Freedom Comes in a Box: Reflections on the National Museum of African American History and Culture

Blacks in one boxBlacks in two boxBlacks onBlacks stacked in boxes stacked on boxesBlacks in boxes stacked on shoresBlacks in boxes stacked on boats in darknessBlacks in boxes do not floatBlacks in boxes count their losses

—Terrance Hayes, “The Blue Seuss”

In August 2016 the National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC), which is located on the last available site of Pierre L’Enfant’s 1791 master plan for the US Capital, will open its doors in honor of the black experience in America. Since the museum’s initial proposal in 1915 by black Union Army veterans, African Americans have been relentless in their demands for a parcel of what is often described as our nation’s most symbolic, if not most important, tract of real estate. As early as 1929, the collective efforts of black soldiers and citizens were sufficient enough to compel President Herbert Hoover to establish a commission that was charged with developing a plan for a National Memorial Building where “the Negro’s contribution to the achievements of America” could be duly recognized (Wilkins). This committee included the likes of Mary Church Terrell, Mary McLeod Bethune, Paul Revere Williams, and John R. Hawkins; but hard luck in the form of the Great Depression obstructed their mission to secure comprehensive legislation and private fundraising. As a result, the appeal for a national black history museum subsided for several decades, only to reemerge during the latter half of the twentieth century. So it’s not surprising that when the culture wars of the 1980s and 1990s enlivened discussions about how Americans should view the legacy of slavery, skirmishes over the proposed museum and reparations became the routine fodder of talk shows and nightly news programs. One might even argue that there is a correlation between how such debates persisted within the black public sphere (aka barber and beauty shops) and the tenacity with which Representatives such as the late Mickey Leland and John Lewis held forth as the museum’s sole congressional advocates. But for all of Leland’s and Lewis’s legislative achievements, beginning with the appointment of Mary Schmidt Campbell as the chair of the Smithsonian advisory board in 1990, the National Museum of African American History and Culture Act (H.R. 3491) would not be ratified until December 16, 2003. Owing to the act’s countless compromises and delays, its realization has now come to feel like so many of our nation’s democratic struggles that turn out to be profoundly reasonable despite embattling a lifetime’s worth of opposition.

Fortunately, this century’s long effort is complemented by an architectural structure that reflects the temerity of the museum’s supporters and their bold programmatic intentions. The museum’s design, which is the result of the collaboration between three internationally acclaimed architects, Philip Freelon, David Adjaye, and the late J. Max Bond, Jr. (all of whom are of African descent), marks a radical break from the neoclassical white marble monuments that dot the architectural landscape of the Capital’s centerpiece. The building itself has the appearance of an upside down ziggurat and consists of three bronze decoratively patterned inverted trapezoids that rest atop a massive plinth. According to Adjaye, a Ghanaian-British national with whom the museum’s design is closely associated, the inverted trapezoids directly reference those Yoruban shrines that were contemporaneous with the existence of the Transatlantic slave trade and thus honor the history of African craftsmanship through the visual effect of a shimmering bronze corona. By having the building’s silhouette reflect upon the foundry cultures of Nigeria and Benin, Adjaye hopes to call attention to the unacknowledged black artisans who developed much of the ornamental metal work that can be found in cities such as Savannah, GA; Charleston, SC; and New Orleans, LA.

Arguably, there is very little in Adjaye’s structure and the surrounding landscape that brings to mind the agricultural labor that was essential to the accumulation of white wealth within the Americas. However, a case for this...