Introduction to the Inspiring Life of Author Mildred D. Taylor
Introduction You’ve probably read a few books in your lifetime. But have you ever read a book that changed your life? That’s what Mildred D.
Black History Month is coming and if you’re looking for activities to do during the month with the family, consider visiting an African American museum.
Black museums are a great place to connect with your history, learn different black culture and view a world of art. These museums tell our story of the past, present, and future.
When you visit an African American museum the experience will help you build further truthfulness and understanding about our black culture in this country.
We put together a list of 20 African American museums for your consideration to visit. Of course, you can always visit a museum throughout for events, exhibits, art, music performances, and so much more. Each museum will offer you a different black experience.
#CelebrateBlackHistoryMonth
The largest museum in the United States is National Museum of African American History & Culture. The museum was established in 2003,but open its doors on September 24, 2016. The building covers an area of estimated of 350,000 square feet and has 10 floors. The museum has a collection of more than 40,000 objects.
Looking north from the building, visitors can see the White House. to the east beyond the National Mall and other Smithsonian museums is the U.S. Capitol, seat of the nation’s legislature. To the south and west are monuments and memorials to Thomas Jefferson, Martin Luther King Jr., Abraham Lincoln, and George Washington, whose contributions to African American history and culture are told in the museum.
The African American Museum in Philadelphia (AAMP) is the first institution funded and built by a major municipality to preserve, interpret and exhibit the heritage of African Americans. It was founded in 1976 in celebration of the nation’s Bicentennial.
The AAMP currently houses four galleries and an auditorium, each of which offer exhibitions anchored by one of our three dominant themes: the African Diaspora, the Philadelphia Story, and the Contemporary Narrative.
The National Underground Railroad Freedom Center is a museum in downtown Cincinnati, Ohio, based on the history of the Underground Railroad. The museum open on August 3, 2004 with a vision to pay tribute to all efforts to “abolish human enslavement and secure freedom for all people.”
The building is 158,000 square feet structure designed by Boora Architects of Portland, Oregon Blackburn Architects of Indianapolis. Three pavilions celebrate courage, cooperation and perseverance.
Bronzeville Children’s Museum (BCM) is the first and only African American children’s museum in the United States founded in 1993 by Peggy Montes, a retired public school teacher. She was determined to build a museum after attending a museum convention with numerous children’s museum. The museum is named after Bronzeville, where African Americans settled in Chicago after coming from the South.
The Museum is designed to serve children between the age of 3 and 9. The exhibits include “You Are What You Eat”, “African American Inventors Changing Lives”, “Journey to Our S.T.E.M”. and “Tour of Bronzeville Landmarks”.
DuSable Museum of African American History is the nation’s first independent museum dedicated to the collection, preservation and study of the history and culture of Africans and Americans of African descent. Exhibits, concerts, films, children’s events and literary discussions are just a few of the institution’s various programs offered.
The DuSable Black History Museum was chartered on February 16, 1961. Its origins as the Ebony Museum of Negro History and Art began in the work of Margaret and Charles Burroughs, Bernard Goss and others to correct the perceived omission of black history and culture in the education establishment. The museum has a collection of 13,000 artifacts, books, photographs, art objects, and memorabilia. The DuSable collection has come largely from private gifts. It has United States slavery-era relics, nineteenth- and twentieth-century artifacts, and archival materials, including the diaries of sea explorer Captain Harry Dean. The DuSable collection includes works from scholar W. E. B. Du Bois, sociologist St. Clair Drake, and poet Langston Hughes.
The National Great Blacks in Wax museum is Baltimore’s first wax museum and the first wax museum of African American history in the nation. The museum was started as a grassroots operation by Dr. Elmer Martin and his wife Dr. Joanne Martin. It was established in 1983, in a downtown storefront on Saratoga Street.
The exhibits feature over 100 wax figures and scenes, including: a full model slave ship exhibit which portrays the 400-year history of the Atlantic Slave Trade, an exhibit on the role of youth in making history, and a Maryland room highlighting the contributions to African American history by notable Marylanders. The museum’s co-founder, Dr. Joanne Martin, describes the importance of preserving Black history in this way, stating: ‘everything else, it seems like a movie if you don’t have a sense of exactly what people were fighting against.’
The Lewis Museum, the largest African American museum in Maryland opened in 2005. The museum tell their story through permanent collection, special exhibitions, educational programs and public events.
The 82,000 square foot facility accommodates over 13,000 square feet of permanent and temporary exhibition space, a two-story theater, museum gift shop, classrooms, meeting rooms, an outdoor terrace and reception areas. The Museum has a collection of about 10,000 objects. Its Online Collection Portal, contains digitized images which are accessible to scholars, students and the general public.
National Museum of African American Music (NMAAM) is the only museum dedicated to preserving and celebrating the many music genres created, influenced, and inspired by African Americans. The museum’s expertly-curated collections share the story of the American soundtrack by integrating history and interactive technology to bring the musical heroes of the past into the present.
The National Museum of African American Music broke ground in early 2017 and officially opened in 2021.
Founded in 1965, The Wright museum holds the world’s largest permanent collection of African-American culture. With a collection of more than 35,000 artifacts, The Wright’s current 125,000-square-foot museum opened as the largest museum in the world dedicated to African American history.
The Wright, whose exhibits include Underground Railroad documents and letters from Malcolm X and Rosa Parks, also hosted memorial events for Parks and the “Queen of Soul,” Aretha Franklin, who lay in state in the museum’s rotunda in 2005 and 2018, respectively.
