[Congressional Record Volume 162, Number 144 (Thursday, September 22, 2016)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5988-S5989]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
OPENING OF THE NATIONAL MUSEUM OF AFRICAN AMERICAN HISTORY AND CULTURE
Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, this weekend the doors will open on a new
American treasure. The National Museum of African American History and
Culture tells the story of a people whose toil and genius helped create
America and whose contributions in every walk of life have enriched our
Nation beyond measure.
The museum stands majestically on the National Mall, at the foot of
the Washington Monument.
If you stand at the museum's entrance and look in one direction you
see the Lincoln Memorial, where Marian Anderson sang and Dr. King spoke
of his dream for America.
Look in the other direction and you can see a plot of land where,
just several generations ago, men, women and children were sold like
chattel--close enough to this Capitol that members of Congress could
hear their anguished cries.
Those stories and many, many more, are chronicled within the walls of
this ambitious and long overdue museum.
The National Museum of African American History and Culture
represents America's first official attempt to tell the story of
African Americans--a story that spans 600 years and stretches from the
indignity and inhumanity of slavery to the long and still ongoing march
for freedom that changed our Nation and our world.
As one writer described it, the museum is ``a shifting mix of sadness
and celebration.'' It is a record of brutal subjugation, racial
violence, and discrimination--and it is the story of a resilient people
who survived those horrors and created a rich and vibrant culture.
The new museum is the 19th in the priceless portfolio of the
Smithsonian Institution.
If you ask African Americans about the significance of the new
museum, you are likely to hear many answers. One answer you will hear
over and over is: ``Now our ancestors can rest.''
At long last, the stories of struggle, perseverance, and achievement
that have been passed down, generation after generation, in African-
American families finally have an official and honored repository in
America.
Speakers at the museum's opening on Saturday will include President
Barack Obama and former President George W. Bush--two Presidents, one
Republican and one Democrat, a White man and our Nation's first
African-American President. Imagine the ancestors' delight at that
line-up.
As many as 100,000 people from all over America are expected to visit
the museum on this opening weekend--like one giant, proud family
reunion.
The National Museum of African American History and Culture tells the
harrowing story of slavery, Jim Crow, and segregation. It also
documents the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s--the
template for the women's movement, the disability rights movement, and
other modern human rights struggles in America and around the world.
But the Museum of African American History and Culture is more than a
story of suffering and struggle. It is a celebration of resilience and
triumph--of faith in America and in a better future.
It showcases the countless ways in which African Americans have
enriched and enlivened American culture and society--in sports, music,
literature, and art--in commerce and business, and in scientific
discovery.
While it focuses on African Americans, it is a museum for all
Americans--because you cannot truly understand American history without
understanding African-American history and the difficult, often
inspirational, and always central role that African Americans have
played in our history.
Lonnie Bunch III is a brilliant historian and educator. He is also
the founding director of the Smithsonian's National Museum of African
American History and Culture.
As he says, the history of African Americans is ``the quintessential
American story,'' a story of measured progress and remarkable
achievement after an ugly period of painful oppression.
From 2001 to 2005, Lonnie Bunch served as president of the Chicago
Historical Society, now called the Chicago History Museum. That is
where I came to know and respect him.
During his short tenure, Lonnie Bunch oversaw a hugely successful
expansion of the Chicago History Museum, and he helped broaden
community support for the museum dramatically.
He became almost as much of a cultural treasure as the museum itself,
and we hated to see him leave Chicago.
But the chance to help create the National Museum of African American
History and Culture--literally, from the ground up--was the challenge
of a lifetime.
It was also, as Lonnie Bunch will tell you, something he felt he
needed to do for his ancestors, to honor their struggle and
perseverance.
When he signed on to head it in 2005, the National Museum of African
American History and Culture had no staff, no collection, and no
building--not even a blueprint.
No Smithsonian museum had ever started life without a collection.
What is more, the museum's initial, very modest acquisitions budget
meant that many of the most valuable artifacts of African-American
history sell at traditional auctions were beyond the financial reach of
the new museum.
So Lonnie Bunch conceived of a brilliant strategy to build the
museum's collection.
He and his staff conducted ``Antiques Roadshow' ''-style programs in
15 cities called ``Save Our African American Treasures.''
