Attachment A - Gallery Descriptions.pdf

Slavery and Freedom Exhibition Brief

Description

Slavery and Freedom will examine the great contradiction at the heart of American democracy—that a freedom loving people tolerated human bondage that violated the values they professed to hold dearest.

America’s history was shaped by this futile effort to reconcile this contradiction.

“Slavery and Freedom” will tell a sad story of violence and coercion, but also an inspiring story of resistance and resilience.

The story told here frames the experience of enslavement from the handful of Africans who arrived at Jamestown in continuing on to also go beyond the life of slavery as a legal institution, to the time of Reconstruction after the Civil War when the nation struggled to determine the meaning of freedom, justice and equality for African

Americans.

In the past several decades the academic understanding of slavery has undergone a sea change that has entered the public conversation….profusion of groundbreaking scholarship on slavery.

We need to recognize the importance of the Smithsonian as the Nation’s museum in participating and advancing this conversation to the widest possible public.

“Slavery and

Freedom” will provide a wide ranging and sharply nuanced look at American slavery, from the first Africans brought to British colonies in the early 17th century to the end of Reconstruction following the Civil War.

This is a complex and compelling and dynamic story, encompassing many different experiences in different times and places.

We will tell this story by focusing on individual lives, often looking at slavery from the vantage point of the enslaved.

Enslaved Africans also fought to break the yoke of their enslavement.

For most Europeans ending slavery was a moral imperative that consistently took a back seat to its economic, social and political advantages.

For enslaved Africans who reaped no benefits from their enslavement, their simple but profound desire was to “be free.”

From the colonial period to the Civil War, enslaved blacks planned, strategized, designed and plotted to free themselves.

According to the census of 1790, 59,000 blacks enjoyed freedom.

Ten years later, that number had increased by

82%.

By 1860, 488,000 African Americans were free.

Thus, a second objective will be to demonstrate the ways in which the enslaved participated in the quest for freedom.

Finally, a core value of telling this story will be our commitment to giving voice to the voiceless.

We will tell the story of slavery through the experiences, perspectives, frustrations, hopes and dreams of the enslaved.

Major Arguments (Rationale)

When Western Europeans began to turn their attention to the slave trade in the 16th century, they were not establishing something new they were taking advantage of a practice that existed in Africa and other continents since the time of the Bible.

But the European search for new trade, land, and opportunity expanded.

As international competition for expansion, wealth, land and dominance grew in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, so did their need to exploit Africans.

The story of how this grab for land, dominance, wealth and power affected those forced to clear the land, produce the commodities—and through the slave trade itself—bear the burden of being the economic engine that fueled this global economy, is the story we will tell.

Understanding slavery is crucial to understanding American history.

It was central to the nation’s political, economic, and cultural life.

It was the engine of the global economy from the

16th through the 19th century.

By although the South only had 30% of the nation’s free population, it had 60% of the nation’s wealthiest white men.

The per capita income of the south was $3, dollars, while in the north it was $2,040.

In slave owners made million dollars, by that number had grown to billion dollars.

So fundamental was slavery to the building of the nation and New World economies, it survived for centuries despite the profound immorality of the institution and its practice.

Slavery and the struggle against it irrevocably shaped world history.

We also understand that enslaved peoples came from rich cultural communities in Africa;

that within those communities, there were degrees of enslavement.

We believe that the enslaved resisted their condition and developed communities and identities in the Americas despite the worst of oppressive conditions, and that their ultimate survival under excruciating circumstances was the highest form of resistance and a testament to their extraordinary resilience.

No where, is the centrality of American Slavery more appropriate to be told than at the

National Museum of African American History and Culture.

As the newest museum in the

Smithsonian family, and the one museum most responsible for shaping the nation’s (and the world’s) understanding of African American History and Culture, the importance of situating slavery in the center of our museum acknowledges and gives voice to the profound contribution African Americans have made to the development of America from its very beginnings.

Major themes and stories

Slavery and Freedom exhibition will be presented in five sections:

1.

Unchained Memories:

Slavery and its beginnings, will examine the context from which

American slavery sprang.

a.

The Economic exploitation of Africa

b. Africa and the Diaspora c.

West African Cultures

2. There is a River:

the Middle Passage, will focus on the journey from freedom to slavery.

a.

Merchants, crews, and monarchies b.

Slave ships and the shipping industry c.

The business of slavery

d. The physical and psychological realities of transporting Human Cargo

3. In The Shadow of Democracy:

The life of a slave, will examine the day to day realities of enslavement.

a.

Geography and Slavery

b. Boundaries, barriers, and tensions between master and slave c.

The enslaved community

d. The world of work

e. Building America

4. Taking Flight:

Emancipation and the fight for freedom will chart the course of African

Americans fight for freedom, including their participation in both the American Revolution and the Civil War.

a. Plotting, Planning, and Running to Freedom

b. Fugitives, Rebels, and Freedom Fighters for American Democracy c.

From James Lafayette and David Walker, to Frederick Douglass and the rise of the black intelligencia

d. The Civil War and Abraham Lincoln

5. Freedom’s First Generation:

The transition from slavery to freedom will explore the black family in slavery and freedom.

a.

