Missing Pieces of American History

The National Museum of African American History and Culture opened on September 24, 2016. When the date was announced six months earlier, in February, Black History Month, I marked it on my calendar. I had already planned two trips for the late summer/early fall, a friends’ outing to Spain and Morocco and another to Memphis to visit the National Civil Rights Museum. Living in Washington, DC, I had been watching the building of the museum and looking for the “opening soon” signage to become a definite date. Now that I had it, both trips would have to be planned around the opening. I wasn’t likely to receive an invitation to the festivities, but nothing would prevent me from being on the museum grounds that day. I had to be a part of this incredible event, a museum on the National Mall dedicated entirely to the history and culture of my people.

“I was sitting at home watching the opening of the National Museum of African-American History and Culture on TV. I could feel the energy and I, too, had been anticipating the opening. I started to wonder why I wasn’t there, then I told myself well it wasn’t my museum. That’s when I had the epiphany. Of course, it was my museum, my museum as an American.”

A white colleague told me that a few weeks after the museum opened. I don’t think he was alone in his viewpoint. Many white people were supportive of a museum dedicated to the African-American experience, but they weren’t sure where/how/if they were a part of it. Even I thought of it as my museum and, interestingly, was, at first, surprised by the numbers of white people during the firsts of my multiple visits.

That’s the problem.

The history of black America has never been a part of the history OF America. It always had a place, and one of significance, in black America, but little visibility in white America. My teachers and principal—all of whom were black—in elementary school made sure I knew it. Biographies of black Americans were prominent in the school library. Pictures and commentary on black people and achievements lined the bulletin boards in the classrooms and throughout the building. Not just for what was then Negro History Week, but throughout the year. And, the successes and milestones of black people were the everyday conversation at my family’s dinner table and readily available as both Life Magazine and Ebony Magazine were delivered to my home.

That wasn’t the experience for my white colleague. No focus was placed on teaching him about black America at any point in his formal education. Without his commitment to broadening his understanding of America, his knowledge would be driven solely by happenstance personal experiences and by the manner of coverage by the ubiquitous electronic, social, and print media.

Black history had been, and still is, compartmentalized, marginalized.

In 1977, many Americans, black and white, were riveted by the television miniseries Roots: The Saga of an American Family. Never had there been as mainstream, and as public, an examination of the history of black people in this country. Every episode became next-day conversations at metaphorical water coolers just about everywhere. But, today, four decades after recognizing how much Roots had revealed that we didn’t know, black history still is not fully incorporated into the American past that our sons and daughters learn in school. Black American history is still niche history, not yet seen—at least by those who control textbooks and our educational system—as a part of a comprehensive examination of our country’s history.

The jigsaw puzzle of America’s history continues to have too many missing pieces. But, for those who understand that gaps exist, and for those who want to understand the fullness, richness, and inequities born in American history, the resources today are many to take that powerful learning journey.

Note: Daughters of the Dream, a book I believe is one, small piece of that puzzle, will be released next month. More info coming soon.