How to Build a Museum, the Story of the Making of the Smithsonian’s African-American Museum of History and Culture was an opportunity of a lifetime. I think it was February 2014 when I received an email from an editor at Viking I did not know, Sheila Koenig. It said “possible project.” She says that she’s a fan of my work and she has a project that she thinks is right up my alley.
We talked and I had a lot on my plate but I said I just won’t sleep, I have to do this book because the museum itself represents everything that I’m about, everything that I’m trying to engage young readers on. It’s the story of the Black experience upon these shores, you know. Slavery, freedom, maintaining freedom, segregation, you know beyond MLK, beyond 1968.
It’s a story of sorrow, songs, and jubilees. It’s, it captures the complexity of Black life you know, the Booker T. Washington’s and the unknown washer women who maintained her humanity and her humor.
It’s the story of how America shaped people of African descent and how people of African descent shaped America. It’s, and one of the points that I make in the book because I know it’s one of the points the museum makes, is that Black history is everybody’s history. And I’ve been on this campaign lately to say all the history is everybody’s history.
I tell people the Trail of Tears is my history. The building of the Transcontinental Railroad is my, as MLK said we are made by history.
Well what I did was I started with, I started at the beginning which is, you know a lot of people know it took 13 years to build this museum but it actually took 100 years for it to come about. It began back in 1950. It began back in 1915 when some people, blacks in Washington said we think and this is, remember, this is the 50th anniversary of the end of the Civil War.
We think that we should have in the nation’s capital a tribute to Blacks who have served in all America’s wars. They don’t get a hearing, you know, they rally, they petition Congress, nothing. And the wonder thing is that by the late 1920s, not only have they not given up they’ve gone beyond a tribute to black veterans. They said we want a first class museum that speaks to and honors the contributions blacks have made in America, in arts, industries, the universe of human endeavor.
And then they get a little support in Congress, then comes the Great Depression, things go on hold. And they continue to rally for this museum, the 30s, the 40s. Meanwhile museums, galleries are going up on the mall. They continue the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s. Representative John Lewis gets involved, the 90s, finally in 2003 the museum gets the green light. And it’s finally decided after much debate to put the museum on the Mall and it’s the last available space on the Mall.