Emancipation, black agency, and the fight for Citizenship

b. The Black Family c.

The politics of race and testing Democracy

d. Faith, Hope and Worship

Collections

1. Large Iconic objects (Slave Ship, Slave Cabin, Sugar Mill, Slave Pen, Tenant Farm House)

2. Core Objects (clothing, archives, art, furniture, musical instruments, hardware, pottery, personal items, etc.)

a. Archival (Free papers, deeds and wills, contract from Black Star Line)

b. Art (William Sidney Mount painting, Urban Slavery, Runaways fighting back, John

Brown’s raid, William Lee, Nat Turner)

c. Bondage hardware (shackles, slave collars, manacles, thumbscrews, Cat o nine tails, whips)

d. Clothing (Negro boots, shoes and buckles, headwraps, dresses, livery, military uniforms, minstrel costumes)

e. Farm Implements (hoes, sickles, froes, cobbler tools, blacksmith and carpenter tools, bale of cotton)

f. Food (hominy, salt pork, Guinea Hens, cotton plants)

g. Graphics (sheet music, posters, abolitionist newspapers, slave auction, Cock fighting, Runaway ads, vernacular scenes of slave life)

h. Hardware (Iron gate, branding irons, slave badges, musket, rifles, swords, pistol)

i. Leather goods, (whip, tacking for horse and oxen, colonoware, casks, hogs heads,

j. Middle Passage (ship compass, monocular, ship manifest, Cannon, captains log, physicians diary)

k. Musical instruments (drum, banjo, tin whistle, fiddle, tambourine, bones)

l. Personal Items (cowrie shells, talismens, buckles and buttons, slave quilts, dolls, children’s games)

m. Slave made furniture (bed, chair, table, cabinets)

n. Weapons (musket, rifle, sword, pistol, revolver, flint, powder horn, powder keg)

o. Uncle Tom’s Cabin (book, graphics, photos of productions)

(Revised 3/12/10)

Scholarly Advisory Council

March 18, Segregation Exhibition

Description of Exhibition

The focus of this exhibition is to explore the years following the end of Reconstruction to examine how the nation struggled to define the status of African Americans.

The Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth amendments freed them and described their status as citizens, but they did not guarantee acceptance or compliance by their fellow citizens.

The period under study from until is best describe as a time of defining freedom for African Americans.

They are challenged on many fronts to accept second class citizenship and circumscribed economic circumstances.

It is an arduous struggle which they engage in with varying degrees of success over the years.

What is constant is their refusal to buckle under the weight of the struggle and their determination to carve a place for themselves and their progeny.

Major Arguments

This period represents a critical era for the United States and for African Americans.

It puts to the test whether African Americans will have full citizenship rights after more than years of enslavement.

The exhibit will capture the major aspects of that struggle and illustrate how African Americans not only survived the challenges set before them but crafted an important role for themselves in the nation.

It also will look at how the nation was changed as a consequence of these struggles and emerged from them more in sync with its pronouncements about freedom, equality, and democracy.

Three Key Educational Points

1.

This entire era is a time of intense pressure on African Americans to take away their rights as citizens.

2. African Americans constantly and consistently resist this pressure.

3. African Americans also create their own communities in order to “feed their spirits” and sustain themselves despite the turmoil around them.

Major themes and stories

The key theme is the importance of the sustained effort it took many African Americans over a long period of time to accomplish the gains brought to fruition by the modern civil rights movement.

It was a challenging multi-‐front effort of community building and achievement while struggling to beat back efforts to relegate them to the bottom of the social, political, and economic ladder.

The successes they achieved, how they accomplished them, and how they moved past setbacks are the critical through line for the presentation.

Scholarly Advisory Council

March 18, Segregation Exhibition

“We simply ask that we shall be recognized as men:

that there be no obstruction placed in our way;

that the same laws which govern white men shall govern black men.”

Exhibition Outline

The Nadir (1876-‐1900)

The focus here is that the end of reconstruction raised the curtain on a sustained attack by southern whites in particular to insure African Americans remained at the bottom of the economic, political, and social ladder.

The response of African Americans was to resist where they could and to provide safe enclaves for themselves.

Key is the intense level of violence and hostility unleashed on African Americans.

First issue:

Opening space will set the demographic baseline for African Americans in which is southern and rural.

AfAm demographic profile is mostly southern and rural.

1. Did not own the land on which they farmed or worked

(sharecropping/tenant farming the norm)

2. Located mostly in states of Mississippi, South Carolina, Louisiana, and Georgia

Might also briefly highlight contested Election of and/or key court cases which remove legal protection of

AFAM

rights

1. Hayes victory means the withdrawal of federal troops from the south

2. End of protection of African American and newly obtained citizenship rights

3. Supreme Court cases of United States v.

Reese (1876)

/1883

United States v.

Harris

Second issue will highlight effort to use sustained violence, laws, and economic coercion to reduce

AFAM

role in southern life:

1. Plessey v Ferguson Case

2. Jim Crow Laws (segregation of streetcars, trains, etc.)

3. Poll Tax, Literacy test, and grandfather clause

4. Increase in lynchings

5. Riots against AFAMs in North Carolina, etc

6. Rise of sharecropping and tenant farming as means of economic control

7. Rise of the Ku Klux Klan

Third issue to focus on

AFAM

countervailing activities in midst of growing hostilities:

Scholarly Advisory Council

March 18, Segregation Exhibition

1. Plessey v Ferguson court case (planned challenge of segregation laws)

2. Exodusters

Oklahoma and Kansas migration

3. Booker T Washington and Atlanta Compromise

4.

