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  • “This Museum Is about American Identity as Much as It Is about African American History”An Interview with Lonnie Bunch
  • Anthony Bogues (bio) and Lonnie Bunch (bio)

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Photograph courtesy of The Washington Post

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This interview was conducted July 1, 2015, in Washington DC.

BOGUES:

I want to start by thanking you first Lonnie very much for agreeing to do this, and we should begin really by asking the question: How did we get here? How did we get to the moment where we will shortly have a National Museum of African American Culture and History on the Mall?

BUNCH:

Even though there has been a hundred-year struggle to do this, a powerful catalyst came with the aftermath of the Civil Rights Movement and the ways people began to think about the movement. The Civil Rights Movement is sometimes thought of as this feel good moment . . . we all came together and we overcame. There was also this sense that many of the people who were involved in that movement were fading from the scene, and that there needed to be a way for us to celebrate and remember them. That led to a broader discussion about remembering the African American Experience. Another crucial factor: we now have the benefit of about sixty years of solid scholarship. That has given us the kind of foundational work that is at the core of a strong, scholarship-driven institution. We also, candidly, have a middle class community—black and white—that could provide some of the financial support needed to build a museum costing more than $500 million. Finally, and I can’t over emphasize this, the main reason this museum is opening is because of Congressman John Lewis.1 John Lewis created the legislation, and he’s one of those heroes that other members of Congress had to follow. All of these things came together ten years ago and have allowed us to come this far.

BOGUES:

Can you just talk a little bit about some of the practical steps that were taken to get to this moment?

BUNCH:

After fifteen years of not getting through, the legislation for the museum finally passed in 2003. This was, again, thanks to the leadership of John Lewis and the fact that he was able to work with people on both sides of the aisle. After the legislation was passed, there was a Commission appointed by President George W. Bush to look at the feasibility of this endeavor. Could there even be a museum? Should it be part of the Smithsonian? Should it be independent? How big should it be? Could it really raise money? The Commission spent a year and a half traveling around the country and listening to people—scholars, historians, educators, journalists, activists—then came back with a report that outlined some key ideas including how large it should be and what kind of collections it should have. In 2005, after leaving the Smithsonian twice, the institution convinced me to come back to start work on creating this museum. I used that Presidential Commission Report as a point of departure. I [End Page 704] began to think about what it meant for the proposed museum to be part of the Smithsonian versus being a separate institution, what it meant if it were on the Mall versus off the Mall. I began identifying staff and identifying scholars who could help us shape the intellectual content of the museum, its exhibitions, its publications, and its public programs. Then we began developing the long-term strategy for getting the museum open in a decade. That’s where we are now—within a year of getting it open.

BOGUES:

One of the things that strikes me about this museum is that there is something different about it, from all the other museums on the Mall. What is it that is distinctive about this museum?

BUNCH:

There are two things that make the NMAAHC unique. First, this museum is explicitly about making America better by confronting its tortured racial past. It’s not a place simply to commemorate and touch the past. It’s a place that...

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