The California African American Museum (CAAM) focuses on enrichment and education on the cultural heritage and history of African Americans with a focus on California and western United States. The museum occupies a 44,000 square feet (4,100 m2) building. It includes three exhibition galleries, a theater gallery, a 14,000-square-foot (1,300 m2) sculpture court, a conference center special events room, an archive and research library.
The museum conserves more than 6,300 objects of art, historical artifacts and memorabilia, and maintains a research library with more than 20,000 books and other reference materials available for limited public use.
The Museum of the African Diaspora (MoAD) opened to the public in 2005 and is a contemporary art museum in San Francisco, California. MoAD holds exhibitions and presents artists exclusively of the African diaspora, one of only a few museums of its kind.
Prior to 2014, MoAD educated visitors on the history, culture, and art of the African diaspora through permanent and rotating exhibitions. After a six-month refurbishment in 2014 to expand the gallery spaces, the museum reopened and transitioned into presenting exclusively fine arts exhibitions. MoAD does not have a permanent collection and instead works directly with artists or independent curators when developing exhibitions.
The New Orleans African American Museum of Art, History and Culture (NOAAM) was founded in 1996. NOAAM is located in the Tremé section of New Orleans, a neighborhood that was home to the nation’s largest, most prosperous and politically progressive community of black people by the mid-1850s.
The NOAAM of Art, Culture and History seeks to educate and to preserve, interpret, and promote the contributions that people of African descent have made to the development of New Orleans and Louisiana culture, as slaves and as free people of color throughout the history of American slavery as well as during emancipation, reconstruction, and contemporary times.
The Whitney Plantation Historic District is preserved by the Whitney Institute, a non-profit whose mission is to educate the public about the history and legacies of slavery in the Southern United States.
The Whitney Plantation historic district was listed on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places in 1992. It is one of 26 sites featured on the Louisiana African American Heritage Trail.
The African American Panoramic Experience(APEX) Museum is the oldest Black History Museum located in the city of Atlanta. It was founded in 1978 by veteran filmmaker Dan Moore Sr., who was inspired by the life of Dr. Benjamin Mays.
The museum maintains a diverse and educating display by routinely changing its exhibits on a quarterly schedule and is the only museum in Metropolitan Atlanta solely dedicated to telling the rich and often untold story of people of the African Diaspora
Trap Music Museum is an interactive experience that uses art to showcase the rich culture of trap music, one of the most popular genres of music today. By paying homage to the inspiring trials and triumphs of today’s biggest trap stars and providing a platform for emerging artists.
Memorabilia, art & room sets, including a jail cell, tracing hip-hop culture, plus an escape room.
Jack Hadley Black History Museum main objective is to get the message to our young people that Black Americans have done great things to help build and shape America‑‑ its goals and dreams. The organization feels that all children, regardless of race, need to know the accomplishments of Black men and women in American History.
Today, he has obtained over 4669 pieces of artifacts; i.e. old news clippings, prints, pictures, paintings, posters, books and magazines of Black America Achiever’s historical accomplishments to include Thomasville/Thomas County’s Black Achievers.
The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem, one of The New York Public Library’s renowned research libraries, is a world-leading cultural institution devoted to the research, preservation, and exhibition of materials focused on African American, African Diaspora, and African experiences.
In 1998 the Schomburg Collection was considered as consisting of the rarest, and most useful, Afrocentric artifacts of any public library in the United States. At least as of late 2006, it is viewed as the most prestigious for African-American materials in the country. As of 2010, the Collection stood at 10 million objects. The center contains a signed first edition of a book of poems by Phillis Wheatley, archival material of Melville J. Herskovits, John Henrik Clarke, Lorraine Hansberry, Malcolm X and Nat King Cole.
Studio Museum in Harlem founded in 1968, the museum collects, preserves and interprets art created by African Americans, members of the African diaspora, and artists from the African continent. Its scope includes exhibitions, artists-in-residence programs, educational and public programming, and a permanent collection.
The museum celebrated the opening in September 1968 of its first exhibition, Electronic Reflections II, featuring works by artist Tom Lloyd.
The Black History Museum and Cultural Center of Virginia (BHMVA)was founded in 1981 by Carroll Anderson, Sr. The museum opened to the public at 100 Clay Street, in the historic Jackson Ward district of Richmond in 1991.
The Black History Museum & Cultural Center of Virginia celebrates the rich culture and moving histories of African American people in Virginia and their contributions to our magnificent country. We endeavor to tell a more complete and inclusive story about America.
The Harvey B. Gantt Center for African-American Arts + Culture, formerly known as the Afro-American Cultural Center is a 46,500 square feet, four-story center was designed by Freelon Group Architects at a cost of $18.6 million — and was dedicated in October 2009 as part of what is now the Levine Center for the Arts.
Since 1974, the dream of the first visionaries has elevated to unforeseen levels. Located in the heart of Uptown Charlotte, October 2009 marked the opening of the Afro-American Cultural Center as the Harvey B. Gantt Center for African-American Arts + Culture. The naming of the new facility is in honor of Harvey Bernard Gantt, a well-respected community leader and businessman. He is a trailblazer as the first African-American student admitted to Clemson University and later served as Charlotte’s first African-American mayor.
Introduction You’ve probably read a few books in your lifetime. But have you ever read a book that changed your life? That’s what Mildred D.
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