Ida B.

Wells campaign against lynching

5. Creation National

AFAM

Council and call to protest lynching(1898)

6. Creation of National Association of Colored Women (1896)

7. Pan American Congress meeting London (1900)

8. Place/role of the black Church during this period

Institution Building (1900-‐1920)

The intent here is to continue to recognize the threatening environment which

AFAM

continued to face.

Still very difficult to be

AFAM

and try to survive in

US.

But, it is also a time when there is an emergence of new protest organizations created to push back against discrimination and segregation

First issue will feature demographics of

AFAM

community.

AFAM

are still mainly southern and rural though there is a shift toward southern urban locales.

Will also highlight the growth of Richmond, Atlanta, Houston

AFAM

populations.

As in the nadir section, hope to have a large image or mannequins this time of a southern y urban family to give tangibility to where

AFAM

are largely located at this time.

This space also will include maps of migration patterns.

Will also profile

WWI

AFAM

soldier who returns home with a new less accepting attitude about discrimination and ready to push back aggressively (Red Summer of 1919)

Second issue is continuing attacks on

AFAM

community through violence and additional restrictive laws and actions

1. Major uprising against

AFAM

in Atlanta, Springfield, East St.

Louis

Red summer of riots

2. Segregation continues to grow and spread -‐grandfather clause, poll tax, etc put in constitutions of new states not only in South but also in West.

a. Restrictive covenant controlling sale of housing used first in Baltimore

3. Appearance of film “Birth of A Nation”

a. Woodrow Wilson increases segregation in federal government

Third issue is creation of new protest actions and organizations

Scholarly Advisory Council

March 18, Segregation Exhibition

1. Niagara Movement/NAACP/Urban league

a. Look at local and national actions

b. First rural

NAACP

chapter in Falls Church, VA

c. Highlight one of northern urban chapters –silent parade against lynching in

Harlem,

2. Rise of Marcus Garvey and

UNIA

3. Creation League for Protection of Colored women

4. Organization of Maggie Walker Bank, Richmond Virginia

5. Chicago Defender newspaper (perhaps use banner headlines from

AFAM

papers to help highlight key issues of time period)

6. The Commission on Interracial Cooperation organized in to oppose lynching, mob violence, and peonage and to educate white southerners concerning the worst aspects of racial abuse)

The New Negro Steps Forward (1920-‐1950)

Focus here is to highlight new younger voices moving to the forefront of leadership.

Also illustrate the tactics employed which were foundation for the modern civil rights movement.

(A.

Philip Randolph, Mary McLeod Bethune, Adam Clayton Powell, Jr.)

First section again highlights demographic characteristics of

AFAM.

Begin to have more

AFAM

moving into northern cities though are still more southern than northern.

Highlight rapid growth

AFAM

populations in

NYC,

Philadelphia, Cleveland, Chicago, and Detroit.

Section will also include maps highlighting the Great Migration to the north of this period.

Second issue is continuing intimidation and violence directed toward AFAMs.

1. Tulsa(OK), Rosewood

(FLA),

Harlem, Los Angeles riots (north and south locations)

2. Scottsboro Boys trial

3. Peonage/convict leasing

Parchman prison, Mississippi

Third issue is to illustrate growing

AFAM

public acts of resistance and protest to violence and discrimination.

1. “Don’t buy Where You Can’t

Work” Campaigns

(NYC,

Chicago, Washington)

Scholarly Advisory Council

March 18, Segregation Exhibition

2. Formation of

CORE

(1943) and launch Freedom Rides (1947)

3. March on Washington Movement (A.

Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin, 1941)

4. Irene Morgan Greyhound bus Case, Virginia (1947)

5. National Council of Negro Women (1935)

6. Jackie Robinson and major league Baseball

7. NAACP

legal cases against segregated education Melendez case in California

8. Double V campaign during

WWII

Fourth issue is to highlight voices emerging out of Harlem Renaissance and other cultural flourishing.

Emergence of Harlem (Apollo Theater) Beale Street, New Orleans Jazz, Kansas City, Washington, DC.

James Weldon Johnson, Langston Hughes, Zora N.

Hurston, Jacob Lawrence, Bessie Smith, Duke Ellington, etc.

The Modern Civil Rights Movement (1950-‐1968)

The focus here is on the modern movement which emerges after

WWII

which is powered by a generation of young people who are insistent that change come immediately rather than gradually.

They leverage world politics, new media, and thoughtful strategic actions to push

AFAM

concerns to center stage of nation and of the world.

First issue is demographics and shift of center of

AFAM

population to northern and western cities.

Now more live in cities than live in rural areas.

Second issue focus on continuing violence directed toward

AFAM

community.

