Student Shares Her Experience at the African American Museum
It was a five story building filled with the history that schools don’t teach. We all know about Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks. We know about discrimination and segregation, but this place had so much more than what the pages in our history books could fill. This summer I visited the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C.
The experience was like none before and the concept of how it is built is just as amazing. The first floor starts with the worst times in African American history then as you rise and get to the top you see all of the amazing things African Americans have accomplished. I have to admit, the things I learned at that museum I did not know before. One thing that shocked me the most was that slaves built the White House, the Capitol and the Washington Monument and for so many years black people were not accepted and kept out of the place their ancestors built. Another thing that also amazed me was after being threatened in the worst ways possible, my ancestors never stopped fighting. A person would kill an innocent African American and leave them on sidewalks and in the street as a warning. If they kept fighting then that would be them, but that didn’t stop them. They marched, protested, fought and allowed themselves to get beat up just so that I and so many others could have a better life and I can not thank the ones before me enough. Without their passion for equal rights and opportunity, without their braveness I would not know the people that I know today. If they gave up then who knows what the world would have been like for me today.
Not only was this trip eye opening, it was also emotional. The images of humans swaying from a tree or their face and body after being beaten were so graphic and it made me wonder how much hate a person has to have for another person to kill them in such a horrific way or just to kill them in general. One image showed a boy begging to be hung because he didn’t want to be tortured any longer. Another image showed a mother and her son hanging from a bridge after she chose to take fall for the crime her son did not commit. Men went to their home, beat them, raped the mother multiple times and then hung them. There was also an Emmett Till memorial. He was a 14-year-old boy who was lied on by a white women for cat calling her and making her feel uncomfortable. Ron Bryant and J.W. Milam then followed the Till to his uncle’s house, kidnapped him, beat and mutilated him before shooting him and sinking him in the Tallahatchie River. An all white jury found both men not guilty. The museum showed Till’s face and you couldn’t even tell it was him when you saw it. It made you realize the fear that African Americans lived in during those times. If you looked at the wrong person at the wrong time as a black man or women it could have ended your life.
My family and I didn’t get to see all of the museum, but what I saw and took note of is how many different races came together to learn about the history. It wasn’t just African Americans, which I appreciated. It shows that people care and don’t want others to forget about the history or the treatment my ancestors received. I think that everyone should visit the museum. It was an amazing and emotional experience. I can not wait to go back and tour and rest.