National museum to tell black Americans’ story
in Washington. The building’s outward design — known as the Corona — features walls reaching skyward, evoking the resiliency, faith and hope that has sustained black Americans since they were brought to the country in bondage. Its threetiered shape is inspired by a symbol from the Yoruba people of West Africa featuring a crown. The 3,600 bronze-colored panels surrounding the building are a tribute to the 19th-century ironwork created by slaves in New Orleans.
Standing five stories high with 60 percent of the building below ground, the 400,000-square foot structure attempts to hold four centuries of black history. Visitors begin by descending to the basement and then walk up a series of ramps winding through the origins of slavery, to the bonds of Jim Crow, to an integrated society. Exhibits on the upper floors highlight the unique contributions of blacks to areas of American life, including the military, sports, music, the visual arts, film and television, business, the news media and religion.
Artifacts large and small fill the space, sure to evoke feelings of pain and pride from the collective memories of black visitors.
There are the ankle shackles that would have been used to restrain people who became slaves after crossing the Atlantic Ocean from the African continent to the Americas. A bill of sale for an enslaved 16-yearold girl named Polly, who was sold for $600 in Arkansas in 1835. A segregated Southern Railway passenger car that would have passed through Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia and Florida. Glass shards and shotgun shells from the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, where four little girls were killed in a racist bombing in 1963.