1. Murder of Emmet Till

2. Murders in south before

3. 1961 Freedom Riders

4. Murder of Medgar Evers -‐1963

5. Killing of three girls in Birmingham church bombing

6. Murder of Chaney ,Goodman, and Schwerner-‐

7. Murder of

Viola Gregg Liuzzo from Michigan in Alabama

8. Assassination of Martin L.

King in

Third issue looks at key catalysts to emergence of modern civil rights movement

1. Brown v Board of Education

Scholarly Advisory Council

March 18, Segregation Exhibition

2. Montgomery Bus boycott

3. Little Rock school integration

4. Cold war/rise of new African nations/TV nightly news

Fourth issue is look at the widespread and multiple actions that emerge during the period;

(highlight how much it is a youth lead movement including students in high school and lower as well as college students.)

1. SCLC/SNCC/OAU

2. Sit-‐ins Greensboro/Wichita

3. Freedom Riders

4. March on Washington

5. March on Birmingham

6. Freedom summer

7. Seattle housing struggle

8. Black Power/Malcolm X

9. March from Selma to Montgomery

10. Failure of northern efforts, e.g.

Cicero, Ill,

11. Urban Rebellions

12. Memphis garbage strike

13. Assassination of

MLK

Probably the major artifacts will be a segregated train car, Emmet Tills’ casket, segregation signs and symbols, Harlem Renaissance material culture, and the home interiors for each time period.

Scholarly Advisory Council and Beyond Exhibition

(5,000 sq ft)

Description of the Exhibition

This exhibition deals with the experiences of African Americans in the United States during the first years of a legally desegregated society, to 2008.

It will address issues of the continuing quest for political participation and power, class and economic differentiation, personal success and public poverty, and the increasing visibility cultural productions and the complexity of African American identity.

It will, on the one hand, present positive aspects of African American life after the civil rights revolution of the

1960s and, on the other hand, explore the limitations and disappointments experienced by

African Americans since 1968.

To quote Nelson George, a keen observer of African American culture:

Documenting the [post-1968] era is not about chronicling the straight line of a social movement, but collecting disparate fragments that form not a linear story, but a collage.

The exhibition will be bookended by two events that occurred on the National Mall years apart:

Resurrection City in and the inauguration of Barack Obama as the 41st President.

The first introduces two key elements that will be encountered later in this exhibition:

the presence and influence of people of color other than African Americans and the importance of issues beyond domestic civil rights:

economic and social justice on a global scale, for instance.

Five weeks after Dr.

King's death, SCLC staffers decide to push on with the Poor

People's Campaign and they build Resurrection City on the Mall in Washington, housing poor people mostly black, some Hispanic and Native American, and a handful of whites from across the country.

The federal government soon razed Resurrection City.

As Poor People's Campaign organizer Marian Wright Edelman later remarked, "1968 was an extraordinarily difficult year.

I mean, we lost Martin.

We lost Bobby.

And for those of us who were determined to carry on the legacy of Martin, it was a time to regroup and rethink and get up and figure out new strategies, to build new paths toward the future."

Coming after this introductory experience are two large sections defined by chronology:

to the mid-‐1980s and from the mid-‐80s to 2008.

The first section deals with the redefinition what it meant to be African American in

America in the generation after the Civil Rights Era.

It considers the vehicles and strategies

Scholarly Advisory Council and Beyond Exhibition

(5,000 sq ft) adopted within the African American community to make the most of previous successes and continue the struggle for full and equal participation in American society.

It draws attention to the immediate despair after King’s assassination, the impact of the Vietnam

War on the psychology and funding of social programs (“guns or butter?”), and the concern over attacks on Black Power advocates, especially the Wilmington and the Black Panther

Party.

This first section explores the cautious optimism of seeking new opportunities through electoral politics (comparing the National Black Political Convention held in

Gary, IN with the creation of the Congressional Black Caucus and Shirley Chisholm’s presidential campaign) as well as education and employment while simultaneously facing increasing opposition to progressive social policies.

This section also will examine the impact of the Civil Rights movement on emerging

Native American, Hispanic and Women’s movements as well as the national liberation movements on other continents.

It will pay attention to the creative explosions of the Black

Arts movement and the Black Feminist literature as well as the significance of the Black

Studies movement on college campuses.

It will analyze the diverse images of African

Americans that begin to appear in popular culture:

media, entertainment, sports.

The wide impact of Alex Haley’s Roots and the transformation of Cassius Clay into Muhammad Ali will be explored.

Rhetorically, this section concludes with the conversation led by

Jesse Jackson over the significance of a name:

Negro?

Black?

Afro-‐American?

African

American?

The second section depicts an era of increasing national conservatism, a retrenchment from political activism and governmental social programs, and more evident and visible generational, gender, economic and class divisions.

These issues are played out within the African American community as well as across the nation in general.

Examining the national trends as background to the specific African American experiences will illustrate once again how African American experience is at the heart of the American experience.

These issues are also played out in a global context as attitudes toward the

African continent change due to national liberation movements, scholarship, and communications technology.

Nelson Mandela is released from prison in and visits the

United States where his emotional respect for Rosa Parks illustrates the international impact of the Civil Rights movement.

The confirmation of Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court illustrated rifts within the African American community and the emergence of a conservative, post-‐civil rights ideology.

