By Carol Schreder
Fifteen years ago Douglas Wilder, the mayor of Richmond and former governor of Virginia, stood on the coast of West Africa and looked out across the ocean. He imagined what life must have been like for his ancestors some 400 years earlier, torn from their villages and families, shackled in chairs, their hearts pounding as they boarded ships to an unknown destination. He dreamed of telling their story. Now, this grandson of slaves is on the brink of making his dream come true with the creation of the United States National Slavery Museum.
“The complete story of American slavery is one of the best-kept secrets,” says Lyn Henley of Topanga. She is the exhibit project director of the museum, which is scheduled to open in 2008. “Without slaves, our country wouldn’t be what it is today.”
Henley runs an exhibit design company in Topanga, CA. A graduate of State University of New York— Purchase, she studied environmental science, but wasn’t looking to become the next Madame Curie. “I’d always liked architecture,” she says, “and I really like interpreting complicated ideas.” A notice in the college placement office led her to a job with an exhibit design firm, and the rest is history. For over 20 years Henley has managed the design and production of museums, interactive multimedia programs, world exposition pavilions and visitor centers from Oklahoma to Singapore. Working out of Topanga on far-flung exhibits is no problem in the electronic age.
The slavery museum is the biggest project Henley has landed. It will be built along the Rappahannock River in Fredericksburg, Virginia on 38 acres donated by a local developer. New Yor
k architect Chien Chung Pei, son of the legendary I.M. Pei, is designing a 290,000 square foot structure that will feature a full-size replica of a slave ship. Henley is working with a team of scholars from around the country to create 10 permanent galleries that will tell the story of slavery and challenge its myths.
“We have a lot of propaganda about Africa being the continent of darkness,” says Henley. Actually, it was the cradle of civilization. Timbuktu in northern Africa had renowned universities with thousands of students. African scholars traveled to Greece and imparted their knowledge of mathematics, astronomy and physics. Contrary to once popular images of “savages” boiling bones over a steaming pot, Africans helped give birth to the Age of Reason.
Armed with this enhanced perspective on Africa, visitors to the museum will enter a 15th century village. “We need to make that real human connection before we go anyplace else,” says Henley. “It’s important to stop thinking of the slave trade as these numbers of people and to remember each slave was a human being just like you or me.” There’s the guy who bakes bread. The woman who delivers babies. Families sharing a meal. But in Henley’s scenario this idyll is shattered by a simulated capture. By the time visitors are crammed into the hold of a slave ship, they’ve been “sold” to Europeans, separated from their families and await their fate.
Henley’s idea for the museum is anything but ordinary. She wants to get inside your head. She wants you to feel what it’s like to be a slave, because she knows that only by understanding the past can we begin to heal slavery’s painful legacy. Racism is not a black problem. It’s not a white problem. It’s America’s problem.
So, let’s follow Henley’s idea for the museum. Let’s pretend you’re a slave, crossing the Atlantic on a journey called the Middle Passage, packed below deck where there’s so little air not even a candle will flicker. Some of you may try to commit suicide in the belief you’ll end up back in Africa. Some of you may rebel, only to face a blast of gunfire. “The ships were terrible, really awful,” says Henley. “We’ll set the exhibit up in such a way that you’ll see rats running alongside you, then feel something move next to your feet. It’ll be hot. You’ll be crowded together with other visitors. It’ll be dark, kind of scary. There’ll be the sense of everything moving.” Henley plans to use techniques from theme parks and movies to make the experience realistic and is working with a team of artists, designers, audio-visual consultants and filmmakers that includes fellow Topangans Phyllis Persechini, Bonnie McCourt and Debra Skelton.
Now, let’s say you survive the Middle Passage and you’re in the Caribbean. But this is no Carnival cruise; you are here to be seasoned. “The ones who survived were the strongest and the strongest willed,” says Henley. “Slave handlers would try to break their spirit.” Not me, right? I’m tough as nails. But after a few sessions with a cat-o’-nine-tails, you begin to see the wisdom of ingratiating yourself to the master as your only means of survival. A plantation in Virginia starts to look pretty good. But you’re not going to Virginia, you’re going to Rhode Island. “Northern states had a lot of slaves,” says Henley. “Rhode Island had one of the largest populations.”
Rhode Island was known for its tobacco. Toiling beneath a blazing sun, you may ask, what’s wrong
with this picture? Isn’t this the land of freedom? Where’s the Declaration of Independence? And that’s the rub. Our Founding Fathers were all about freedom and equality, except when it came to slavery. “There were slave auctions right on the lawn of the White House,” says Henley. “Slavery was the engine that drove the economy.” It was as vital to our country’s well-being as oil is today. Slaves cleared the forests and plowed the fields. They built our nation’s Capitol. The Founding Fathers figured that if America wanted to be a great nation, it couldn’t afford to get rid of slavery. They put on blinders, and for many Americans it took Hurricane Katrina to remind them of the hypocrisy we’ve been living with ever since.
So, thanks to Thomas Jefferson, you’re a slave in Rhode Island. Or maybe you’ve been sold to a plantation in Georgia, or run away to the Underground Railroad. There’s the Civil War, and maybe you fight with the Union Army. The 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution are ratified, and the promise once made by the Declaration of Independence takes a step closer to fruition. You survive the backlash of Jim Crow and celebrate the Civil Rights Act. Yet the shadow of slavery still follows you—in the media, housing, jobs, education, in the rants of Michael Richards and the taunts of Senator George Allen.
Now at the dawn of the 21st century, you find yourself in a place called the United States National Museum of Slavery, in a room Henley calls “Truth and Reflection.” “We have a long way to go in healing the wounds of slavery,” she says. “In order to understand it you kind of have to look at your own dark side. Individuals make mistakes. Societies make mistakes. Any one of us is really capable of having played a part in any piece of this.” Coming to this project with an open heart, Henley has been able to work with ease alongside her black colleagues, because this museum is not about casting blame or invoking guilt, it’s about truth and reconciliation.
The truth about Topanga is something of a revelation. We might think of ourselves as an island of tolerance, but the deed to my house contains the following clause: “…no part of any said lots shall ever at any time be used or occupied, or be permitted to be used or occupied by any person not of the white or Caucasian race, except such as are in the employ of the resident owners or resident tenants.” Slavery’s legacy lurks at our own back door.
Reparations for slavery are a difficult issue in this country, but funding for a museum should not be. And yet, obstacles exist. Some feel nothing good can come from dwelling on the abuses of the past. Others believe slavery is addressed in existing museums. But Governor Wilder is passionate about what will be the only museum dedicated to the education about slavery and the promotion of racial reconciliation. His appeals to corporations, such as Wal-Mart and Wachovia Bank, and wealthy individuals like Bill Cosby have raised $50 million of the $100 million needed to break ground for the building. It’s a good beginning, but chasing after dollars in the competitive world of fundraising is no easy task. So, if any of you have a rich uncle, or money left over from your allowance, or just want to be part of healing our nation, you can go to www.usnsm.org and make a contribution of any size.
Martin Luther King, Jr., whose birthday we celebrated this month, once said of slavery: “Before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth, we were here. Before the pen of Jefferson etched the majestic words of the Declaration of Independence across the pages of history, we were here. For more than two centuries our forebears labored in this country without wages; they made cotton king; they built the homes of their masters while suffering gross injustice and shameful humiliation—and yet out of a bottomless vitality they continued to thrive and develop.”
Now, thanks to the dream of Douglas Wilder and the vision of Lyn Henley, their story will finally be told at the United States National Museum of Slavery.
