Like I said, the building of this museum reflects Black life upon these shores. Many things were a long time coming like freedom, a long time coming. And so when the museum shared with me thousands of artifacts that they were, had acquired, you know the idea is how do you choose, how do you create balance so that you have shackles but you have also things that uplift people?
One example, we all know that Easter Sunday 1939, Marian Anderson gave a great outdoor concert at the Lincoln Memorial, where she sang My Country Tis of Thee. And we’ve seen her, we have the fur coat and you’ve seen the photographs. But do we ever think what did she have on underneath the coat? And it was this gorgeous orange and black velvet ensemble.
Of course all the photographs we ever saw were in black and white. And then because I knew that the museum wanted to be about human beings, not just events, but as Lonnie Bunch the director said, bring it all to a human scale. So that when we think of Harriet Tubman we think of her as strong maybe with a rifle, leading people to freedom, urging them on. But when you see a lace collar that she wore or you see the shawl that Queen Elizabeth gave her you’re sort of reminded she was also a lady, you know.
And I think we wanted, my editor and I wanted to choose objects to reproduce in the book that would make people see the unknown Black people in a new way. One of my favorite artifacts is a sack that was made by a woman named Rose in the 1850s, made quickly after she learned that her nine-year-old daughter Ashley had been sold, they would soon be gone. And into this sack she put some pecans, I think a lock of her hair and some clothing.
And then as she told her daughter the sack also contained all her love. And I love that because when enslaved people are represented, we present how they were brutalized again, and again, and again. But we don’t show how they also held on to their humanity. How they held on to their love. If that woman Rose had been so brutalized beyond repair, she would have never thought of something so kind of metaphysical as saying all my love is also in this sack.
And there’s a kind of, she’s a poet. And she’s giving her daughter something so I think that’s one of the most powerful objects for me.