The section will also include the role of rap music and hip-‐hop culture as aspects

Scholarly Advisory Council and Beyond Exhibition

(5,000 sq ft) of our media-‐saturated culture as well as illustrating generational and gender relations within the African American community.

The traditional importance of religion will be emphasized with materials from various denominations.

The importance of immigration in diversifying the African American identity will be graphically illustrated in this section by an immersive treatment of a multi-‐ethnic street fair modeled after Brooklyn’s West Indian

American Days.

This area, in particular, will convey the impression of a collage, a sense of overlapping images, trends and ambiguities.

This section will address the disproportionate impact on African Americans of global economic change, deindustrialization and urban decay, decline of education systems

(including re-‐segregation), inconsistent judicial policies and practices, and unequal access to housing and health care.

It is a situation referred to by many names:

“institutional racism,” “racism without racists,” and “colorblind racism.”

Perhaps a visceral experience of this attitude and its results can be presented in concentrated form by examining the impact of Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans.

Whatever the name and regardless of whether they’re caught in its depths or able to escape its most virulent assaults, African Americans struggle against it in a variety of personal and collective ways.

The final scene of this exhibition is the crowd gathered on the National Mall for the inauguration of Barack Obama.

The inauguration is a symbol of the longest-‐lived democracy on earth and the tradition of the transition of power via peaceful means for the last years.

In it was also an unprecedented event:

the elevation of an African

American to the office of the presidency.

A nation that would not allow African Americans to vote a mere two generations ago now had elected an African American as President.

But what are the conversations that this gathering provokes?

Is this a post-‐racial society?

Is this generational transition as much as a racial transition?

What does it mean to be a multi-‐cultural society?

The first section of this exhibition ends with the late-‐20th century discussion over how African Americans should refer to themselves as a way of exploring what it means to be an African American in “post-‐soul” America.

This section leaves visitors with two unanswered questions:

What does it mean to be African American in the 21st century?

What does it mean to be American in the 21st century?

Scholarly Advisory Council and Beyond Exhibition

(5,000 sq ft)

Arguments

1. The end of legal segregation did not produce nor end the search for racial equality or social justice.

2. African Americans pursued their personal and social goals through a variety of strategies and methods.

3. Diversity within the African American community, always present, is more evident than ever.

4. Exploring the meaning of the African American experience and presence in America is a never-‐ending process that involves all Americans.

Stories and Artifacts

The exhibition will present a series of diverse examples or contradictory episodes relating to key topics of the era:

o Civil Rights activities involving the

SCLC

associated with greater international awareness and the Black Panther Party’s activities in

CA

o The Gary Convention and creation of the Congressional Black Caucus o Black Viet Nam Veteran’s materials o Diversifying popular culture:

Muhammad Ali’s global recognition;

Bill Cosby stars on Eye Spy;

the impact of Haley’s Roots, Muhammad Ali, Robert

Johnson, Dr.

Ben Carson, Oprah Winfrey and Russell Simmons o Racial/generational differences:

the Rodney King beating, trial and aftermath;

the funerals of Tupac Shakur and Notorious B.I.G.

and the trial of

O.J.

Simpson as cultural barometers o Integrating public space:

school busing in South Boston;

a Denny’s dining booth o Seeking/exercising political power:

continuing voter registration efforts;

Kenneth Gibson;

Shirley Chisholm, Jessie Jackson;

the

CBC;

Barack Obama o Expressing world views:

the Black Arts Movement, Black feminist authors o Family structure and urban life:

An apartment setting from (for example)

Chicago’s Cabrini Green complex o Being jailed:

a jail cell or courtroom setting representing the famous and the obscure;

the racism inherent in differential punishment for crack and power cocaine, for instance o The impact of drugs and “black-‐on-‐black” crime in urban areas

Scholarly Advisory Council and Beyond Exhibition

(5,000 sq ft) o Raising a family:

a middle-‐class suburban church;

perhaps an automobile with all the accoutrements of a family heading off to a family reunion;

a young, single “welfare mother’s” bus pass, work schedule and grocery list;

Clinton’s signature on the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity

Reconciliation Act replaced

AFDC

o Finding kinship (literally and metaphorically) in Africa:

African American travel groups visiting the continent, Pres.

Clinton’s official visit o Obama campaign and inaugural material

W.

S.

Pretzer, 3.11.10

SAC Meeting March 18, 2010

Musical Crossroads

Exhibition Brief Update Curator, Dwan Reece

I. Description

In a space of 13,000 square feet, Musical Crossroads will tell the story of African American music from the arrival of the first Africans in 1619 to the present. Visitors will have the opportunity to listen and appreciate African American music, not only as a vibrant living art form but as a vehicle of cultural, social, political, and economic progress and survival in African American life. Musical Crossroads will also illustrate the centrality of African American music performance styles and tradition to American music as a whole. Through its content, Musical Crossroads will be the space that explicitly shows how cultures intermingle, where we can explore the tensions and intersections between the sacred and the secular, and where music serves as the crossroads for the interpretation of race, class, culture, regions and nations.

