A Long Walk Through History

Beverly Hill
Jul 2
2 min read

National African American Museum, Washington, D.C.

I was recently blessed with the opportunity to explore the National African American Museum in Washington, D.C.

It took two days to delve into the exceptional and deep history of myself and my people. The ornate and majestic building, shaped like an African crown, houses relics and historic truths of a people stolen from their homes, held in captivity through the Middle Passage, and kept in bondage until this day.

To start, you take an escalator down to a room-sized elevator that looks and feels like a time machine. This level is marked “Today,” and as the elevator descends, years are displayed like the “Way-Back Machine.” Slowly, you arrive at the year 1400.

Here, you are greeted by the European nations that participated in the slave trade: the UK, France, Portugal, Spain, the Netherlands, and Denmark—all were instrumental in kidnapping and trafficking human cargo to their homelands and the Americas.

Videos of the “Point of No Return”—a cave structure in Ghana where people from all parts of Western Africa were shackled and held, stuffed like sardines—awaiting the ships transporting them to a new, unknown destination—play in somber silence.

So many died during the Middle Passage. Replicas of ships display the stacking methods used to utilize every crack and corner of the below-deck prison. Shoulder to shoulder, men lay next to each other, unable to move until brought up for exercise—at which point many jumped overboard rather than endure the long, torturous journey.

Feces, vomit, blood, and urine created a scent so foul it could make one faint upon opening the hatch. Women, sharing the same fate, were also raped and sometimes beaten. Ocean water was occasionally thrown below deck onto the slaves and ballasts to flush down the grotesque human waste mixture.

And that was just the 1400s. There are three more floors below, covering plantation life, emancipation, Jim Crow and segregation, Civil Rights, and African American involvement in all the wars—including Vietnam.

And suddenly, you’re at 1968, with protests and unrest that mirror today. At this point, Sweet Home Restaurant offers a down-home respite with collard greens, mac and cheese, sweet potatoes, and cornbread—or Caribbean curried chicken, oxtails, or red snapper with coleslaw—washed down with sweet tea.

Onward and upward to our sports history, acting and comedic history, music, and political history—all magnificently displayed on three floors above the main.

There are even private booths where you can record your own historic statement.

It’s one thing to read about your history; it’s another to visually experience it. That’s what the museum provides: a long walk in the shoes of survivors.

President Trump has issued orders to eliminate Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion across federal agencies. He also signed an order targeting the teaching and preservation of what he described as “narratives that portray American and Western values as inherently harmful and oppressive.” That order singled out some Smithsonian Institution museums, including the National Museum of African American History and Culture.

We must fight for the right to truth in history—by preserving, through facts and physical evidence, our museums and the true knowledge they contain.