I just read this morning’s New York Times’ article “How the Slave Trade Shaped the World”; you should, too. It’s the story of a major exhibit that just opened at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, located on the Mall about four miles from our house. The museum opened the 2016, over eight years ago. No one that I know who has visited the museum has anything negative to say about it (other than it is exhausting because it is so large and comprehensive), and this exhibit, which will be on display for about six months, will only add to its allure.

Now, let’s try to think of something surprising about this architecturally striking museum, which I probably have driven by several hundred times. What did you come up with? My answer is: Edie and I have never visited the museum. Eight years of talking about how we have to go, and eight years of never doing it. Excuses? I am not sure: well, there were the COVID years, where we really didn’t go anywhere. There were the early years where it was so crowded that you had to get tickets well in advance, or potentially be disappointed that there weren’t enough walk-in tickets available when you showed up. There really isn’t any nearby parking, so you have to either walk a fair way, or take a cab or Uber (or Lyft). But none of these excuses are good excuses, are they? Or are they?

[There has been an interruption in the creation of this post. Edie and her four year old sous chef were busily baking gingerbread men when they discovered that they were low on molasses. So, I – the designated all time driver – was given the task of buying more of Grandma’s Molasses. A quick trip to the nearby Safeway and I learned that “yes, we have no molasses, we have no molasses today”, so I had to reverse course and go to the neighborhood Giant, where they had three jars of Grandma’s Molasses, and where they now have only two. The Grandma’s label says that they have been making quality molasses since 1890. Assuming that Grandma was 65 years old when they started (yes, that’s just a wild assumption), she would have been born in 1825. In 1825, John Quincy Adams was president, and the United States had 24 states, in 15 of which slavery was legal.]

At any rate, it is time for us to visit the African American History Museum.

You know what makes this even stranger? Last April, we drove to Montgomery Alabama just to see the Legacy Museum which documents slavery in America, and the civil rights sculpture museum and even the Rosa Parks Museum. And we had visited the Old Slave Mart Museum in Charleston South Carolina, and more. And other civil rights museums around the country. Go figure.

But, you know what they say. You don’t go to tourist sites where you live. For example, I have never been either to the top of the Arch in St. Louis, nor to the Jefferson National Expansion Museum below the Arch. And, here in Washington, where I have lived since October 13, 1969 (but who’s counting?), I have only been on a White House tour in the Spring of 1958, when I was here with my junior high school class. Just think how many times the White House has been re-decorated since the days of Mamie Eisenhower.

Now, it’s also true that I have only been in the Holocaust Memorial Museum twice, and it has been in operation now for a little over 30 years. And, although I have been to Yad Vashem in Jerusalem and the Holocaust Museum in Houston, I have pretty much avoided the others. You can just get too much of a bad thing, you know.

At any rate, the slavery exhibit, titled “In Slavery’s Wake: Making Black Freedom in the World”, looks like a don’t miss exhibit. Apparently it is ten years in the making and, after leaving Washington next June, it will travel to Amsterdam, Rio de Janeiro, Cape Town, Dakar and other places, so maybe you can catch it somewhere else. We have also never been to sub-Saharan Africa. There are a lot of places there I would like to see, but it is probably too late for something that extensive. After all, didn’t I tell you how hard it is just to travel 20 minutes to the Smithsonian African American museum?