II. Arguments

Musical Crossroads will take an integrated approach to African American music recognizing that it is a living art form defined by cultural traditions, communal participation and self-expression, innovation, and social and cultural changes via the exchange of musical values, ideals, behaviors and performance practices. The exhibition should be representative of the breadth of African American musical activity. To accomplish this goal primary and secondary stories will be explored through the lens of one or more of the five following themes:

A. The Roots of African American Music. The roots of African American music are the cultural and musical traditions that Africans carried with them when transplanted to these shores. Their survival reflects a continuum of cultural retentions, adaptations, re-invention, and innovation. These are identifiable characteristics (e.g. vocalization, use of rhythm, improvisation) that have distinguished African American music and have evolved over time. Individually and in groups, African Americans have relied on the African roots of African American music for social commentary, as an emotional and spiritual outlet, cultural retention, communication, creative expression, community-building and mobilization, recreation.

B. Hybridization-The foundation of African American music making and American Music, for that matter, is the intermingling of musical traditions, styles and beliefs primarily, but not exclusively, between African and Euro-American musical styles and performance techniques. The inter-cultural blending, and crossover among musical genres, forms, and audiences is embedded in African American/American musical history.

C. Agency and Identity. Agency and identity is interpreted as a source of individual, community, social, and/or political power. In African American music it is not only expressed in terms of strategies of resistance to the oppressive power of racism and discrimination but stretches beyond to include issues of gender, sexuality, class, economic power, artistic sensibilities and the power to define one’s self as a performer and musical artist on his or her own terms. This theme gives Musical Crossroads the opportunity to be truly representative of the many complex ways African American music is defined and consumed in American culture. Musical Crossroads can explore this central trope of the duality of African American identity—the challenges of defining the artistry of African American artists through a prism which negates neither the African or American component of African American identity.

D. Mass Media and Popular Music. The birth of mass media and the evolution of an American entertainment industry are closely intertwined with the history of African American/American popular music. Along with the evolution of musical styles, issues of race, authenticity and cultural appropriation have been paramount. The reach of African American popular music is wide and its ability to challenge and break down cultural, social and economic barriers continues to this very day.

E. Music and the African Diaspora. African American music’s global reach and influence has deep historical roots. It has a rich and historic legacy of African American music traveling the world sharing and incorporating a variety of musical influences to create musical forms that cross-pollinate in many ways.

Musical Crossroads will enable visitors to understand the complex role music has played in African American life and appreciate the profound influence African American music has had in defining American musical traditions by

• Introducing visitors to crucial figures (both well and unknown) in music history, from the arrival of the first Africans to the continent to the present, in the development and evolution of African American music;

• Enhancing visitors’ musical and cultural literacy in all genres through an increased understanding of the components that distinguish different African American musical traditions from one another;

• Challenging broadly-accepted notions about what constitutes African American music and what does not;

• Recognizing the breadth and diversity African Americans have contributed to the American music landscape;

• Highlighting the global reach and influence of African American music and the African Diaspora.

III. Exhibition Organizational Framework

The story of African American music will be told thematically primarily through genres, with sub-stories that highlight important influences, movements, issues and industries, that play key roles in its evolution over the last 400 years. Music is meant to be heard and experienced so active visitor engagement is essential. The exhibition will be story driven and because of the numerous contextual layers that can be explored in all the major stories will make strong use of audio-visual elements and interactive and immersive scenes where visitors can engage with the music in real time. The mood of the exhibition is one of lively engagement with a continual interplay between familiarity and discovery, familiarity in the music and the genres, stories and artists that are widely known and discovery of new perspectives, genres that many visitors may not immediately recognize for its ties to African Americans, and how music tells the stories, struggles and triumphs of African Americans and of America itself.

There are four main features to this exhibition:

1. Exhibits that address the core themes through a variety of genres, influences, and periods and events of historical significance.

2. Musical Notes/Sidebars (Sub-stories on an individual artist, particular instrument, event, important song, recording or composition);

3. Spaces for listening (listening zones-public and private) creating/performing (recording studio and other music making spaces) and using (dance floor) music; and

4. A variety of audio-visual components will occur throughout all sections including a visual interactive map or chart of musical influences and categories, and regional and historical developments (The Delta, Piedmont, Detroit, Chicago, Philadelphia, Harlem, ) among other things to help visitors grasp the broad scope and migration patterns of musical influences.

Preliminary Breakdown of Primary Stories

THE ROOTS

Instruments Musical Practices Religious Life Community

THE SACRED-MUSIC AND RELIGIOUS LIFE

Spirituals Gospel Hymns Classical Traditions

AND THE SECULAR

Folk Music Art/Classical Minstrelsy Blues Vaudeville Ragtime Musical Theater Jazz Rhythm & Blues Rock & Roll Soul Disco Funk Rap Hip Hop

POPULAR MUSIC AND MASS MEDIA

Publishing Recording Industry Radio Television Music Videos

IV. Collecting

Collecting will also focus on significant figures in African American music, artists’ whose signature achievements hold historical or musical significance. Objects tied to influential artists, reflecting various genres, events and performances will be used to explore the primary stories.

The variety of objects that can be collected is broad and will include musical instruments, objects that are used to compose, play, record and produce music, costumes, clothing and accessories, musical instruments personal belongings, personal papers, items used in tours and other memorabilia, demo-recordings, original marked up sheet music, and a club, juke joint or other performing venue.

