We've Come a Long Way, but Only Part Way: Reflections at the National Museum of African American History

A section of the lunch counter from Goldsboro, NC

A Day of Monuments, Museums, and Meaning

On a family trip to the mainland, we spent two whirlwind days during which we saw more or less every single inch of the National Mall in Washington DC. We saw the monuments. We saw the political buildings. And boy, did we see the museums. Lots of museums.

During our second day in DC, we visited the Holocaust Museum, the Museum of Natural History, the National Archives, and the Museum of American History (along with most of the monuments — can you say footsore?). Within the Museum of American History, there was a wing dedicated to African American history, highlighting a small portion of the collection that was destined for the new National Museum of African American History and Culture, set to open about a year after our visit.

Outside of the display sat a portion of the lunch counter that was at the center of the protests in Goldsboro, North Carolina. If you don’t know the story, you should look it up. It is one of countless acts of bravery by people fighting for rights they never should have needed to fight for. Seriously, look it up. I’ll wait . . .

It’s a give-me-goose-bumps type of story if you try to imagine what it would have been like to be one of those young men. The bravery. The commitment. The absurdity of it being necessary. Seeing a part of the actual counter was a powerful experience, and my wife proclaimed it to be the "coolest thing in the whole museum."

After the lunch counter, we proceeded through the displays, which were centered largely on the Civil Rights Movement. It was one of the great moments of our trip for me, as I huddled with my children in front of a picture of a group of African American men, each holding a sign that simply read "I am a man." We looked at the sober figures as they gazed into the camera with all the dignity of anonymous heroes, and we talked about what the terse phrase "I am a man" means. We talked about why it would even be necessary to get across a message that should have been, in the words of a group of rather well-known philosophers and statesmen, self-evident.

And then we started talking about how far we have come as a country. I assured my kids that while we are not perfect, the levels of racism in our country have, indeed, fallen. I told them that things are better now. And they are.

A Long Way to Go

But then I looked around, and I noticed something that put a serious damper on the experience. As far as I could tell, we were the only white people in the whole wing of the museum.

What does it mean that while most of the white visitors to the Smithsonian that day likely wouldn’t consider themselves racists (I hope), somewhere in the deep recesses of their minds they had decided that the African American wing of the museum was simply not interesting?

Not applicable.

Not to them.

Or maybe it was just too difficult to face.

I often say that I travel to reinforce the way people are simply people, and we have far more similarities than differences. But this experience made me stop and ponder. Because travel can also point out how often the world we live in sends us the opposite (and, in my opinion, incorrect) message: we are different from each other. But I know better. Because travel.