I first visited the African American Museum last Christmas. Although I’d spent most of my visit in the basement, which goes back in time as one rides the elevator down, I didn’t have enough time nor mental bandwidth to see the upstairs.
As much as I enjoyed and absorbed the information from the theme-inspired floors, I took very few pictures as a result. I loved that the Funkadelic spaceship had an honored position. This was probably my favorite artifact in the music section although the music room itself, where we could order up a song through an interactive screen embedded into a table, was my favorite interactive.
This album cover spoke to me since I’d begun writing an essay for Veterans Day about how the phrase “We the American People” should be inclusive, yet in common practice, it exclusively means White people. What struck me most about this album cover was as much progress Black people have made, we’re still fighting some of the same battles.
This interactive, geared mostly toward kids, taught some Black Greek step moves. I’d wanted my nephew to do more than watch his own outline move, but at least he tried it out.
And like my first visit, I was starving by the time we ate. My feeding was delayed because my sister wanted to see the special exhibit before eating: Oprah Winfrey. As if that exhibit was going somewhere! For some reason, she was too anxious to wait. I sucked it up and walked around with a growling stomach, too hungry to take any pictures. Even so, I enjoyed watching some of her earlier clips when she was a mere beat reporter who’d eventually become a self-made billionaire.
As soon as I hit the cafe, I made a beeline to get the gumbo. That was memorably the best dish I’d tasted the last time. I did my foraging quickly around that a la carte style cafeteria, so I could get a table and put the feedbag on. My sister split a brick of cornbread with me after she and my nephew finally arrived at the table.
At the time, my sister wanted me to tell her my favorite part of the visit. I know it sounds too vague to say “all of it” or “the fact that it exists.” Honestly, I enjoyed seeing myself reflected in history and that the torch has been passed on to my generation to continue the challenge of making positive contributions to society and passing the torch of progress to the next generation.