[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.

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