Their hunt for African-American treasures kicked off in January 2008
at the Harold Washington Public Library in Chicago. Hundreds of people
brought family heirlooms to be inspected and appraised.
Many of the nearly 40,000 artifacts in the new museum's collection
came from these shows. In city after city, people brought treasured
objects that had been in their families for years and generations and
said: ``We've cared for this until now. We trust the Smithsonian to
keep it safe from now on.''
Among the treasures is Harriet Tubman's prayer shawl, given to her by
Queen Victoria, and the great abolitionist's personal hymnal.
As the endpoint in the great migration of African Americans from the
Deep South to the North, Chicago holds a special place in African-
American history and that is reflected in the new museum.
One of the most powerful exhibits is the original glass casket that
held the battered body of Emmett Till, the 14-year-old boy from Chicago
who was viciously murdered by two White men in Mississippi in 1955.
Emmett Till was kidnapped, beaten to a bloody pulp, and shot in the
head. His broken body was then weighted down and thrown into a river.
His grieving mother, Mamie Till Moseley, insisted that the casket
remain open during her son's funeral so the world could see what racial
hatred and violence had done to her only child.
The images of Emmett's mangled body shocked the Nation's conscience
and fueled the modern civil rights Nmovement.
Rosa Parks said she was thinking of those images 3 months later when
she refused to give up her seat and move to the back of the bus.
Other treasures from Chicago and Illinois include objects from the
Pullman Car Company and from famed African-American publications
including Ebony and Jet magazines and the Chicago Defender newspaper.
There are photographs from fair housing marches led by Dr. Martin
Luther King in Marquette Park, a neighborhood in southwest Chicago in
1966. Dr. King was struck in the head by a brick thrown from an angry
mob. Those marches showed America that racial animus and violence was
not simply a Southern problem, it was an American problem.
[[Page S5989]]
Only nine African Americans have ever served in this Senate. Illinois
is proud to be home to three of those Senators, including the man who
went on to become our first African-American President.
Among the museum's artifacts from Barack Obama's historic public life
is the entire contents of a 2008 Obama for President headquarters in
Falls Church, VA--packed up--lock, stock and barrel--and preserved by
the Smithsonian for future generations.
Among the museum's other treasures are a fighter jet flown by
Tuskegee Airman and shards of glass from the horrific Klan bombing in
1963 of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, an act of
terrorism that claimed the lives of four little girls attending Sunday
school.
Other artifacts remind us that the long march to freedom is not
entirely over yet.
Poll tax receipts from a century ago remind us of the need to be
vigilant in protecting every Americans' constitutional right to vote.
A guard tower from the infamous Angola State Penitentiary reminds us
that racial inequities persist in America's criminal justice and we
have more work to do to root it out.
To borrow a phrase from the immortal Sam Cooke, the National Museum
of African American History and Culture ``has been a long, long time
coming.''
It was first proposed more than a century ago by African-American
veterans of the Civil War.
Congress approved it once, in 1927, but never funded it because of
the Depression.
The idea was resurrected in the late 1980s, led by Congressman John
Lewis of Georgia, an icon of the civil rights movement.
For 15 years, though, a bill to create the museum was defeated
The logjam was finally broken in 2003, when President George W. Bush
took up the cause.
More than any previous Smithsonian museum, this one has relied on
private donations, rather than just public dollars.
A number of celebrities have made very large gifts, including $5
million from Michael Jordan and $21 million from Oprah Winfrey, the
largest single benefactor.
But many of the donations have come from churches, sororities and
fraternities, and other African-American groups. A large amount--$4
million--came from average people in gifts of less than $1,000.
The new museum looks like nothing else on the National Mall. It is
clad in burnished bronze grillwork and built to resemble a three-tiered
crown from an old African kingdom.
Looking at it, one is reminded of the words of the writer James
Baldwin. In exhorting African Americans to take pride in their history,
Baldwin wrote: ``Your crown has been bought and paid for. All you must
do is put it on.''
The National Museum of African American History and Culture is one of
the great jewels in that crown. It will help the ancestors to rest and
allow this and future generations to learn and be inspired, and that is
cause to celebrate.
____________________