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It has been in the works for more than a century – as NPR’s Tanya Ballard Brown reported, it was “first proposed in 1915 by black veterans of the Civil War.” She walked us through the many steps between that initial proposal and today’s dedication ceremony here.
The museum is organized so that visitors experience a journey from darkness into light, as Tanya explained:
“The majority of the exhibition space is underground. On the bottom level, museum-goers will find themselves in literal and metaphorical darkness: slavery. Then, as they ascend, visitors move through exhibits exploring the Jim Crow era and the civil rights movement, until finally reaching light and joy — above-ground galleries devoted to culture, music, dance, literature.”