NMAAHC Collection o Harmonics Trek II Organ (James Brown) o Speaker Cabinet (James Brown) o Signed guitar (James Brown) o Fedora (Michael Jackson) o Selmer Trumpet (Louis Armstrong) o Tiple (Timmie Rogers) o Hat with Medallion (Bo Diddley) o Handwritten Lyrics “Everybody’s Got a Thing” (James Brown) o Ballad of Americans Album (Paul Robeson)

D.R.R.

3/12/2010

Permanent Exhibitions Planning Retreat Draft August 5-6, 2009

Sports 4,000 sq. ft.

Description

This exhibition will present a view of Sports as a dramatic and important cultural arena in African American and American life. Much like music, the topic of sports will likely be a big attraction for visitors. Though it will be delivered in a smaller gallery, it will use the world of sport as a unique and popular lens with which to understand the African American experience and race in America. Through artifacts and interpretive techniques it will demonstrate how the massive sports culture that developed in the U.S. during the past century and a half became an arena for freedom struggles, for racial oppression, for community organizing, for individual and collective success, and for interracial cooperation.

The Sports gallery will also provide visitors with an opportunity to revel in the purely transcendent qualities that sport and competition can embody. Combining these approaches that address the politics, drama, and the pleasures of sport within a historical context, the Sports gallery can be a place where visitors can learn about and grapple with complex issues in an exciting and engaging environment.

Argument

Late in his life, Frederick Douglass hung a picture of the West Indian fighter Peter Jackson—one of the first black heavyweights to box white men in the ring--on his study wall. Douglass remarked that "Peter is doing a great deal with his fists to solve the Negro question." This comment from one of America’s greatest voices on equality, justice and freedom shows not only a recognition of the possibilities for social transformation contained in the world of sport, but it also conveys a core understanding of the deep connections between sport and politics, culture and community.

The Sports Gallery at NMAAHC reflects a similar belief to Douglass’ that Sports matter. It will bring much needed critical attention to a genre and area that is defined almost exclusively by Halls of Fame. Just as it is impossible to understand American culture without carefully considering how race and African American history and culture have shaped it, any thorough assessment of American sport must do likewise. The Sports gallery will provide an invaluable window into understanding African American and American culture and history. It also provides a way to subtly raise questions about how gender, race, and class shape African American and American identities.

Major Themes

The Sports gallery will strive for balance a display of professional sports and sports figures with lesser known figures and stories: stories of business and community, amateurs and children. It will address several major themes, demonstrating:

Permanent Exhibitions Planning Retreat Draft August 5-6, 2009

• The success and presence that African Americans have achieved in sports have been a major aspect of the history of nineteenth and especially twentieth-century popular culture

• How American professional and amateur sports were shaped in an environment that was racially segregated

• How desegregation on the sports fields helped to transform American society

• How integration has not fully penetrated professional sports, especially in the field of management and ownership

• How gender is shaped and understood in the sports world

• How fans interact with and shape the world of sport

These (and other) themes can encompass a wide range of narratives, from Jackie Robinson’s integration of Major League Baseball – a story still not well and fully-told – to the story of Wilma Rudolph, two people who helped shape the civil rights generation in profound but different ways. They can reach to recover other, less known narratives including the story of African American horse jockeys in the late 19th century, or the story of Edwin Henderson, one of the fathers of organized basketball, who envisioned the sport as an instrument to advance causes of public health and civil rights for African American youth, or the role and importance of bowling in African American culture leading up to and following the Orangeburg massacre at the Tri-Star bowling alley in 1968. They can address the position of a boxer like Joe Louis who became a both a soldier and national hero during WWII and compare to figures like Muhammad Ali or Tommie Smith and John Carlos to unlock understanding of national and racial identities at a later moment in time.

Some Key Objects/Collections:

• Baseball related materials and oral histories – MLB and Negro Leagues (esp. Artifacts related to Jackie Robinson’s story)

• Basketball related materials and oral histories – NBA and college etc. (Harlem Globetrotters uniform and material, Air Jordan line of products, Charlotte Hornets material)

• Boxing related materials and oral histories – Joe Louis, Muhammad Ali, Angelo Dundee, Don King etc.

• Football related materials etc. (Eddie Robinson materials – Grambling and other HBCU stories for example)

• Track & Field materials (artifacts related to Jessie Owens, Wilma Rudolph, Flo Jo, Penn Relays, Track and field clubs.

• Objects from Tri-Star Bowling Alley, Orangeburg, SC and African American bowling leagues

• Tennis Related materials and oral histories – Arthur Ashe, Althea Gibson, Venus and Serena Williams

• Collections from defunct Sports Museum of America being investigated

LIVING

CULTURE

Scholarly Advisory Council

Space:

6,000 sq.

ft.

Definition/Rationale

Culture, both the larger overarching interpretation and the specific artistic expression of an individual or a cultural group are necessary for survival.

Cornel West says Culture is what people create from preexisting cultures in order not to commit suicide.

…1] He goes on to say that “culture is as structural as the economy or politics and is rooted in institutions like families, schools, churches…and communication industries like televisions, radio, video, music.

