A Century in the Making: The Journey to Build a National Museum

Photo: The National Museum of African American History & Culture, Michael Barnes. 

There has been an African American connection to the National Mall from the time of the city’s origin.  Benjamin Banneker, an African American astronomer, surveyor, and inventor, worked with Andrew Ellicott to play a central role in Pierre L’Enfant’s original plan of the nation’s capital.   As contributors to the design of the National Mall, African Americans have a unique connection both as those enslaved, penned and sold in markets there, and as laborers, carpenters, and masons. Laboring alongside one another, free and enslaved, African Americans helped build many of the historic structures that adorn the National Mall, including the Capitol and the White House.  The quest to build a national museum dedicated to African American history and culture is a tribute to this long and unique connection, and unknown to many, goes back at least four generations.  

The 100 Year Struggle to Build a Museum 

In 1915, the “Committee of Colored Citizens” of the Grand Army of the Republic, a Civil War veterans organization, was formed to support the “Colored Troops” visiting Washington to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the triumphant parade down Pennsylvania Avenue by Union soldiers, that followed the end of the war.  Having been excluded from the first march in 1865 due to discrimination, the committee was established to ensure African Americans were afforded proper accommodations such as places to eat, sleep, and otherwise while visiting segregated Washington, D.C.  The discrimination during the 1915 encampment caused Baltimore Afro-American to ask, “What has these 50 years brought of fame or honor to them that they might feel proud that they once fought for a grateful country?”

Photo: Keepsake pocket bank for the National Negro Memorial. Circa, 1926. Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Gift from the Ball-Haagland family in memory of Robert Ball.

As an effort to recognize the African American contribution to the nation’s history, the Committee of Colored Citizens collected a small fund during the 1915 encampment and formed the National Memorial Association to create a national movement in support of what became commonly known as the national “Negro Memorial.”  But this group wanted much more than just a statue, fountain, or other common veteran’s memorial; they envisioned a national museum:

It is the purpose of the National Memorial Association; to erect a beautiful building suitable to depict the [N]egro’s contribution to America in the military service, in art, literature, invention, science, industry, ect.—fitting tribute to the Negro’s contributions and achievements, and which would serve as an educational center giving inspiration and pride to the present and future generations that they may be inspired to follow the examples of those who have aided in the advancement of the race and Nation.

By 1919, Congress was holding hearings on legislation to authorize the construction of a “National Memorial Building.”  Though the legislation did not specify a site, the National Mall was considered the natural location for that memorial building from the beginning.  In 1920, written in an internal memorandum to Congress, possible locations were considered by the Commission of Fine Arts for the building on the National Mall. Among them, several then-undeveloped sites, are present locations of many national museums: the National Gallery of Art (main building and east building), the National Air and Space Museum, and the National Museum of the American Indian. Interestingly, the Commission on Fine Arts never sent this memo or its findings to Congress, instead writing that consideration of a negro memorial should be deferred until after a national World War I memorial was approved.

It was not until March 4, 1929 that President Calvin Coolidge would sign Public Law 107 into law.  The law authorized a newly created “National Memorial Commission” to construct “a memorial building suitable for meetings of patriotic organizations, public ceremonial events, the exhibition of art and inventions…as a tribute to the Negro’s contribution to the achievements of America.”  The National Memorial Commission was composed of twelve Presidential appointees, as well as the Director of Public Buildings and Public Parks of the National Capital, the Supervising Architect of the Treasury, and the Architect of the Capitol as ex offico members.  Unfortunately years of vigorous opposition to the legislation eliminated hopes for federal funding, which led the Chicago Defender to call the law a “joke” and would prove to be devastating.

By October of that year, the stock market crash doomed any expectations to fundraise for financial support by the recently established National Memorial Commission.  Nonetheless, and relentless in their efforts, the National Memorial Commission met with President Hoover on December 5, 1929, and requested that he make available for the construction of the Memorial Building over $1.6 million owed to African Americans and lost by the federal government.  These funds consisted of the more than $300,000 in unclaimed pay owed to African American soldiers who served during the Civil War that was paid into the federal Treasury after the Freedmen’s Bureau was abolished in 1872, and the nearly $1.3 million owed to African Americans who lost their money when the Freedman’s Bank collapsed in 1874.  (A report submitted to the current Presidential Commission by Swindler Berlin Shereff Friedman LLP confirmed the legitimacy of the claim and conservatively estimated the present value of the funds at $200 million.)

Photo: Pinback button promoting the arrival of the National African American Museum, circa 1990s. Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Gift of Lonnie G. Bunch III.

Pushing Forward 

Plans to create a federal national museum dedicated to African American history and culture mushroomed again in 1968, likely a result of the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and the surge of the Black Studies Movement. Several bills were introduced in the House and Senate in 1968 and 1969 to establish a “Commission on Negro History and Culture” and to “examine the possibilities” of establishing a national museum.  Despite widespread support in the African American community, none of the bills passed.  1968 was also the beginning of sustained effort by the Ohio Congressional delegation, led by Representative Clarence Brown (D-OH) and Senator John Glenn (D-OH), to pass legislation establishing a “National Museum and Repository of Negro History and Culture” at Wilberforce, Ohio, within the National Park Service.  However, a National Park Service study concluded that a national museum should be part of the Smithsonian and located in Washington, and none of the legislation to establish the national museum at Wilberforce passed.  In 1980, Congress created a commission to study the Wilberforce concept, but the National African American Museum and Cultural Center that would open in Wilberforce with state and private support many years later would do so without federal authorization.

