With support from the University of Richmond

History News Network

History News Network puts current events into historical perspective. Subscribe to our newsletter for new perspectives on the ways history continues to resonate in the present. Explore our archive of thousands of original op-eds and curated stories from around the web. Join us to learn more about the past, now.

You May Choke Up at Some of the Items on Display at the National Museum of African American History and Culture

A wide-eyed Lance Spencer, 12, stood against the wall, between a stone block once used to auction slaves and a glass-boxed gallery where a worker was adjusting the lights on a shawl that belonged to abolitionist Harriet Tubman.

“It’s cool!” the seventh-grader at Eliot-Hine Middle School in Washington, D.C., exclaims. “That’s what I think is interesting so far. … I wanted to see our history. I’ve learned so much, but there’s more that I want to know.”

Lance, two classmates and his broadcast-media teacher, Mandrell Birks, were threading their way through a nearly impassable gallery choked with reporters, curators and construction workers as the National Museum of African American History and Culture offered a preview of its collection.

Read entire article at The Root