Washington, DC – February 2019

Washington, DC was designed by a Frenchman who grew up in Paris. I see some similarities in the layout, grand monuments and landscaping. I have been to DC countless times, but there is always more to see.

This time I spent SIX HOURS in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture. There is so much to read and learn. I keep getting more pieces of that puzzle. Like a 1807 law banned import of slaves into the U.S., and how the resulting accelerated domestic slave trade increased tearing enslaved families apart. Or how the invention of the cotton gin put even more pressure on enslaved agricultural workers to produce cotton quickly enough for the machines. Or the particularly nuanced sociology of the mid-Atlantic states where free and enslaved black people worked side by side and intermarried.

The African American museum is laid out very symbolically, with visitors descending underground to the lowest of the eight floors dealing with the early years of slavery, then working their way up the floors through the Civil War, Reconstruction, Jim Crow Laws, the Civil Rights Movement, and more recent history. It is important American history. The Museum is still fairly new, so it is difficult to get it during the summer and on weekends. Look online for timed-entry passes. Or do what I did, go in the dead of winter on a weekday.