When the International African American Museum opens Tuesday in South Carolina, it becomes a new site of homecoming and pilgrimage for descendants of enslaved Africans.
Overlooking the old wharf in Charleston at which nearly half of the enslaved population first entered North America, the 150,000-square-foot museum houses exhibits and artifacts exploring how African Americans’ labor, perseverance, resistance and cultures shaped the Carolinas, the nation and the world.It also includes a genealogy research center to help families trace their ancestors’ journey from point of arrival on the land.
Upon entering the space, eight large video screens play a looped trailer of a diasporic journey that spans centuries, from cultural roots on the African continent and the horrors of the Middle Passage to the regional and international legacies that spawned out of Africans’ dispersal and migration across lands.
The program was emceed by award-winning actress and director Phylicia Rashad and included stirring appearances by poet Nikky Finney and the McIntosh County Shouters, who perform songs passed down by enslaved African Americans.“Truth sets us free — free to understand, free to respect and free to appreciate the full spectrum of our shared history,” said former Charleston Mayor Joseph Riley, Jr. who is widely credited for the idea to bring the museum to the city.
The land is now part of an intentionally designed ancestral garden. Black granite walls are erected on the spot of a former storage house, a space where hunched enslaved humans perished awaiting their transport to the slave market. The walls are emblazoned with lines of Maya Angelou’s poem, “And Still I Rise.”
The opening of the Charleston museum adds to a growing array of institutions dedicated to teaching an accurate history of the Black experience in America. Many will have heard of, and perhaps visited, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture in the nation’s capital, which opened in 2016.
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At International African American Museum opening, a reclaiming of sacred ground for enslaved kinThe International African American Museum will soon open in Charleston, South Carolina, at one of the country’s most historically significant slave-trading ports.
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At International African American Museum opening, a reclaiming of sacred ground for enslaved kinThe International African American Museum will soon open in Charleston, South Carolina, at one of the country’s most historically significant slave-trading ports
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At International African American Museum opening, a reclaiming of sacred ground for enslaved kinWhen the International African American Museum opens to the public Tuesday in South Carolina, it becomes a new site of homecoming and pilgrimage for descendants of enslaved Africans whose arrival in the Western Hemisphere begins on the docks of the lowcountry coast.
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At International African American Museum opening, a reclaiming of sacred ground for enslaved kinThe International African American Museum will soon open in Charleston, South Carolina, at one of the country’s most historically significant slave-trading ports.
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At International African American Museum opening, a reclaiming of sacred ground for enslaved kin - New York Amsterdam NewsWhen the International African American Museum opens to the public Tuesday in South Carolina, it becomes a new site of homecoming and pilgrimage for descendants of enslaved Africans whose arrival in the Western Hemisphere begins on the docks of the lowcountry coast.
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