I began my journey through history in Washington D.C. at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African-American History and Culture (NMAAHC). The Smithsonian museums in Capital City are all free to the public, a gift that I was so grateful to accept I felt that needed to be sure not to take it in vain. I spent two full days in the NMAAHC and half a day in the American History Museum (in hopes of seeing the Sesame Street Exhibit). The muppets were gone, but there was a powerful exhibit detailing the experiences and effects of Japanese concentration camps during World War II that proved to be a valuable addition during this increasingly parallel moment in our country’s story.
The NMAAHC is six stories— three down and three up. The bottom floors trace history from slavery to “freedom”, while the top floors honor and display the history of culture. Similar to the holocaust museum in Israel, The NMAAHC is designed in a way that visitors may truly get a taste of not just the facts, sounds and visuals from a given point in history, but also the feelings that went along with them. The bottom-most floor of the building represents slavery and is structured with low ceilings and dim lights. It’s crowded, dark and overwhelming without a tour guide. I followed a volunteer through the basement floors before walking through again on my own.
The Emmett Till memorial was designed so that visitors have to wait in a line that snakes through an entire floor of the museum, surrounded by solemn guests who squeeze past on their way to other exhibits. It would be impossible to truly mimic the experience of standing in line with strangers, wrapped around street corners in Chicago that late summer of 1955. However, the energy of the space was incomparable to anything I have felt in a room before and I wondered how it was possible that we were all still standing and breathing in it, with tears flooding and drowning our eyes.
I left the museum feeling empowered to learn more and fully plunge myself into the immersive experiences I had laid before me. The next several stops I’d planned for myself I consider to be not only an integral part of this trip, but also a significant piece of my overall journey towards self-acceptance and understanding.
I travelled onward towards Georgia first through North Carolina, where I stopped and spent a day with my best friend from home; and then through South Carolina, where I woke up along the beach– just in time to watch the sun rise over the Atlantic Ocean.
And then finally, I was ready for church.
(To be continued…)
***Photo taken at the Smithsonian NMAAHC in Washington D.C.
Wandering Woman 