Religions > Atheism > Museum to re-examine the scars of slavery-construction of National Slavery Museum in Virginia
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Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"stoney" |
| Date: |
01 Mar 2006 10:23:46 PM |
| Object: |
Museum to re-examine the scars of slavery-construction of National Slavery Museum in Virginia |
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11608337/
Museum to re-examine the scars of slavery
Black leaders hail construction of National Slavery Museum in Virginia
Updated: 3:21 p.m. ET Feb. 28, 2006
FREDERICKSBURG, Va. - Deep in the territory of the old Confederacy, a
new glass and stone edifice will soon begin rising — the first national
museum in the United States devoted to the subject of black slavery.
Builders will soon start sinking foundations for the 29,000-square-foot
United States National Slavery Museum that organizers hope to open to
the public in early 2008.
The structure, 120 feet (36.5 meters) high, will be built on a 38-acre
(15-hectare) site on donated land overlooking the Rappahannock River
about 50 miles (80 kilometers) south of Washington and close to where
several fierce Civil War battles were fought.
The building, illuminated at night, will be clearly visible to drivers
on Interstate 95, the main north-south East Coast artery, said former
Virginia Gov. Douglas Wilder, himself the grandson of a slave, who is
spearheading the project.
Wilder, now the mayor of Richmond, said there was a burning need for
such an institution. “We need to ask new questions and provide new
information about one of the most misreported and misunderstood
institutions in American history,” he said.
Reluctant to revisit subject
After slavery was abolished in the 1860s, blacks were reluctant to dwell
on their painful history and were absorbed with the continuing fight for
economic survival, civil rights and equality in the United States.
Wilder’s own father was reluctant to speak about his father’s
experiences and handed down only a few stories about how his owner would
beat him for sneaking off to visit his family on a different plantation.
“He really tried to just get past it,” Wilder said of his father.
That is now changing as black leaders express a growing desire and need
to re-examine the past. Wilder said all Americans needed to understand,
for example, the role slavery played in U.S. economic development in the
19th century.
Museum officials said they have already raised around $50 million —
around half the amount needed to build the museum. Wilder wants to raise
an additional $100 million as an endowment and has called on U.S.
corporations that may have profited from slavery to help, “not in the
sense of reparations but as an acknowledgment of doing what is right.”
Several major corporations have pledged to help.
‘This is our Holocaust Museum’
In a recent Washington speech, actor Ben Vereen, who played in the
groundbreaking TV mini-series “Roots” in 1977, told corporate leaders
they had an obligation to step forward.
“We’ve bought your cars. We’ve smoked your cigarettes. We’ve built your
industries. Now it’s time to tally up,” he said.
“This is our Holocaust Museum,” Vereen said, evoking a direct comparison
with the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington that opened in
1993.
The museum design is by architect C.C. Pei, son of renowned architect
I.M. Pei. The centerpiece is a massive glass-roofed atrium that will
hold the replica of a slave ship, the Dos Amigos, which is being
reconstructed from its original plans.
Museum executive director Vonita Foster noted that there are about 6,000
museums in the United States. Several smaller regional museums of
slavery are in the works, but this will be the first national museum
devoted to the issue.
Re-creating the mood of a slave
Apart from the ship, visitors to the slavery museum will undergo a
multimedia experience that will allow them, if only for few moments, to
feel a little of what it was like to be captured in Africa and become a
slave.
“We want to surprise visitors, take away control and not let them know
what is coming next,” said exhibit designer Lyn Henley. “We will walk
them through an experience of being psychologically captured.”
She would not say exactly how this would happen but added that parts of
the exhibit would be unsuitable for young children.
In another part of the exhibit, visitors would be taken into an
“invisible church” where they could eavesdrop on the voices of slaves
creeping away into the woods at night to practice their religion and
meet their loved ones.
The museum already has a growing collection of artifacts, including
slave shackles, furniture and clothing and a large collection of what
Henley called “objects of racism” — paraphernalia of the slave owners.
One of the most evocative is a set of shackles designed for an infant.
Copyright 2006 Reuters Limited
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Fundies and trolls are cordially invited to
shove a wooden cross up their arses and rotate
at a high rate of speed. I trust you'll
be 'blessed' with a cornucopia of splinters.
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| User: "Colin Day" |
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| Title: Geography quibble |
02 Mar 2006 01:24:12 PM |
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stoney wrote:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11608337/
Museum to re-examine the scars of slavery
Black leaders hail construction of National Slavery Museum in Virginia
Updated: 3:21 p.m. ET Feb. 28, 2006
FREDERICKSBURG, Va. - Deep in the territory of the old Confederacy, a
new glass and stone edifice will soon begin rising — the first national
museum in the United States devoted to the subject of black slavery.
Fredericksburg is hardly deep in the territory of the old Confederacy.
Colin Day aa #1500
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| User: "Jim07D6" |
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| Title: Re: Geography quibble |
02 Mar 2006 02:29:21 PM |
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Colin Day <cday3@sc.rr.com> said:
stoney wrote:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11608337/
Museum to re-examine the scars of slavery
Black leaders hail construction of National Slavery Museum in Virginia
Updated: 3:21 p.m. ET Feb. 28, 2006
FREDERICKSBURG, Va. - Deep in the territory of the old Confederacy, a
new glass and stone edifice will soon begin rising — the first national
museum in the United States devoted to the subject of black slavery.
Fredericksburg is hardly deep in the territory of the old Confederacy.
Maybe he meant to say the *old old* confederacy.
--- Jim07D6
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