Black History Museum Site is Set

In honor of the start of Black History Month I decided to write this:

Well, after years and years and years of talk and no action, things are finally starting to set off. The Smithsonian Institute officially announced Monday that a site for the National Museum of African American History and Culture has been established on the National Mall. The Mall location is very important because that is where the major museums in the Washington Metropolitan area are located, the most prestigious ones. The museum will be one block away from the National Museum of American History and across the street from the Washington Monument. The area is about five acres and the proposed design of the building will be about 350,000 square-feet, equivalent to the size of the National Museum of the American Indian. Some members of Congress have been fighting for this for 20 years. They say the total costs for the museum will be around $500 million; half of the funds will come from the federal government and the other half will come from private fundraising. Oprah Winfrey (yes, Ms. Winfrey) and Bob Johnson, founder of BET are among the fundraisers for the museum.

Congress and the Smithsonian Institution did take its time to find this location. President Bush signed legislation in 2003 to officially begin the search for the sight of the museum. The Smithsonian's board of regents made the final decision on the location of the site. While watching the news coverage of the announcement on C-SPAN2, I did notice that majority of the panel was all white; however, the director of the museum, Lonnie G. Bunch, is a black man. I guess I shouldn't comment too much on the process of finding the location, and who was in charge of finding the location, because I have no idea how the process really works. I do know that the piece of five acre land on the Mall has not changed at all, it's been sitting right there all this time.

At least the Smithsonian Institute realized that the Anacostia location (a Washington D.C. neighborhood area) of the black history museum was the worst they could have picked for the impoverished, majority black area of Washington, D.C. I guess they wanted to keep it close to the Frederick Douglas house which is a National Park Service site.

So, be on the lookout, in 2012, for the new National Museum of African American History and Culture which will be located right in the heart of our nation's capital.

Map of Confirmed Location