Long Road to Hard Truth: The 100 Year Mission to Create the National Museum of African American History and Culture - Hardcover

Wilkins, Robert Leon

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0997910402 ISBN 13: 9780997910407

Publisher: Proud Legacy Publishing, 2016

Synopsis

In Long Road to Hard Truth: The 100 Year Mission to Create the National Museum of African American History and Culture, Robert L. Wilkins tells the story of how his curiosity about why there wasn't a national museum dedicated to African American history and culture became an obsession-eventually leading him to quit his job as an attorney when his wife was seven months pregnant with their second child, and make it his mission to help the museum become a reality. Long Road to Hard Truth chronicles the early history, when staunch advocates sought to create a monument for Black soldiers fifty years after the end of the Civil War and in response to the pervasive indignities of the time, including lynching, Jim Crow segregation, and the slander of the racist film Birth of a Nation. The movement soon evolved to envision creating a national museum, and Wilkins follows the endless obstacles through the decades, culminating in his honor of becoming a member of the Presidential Commission that wrote the plan for creating the museum and how, with support of both Black and White Democrats and Republicans, Congress finally authorized the museum. In September 2016, exactly 100 years after the movement to create it began, the Smithsonian will open the National Museum of African American History and Culture. The book's title is inspired in part by James Baldwin, who testified in Congress in 1968 that "My history... contains the truth about America. It is going to be hard to teach it." Long Road to Hard Truth concludes that this journey took 100 years because many in America are unwilling to confront the history of America's legacy of slavery and discrimination, and that the only reason this museum finally became a reality is that an unlikely, bipartisan coalition of political leaders had the courage and wisdom to declare that America could not, and should not, continue to evade the hard truth.

About this title

About the Author

Robert L. Wilkins is a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. He served as chairman of the site and building committee of the Presidential Commission that Congress established to plan the National Museum of African American History and Culture. Prior to becoming a judge, he was an attorney with the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia and a partner in a large private law firm. He is a graduate of Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology and Harvard Law School.

Review

A brief history of the creation of the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C.

Shortly after the conclusion of the Civil War, a "Grand Review," or a massive military parade, was organized to celebrate the accomplishments and sacrifices of the Union soldiers. Although 200,000 veterans marched over two days, African-American soldiers felt disenfranchised from the celebratory affair, in which they were relegated to second-class status. George Washington Williams, a well-known African-American historian, responded to this underrepresentation by proposing the construction of a monument commemorating the African-American soldier. In 1915, a re enactment of the Grand Review was staged, and an organization called the National Memorial Association formed in response to it, which officially advocated for Williams' proposal. By the 1920s, the original idea of a monument had grown to encompass a full memorial building of some kind, which would not only honor the martial valor of African-Americans, but also acknowledge their contributions to the United States in other domains. In 1929, President Calvin Coolidge signed legislation into law that sanctioned the creation of a National Memorial Building to Negro Achievement and Contributions to America, but it was a stillborn measure, radically underfunded. Yet another bill was introduced in 1965 to study the feasibility of a museum devoted to African-American history, but that project, too, died from neglect, as did another in 1995. Eventually, however, the National African American Museum and Cultural Complex was formed, and Wilkins, the debut author of this book, was its president. He's spent 20 years researching this work, which is nearly as much of a purposeful labor of love as the museum itself. In it, he skillfully relates not only the myriad practical problems―political, financial, and otherwise that slowed the museum project down, but also addresses its moral dimension, as well as the sometimes-tepid support the project had in the African American community. Ultimately, the author furnishes a rigorous history that captures the struggle of African-American people and the proud contributions they made to a country that did not always accept them: "The beauty of the African American story is that the toil of our people has not been in vain," he writes. Given all the historical minutiae that Wilkins provides, it's a surprisingly gripping historical drama.

A delightful, edifying tale written with intelligence and emotional sensitivity.

(Kirkus Reviews 2016-09-13)

About this edition

• Publisher: Proud Legacy Publishing
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 0997910402
• ISBN 13: 9780997910407
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 160