks for itself. The Black experience in this country is far more complex than the history that breeds it or the things that can be included in an essay or an exhibit. And that’s how it should be. There is not a place on Earth one could make a pilgrimage to understand the extent of being Black. It must be lived, and ‘it’ is different to each one blessed enough to carry that ancestry.
Yet, when I think of places of commemoration and historical value in the United States, those thoughts often fail to include places of Black joy, triumph, and advancement. The National Museum of African American History and Culture is a giant step in that direction.
All photos were taken at the National Museum of African American History and Culture and the contents are all attributed to Smithsonian.
Posted 5/23/22
By BIlly Listyl
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