Questioning America

The first thing you notice at the National Museum of African American History and Culture is that everyone is trying to be so nice, especially the white people. ‘Excuse me’s’ flutter like confetti, an invisible murmuring of apology for standing in front of someone and for everything else that’s ever happened.  It’s unconscious, reflexive almost, and one wonders why the deference to history doesn’t play out in the rest of life. It’s as if we can only get it here in the lowest level of the museum studying the intricate drawings of how human cargo was arranged and stacked on slave ships.

There were different strategies, you know. Some slave ship captains packed people very tightly, figuring that even with high death rates they would still realize a profit. Others opted for a looser pack, thinking that fewer would die en route, thus ensuring a higher profit. I bet the debates were endless, fueled by big steins of beer and lit by fat candles burning down into pools of wax. Meanwhile, back at the ships, there were slave revolts on one out of ten crossings. Death, sickness, weeping, moaning, clean words for what it must have actually been like. One captain was quoted as wishing for the mournful singing to stop because it made him so terribly sad.

The museum’s exhibits are on three floors; you start at the bottom with the slave trade and ramp up to the present. So you are always walking forward in time. Depending on your age, you eventually get to the part of history that you lived through. I have seen White Only signs in the south – not in photographs, but at actual gas stations. I remember the sit-ins at the lunch counters, the murder of Medgar Evers, Bull Conner turning fire hoses on people, the Birmingham bombing, the march from Selma to Montgomery, all of this from the nightly news, Walter Cronkite, David Brinkley, and Chet Huntley somberly describing the scene, woman and children pummeled up against store fronts by fire hoses while our dinner simmered in the kitchen. These things seemed to have happened in our living room. Everyone’s living room then. That’s how it was.

I saw Fannie Lou Hamer’s speech at the 1964 Democratic National Convention; I was an avid watcher of political conventions, watched wall to wall, and I remembered her speech today when I saw it projected on an enormous wall, the pain written so large and deep on her face in a way I couldn’t see on our tiny TV years ago, questioning America, the land of the free and the home of the brave. It was so long ago but it could have been last week. It’s like we’ve traveled so far but haven’t gone anywhere.

The last exhibit was about President Obama and Michelle Obama. I stood in front of it smiling like I’d run into beloved relatives I hadn’t seen in years. We were so blessed by this President, I thought, and now we are lost, just cut adrift from stability and intellect, common sense, and compassion. The museum needs to add more space here, they need more rooms, space to talk about what comes next, where we go from here.

Back at our hotel, I scrolled through my Facebook feed. There, an alderwoman from back home posted about how she’d spent the day discussing the issue of city contractors carrying guns on various street and construction projects. She then showed one of the emails she’d received that day from a citizen addressing the issue.

“You colored folks in government should just shut the fuck up. Whitey is starting to arm up because all your little n—– chillen are robbing and killing. You folks should have been shipped back from where you came when you were freed.”

So there has to be more to the story, our country’s story. We aren’t done yet. We aren’t there yet. Even if we don’t know where we’re going, we need to keep moving. The museum needs space to grow.