February, Black History Month, is the month I just happen to see this black history exhibit that is being presented by Tavis Smiley and various sponsors. It is entitled, America I Am: The African American Imprint. The exhibit debut in Philadelphia and is traveling all around the country, and it is presently in Los Angeles, California. I remember reading about it last year and looking forward to seeing it, but I honestly had forgotten all about it until this morning.
I assumed that the exhibit would be housed in California's African American Museum. Well it is not at the African American Museum, it is actually at the Science Museum, which is still in Exposition Park along with the Natural History Museum.
I arrived at the Science Center at exactly 12 noon, along with bus loads of school children. I should have known that this would be the case because it is a Wednesday and early enough in the day for the kids to go to the museum and get back to school in time to go home.
However, it was not as disruptive as you might think. The staff there had it all under control. If you do want to avoid lots of kids, then I am told that later in the day during the week and Sundays are the best time to avoid large crowds.
The exhibit was well worth the $9.50 admission. It was beautifully done, with a great deal of authentic pieces. One of the things that touched me the most was to see some of the clothes of Frederick Douglas, as well as a few of his original books. They also had one of Malcom X's original hand written journals, and it was legible. They even had the bench and key from the jail cell occupied by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr in Birmingham, Alabama, where he wrote Letter from a Birmingham Jail. It shows a picture on the back wall of Dr. King sitting in this cell pensively peering through the bars, the worn bench was sitting in front of the picture, and this was all enclosed behind some jail bars, as the key was displayed on the wall outside of the cell. This sort of tugged at my heart, but also made me very proud.
0 comments:
Post a Comment