Spending a few hours contemplating what never should have happened

The writing on the wall...

It's one of the hottest tickets in town, and it took several months of trying before I was finally able to score three ducats online, but on Saturday my daughter and I (the wife opting out as usual at the last moment) visited the National Museum of African-American History and Culture:

The museum has been extremely popular since its opening in September 2016, and timed entry passes (free) for weekend visits are required. The passes become available three months in advance on the first Wednesday of each month. After a couple of unsuccessful prior attempts, I was finally able to reserve three spaces for an early afternoon slot on the first Saturday in March. Even with the timed entry system, the museum was still packed with visitors:

Which was a shame, as the crowds made it difficult to fully appreciate the extensive historical exhibits, packed into three subterranean levels. The displays cover arguably the most disturbing chapter in American history (along with the genocide committed against the indigenous populations). It's all there - the enslavement of West Africans and their transport to the New World; two centuries of often brutal forced labor; Jim Crow, lynchings and segregation; the Civil Rights struggles and so on. It's a lot to take in, a depressing failure of the so-called ideals of equality, justice and opportunity that this nation is supposedly founded on, and which our politicians never seem to tire of trotting out for public speeches. This particular American chapter is a sobering but absolutely necessary read, and it was too bad the museum's popularity meant it wasn't possible to take all of it in, to give each exhibit the time it needed, to record in photographs all the images I would've like to have shared on this post. Do yourself a favor and try to visit:

The Amistad revolt:

The cotton gin, the "benefits" of which only served to strengthen the institution of slavery in the Antebellum South:

Lynchings no longer occur in the U.S. Nowadays, young, unarmed African-American males are instead gunned down by law enforcement officials. Due to the crowds, we somehow missed the section on Emmett Till, but considering Amber's age and everything we had seen already, it was probably for the best:

Black travelers faced extensive hardships just simply trying to move around their country:

Two of my favorite TV shows when I was a kid were The Flip Wilson Show and Sanford and Son:

I'm old enough to remember the Boston busing crisis (though too young at the time to have understood it) and the shameful incident pictured below of an African-American man being attacked with an American flag. (I also remember hating Reggie Jackson for hitting three home runs in Game 6 of the 1977 World Series, but that was due to the fact that he was playing for the New York Yankees and against the Los Angeles Dodgers, my then-favorite team):

Tuskegee Airmen exhibit:

It was a lot to process, but at the end of the historical sections the museum provides a much-needed Contemplation Court. Individually, I was aware of  most of the things that make up the black American historical experience, but to see it all in one place, at one same time, was overwhelming, to say the least. It's a history that sadly should never have occured, but it did (and is still happening in some aspects), and more Americans need to familiarize themselves with the narrative if this country is ever going to be all that it claims to be:

The upper floors of the museum continue to focus on the struggles faced, but also celebrate the contributions made, by black athletes, artists and entertainers to American culture and society. I found myself gravitating toward the baseball exhibits. The Cardinals uniform below belonged to Curt Flood, whose unsuccessful fight against the reserve clause eventually laid the groundwork for free agency:

I was floored to learn that Amber did not know who Jackie Robinson was. What are our schools teaching our kids these days?:

Muhammad Ali was one of my favorite athletes when I was a sports-crazy boy growing up in southern California - by the mid-1970's kids my age didn't know who Cassius Clay was, nor did they care. All of my sports heroes back then were African-American, including Henry Aaron, Wilt Chamberlain and O.J. Simpson. Yeah, about that last one, he was a great running back...:

I was equally impressed at seeing a photo of the Bad Brains playing a gig (in the background) as I was with Jimi Hendrix's vest:

The P-Funk Mothership, from which Dr. Funkenstein would emerge "to better administer funk to the audience":

Chuck Berry's 1972 Cadillac:

The Garden of Eden (1852), by Robert Duncanson:

Skin-whitening products:

My daughter poses outside of the museum afterward. I'm not sure what Amber made of everything she had seen inside, especially the more disturbing exhibits. She had been excited about going, but was quiet throughout our visit as we made our way around. On the way home, we talked about the discrimination faced by Asian immigrants and Asian-Americans:

Being an American of Asian descent means having to attend Chinese classes on the weekend, and on Sunday my daughter's school held a show to celebrate the Lunar New Year. Amber's class (they learn to read and write traditional characters) read a story (in Mandarin) about red envelopes 紅包, while one student showed off his skills with the Chinese yo-yo 扯鈴:

The National Museum of African-American History and Culture is an excellent, albeit long-overdue, addition to the Smithsonian group. I would like to return one day when the crowds are a little thinner in order to spend more time coming to greater grips with this country, its history and its peoples.