Photo: President George W. Bush signs H.R. 3491, the National Museum of African American History and Culture Act, in the Oval Office Tuesday, December 16, 2003. The act authorizes the creation of a Smithsonian Institution museum dedicated to the legacy of African Americans in America.

Toward the 1990s, the focus shifted back to building a national museum in Washington.  In 1986, under the leadership of the late Mickey Leland (D-TX), Congress passed Joint Resolution 666, Public Law 99-511, to “encourage and support” private efforts to build the museum in Washington.  In 1988, Representative John Lewis (D-GA) introduced a bill to create a “National African American Heritage Museum and Memorial” within the Smithsonian, and the following year, Representative Leland and Senator Paul Simon (D-IL) would join Mr. Lewis to do the same.  In 1989, the Smithsonian hired the late Claudine Brown to create its Center for African American History and to lead the “African American Institutional Study,” to be performed by a blue-ribbon commission appointed by the Smithsonian. Ms. Brown and two of the members of the Smithsonian commission, Lerone Bennett, Jr., and Howard Dodson, were all members of the Presidential Commission.  

In 1991, the Smithsonian commission recommended the creation of a national museum, concluding that “[t]here exists no single institution devoted to African Americans which collects, analyzes, researches, and organizes exhibition on a scale and definition comparable to those of the major museums devoted to other aspects of American life.”  The Smithsonian commission recommended that the museum be temporarily located in the Arts and Industries Building until a new, larger facility could be built.  However, controversy about funding and the appropriateness of the Arts and Industries Building prevented passage of legislation, with a bill passing the Senate but not the House in 1992, and another bill passing the House but not the Senate in 1994.

In 2001, Representative Lewis, Representative J.C. Watts, Jr., (R-OK), Senator Sam Brownback (R-KS), and Senator Max Cleland (D-GA) led a new bipartisan coalition to establish a National museum of African American History and Culture within the Smithsonian.  Renewed questions about funding and the feasibility of using the Arts and Industries Building resulted in the formation of the present Presidential Commission to develop a Plan for Action to build the Museum.  As described later in this report, the Presidential Commission has answered the questions by recommending a sound funding plan and that the Museum be built where the movement to create it began––at the head of Pennsylvania Avenue near the Capitol where those heroic African American Civil War veterans gathered with their White brethren to begin the historic 1915 march.

The Journey to NMAAHC 

The National Museum of African American History and Culture, established by law in 2003, is the culmination of decades of efforts to commemorate African American history. In April of 2003, the Commission released its first report, The Time Has Come, to the President and Congress after a yearlong study and more than fifty national and local meetings. This document included suggestions for several possible locations and a preliminary planning program that determined an area of 350,000 square feet represented a reasonable size for the museum. In September of 2003, the Commission issued its Final Site Report which presented detailed analysis of the possible sites for the museum and recommended the Capitol Grounds site, with the Washington Monument site as an alternative. In December 2003, Congress enacted The NMAAHC Act, P.L. 108-184, establishing a museum within the Smithsonian Institution to be known as the National Museum of African American History and Culture. The act required the Smithsonian Institution Board of Regents to select a final site.

In October of 2004, the Board of Regents appointed nineteen members to the National Museum of African American History and Culture Council, to serve as advisors to the project.  On March 14, 2005, Lonnie G. Bunch III, then director of the Chicago Historical Society, was appointed Founding Director of the museum.  The southwest corner of 14th Street and Constitution Avenue, Northwest were chosen by the Board of Regents in 2006 as the site and for the next two years staff completed extensive planning of the museum. The design team of Freelon Adjaye Bond/Smith Group was selected in April 2009 from among twenty-two entries submitted by architectural firms worldwide.

Photo: Director of the National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC), Lonnie Bunch, points to the site where the new NMAAHC museum will be built on the National Mall, with Deputy Director, Kinshasha Holman Conwill. The Washington Monument is visible beyond the site.

Despite the lack of a physical site, the National Museum of African American History and Culture has been open to the public. In 2006, museum staff presented their plans to the public at the Smithsonian Inside Out program at American Folklife Festival on the National Mall.  In 2007, museum staff completed their inaugural exhibit, “Let Your Motto Be Resistance: African American Portraits,” at the National Museum of American History, followed by “Ain’t Nothing Like the Real Thing: How the Apollo Theater Shaped American Entertainment in 2010,” and “The Kinsey Collection: Shared Treasures of Bernard and Shirley Kinsey, Where Art and History Intersect and For All the World to See in 2011.”  In 2008, the museum initiated the Save Our African American Treasures Program, with workshops on preserving historical materials for African American communities across the country.

Now, in 2016 on September 24th, the National Museum of African American History and Culture opens its doors for the first time to the public to celebrate a people’s journey and a nation’s story.

Find out more about the grand opening of the museum: https://nmaahc.si.edu/visit/faq