Historically it protected African

Americans from the forces of racism.

”2 Culture provided Blacks with hope and meaning and the desire to marshal their resources to build businesses, schools and the civic institutions that are explored in the exhibit Make A Way.

Culture is dependent upon raw material technology, social structures, and a system of communication that allows learning to occur and then allows what is learned to be transmitted to future generations.

How people live is influenced (not in a deterministic way) by the environment in which they find themselves.

Description of the Exhibit

Living Culture covers a broad range of subject matter and time periods.

The gallery will be a dynamic focal point for looking at important cultural contributions of African Americans in the arts including, Adornment, Foodways, Styles of Communication, and Religion.

We will also examine the processes by which African American culture has shaped and been impacted by the Media of television, film, radio and the Internet.

The exhibits within the gallery will be chronological and thematic.

In the case of adornment, foodways and religion we will look at their evolution over time.

The focus of styles of communication, and media will be centered around specific time periods.

Since the gallery will cover a lot of information and ideas, and the exhibit will provide visitors with a variety of interactive and immersive experiences.

Visitors should walk away with a feeling that they have a better understanding of how culture plays a critical role in creating a sense of community among African Americans;

(shared values-‐behaviors-‐choices) and that African American culture is and always has been very diverse and that it changes over time.

(region, elderly/young, class, religion, education, conservative/liberal, etc.).African American culture of the 21st century is different from African American culture of the 19th century.

Cornel West, Black Popular Culture, ed.

Gina Dent, BayPress, Seattle, 1992, 37-‐38.

Body Adornment

Body adornment is a style of communication that is applicable to all humans.

It can be either an individual affirmation or a collective statement about gender, status, political stance and/or ethnic identity and more.

African American adornment varies over time, region, and from generation to generation.

The exhibit will begin by exploring how African Americans have used hair as a canvas for communicating cultural standards of beauty, gender, status.

It will also feature a section that looks at standards of beauty and how it used to about beauty and how when fifteen-‐century Europeans first encountered

Blacks in western Africa they were impressed by their vast array of hair styles.

The styles included different combinations of braids and plaits that had shells, beads or strips of fabric attached.

Sometimes their heads had designs that were shaven into the hair.

Certain hairstyles were indicators of class or gender.

One early 17th century Dutch explorer illustrated sixteen different hair styles for men and women.

Based on descriptions of hairstyles from eighteenth-‐century ads for runaways, enslaved African

Americans continued the practices.3

Another traditional African method of styling hair was wrapping hair.

Based on

WPA

descriptions of hair styles there was a continuation of hair wrapping.

In the 19th century that was known as wrapping or threading the hair.

This involved parting the hair in small sections and binding the section from the root to the tip of the hair with string or fabric.

Afterwards, the hair would have been tied down with a handkerchief to protect it during the week.

On Sunday or for a special occasion, the hair would be unwrapped leaving it straightened or curly.4

Culture of Beauty

Annie Malone (1869-‐1957) and Madame C.J.

Walker (1867-‐1919) were two of the early African

American pioneers in the black hair care and beauty industry.

The history of hair straightening and who invented the process, including the straightening comb seem to be somewhat convoluted.

Hair straightening products combs and curlers were available in the late 19th century.

In 1872, Marcel

Grateau is credited with inventing the first hot comb for French women.

His combs were advertised for sale in Sears catalogues during the 1880s.

Annie Malone of Metropolis, Illinois began selling her product known as Poro (A West African word that means physical and spiritual growth) door-‐to-‐door by

1902.

Madam C.

J.

Walker was an early employee of Malone and both Malone and Walker patented hot combs for straightening black hair.

Madame C.

J.

Walker moved to Denver, Colorado in where she continued to sell Poro products.

By she was experimenting with her own hair care products and by the Madame C.

J.

Walker products were being sold and promoted across the country.6

It is important to explore the stories of both women who were highly successful during an early period of American history when

African Americans and women were excluded from developing and

White, Graham and White, Shane, Stylin’ African American Styles from Its Beginning to Zoot Suits, Cornell

University Press, 1998, 41-‐42.

_______White, 57-‐59.

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=2007020319555AAR0oGm http://www.madamcjwalker.com/ 3/12/10.

maintaining large-‐scale businesses.

Malone’s story of success is less well-‐known but equally important as she also became a multi-‐millionaire (by the 1920s) and a strong supporter of civic and social causes.

Since the 1960s African American hair has had a variety of styles from the Afro/Bush as a symbol of

Black Power, the Jheri Curl of the 1970s/1980s, dreadlocks from Jamaican/Rastafarian influences to braids and weaves of the 1980s.

Foodways

Food is connected to almost every aspect of our lives, from rites of passage celebrations for birth, weddings and death to the unplanned house party.

It is a central part of social and community events that include reunions, concerts, games, as well as recurring local and national events/holidays like

Emancipation Day, Christmas and New Years.

Food plays an integral role in defining, gender roles, responsibilities and relationships, racial, ethnic (Soul Food) and regional (Gullah in the southeast and

Creoles in Louisiana) identity.

African American food traditions like many other aspects of African

American culture are an admixture of African, European Native American customs that also include

Caribbean influences.

It is a complex process of creolization that also involves…