Rendering of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, under construction on a five-acre site adjacent to the Washington Monument in Washington, D.C. Drawing by Freelon Adjaye Bond/Smith Group, the museum’s architectural and engineering team; courtesy NMAAHC.
By Barbara Franco
In November 2015, the Smithsonian Institution’s long awaited National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) plans to open its doors in a new building on the mall in Washington, D.C. The opening will come exactly one hundred years after a Civil War veterans’ organization first began collecting funds for a suitable memorial building to honor the contributions of African Americans in military service, as well as in art, literature, invention, science, industry, and other areas of human endeavor. Although Congress passed legislation authorizing construction of the memorial in 1929, the long anticipated museum had never materialized despite various commissions, site studies, and Smithsonian plans.
Nonetheless, some people never gave up on the idea of an African American museum in the nation’s capital. With bipartisan support Congress established a Presidential Commission on December 28, 2001, to create an implementation plan for a National African American Museum of History and Culture as part of the Smithsonian Institution. The commission’s plan led to legislation creating NMAAHC signed by President George W. Bush on December 16, 2003. Lonnie G. Bunch III was named Founding Director in 2005, and site selection was completed in 2006. Read more
Working at a special collections library, I am only too aware of the high costs of providing digital access to historical materials. Sure, it’s wonderful to be able to view historical photographs or manuscript collections or even published volumes online. But it can take a lot of resources to get those materials on the web. [...]
Sign, sign, everywhere a sign, Blocking out the scenery, Breaking my mind. You’ve probably heard this song before. A hit in 1971, by a group from Ottawa called Five Man Electrical Band, it celebrated the free-thinking philosophy of flower children. Sometimes these two lines run through my head for a different reason. Plaques, waysides, interpretive [...]
After a week spent wrestling with XML coding, I’m reminded yet again: just how much of a tech geek do you need to be to work in digital humanities? Let me preface this by saying I am no IT expert. I was able to solve my own specific problem only after a lot of reading, [...]
This may be an odd time of year to be talking about this, after all Spring is the season for new life and renewal but some recent events have brought dead people across my path. As historians we deal with dead people a lot. Through investigating the documents and artifacts they leave behind we try [...]
Success doesn’t come overnight. For most, landing a dream job requires short-term sacrifices—you’ve got to be willing to pay your dues in order to reach long-term goals. In the field of public history maybe that means volunteering to get a foot in the door at an archives or museum. Or maybe that means seven more [...]
Thinking about the audience for your digital history project is an important step in any digital history project. Few of us, especially in the nonprofit world, have the luxury of creating these types of online projects without a defined purpose: to educate, to motivate, or to engage a specific population. We might hope to create [...]
It is February and you know what that means – it is Black History Month. I have never been too keen on the setting aside of particular months for things whether it be Women’s History Month in March or Breast Cancer Awareness Month in October. I feel it gives people an excuse to ignore these [...]
